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"Eve of Destruction"

Don't you understand what I'm trying to say

Can't you feel the fear I'm feeling today

- Barry McGuire

A hot shower—well, lukewarm, which was really the best the cabin offered—the next morning made Hopper feel somewhat better, but he was definitely swearing off red wine. "Kee-on-ti," he sneered into the spray, mimicking that snooty waiter with his "very good, sir"s. With some difficulty, he managed to pry the cap off a bottle of aspirin to go with his first cigarette of the morning, and washed it down with long gulps of milk straight out of the carton.

As he was wiping the milk off his mustache he saw the note on the fridge: "Gone to Maxs. Sleeping over. – El". All right, then. He was going to assume she had asked permission at some point that he had been too drunk to remember. That felt safer, because getting mad in his current condition sounded painful.

A knock on the door broke the silence in the cabin, and then he heard the last voice he had expected—Joyce's. "Hopper? Are you there?"

He narrowed his eyes. Getting mad sounded better already. Yanking the door open, he glared down at her. "Oh, look who it is."

She rushed past him without an apology or a pause to notice that he was half-naked, wearing only a towel. "We need to talk."

"Yeahhh, we do." He slammed the door shut. "I haven't been stood up like that since Alice Gilbert in the ninth grade."

Joyce was paying him no attention. She was crouched down in front of his refrigerator, dumping some stuff out of a bag onto the ground.

Slinging on his shirt, Hopper demanded, "What are you doing? Joyce? Hello?"

She held up a hand to stop him. "Just—watch." Picking up the things from the ground, which he now recognized as the magnets he had tripped over in the store yesterday, she tried to stick them to the refrigerator, but they slid right off. Over and over again. She turned and stared at Hopper as though there was something there to be upset about, while he stared back at her wondering when she had gone off her rocker.

"Okay," he said, "you're freaking me out."

Coming toward him, she shook one of the magnets at him. "You slipped on this, remember?"

"Yeah."

"It fell in the night; it lost its magnetism."

"Oh. Did it." Where was she going with this?

"And the same exact thing happened at my house the day before."

"Wow." Like he cared about her history with magnets.

Joyce went on as though he hadn't spoken. "And I thought, okay, that's weird, why are all these magnets suddenly losing their magnetism?"

He put a hand over his face. This must be some crazy dream. He'd wake up from a nap and go on their date and— But Joyce was still talking.

"So, I went and saw Scott."

That got through to him. When she was supposed to be on a date with him, she was with some other guy? "Scott," he repeated sharply. "Who's Scott?"

"Scott Clarke," she said, as though he was supposed to have known that.

Come to think of it, he did know that. The science guy. Another science geek. Hopper was losing her to another one of those weird geeky guys? He didn't think so. "Your child's science teacher?" he asked, his tone making it clear what he thought about that.

Joyce frowned. "He's pretty brilliant, actually—and I asked him, how is this happening, and he built this magnetic field using an AC transformer and plugging it into a solanoid, and—and with that solanoid—"

He had completely lost the thread of what she was saying. What the hell was a solanoid? Getting up, Hopper held up his hands to stop the flow of her words. "Hold on. Slow down, slow down." She stopped, looking up at him in confusion, and he went on, "I just want to get this exactly right, okay? You stand me up, no phone call no apology, because you had to go to Scott Clarke's house."

"Yeah." She said it like it was obvious.

Well, it wasn't obvious to Hopper. She'd been flaky in the past—she'd even left him, all those years ago, for Lonnie. But this. To stand him up when he was trying to start something real, when he thought he could see a future for the first time in years … this took the cake. "You've outdone yourself, Joyce. You really have. No, you've outdone yourself!"

"Oh, come on, Hop!" she said, agitated, following him as he hunted for his pants. "You're not even listening to me. Scott was able to demagnetize some of the magnets, and he thinks—"

"I don't care what Scott thinks!"

But Joyce went on, over his shouting. "He thinks that a large-scale magnetic field could be built using some sort of machine or, or experimental technology—"

"He's brilliant," Hopper agreed. Brilliant and sneaky, snaking Hopper's girl. "Really, really brilliant. Is he single, too?"

He was almost to the door of his bedroom when her next question stopped him in his tracks.

"What if it's them?" She continued, "To build a machine like this, you need resources. You need scientists, you need funding … tens of millions of dollars."

"Joyce." They couldn't go down this road again. He couldn't risk losing El. Not now.

"It can't just be a coincidence, Hopper. It has to be them."

"Joyce. Stop."

"It has to be the lab!"

"It is impossible." It had to be impossible.

"Well, then, prove it to me."

"Prove it."

"Yeah. Take me back there."

"To the lab."

"Yeah, I want to go back."

"Because some magnets fell off your fridge."

She refused to be budged by his sarcasm and disbelief. "Yes."

"Okay, it makes sense," he told her.

"Thank you."

"It makes sense. I'm sorry." She was buying that he was buying her craziness, and he was still pissed, so he glanced at his empty wrist as if he was looking at a watch. "I'm a little busy right now, but I'm thinking maybe we can meet up there. Tonight, like seven o'clock. You know, of course, unless something comes up, which—" He shrugged, going into his room and pulling the curtain closed so he couldn't see in her face how hurt and angry she was. "You know. It will."

As he got dressed, he could hear her voice coming through the curtain. "You know, after everything that's happened, this is no joke!"

"No, I don't think it's a joke," he called back. "I think that when I asked you out, I think you got scared. I think you got scared and now you're inventing things. You're inventing things to get worked up about so that you can push me away. Because God forbid any of us move on!" he bellowed, zipping up his pants. "Because that—that would be—I mean, that would be too much, right, Joyce? You know. That would be too much, wouldn't it, Joyce? Wouldn't it, Joyce?" he repeated, realizing that it had suddenly gotten awfully quiet.

Ripping open the curtain, he stared at the empty cabin. Carrying his shoes, he went out on the porch and called her name to the empty woods, just barely managing not to jump as the doors to his shed flew open. She came out, carrying a bunch of stuff. "What the hell are you doing?"

"I need to borrow these."

"No," he told her, sitting down to put on his shoes. "You're not going back there. Joyce!" he called, when she kept moving as though he hadn't even spoken. "Joyce, you're not going back there. Son of a bitch!" he muttered, hopping on one foot trying to tug his other shoe on as he realized that she was indeed going back, with him or without him.

Well, in that case, it was damned well going to be with him.