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"Pleasant Valley Sunday"

Creature comfort goals

They only numb my soul

And make it hard for me to see

My thoughts all seem to stray

To places far away

- The Monkees

The new house was big. So big Joyce was afraid she might get lost in it. Each of the kids had their own room, and the house was on multiple levels so sometimes it felt like each of the kids was off in their own house, too.

She'd seen the same reaction in the kids when they pulled up in front of it, when they went inside and started exploring. Yeah, it was crazy cool to be living here in California, near the mountains and the desert, and to have such a big new space to spread out in—but it was scary, too. In some ways, maybe it was too big.

Joyce could see why Owens had chosen this place. It was nothing like Hawkins. The house was recently built, sprawling, still smelling of fresh paint, and the neighborhood was large, the houses close together. The kids could make friends who lived next door, instead of having to bike through dark spooky woods to get to their friends' houses. This was exactly the kind of place she had dreamed of living in when Jonathan and Will were young, a place where they could be equal to their peers and have everything their friends had.

But now … she saw Will looking at the neighbors with the same fearful and wary expression she had always seen in Jonathan when he met new people, the same one she saw in El. Will had always been so open and outgoing, and now … he was no more ready for this kind of close-knit normalcy than the rest of them.

So it was a relief, at first, when none of the neighbors came calling. No casseroles delivered to the door, no plants with a housewarming card. None of them had wanted such a thing, anyway, too busy getting used to the big house and the space, to shouting across the house and not being heard, to doors closing each of them in by themselves.

It was less of a relief when the kids came home from the first day at the new school with pinched, tired looks. Apparently they didn't fit into the California school any better than they fit into the California neighborhood. Joyce tried to jolly them out of it, to encourage them to try harder to make friends, and they responded half-heartedly, picked at their dinners, and went to their rooms claiming homework.

Joyce did the dishes alone, just the way it had been back in Hawkins, except then it was because the boys had places to be, people who cared about them. And so had she … however briefly. She thought of Bob, with his cheesy music and his love of dancing, and his refusal to let her hide from the joy he took in life. She thought of Hopper, his vitality and strength, his blue eyes that challenged her to be the person he believed she could be. And she sank down on the couch, put her head in her hands, and wept for them, for herself, for her children.

After a few minute of that, carefully muffling the sound so the kids couldn't hear her cry, Joyce made an effort to pull herself together. It was only the first day of school. They had been in California less than a week. How could she give up this easily? Bob wouldn't have. The man who had withstood a lifetime of being called "Bob the Brain" and remained cheerful would come up with a way to make life here fun and interesting for all of them. Hopper wouldn't have—he'd have ignored the rest of the world and done his best to make their home a safe and happy place to be.

That, at least, Joyce decided, she could do. She forced herself up off the couch and started opening boxes, unpacking things, deliberating the best places to put them.

After a while, she heard a door open, saw Will's head pop out. "Mom, you need some help?"

"Yeah, buddy. Come on up and give me a hand with this, will you? I'm not sure whether it looks better on this wall or that one."

"Jonathan's good at that stuff. Hey, Jonathan!" Will called, and his brother's door opened. And then, hearing them laugh as they unpacked, El joined them, the four of them calling out jokes and tossing balls of packing tape across the room at each other, digging into boxes and hanging pictures and making the place a home.

Joyce looked at them together, side by side by side on the couch with bowls of ice cream, watching The A-Team and trying to count how many gold necklaces Mr. T was wearing. They were strong; they would make the best of this new life. A period of adjustment, that's all this was. Getting used to new places and new people. After a few weeks, it would be like they had always lived here, always been part of life in the Lenora Hills.

And in the meantime, she would do her best to keep them laughing together, to remind them that they were a family, and to live up to the two men she had loved and lost.