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"Lonesome Town"

Goin' down to Lonesome Town

Where the broken hearts stay

Goin' down to Lonesome Town

To cry my troubles away

- Ricky Nelson

By the time they'd been in California three months, Joyce was pretty sure the move had been a mistake.

She had looked on it as freedom, as fun in the sun, a way to leave Hawkins and all the darkness and fear there behind them. But the people they'd left behind in Indiana still kept them all tied to the place … as did the people they hadn't left behind. Even half the continent away, Joyce still felt the gaping hole in the world where Hopper should be, and she could see that El did, too. El missed Mike desperately, especially as school and other obligations got in the way of their nightly phone calls. Will missed Mike and all the rest of his friends. Jonathan spoke little, but Joyce could see in his face that the separation from Nancy was taking a toll on him. As far as she could tell, he hadn't picked up a camera once since they'd arrived, which was a clear sign of inner turmoil.

What had she been thinking? she asked herself, sitting at the dining room table and circling more want ads for more crappy jobs that she really didn't want. She'd had three so far: a secretarial job that she'd left when the boss made it clear on her second day that her duties involved ribbons other than the ones that belonged in a typewriter; a coffee shop job that she'd lost when she spilled coffee on someone who turned out to be the mayor; and a photo lab she'd been bumped from so the owner's son could work there instead.

Their neighbors looked on them with suspicion, especially once Jonathan's car finally gave up the ghost completely and just sat there taking up space in the driveway. Will and El didn't talk about school much, but it was clear from their silence and the lack of any invitations that they weren't fitting in there. Jonathan had made one friend, a pizza delivery guy with hair down to his knees, and the kid seemed nice enough, but he was out there, spacey, and Jonathan seemed the same when they were together.

The problem, Joyce decided, giving up on the want ads and lifting her cup of coffee, was that they hadn't moved because they wanted a fresh start. They had moved because they were running. Hiding. If she'd really wanted to give them a fresh start, she should have stayed, she thought ruefully, odd though that sounded. El would have been more comfortable going to school in Hawkins, where she had friends she trusted. They could have gotten used to being a family there, the four of them living together. Then they could have sat down and discussed what to do.

Except that they hadn't had that luxury. Owens made it sound like people were still looking for El, like the Hawkins Lab people would be swooping down on her eventually if they didn't take steps to hide her. Joyce couldn't have let that happen. Of all the things that mattered, the most important was keeping Hop's girl safe, letting her live like a normal person, the way Hopper would have wanted her to.

Tears stung Joyce's eyes just thinking of him, replaying in her mind those last moments, that last conversation, as she did so often. The truth was that she had let them all down. When they left Hawkins, Joyce had meant to be so strong. She had meant to be the kind of mom who had her shit together, the kind of mom who baked cookies and was on top of homework and invited the kids' friends to the house. Karen Wheeler, that was who she had meant to be. But she hadn't. She'd gotten to California and moved into the house Owens had found for them; she'd let Jonathan make the arrangements to enroll them all in school, signing the papers he brought home to her; she'd let Will look after El as she went into her first experience in a real school. And what had Joyce done? She'd sat at home and looked at want ads, she'd overslept more often than not. She'd gone right back to the total mess of a mom she had been before Will disappeared, the mom she had promised herself she would never be again.

If only Hopper was here …

But he wasn't, she told herself, slamming the cup down on the table and sloshing coffee over the edge. He wasn't here, and he would never be here, and she was letting him down. She was letting herself down. And most of all, she was letting down these three extraordinary teenagers who counted on her, who had all been through more than any human being should have to deal with in a whole lifetime, much less in three short years. It had to stop.

"It has to stop," she said out loud, the sound of her own determined voice loud in the hushed house. "It has to stop."

She pulled the want ads toward her and started circling, looking for jobs that she might actually enjoy. Maybe that was where it started … maybe if she fixed herself, she would have the energy to make things better for the kids.

She had to do something. She couldn't stand to let them keep flailing another minute.