"Runaway"

I'm a walkin' in the rain

Tears are fallin' and I feel a pain

A wishin' you were here by me

To end this misery

- Del Shannon

When they didn't find Will, or any trace of him, in the woods, Joyce came back to the house and did what she had been putting off all morning—she called her ex-husband. And, of course, she got some tramp he must be shacked up with. 'Cynthia'. Of course she'd be a Cynthia. She sounded like a Cynthia.

Even with her back to him, Joyce knew how Jonathan was sitting. Closed in on himself, like he could disappear if he tried hard enough. The way he always sat when Lonnie was involved. If she'd had any sense, she would have kicked Lonnie to the curb before he had the chance to hurt Jonathan as deeply as he had. One of many regrets she'd carry with her the rest of her life.

She tried so hard to remain calm while Lonnie's Cynthia brushed her off, so hard. But she was so afraid for Will and so upset at the idea that Lonnie might be involved and so unhappy in general that her voice rose and her hand tightened on the phone without her meaning them to. And then Cynthia hung up on her, and Joyce slammed the phone on the wall and screamed "Bitch!" at it.

"Mom," Jonathan chastised her from the other room.

"What?!"

"You have to stay calm."

Calm. Right. Because she did calm so well where Lonnie was concerned. Joyce dialed the number again, getting an answering machine. On the one hand, she was glad not to have to talk to 'Cynthia' again. On the other hand, answering machines turned her into a stammering fool. She held on to her temper, and her cool, with both hands, long enough to leave what she hoped was a coherent message, and then lost it again on the phone, slamming it onto the hook two or three times while she shouted at it.

That was when Hopper showed up, with Will's bike in tow.

This was a whole different Hopper than she'd talked to this morning. Then, he hadn't taken her seriously. Now, he was worried. And while a worried Hopper meant Joyce had reason to worry, she already had been nearly out of her mind—and a worried Hopper was a sharper Hopper, one who would be able to think things through and find her boy. She was sure of it.

Hopper went through the house, looking for clues, spending time out in the shed in the back. There were shotgun shells spilled on a table, evidence of some kind of violence in some smashed wood up against a wall. Something had happened out here. Maybe the kid had made it home, made it to the shed behind his own house, and then been taken. Stranger things had happened … although not usually in Hawkins.

He had his deputy call back to the office and get a search party together, and he grilled Joyce, as gently as he could, considering how on edge she was, about any detail about Will that might be helpful.

Then they spread out, flashlights in hand, moving slowly through the woods, calling for Will.

Behind him, Hopper heard a voice. "He's a good student."

Turning, he saw the teacher there, the one who had been with Will's friends this afternoon. "What?"

"Will? He's a good student. Great one, actually."

Hopper couldn't help thinking of the little boy with the big eyes—Joyce's eyes—he had met at the movie theater. Joyce had been a good student, too, or could have been, once long ago. It hurt to think she had lost her son, and that pain brought up other pain, old pain, pain that he didn't want to deal with now, or ever again.

The teacher held out his hand. "I don't think we've met. Scott Clarke. I teach at Hawkins Middle. Earth and biology."

"I've always had a distaste for science."

"Well, maybe you had a bad teacher," Scott Clarke offered.

"Man, Miss Ratliff was a piece o' work."

The teacher chuckled. "Ratliff? You bet. She's still kickin' around, believe it or not."

"Oh, I believe it. Mummies never die, or so they tell me." Before he knew what he was saying, he went on, "Sara, my daughter … Galaxies and universe and whatnot? She really understood all that stuff. I always figured there was enough goin' on down here, I never needed to look elsewhere."

"Your daughter, what grade is she? Maybe I'll get her in my class."

"No, she, uh …" But he couldn't say it. Just this once, he wanted to have a story that ended differently. Before he could stop himself, he found himself lying to a teacher … just like old times. "She lives with her mom in the city. Thanks for comin' out, Teach. We really appreciate it."

And he pushed his way farther into the woods, as much to outrun the ghosts behind him as to find the living child.

Hopper hadn't thought having Joyce or Jonathan out in the search party would be a good idea. Afraid of what they might find, she imagined, and then tried not to imagine it.

Instead, they were set to making up posters with Will's picture on them, posters that could be put up around Hawkins and in the surrounding towns, in case anyone had seen him.

Jonathan had been taking a lot of pictures, more than Joyce had seen in a while, and she felt badly that she hadn't been paying more attention. She leafed through them, impressed as always with his eye for detail, forgetting for a moment that they were looking for one of Will because Will was missing.

"Wow, you took these? They're great," she said to Jonathan. "They really are." Why hadn't she seen these before? How had she lost track and gotten so scattered again? "I know I haven't been there for you," she told him. "I've—I've been working so hard and—I just feel bad, I don't even barely know what's going on with you." She put a hand on his knee. "I'm sorry."

He was silent. He was always so silent, her little boy who was so sensitive, who felt other people's pain so deeply because he was so lost in his own. Damn Lonnie, anyway, and damn herself, for having gotten so caught up in their own problems that they had done this to their son.

"What is it?" she asked him. If you could get the words out of him, it always helped, but it was so hard to do. "Sweetheart?"

"Nothin'." But the quaver in his voice and the sniff that followed the word gave him away.

"Tell me."

He shook his head, saying "no", but Joyce wouldn't let it go. She couldn't, or whatever it was would eat him alive.

"It's just—" At last the words pushed through the barrier in him. "I should've been there for him."

Joyce wanted to cry. Jonathan had always been so responsible around Will, always taken it on himself to stand between Will and anything that might hurt him—especially between Will and Lonnie, to take the burden of their father's anger and disappointment and bitter cutting words on himself so they touched Will as little as possible. Jonathan had taken care of his brother, fed him and driven him places and watched him while she worked. It was, it always had been, too much too ask of a young boy, but he had been there when no one else was and she had leaned on him, far more than she should have. "No!" she protested. "No, no, you can't do that to yourself. This was not your fault. Do you hear me? He— He's close. I know it." She did, too. That was the nameless thing that had kept her going all day, that somehow she felt like Will was just around the corner, that she could almost see him if she held still enough. "I feel it, in my heart. You just, you have to trust me on this, okay?" She put an arm around him, holding him tight, and reached out for a picture that suddenly seemed to be smiling up at her from the pile on the table. "Look at this one." They looked at it and laughed because it was so Will, so much his smile, bright and shy and happy, and they held the picture and each other.

And then the phone rang. Joyce hurried to it, snatching it off the hook, hoping it was Lonnie, or Hopper, or any news at all. "Hello?"

There was nothing there, only breathing, like there was interference on the line.

"Lonnie? Hopper? Who is this?"

The breathing went on. It almost sounded like someone trying not to cry. Then she realized—it wasn't someone. It was Will. It was the sound he made when Lonnie had called, again, to say he wasn't coming, and Will didn't want her to know how badly he was hurting.

With all her heart, Joyce knew that her son was on the other end of the phone line.

"Will? Will!"

The breathing crying sound deepened into full crying. There was a crackling on the line, a strange sound, and Joyce was screaming into the phone "What have you done to my boy?!" and then electricity stabbed through the phone lines, jolting against her fingertips, and she dropped the phone.

Jonathan picked it up, calling "Hello? Who is this?" into it, but the phone was dead, burnt out by that strange power surge.

Joyce could hardly breathe, she was so upset, trying to hold back tears long enough to tell Jonathan that she had heard Will on the phone, that it was his breathing and she knew it was him, and they held the phone between them as they clung together and wept in fear and confusion and loss.