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"Ain't Even Done with the Night"

Well I'm tellin' ya that I don't know if I know what to do

You say that's all right, hold tight

Well I don't even know if I'm doing this right

- John Mellencamp

It seemed to take an eternity for Hopper to go to the junkyard and collect the kids and get back. Joyce and Jonathan and Nancy tried to make small talk, but they ran out about the time Joyce asked Nancy how her mom was. Nancy gave her a look, Jonathan gave her a look, and they all subsided into sitting and watching the window and fidgeting.

When the lights of the car finally appeared in front of the house, they all jumped up immediately and ran for the door. It felt better to Joyce to have the boys here. While Will and his friends didn't spend a ton of time in her house, it was enough that she knew them all, and Will felt closer with them present.

Nancy ran past her and hugged Mike, who clearly wasn't expecting that at all, and didn't like it much, standing there stiffly while she held him. "I was so worried about you!"

It was obvious to Joyce that Mike hadn't given a thought to his sister—and why would he? Presumably he didn't know about Barb or the monster or any of what had happened. "Yeah, uh … Me, too?" he said dutifully.

Looking past him at the unfamiliar figure with the shorn hair, wearing a fairly incongruous pink dress, Nancy frowned. "Is that my dress?"

No one answered that, the boys and the child looking around awkwardly.

They brought the kids inside. "Anyone hungry?" Joyce asked, not surprised when the answer was an all-around yes.

She started to get things out for sandwiches, but Jonathan pushed her gently aside. "I've got it, Mom."

"But—"

"No. You and Nancy go fill them in. I'll take care of this."

Joyce squeezed his arm in gratitude. "Thank you." She went back into the living room, walking straight to the little girl. "Are you all right?"

A slow, silent nod.

"My name's Mrs. Byers. Joyce. My son is missing. Did Mike tell you?"

"Will," the girl whispered.

"Yes, Will! Have you—" She caught herself. The girl already seemed overwhelmed enough. Joyce didn't want to add to that by drowning her with questions. "I'm sorry, I don't know your name."

"Eleven."

"Eleven?" There wasn't much to say to that. Poor thing, raised in a lab without even a real name. "Welcome, Eleven. This is Chief Hopper, whose bark is worse than his bite, and this is Nancy, and in the kitchen is Jonathan, Will's brother. We're going to help you."

"Eleven can help, too," Mike put in. "She's strong and smart and … she knows things."

The girl gave him a grateful glance. Yes, no question, Mike had been protecting her. Joyce wondered if Karen Wheeler knew this strange girl had been in her house for, what, days at least.

Dustin was staring at Nancy. Some things never changed—Dustin always stared at Nancy. But this time it was with curiosity rather than fascination. "Why are you here?"

"Because my friend Barbara was taken."

"Taken?" Lucas echoed.

Nancy pulled out the picture. The silent girl flinched when she saw it. "You know this thing?" Nancy demanded.

"Leave her alone!" Mike said instantly.

"Hey," Hopper told him, "simmer down. It's just a question." He looked at the little girl with a gentleness that forcibly reminded Joyce of what he had lost. "You recognize the thing in this picture?"

Eleven nodded, her eyes wide in her pale face.

"Do you know where it comes from?"

She nodded again.

Quickly, Hopper explained to the boys about the lab. They already knew about Hawkins Lab's involvement—they had fled Mike's house just before the men in the black cars and the other men in the white vans had arrived. Dustin explained with wide excited eyes how Eleven had flipped a truck completely over.

Hopper and Joyce exchanged looks. Terry Ives had been right. If this was her daughter, as Joyce suspected she was, her little girl was an extremely powerful human being. Joyce wished she could tell the other woman—but if she couldn't, the next best thing she could do would be to take good care of her little girl. She made sure Eleven got the first of Jonathan's grilled cheese sandwiches and a generous helping of potato chips to start with.

"All right, kids, start talking. Wait." Hopper held up a hand when all three boys started at once. "Let me talk and you fill in the blanks. You found the girl in the woods." Nods all around. He looked at Eleven. "You were at Benny's, weren't you? Big guy, fed you?"

She nodded, pain in her eyes. So she knew what had happened to Benny. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

"That wasn't your fault. Okay? Not your fault."

It had been a long time since Joyce had seen that much tenderness in Hopper's face, and she was glad to see he was still capable of it.

"So then you boys took her home and hid her, yeah? And in the process you made that kid piss himself and broke his arm?"

There was no pain in Eleven's face when she nodded this time.

"She saved me," Mike said. "I was going to fall into the quarry, and she saved me."

Joyce realized the boys didn't know about the fake body. "Will didn't fall into the quarry. He's alive. The body was a fake."

"We know." Dustin looked at her with sympathy. "We could hear you talking to him. He's in the Upside Down."

"The Upside Down?" Hopper asked, while Joyce grasped Dustin's arm and gasped, "You know where Will is?"

"Kind of." Dustin gestured to Mike, grabbing a sandwich off the plate. "You tell 'em."

"Okay. It's the flea and the acrobat."

"The what? Come on, kid, it's been a long day. Talk sense," Hopper complained.

Mike took a piece of paper and made some sort of drawing on it. "Okay," he said again. "So in this example, we're the acrobat." He pointed to a stick figure standing on a line. Then he pointed to something underneath the line. "Will and Barbara—and that monster—they're this flea. And this is the Upside Down, where Will is hiding. Mr. Clark said the only way to get there is through a rip of time and space."

"A gate," Dustin clarified.

"That we tracked to Hawkins Lab."

"With our compasses."

As usual with these guys, Joyce was impressed by their collective intelligence—and couldn't follow it at all. She looked questioningly at Dustin.

"Okay," he said, "so the gate has a really strong electromagnetic field, and that can change the directions of a compass needle."

"Is this gate underground?" Hopper asked.

"Yes." The single soft word had come from Eleven. She was looking at Hopper, who was looking at her, the two of them understanding each other.

"Near a large water tank?"

She nodded. "Yes."

"H-how do you know all that?" Dustin asked him.

"He's seen it," Mike guessed.

"Is-is there any way that you could, that you could reach Will?" Joyce hated to ask it of Eleven, who looked exhausted and underfed and generally in need of love, not of being asked to do impossible things—but Will was still out there, had been out there for days, and Joyce needed to know he was still okay. "That you could talk to him, in this—"

"The Upside Down," Eleven confirmed.

"The Upside Down, yeah."

The girl nodded.

"And my friend Barbara," Nancy added. "Can you find her, too?"

"Yes."

They gave Eleven Barbara's picture, and the walkie-talkie, and gathered around her while she sat at the table, closing her eyes and concentrating.

Joyce watched in fascination and terror and wild worry as the little girl's face tightened, her closed eyes moving, the walkie-talkie emitting bursts of static. The lights flickered.

Eleven's eyes opened and she looked at Joyce in pain and embarrassment and a little touch of fear. She was used to being punished when she let people down, Joyce realized, certain scenes of her own life coming back to her and making her feel a sudden kinship with this unusual child. Then Eleven spoke, her voice trembling. "I'm sorry."

Clinging to Jonathan's hand as it rested on her shoulder, Joyce could feel her fear rising. "What? What's wrong? What happened?"

"I can't find them."

Joyce barely held back tears, and Jonathan had to turn away. Eleven got up and rushed to the bathroom. "What did that mean?" Joyce asked the boys. "Is Will—gone?"

"No," Mike said immediately.

"I don't think so," Dustin said. "I think her battery's low."

"Her what?" Hopper asked.

Mike explained, "Whenever she uses her powers she gets weak."

"The more energy she uses, the more tired she gets."

"Like, she flipped the van earlier," Lucas added.

"It was awesome."

"But she's drained," Mike said.

"Like a bad battery."

"How do we make her better?" Joyce asked.

"We don't. We just have to wait and … try again."

"Well, how long?" Nancy asked.

Mike shrugged. "I don't know."

"Bath."

Joyce turned at the sound of Eleven's voice. "What?"

"I can find them … in the bath."

"What kind of bath? Like, run you a bath in the tub?"

"No, it was … different." Eleven was clearly unused to speaking so much, and to such a large group. She looked at Mike, appealing for help.

He shook his head. "I don't know."

"I do." Hopper looked at Eleven. "The tank, right? They used the water in the tank to boost your abilities?"

She nodded.

Joyce remembered what Terry Ives' sister had said. "The isolation tanks! Saltwater!" She looked at Hopper for confirmation.

"Yeah. That's it." Hopper looked around at the boys. "Any of you science … kids know how to make a sensory deprivation tank?"

They looked blankly at each other. Then Dustin grinned. "But I know who does. Can I use your phone, Mrs. Byers?"

"Sure. Go ahead."

They waited while Dustin called Mr. Clark and talked him into giving him the directions over the phone, despite the late hour. He hung up, looking at Joyce across the table. "Do you still have that kiddie pool we bobbed for apples in?"

"I … think so, yeah," she answered, looking to Jonathan, who nodded.

"Good. Then we just need salt. Lots of it."

"How much is lots?" Hopper asked.

Dustin did some quick math. "Fifteen hundred pounds."

"Well, where are we going to get that much salt?" Nancy asked.

"I know." Hopper got abruptly to his feet. "Let's go."

"Where?"

"Where do you think there's a whole warehouse full of salt?" he asked her.

"Chief, you're a genius!" Dustin said, delighted. He frowned at the rest of him in disappointment when they still didn't get it. "The salt they use on the roads in the winter!"

There was a chorus of understanding. They piled into Hopper's truck and Jonathan's car and drove to the school. Joyce was glad to be going—if the people from the lab knew about Mike, they probably knew about Will, and it was only a matter of time before they made their way to her house.