Chapter Text
This time, the world doesn’t turn upside down.
There are no monsters. Not yet. Not other than the human kind, who drive right down the main street of peaceful, sleepy Hawkins, Indiana, where nothing ever happens, with a screaming, terrified, stolen infant in the back of a Power & Light van. In plain sight of mothers with their own children, who will never even know.
In another version of this story, that stolen infant is designated 011, and the psychic abilities that are the reason she was taken will be the downfall of those who took her.
But, in telling her story, it is important not to forget – there were another ten before her.
…
“- swear to god it was like a bomb went off! And of course they said it was just a tire blowout, but I’ve never seen a blowout that could knock me off my feet from a block away.”
Jill, on the other end of the line, makes a sympathetic noise. “You don’t think it was one of the lab’s super top-secret weapons?” It’s a joke. Karen doesn’t feel like laughing.
“You weren’t there, Jill. I was worried about the baby.” She’s still worried. Little Nancy-or-Neil hasn’t stopped tossing and turning since whatever it was had gone off in the back of the Power & Light truck downtown. The baby’s never this active. Though Karen supposes it’s better than heavy, lifeless stillness would have been.
“Oh, sweetie. I’m sorry.” Jill’s silent for a moment before asking, all trace of amusement missing from her voice now, “How are you feeling?”
“All right now, it just – it was such a shock.” Karen sighs, leaning back against the kitchen counter. “And of course Ted’s been no help at all.”
“Ugh. Tell me about it. I think if I told Frank I’d been knocked off my feet, he’d just say it wasn’t so bad unless I was bleeding.”
“Sounds like him.”
Little Nancy-or-Neil chooses that moment to deliver a sharp, vicious kick directly to Karen’s bladder. She doesn’t manage to totally swallow the yelp. “Sorry, Jill, I’m going to have to let you go. This little one’s got ideas about what I ought to be doing, and they don’t seem to include talking on the phone.”
“Oh, you’d better watch out. That kid’s going to be headstrong,” Jill teases.
“It’s happening. My mother’s curse, that I should have a kid who’s just like me. It’s all coming true.” Nancy-or-Neil is pummeling Karen’s kidney, now, sharp repeated jabs. “Sorry again, Jill. Chat soon.”
“Don’t be a stranger.”
Karen hangs up the phone, and escapes to the bathroom. That’s the worst part about being eight months pregnant – she doesn’t dare get too far from a bathroom these days.
About a month later, the baby settles the debate between Nancy and Neil once and for all. Little Nancy is perfectly healthy, if a little underweight, and she has the loudest wail Karen’s ever heard come out of an infant that small. The doctors tell her it means Nancy’s lungs are well-developed, that she’ll likely never struggle with asthma or allergies. Karen would settle for being able to sleep through the night.
But Nancy’s healthy. She grows normally. And that’s all anyone can ask for, with a baby.
And that day downtown, when whatever was in the Power & Light truck had knocked Karen Wheeler – and everyone else in the street – off their feet is quickly forgotten.
For a while.
…
They don’t talk about it.
But Joyce Byers knows – when her youngest son goes missing, she knows he’s still out there. And the moment she sees that first light flicker, she knows it’s Will.
Because it’s not the first time he’s made something like that happen.
…
They don’t talk about it.
But Nancy Wheeler usually listens when Barbara Holland says what’s going to happen. She hasn’t been wrong yet.
But – Barb can’t seriously mean it when she says Nancy and Steve Harrington are going to be an item. They’ve just hung out a couple of times. It’s not like it’s serious. And Nancy isn’t that kind of girl.
But Steve has a way of getting what he wants from people. All he has to do is ask.
…
They don’t talk about it.
But the Party each have their individual strengths. Their class proficiencies. Odd talents that come in handy, now and then. Dustin’s – thing, the one with the name that’s too long for anyone but a brainiac like Dustin to remember, the one that lets him bend at improbable angles. Lucas, the human lie detector. Will, and his permanent static charge. One time he’d zapped Troy so bad that Mike could see the electricity arc. Troy and James had given them all such a pummeling afterwards that Dustin had had a fat lip for a week and Will’s nose hadn’t stopped bleeding for almost twenty minutes, but it had still been awesome.
And then there’s Mike. Whose only real standout feature is being superhumanly…ordinary.
But the girl they found in the woods makes all of them look ordinary, in comparison. Between the shaved head, the tattoo, and the Jedi mind-powers, she’s got them all beat for weirdness, easy.
Dustin thinks she’s crazy. And Lucas knows she’s hiding something. Mike doesn’t agree that she’s crazy, but – he can’t exactly argue with the stuff Lucas knows. And the fact that El’s spoken maybe five whole words since they met her means she almost categorically hasn’t told them something.
But – she knows Will. She knows something about where Will is. Mike’s willing to let her keep a few secrets, if she can help find him.
…
They don’t talk about it.
But Jonathan Byers likes to keep a healthy distance between himself and other people. It’s better that way. Quieter. He doesn’t have to hear their hypocrisy in person. Those moments where he sees who people really are, what they’re really thinking, somehow feel – more honest, more earned, when he has to work to capture them on camera instead. Or maybe it’s just easier, through a lens, from a distance, to fool himself into thinking they’ve got more depth than they really do. That they’re thinking something more meaningful than they really are.
What he sees through his camera lens that Tuesday night, though, is like nothing he’s ever seen – or heard – before.
Barbara Holland looks up, like she’s heard something, or seen something. Looks back over her shoulder. And then throws herself, coat and all, into the pool.
And – something huge and misshapen, something without a face, lunges out along the diving board right where she’d been sitting just a heartbeat ago and splashes into the water after her.
Jonathan’s up and running before Barbara even surfaces, before she even screams. He doesn’t know what he’ll do, what he can do, but – there’s blood in the water and, whatever that thing is, Jonathan wouldn’t leave his worst enemy to face it alone.
Barbara’s panicking, when he reaches the poolside, scrabbling at the rungs of the ladder, weighted down by her sodden coat. Whatever’s after her is thrashing in the water, churning it up too much to see exactly what or where it is even if the pool lights hadn’t been flickering wildly. Even the sound of it is alien, a horrible chilling screech that saws through Jonathan’s brain. He grabs Barb’s reaching hand and helps haul her up onto the patio, and they both scramble back, away from the pool’s edge.
Whatever that thing was that had gone after Barbara, it doesn’t resurface. The water slowly settles back to calm as the others come running out of the house in various stages of undress. By the time the six of them are all gathered together, close enough that their combined noise is already starting to give Jonathan a headache, the surface of the pool is still and clear, the lights glowing up through it steadily.
And there’s nothing in it but blue water.
…
Jonathan should have understood about the lights. Of all people, Jonathan should have understood about the lights.
Joyce isn’t sure why he doesn’t. Why he won’t believe that Will could be here even if they can’t see him. Why he’s so ready to give up hope.
He’d probably just give her one of those wry smiles, if she asked. Say something snide about human nature, about who can know what people are really thinking. He really seems to think she doesn’t get his little jokes with himself. Like she wasn’t the one whose sentences he constantly finished when he was a baby.
Like she doesn’t have any idea what’s going on in his head.
Of course, maybe that’s why. Maybe – maybe it’s too quiet in this house now. Maybe, whatever Jonathan’s hearing that Joyce never can, it doesn’t include Will anymore.
Joyce’s heart leaps into her throat at the knock on the door. But it’s only Karen Wheeler, with her youngest in tow and an offering of a casserole. The last thing Joyce wants is to have someone else who won’t believe her hanging around the house, trying to be sympathetic, but – their shared history might have had some bumps along the way, but she and Karen go way back. She can’t exactly turn Karen away.
And – it’s sort of nice. Especially after that thing in the wall. Not to be alone in the house.
At least, it’s sort of nice up until Joyce and Karen realise they’ve both lost track of little Holly.
Joyce can’t distinguish the stab of terror that shoots through her when they find Holly in Will’s room, staring at the wall that – whatever it was had started to come through, from the burst of painful hope. “Did you see something?” she demands, and that hope swells as Holly nods.
Karen, on the other hand, looks at Holly like Holly’s just confessed to cold-blooded murder. And then she sweeps Holly up in both arms and carries her out into the hall, making her way to the front door before Joyce can even tell her that they need to get out. “I’m really sorry, Joyce. I hope they find him. I really have to go, I forgot – I’m late for, I have to – pick Nancy up. From – the game. At school.”
Karen’s always been a rotten liar. Especially under pressure. Joyce follows her down the hallway, not sure what she’s seeing. What’s going on.
“Karen,” she says, as Karen is opening the door, and Karen turns to look at her, her stream of babbled excuses cut short. “What – did you see something? Do you know something?”
“No,” Karen says, almost before Joyce is finished speaking. “No, I don’t know anything, and neither does Holly, and she didn’t see anything, right, sweetheart?”
“Ow!” Holly says, and squirms, as Karen’s grip tightens. “Mommy -”
“You didn’t see anything. Right, sweetheart?”
Joyce looks from the struggling Holly to Karen. Karen, she realises, looks stone-cold terrified.
“Karen,” Joyce repeats, and Karen turns wide, frightened eyes on her. “Please. Will is missing. I know it sounds – crazy, but I saw -” She bites the sentence off. “If you can help me, if Holly can -”
“There’s a reason we don’t talk about it, Joyce,” Karen says, shortly. Her eyes soften as she hitches Holly a little farther up her hip, but she still reaches for the doorknob again. “I really am sorry. About Will. About everything.”
And then she’s gone.
…
Nancy believes Barb, about what chased her into the water. Barb’s never told her a lie. And her terror is real.
And also – outside the window, under the music, just before Barb had started screaming – Nancy’s sure she’d heard…something.
But Nancy and Jonathan are the only ones who believe it.
And after Steve says that Barb just isn’t used to being drunk, that some animal in the woods – or maybe even creepy, stalking Jonathan Byers in the woods – must have spooked her into seeing things, that it’s nothing – Carol and Tommy H don’t even seem to hear Nancy’s protests. Like the words just go right through them. Like the world is this way, and it’s only ever been this way, and there isn’t even another way to consider. They’re already convinced. It was nothing. Also, what was creepy loner Byers doing spying on their party, anyway?
Nancy’s more than glad to leave with Barb, after that. She wonders a little, as she’s giving back his sweater, just what she’d thought she’d seen in Steve. This isn’t, now that she thinks about it, the first time he’s run right over her resistance with his smile and his charming eyes and his stupid – hair.
Well, not any more.
She has to agree with Tommy H and Carol on one thing, though. What was Jonathan Byers doing spying on their party?
Nancy and Barb seek Jonathan out after school the next day, hoping to get some answers. Nicole points them to the photo lab, where they find him in the darkroom. The photos he’s developing are – they’re all of Steve Harrington’s pool. Steve Harrington’s house. Steve Harrington’s bedroom window, with –
Before Nancy really has time to process the surge of visceral disgust and – violation that rips through her at the sight, Barb’s tugging her forward to point down at a square of photo paper sitting in the bottom of a developing tub. “Nancy! I told you! Look!”
Nancy looks.
The photo is mostly shadow, highlights gleaming in the red light of the darkroom. The pool is a huge spill of light across the bottom of the page, its glow picking out the planes of Barbara’s face where she sits on the diving board, looking down into the water.
And picking out the body of the enormous, inhuman thing behind her.
“Thought I’d got it on camera,” Jonathan says, sounding proud, as he pulls the photo from its bath and pins it to the string to drip dry. “There you go, Nancy. Proof.”
“I believed you,” Nancy protests. She glances back at the photos, and says, “I believed Barb.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Barb says, turning her attention to the hanging photos. The face she makes is somewhere between horrified and confused, turning to anger as she turns to Jonathan, but her voice stays conversational and bright. “You are so lucky that you kind of saved my life, because if you hadn’t, I’d be killing you right now.”
Jonathan suddenly looks hunted. Nancy crosses her arms over her chest and stares him down. “Yeah. What are these?”
“A mistake,” Jonathan says, to the floor. He shakes his head, his overlong bangs flopping in front of his face. “It was stupid. I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t have done it. I just -” His eyes, when he turns them up onto Nancy’s face, are defiant. “Sometimes – it’s just nice to feel like I’m close to somebody. Part of something. Even if I’m only fooling myself.”
“You could actually be close to somebody,” Barb says, sharply. “If you ever actually talked to anyone.”
Jonathan’s smile is wry, like whatever he’s saying means something he knows neither Nancy or Barb will grasp. “I don’t need to talk to people. By the time I get close enough, I’ve already heard everything I need to hear.”
“Cynic,” Barb mutters.
Jonathan ignores that. “How’d you know that thing was coming?” he asks her, instead, looking up at the photo of Barb by the pool. “You got out of its way just in time.”
This time, it’s Barb who looks hunted. Nancy opens her mouth, ready to defend her, but Jonathan’s already talking, soft but sure.
“You saw it coming. How? You had your back to it.”
Barb shrugs, and pushes her glasses up on her nose, squaring her shoulders and straightening up with a look that almost passes for unconcerned. “Just lucky, I guess.”
Jonathan’s look doesn’t get any less piercing, and his eyes don’t leave her face. “But you’ve been just lucky a lot, right?”
Nancy looks back and forth between them. She’s got the feeling that there’s a silent conversation – maybe a silent argument – going on that she’s not party to. And she doesn’t think she likes it.
Then Barb lets out a long sigh, her shoulders drooping. “Fine. You’re gonna find out anyway,” she says. “Sometimes…sometimes, it’s like I know about things before they happen. Go ahead. Call me crazy.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy,” Jonathan says, and he sounds like he means it. Nancy’s not sure why his eyes skip over to her. “Nancy already knows.” It’s not a question.
“Knows – you’ve never told me you think you’re. What. Psychic?” But even as she says it, Nancy understands. Barb didn’t have to tell her. They don’t talk about it. But –
But Nancy usually listens when Barb says what’s going to happen. Because Barb hasn’t been wrong yet.
“I don’t…think you’re crazy, either,” Nancy says, slowly.
The three of them stand in the dim red light in silence, for a long moment, after that.
“We need to find out what that thing is,” Barb says, at last, at the same time as Nancy starts to say, “Wait, Jonathan, if your little brother -”
They both break off, looking at each other.
Jonathan doesn’t seem to be paying attention to either of them. He’s turned to look at that photo again, at the thing in it. Nancy’s not sure if the way his eyes shine can be put down to just the red light.
“Yeah,” he says, and there’s something about his voice that makes him sound like – less like angry, creepy loner Jonathan Byers and more like a little kid. Just a scared, sad little kid. “Yeah. That’s what I’m afraid of.”
…
“Is she lying? Lucas! Is she lying!”
Lucas shakes his head. “If she is, she’s a better liar than anybody I’ve ever met.”
“Maybe she got confused?” Dustin offers, painfully hopeful, before turning to El. “Will lives here. We want to find where he is now.”
El nods, slowly, her eyes big and wide. And doesn’t move.
“What? What does that mean?” Mike asks. “You were confused?”
El shakes her head. Her voice is quiet and whispery. “He’s here.”
Mike glances over at Lucas, and sees Dustin do the same. Lucas gives El a long look, frowning in confusion as he shakes his head.
“The truth,” he says, like he can’t believe it either.
“This doesn’t make any sense. If Will was at his house, his mom would’ve found him by now.” Mike takes a deep breath, and a step forward to put a hand on El’s shoulder, searching her face for any kind of clue. “This can’t be it. There has to be something else. There has to be more –”
And that’s when they hear the sirens.
The police cars lead them to the quarry. To where they’re pulling a stretcher out of the water. A kid-sized stretcher. With a kid-sized body on it.
A kid-sized body wearing a very familiar vest.
Mike thinks he’s going to hurl.
He looks at El, and thinks he’s going to burst, going to shatter. He’d trusted her. He’d trusted her, but somehow she’d fooled Lucas, she’d fooled them all, she’d, she’d let him hope –
Lucas smacks him in the arm.
“Guys,” he says, under his breath, not taking his eyes from the stretcher coming up out of the water, “it’s not him.”
“What?” Even Dustin sounds distraught, and it takes a lot to upset Dustin. “Are you for real? Look at him!”
“I am looking at him, and I’m telling you, it’s not him! That’s not Will!”
“Yeah, well, you’re not doing so hot tonight, are you?” Mike snaps, and Lucas turns back to shoot him an annoyed glare.
“Mike. Have I ever lied to you?”
“Friends don’t lie,” El says, softly, behind him.
“It’s not him,” Lucas says, and he sounds sure. “It’s not real, and it’s not him.”
“And if it’s not him -” Dustin’s eyes widen as he turns to El. “She could be right.”
Mike turns one last, long look back out onto that stretcher. It looks like Will. It could be Will.
But he trusts his friends. And he wants to hope.
“Okay,” he says, picking his bike back up. “Then we’ve gotta get back to Will’s house. Now.”
…
Joyce hears the sirens, sees the lights, like they’re a thousand miles away and underwater. Her ears are full of the pounding of her own heart, her ragged breathing, the crunch of gravel under her sneakers, as she runs as far and as fast as she can away from the house.
Away from the thing inside it.
She can only hope that Will got away before it came. God – Will – if he’s been trapped, somehow, all this time, with that thing, that monster –
Joyce doesn’t see the bikes until she’s almost tripping over them. There’s a chorus of shouts and a squeal of brakes and gravel as they all pile to a halt.
Will’s friends look back at her with wide eyes. Mike Wheeler, Lucas Sinclair, Dustin Henderson, and – for a split second, Joyce’s mind fills in the fourth boy with Will’s familiar face, before she remembers and really looks. The fourth kid isn’t Will, of course. It’s not even a boy. Joyce doesn’t recognise the scared-looking girl with the shaved head at all.
“Mrs. B?” Dustin asks, when several long seconds pass and no one says anything. “Are you all right?”
“Did Will come home?” Lucas asks, voice thick with both anxiety and hope.
“What?” Their eyes are all so wide, so earnest, so hopeful. Joyce takes a few long, deep breaths, trying to bring herself back under control. “No – no, boys, I’m sorry.” She looks at their faces again, and hope digs its claws into her chest. “Did you think he had? Did he – you haven’t seen him? Has he talked to you?”
Three heads shake a mute no.
Joyce lets out a breath, and with it lets go of that barbed hope. “What – what are you all doing out here at this hour, anyway?” She looks at the girl, again, who ducks her head back behind Mike’s. “Who’s your new friend?”
“She’s – uh – Eleanor,” Mike stammers. “My cousin.”
“She’s visiting,” Lucas supplies.
“From Sweden!” Dustin contributes brightly.
Karen Wheeler’s brother isn’t married. Joyce doesn’t know Ted as well, but she doesn’t think either of his sisters have children, and she knows that one of them lives in Michigan and the other works at the hospital in town. And all three of the boys are looking at her like they really, really want her to believe them. Joyce can’t fathom why they’re lying to her.
But – the girl is still hiding behind Mike. And for some reason, Joyce is reminded of what Karen had said, before she’d left.
There’s a reason we don’t talk about it.
“All right,” she says. “It’s – nice to meet you, Eleanor. I’m Will’s mom. You can call me Joyce, if – if you want.”
“That’s always gonna be too weird, Mrs. Byers,” Lucas apologises.
The girl peeks out from behind Mike’s head. She gives Joyce a long look, before flashing a flicker of smile that doesn’t move any part of her face except her mouth.
“Do – um, do your parents know you’re here?” Joyce asks.
The looks the boys exchange between themselves tell her loud and clear that they don’t. “Eleanor”, though, doesn’t take her eyes off Joyce’s face.
And that’s when Joyce realises the sirens are coming closer again.
“Shit!” Dustin swears, and then turns wide eyes in Joyce’s direction. “Sorry, Mrs. B.”
“We gotta go,” Lucas says, as headlights start to sweep up the road. He and Dustin turn their bikes and start to pedal hard for the trees.
Mike starts to turn his bike, too, but pauses, looking back at Joyce. He meets her eyes, and she feels – frozen.
“Don’t listen to them,” Mike says, like the words are terribly important, like if he had to say this with his dying breath he’d still force the words out. “They’re going to tell you Will’s dead. It’s a lie.”
“What?”
“Mike,” the girl Mike had called Eleanor says, soft but urgent, fingers digging into his shoulder. Mike glances back behind him before kicking the pedals of his bike into motion, heading after his friends.
“Michael Wheeler!” Joyce shouts after him, running two steps after the bike and then sliding to a stop. It’s better that they’re leaving, anyway, with that – monster in the house, but - “What do you mean, they’re going to tell me Will’s dead?”
Mike twists back around, as he disappears into the cover of the trees, calling back to Joyce as the first squad car pulls into the drive, bathing her in its headlights. “Don’t listen to them!”
The last Joyce sees of them is the girl’s dark eyes, still fixed on her face.
Then Mike’s bicycle bumps behind a tree, and they’re gone.
…
Nancy gets home after a long and fruitless evening at the library with Jonathan and Barb, not having found anything that even vaguely resembles the thing in the photo.
And finds Steve Harrington knocking at her window.
She thinks about just leaving him out there, for a moment. But in the end, Nancy pushes the sash up and lets Steve come stumbling in. “What do you think you’re doing here?”
Steve dusts himself off, brushing a stray lock back out of his face as he straightens up. “You blew me off. For the game.”
Nancy’d completely forgotten about the game. No wonder her mother hadn’t fussed too much when she’d got home late. “Oh. Y-yeah. Sorry. I – forgot. I had this…big biology project. I was at the library with Barb all afternoon.”
“And you couldn’t stick around after school long enough to mention that to me?” Steve looks – confused. And a little hurt.
“You would’ve tried to talk me into staying for the game,” Nancy says, with an apologetic smile. It’s not a lie.
Steve shoots her one of his most disarming smiles. “And I would’ve succeeded. Come on, it was way better than any old biology project. At least, it would’ve been if you were there.”
Nancy rubs her arm with one hand. She must’ve let in a little of the chilly night air along with Steve. “I’m – I’m really sorry. I just – lost track of what day it was and -”
Steve lets out a long breath before interrupting her increasingly lame attempts at an excuse. “Nance. It’s all right. I know what this is really about.”
“Oh,” Nancy says, feeling like she’s just swallowed a bowling ball. She looks Steve in the eye, and suddenly, the afternoon’s activities feel extraordinarily foolish. Believing in psychic abilities feels extraordinarily foolish. Monster hunting feels extraordinarily foolish. “You – you do.”
“Yeah.” Steve has a way of looking at her like she’s the only thing in the room. It was…nice, last night. Electric. Now, Nancy just kind of wants out from under it. “What happened last night, what I said – it really got to you, huh?”
Nancy blinks at him.
“That’s what I’m doing here.” Steve finally takes his eyes off of Nancy’s face, turning his head to look around her room as he gives an exaggerated shrug. “Think I’m trying to apologise.”
Well, at least it’s not about her spending time with another guy. Nancy crosses her arms over her chest and stares down Steve’s rueful, sheepish smile. “I don’t think it’s me you need to be apologising to.”
“No. No, you’re right, but -” The smile fades off Steve’s face. “I don’t know where Barbara lives.” There’s something earnest, almost puppy-dog-ish in his dark eyes as he adds, “And…I didn’t want to see her like I wanted to see you.”
Nancy bites down on her bottom lip. She lets Steve squirm for a moment before taking pity on him. “All right. Let’s hear this apology.”
“I – look, I didn’t mean to upset you or your friend. And I really didn’t mean to insult her, or – make her look stupid in front of Tommy and Carol, or anything. We shouldn’t have just left her out there alone.” Steve stuffs his hands in his pockets, shuffles his feet against Nancy’s carpet, the picture of contrition.
He ducks his chin into his collar, looking at Nancy through his lashes, and she has to steel herself all over again. “You were being kind of unreasonable, though. I’m sure Barbara did see something that scared her. But – come on, Nance, faceless monsters? Maybe – maybe there was a coyote or something in the woods back there. Maybe even a bear. It was dark. She was already upset.”
It sounds…so reasonable. So logical. Nancy almost wants to give in and agree, just admit that he was right and the whole thing is crazy. Really, what did she let convince her otherwise? The word of Jonathan Byers and a blurry photograph?
A blurry photograph.
“It was real!” Nancy blurts, and the spell is broken. Steve takes a half-step back, apparently as taken aback as she is by her volume, and Nancy dials it down before she goes on. It would not improve her night for her mom to come up here and find Nancy with a boy in her bedroom. “It was real. We have proof.”
Steve gives her a long, hard look. “Proof.” And then he twigs to the part that Nancy was hoping he wouldn’t notice. “ ‘We’?”
“Me. And Barb.” Nancy takes a deep breath, and, again, blurts it out. “And Jonathan. He caught it on camera.”
“He was taking photos of us?” Steve shakes his head, his face shading into anger mixed with disbelief. “I should knock his block off. I should bust that stupid camera -”
“Don’t.” Nancy’s taken two steps forward before she knows she means to, curling both hands in the lapels of Steve’s jacket. “Don’t, okay? It was stupid, but he already apologised for it.”
“He apologised to you,” Steve corrects her. And then, a thoughtful frown crossing his face, “When did he apologise to you?”
Nancy shuts her eyes, grimacing. This isn’t going to help. “Today. When he showed us the picture.”
“Nancy,” Steve says, and it’s as serious as she’s ever heard him, ever seen him. He searches her face before asking, like he doesn’t really want to know the answer, “Did you seriously blow me off to look at Jonathan Byers’ creepy photos?”
Nancy looks over at her desk to avoid meeting Steve’s eyes.
Steve pulls away from her, sitting heavily on the chest under her window. “Shit,” he says, with feeling, staring blankly into the middle distance in the direction of Nancy’s dresser. “I’m gonna kill him.” It’s matter-of-fact, plain and simple, with no heat behind it.
“You’re not going to do anything. It wasn’t like that. And I’m sure he’d apologise to you if you gave him the chance.”
Steve doesn’t say anything, doesn’t move, for a long moment.
“Fine,” he says at last, pushing himself to his feet. “Well, he’s gonna get the chance, then. Because I want to see this proof that’s got my girlfriend running around hunting monsters with Jonathan Byers for myself.”
“Only if you promise you’re not going to start anything.”
“That’s a big promise, Nance.”
“Steve.” Nancy looks up under her lashes at him. “Please.”
Steve looks off to his right, runs a hand through his hair, and heaves an enormous sigh before turning back to look at Nancy. “Fine. Fine. But only because you asked.”
Nancy nods, and says a silent apology in her head to both Jonathan and Barb for what she’s about to do. “We’re meeting up again tomorrow. After school, at the library.”
There’s no warmth in the smile Steve flashes in her direction. “Then it’s a date.”
…
“Mike.”
Mike looks up from the walkie he’s turning over and over in his hands to the blanket fort. El’s looking back at him with huge, solemn eyes. Her expressions are never exactly easy to read, but – he thinks he sees fear in this one. “Will she tell?”
“Who, Will’s mom?” El nods, and Mike shakes his head. “No way. She worries a lot, but – she’s cool. And I think she bought that story about you being my cousin.”
El does not look reassured. All she says, though, is, “Cousin?”
“Like – like, if your mom or dad has any sisters or brothers. Their kids are your cousins. I don’t really have any. Lucas has a whole bunch out west somewhere, and Dustin thinks he has a couple but they don’t talk to his dad’s side of the family anymore so he’s not really sure.” El seems more confused, not less, so Mike stops talking.
“Sisters?” El asks, shifting closer towards him out of the fort. Mike nods.
“Yeah. Like – other kids with the same mom and dad as you. You really don’t know what sisters and brothers are?”
For a moment, El looks like she’s looking at something a million miles away.
“I had…sisters,” she says, at last.
“Really?” Mike sits forward on the couch, setting his Supercom down on the coffee table so he can give her his full attention. “What happened to them? Where are they now? Still in the bad place?”
El looks at him with big, heartbroken eyes. She doesn’t take them off his face as she slowly, slowly shakes her head.
The single word she says is like an ice cube pressed against his spine. “Gone.”
Mike doesn’t know what to do. He gets up from the couch and goes to sit next to El, inside the blanket fort. It’s warm and a little stuffy inside, with the nightlight on, a soft yellow glow. It feels – like nothing bad should be able to get them in here. It’s not fair that that’s not true.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and El gives him the smallest frown of confusion. “Sorry? You know, like -”
“I know ‘sorry’,” El says, saving Mike from having to try to figure out how to explain the concept of being sorry. “Why?”
“Because – because it’s sad, that they’re gone. And because it’s making you sad. So it’s too bad that it happened and I wish it hadn’t. So…” He shrugs. “Sorry.”
El’s still got that slight frown on her face, but she doesn’t exactly look confused. Or mad. Just like she’s trying hard to figure something out.
“What were they like?” Mike asks, for something to say. “Your sisters. Were they – like you?” He taps his temple with two fingers.
El gives him a slow, cautious nod. She presses two fingers against her own chest, and then reaches out to gently tap them against Mike’s. Her stare seems to be looking right through his eyes to the back of his skull, like she’s trying to talk to him without words. “And you.”
Mike puts a hand to his chest, where El had touched. He can still feel the faint pressure of her fingers, like she’d burned him through his t-shirt with her touch. “What, like – boys? Boy sisters are called brothers.”
“Brothers,” El repeats, her eyes searching back and forth across Mike’s face.
“Yeah. You had brothers too?”
El shakes her head no.
Mike doesn’t get it. But before he can ask any more questions, his mother’s voice calls down the stairs. “Michael? Are you still down there? It’s a school night.”
“Coming!” Mike yells up the stairs, then lowers his voice as he turns back to El. “I’ve gotta go up to bed. But I’ll see you again in the morning. Okay?”
El bites at her bottom lip, just a little. But she nods once. “Okay.”
…
Jonathan starts to get a bad feeling when he passes two squad cars going back towards town on his way home.
When he pulls into the drive, his mother’s sitting out on the porch, with a pack of Camels on the table beside her and a small collection of butts stubbed out against its glass top. The cigarette she’s holding in one hand shakes as she brings it to her mouth.
“Mom,” Jonathan says, concern growing as he hurries up to join her on the porch. His mom doesn’t look up at him, just breathes out a long stream of smoke. The jangle and static of her nerves is a frantic buzz, drowning out any kind of coherent thought she might be having. She’s got to be feeling paralysed. It’s been a long time since Jonathan’s seen her this bad. “What happened? What’s going on?”
His mom finally looks up, meeting his eyes, and Jonathan takes a half-step back. The last time he saw that kind of hurt in another living being’s eyes, it was just before his dad had made him kill it.
“Mom,” he repeats, and his mom surges up out of the patio chair, throwing her arms up around his neck and clinging desperately, furiously, like he’s the only thing keeping her from falling straight off the Earth.
Jonathan can tell she’s struggling for words, searching for the kindest way to say it. But it’s too late. It’s the only thing left in her head.
“Who found Will’s body?” he says, before he can stop himself, and his mom gives one shuddering, shoulder-heaving sob into his shirt.
She’s too distraught to mention, or really even notice, Jonathan’s slip. She’s also too distraught to offer much resistance when he scoops up her pack of Camels and lighter in one hand, and steers her towards the front door with the other. “Come on. It’s freezing out here.”
Jonathan tries to muster up an emotion of his own as he puts on a kettle and goes rummaging for teabags. The last thing his mom needs right now is coffee.
He finds the teabags in the back of a cupboard. But all he can find inside himself is a heavy, hollow dullness. This is what he’s been bracing himself for since the moment they realised Will hadn’t spent the night at the Wheelers’. Somehow, Jonathan thinks, he’d already known. Somehow he’s known all along.
The warmth of the house and the hot drink in her hands seems to calm his mom down some, give her space to start sorting through her thoughts. She’s still struggling to wrap words around it, to find her voice to say it and make it all real, and even though they don’t talk about it, Jonathan has to take pity on her. “Mom, don’t. You know you don’t have to tell me.”
His mom looks up at him with eyes that are suddenly and remarkably clear. When she asks, “Why don’t you ever talk about it?”, Jonathan isn’t surprised. But he can’t say he isn’t blindsided.
“You told me not to,” he says, taking a sip of his own tea so his mother can’t see his face.
“Not – not to strangers, baby, not -” His mom struggles with words for a moment before giving up. “You could have talked to me. You can talk to me. You know that, Jonathan, right?”
Jonathan shrugs.
His mom’s stare is uncomfortably knowing. “You don’t have to pretend to be normal for me, Jonathan.” She gives a soft huff, blowing on the surface of her tea even though it must have gone lukewarm a while ago. “Whatever that is.”
She really thinks she means it. Jonathan can’t say he’s surprised. But she has no idea what she’s asking for.
“I was…trying to let you think I was growing out of it,” he says. It’s been the opposite, really. His radius just seems to get wider every year. And people’s noise harder to tune out.
“Sweetheart,” his mom says, reaching across the table to grasp his hand in what she thinks is a reassuring grip, “why would you do that?”
Jonathan shrugs one shoulder. But he doesn’t pull his hand away just yet. “So you wouldn’t have to worry so much about me. About it.” He looks down at her hand, closed so tightly over his that it’s starting to hurt. He can’t look her in the eyes and say this. “And – Dad never really seemed to be a fan.”
If his dad knew what his mom thought of him in that moment, Jonathan thinks, he’d steer clear of their family for fear of his life.
“You don’t have to worry about him,” Jonathan’s mom says, firmly, giving his hand one last squeeze before releasing it. From the resolve that’s settled in her, Jonathan doesn’t doubt she means it. At least, until the next time Lonnie Byers comes around with flowers and sad eyes and all the right words of contrition, wanting to spend some quality time with his sons.
Son, now.
Jonathan wrenches his mind back onto the topic at hand. “Yeah, but – you know. Other fish in the sea.”
He doesn’t need to be able to read his mother’s mind to see the flicker of guilt that flashes through her. But what did she think? That Jonathan just…wouldn’t notice that she never dated, never brought anyone home? That her telepathic son wouldn’t be able to tell that she let herself be lonely, because she was worried about what might happen if she let a stranger close enough to find out what her family was really like?
“I – I don’t care about that,” his mom says, a weak lie. “Okay? I just – I only ever wanted to protect you. Keep you safe.”
“I know,” Jonathan mutters into his tea. That’s the worst part. He does know.
The look his mom fixes him with is uncomfortable, and he gets up and paces the length of the room, not wanting to hear whatever’s going through her head. Unfortunately, it sounds like she’s going to tell him anyway.
“You are just – you are so, so special, Jonathan. Both you and your brother are. You do know that, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” Jonathan mutters. “Can’t exactly forget it.”
His mom bites down on her lips, giving him a kicked-puppy look, and then turns and stares down into her tea.
“Mike Wheeler warned me,” she says, after a moment of silence. “Before the cops got here. Said that they were going to tell me Will was dead. And that it was a lie.”
It’s amazing. Jonathan still can’t summon up a single feeling about finding out that his little brother, the one he was supposed to protect, is dead. But this? This sparks a burning black rage in the pit of his chest. “Mom. You can’t do this.”
His mother gives him a surprisingly steely look. “I’m not giving up on him, Jonathan. That’s the only thing I can’t do.”
“Giving up -” The sight of that – faceless monster, moving too fast to be natural, too fast to avoid unless you already knew it was coming, flashes across Jonathan’s memory, and the fury burns hotter. He’s not totally sure if it’s aimed at his mother or at himself. “Will is dead, Mom! They found his body! We’re way past giving up!”
But he doesn’t need to hear his mom to know it’s a lost cause. She just shakes her head, setting her mug down on the table with a firm thump. “The body that they found at the same time as I was talking to Will?”
“What, through the Christmas lights? Can you hear yourself?”
Jonathan’s mom looks, for a second, like she’s about to burst into tears. But instead, she pushes herself to her feet. “I don’t care. I don’t care if you think I’m crazy. I don’t care if – if everybody thinks I’m crazy! Just because you can’t hear him anymore, doesn’t mean he’s not there. And if there is even the tiniest shred of a chance, even the – the smallest sliver of doubt, I cannot just give up. I will do – whatever it takes, and I will find Will, and I will bring him home!”
She bangs a fist down on the table like punctuation, and it wobbles on its uncertain legs. Tea slops up and out of her mug, pooling on the placemat around it.
Jonathan and his mom both look at it for a long moment, before Jonathan sighs and makes for the sink to grab the dishcloth.
“Jonathan,” his mom says, like a plea. Understand, please. Agree, please. Watch out for your brother, please. Don’t make a fuss, please. I’m only trying to take care of you. It’s been the background narration of his life, and abruptly, Jonathan’s sick of it.
“It’s late,” he says, brushing past his mom to scrub tea off the tabletop. “Everybody’s had a hard day, and tomorrow’s gonna be worse. Let’s just – sleep on this. Okay?”
For some reason, his mom looks back over her shoulder at that, with a stab of fear as she turns towards the living room.
“What?” Jonathan asks, and his mom spins back to face him with a wobbly fake smile.
“You – you go ahead, sweetheart. I’m just going to sit up a little longer. Don’t think I can sleep yet.”
“Mom,” Jonathan says, sternly, and doesn’t feel guilty about the way her face falls. He doesn’t. She was the one who said he didn’t have to pretend to be normal for her. “Why are you going to get the axe? What are you scared of?”
His mother gives him a long look. Jonathan wishes he didn’t have to know the way what she sees in him is shifting. There’s a reason why Will’s the only one he ever really lets himself be himself around. Will at least sort of understands – understood. Everybody else – well. Jonathan can’t say he’d be thrilled to find out somebody else had been going snooping in his head.
Although – he finds he doesn’t really regret blowing up the careful illusion he’s been maintaining for his mother. Especially not when her assessment of him settles out into something that feels almost like respect.
“Will warned me,” she says, with a fluttery gesture in the direction of the living room. There’s something a little too sarcastic in the way she says, “Through the Christmas lights, yeah. It, it came out of the wall -”
Jonathan doesn’t want to start the argument about Will all over again. But he doesn’t have to bite his tongue for long, because the memory that floats to the surface of his mother’s thoughts is sharp and vivid and – and Jonathan has to wonder if she isn’t trying to show it to him.
He’ll have to think about how that’s making him feel later, though. Because, right now –
“That – you really saw that?” Jonathan demands. His mom nods. “Here?”
“Twice. Before – in Will’s room, before I had the Christmas lights. I, I think it’s after him, Jonathan, it’s real -”
“Mom,” Jonathan says, cutting the litany short. “I know.”
His mom’s face doesn’t change. But the mushroom-bloom of painful hope that fills her makes Jonathan feel suddenly guilty, for reasons he can’t explain even to himself.
Still, he takes a breath, and says the words he knows she’s waiting, hoping, for him to say. “I’ve seen it too.”