Chapter Text
This time, there are no sirens.
No high-speed police chase. No police. Not yet. They may come later.
Now, here, there are only two girls, and a man who hurt them both.
“Do you remember us now?” Kali Prasad asks. Her voice is a child’s. The man looking on sees a child, as well, neat twin braids in her hair, starched uniform and big eyes.
The girl standing beside her hasn’t spoken. Doesn’t speak. Only clasps Kali’s left hand in her own, thin, pale one. Her eyes are even bigger than Kali’s, bigger than the eyes of anyone the man has ever seen or known. They seem to be seeing something more than just his face.
“Please -” he tries.
“Oh, we’re long past begging now,” Kali says, as the illusion melts away. The girls are taller, now, older, wild-haired and dressed in black. And armed. But the eyes are the same. The eyes don’t change. And their hands stay clasped. “Where was your contrition, Harry, when you were guarding the cages of children? Where was your conscience?”
“I – I didn’t think – you don’t have to do this, it won’t -”
Kali puts her head to one side, frowning thoughtfully at him. “You dare ask us, now, to spare your sorry life?” Her eyes narrow. “Would you have freed us, then? If we had begged? If we had asked nicely?”
She raises the pistol in her right hand, taking aim at the dead centre of the man’s forehead. Her arm is steady as a rock. Her gaze is piercing. “Oh, but I remember. You didn’t.”
There’s no explosion of sound. No short sharp burst of blood and brain and bone, spattering across the wood-panelled wall behind the kitchen chair the man is seated in. He only goes, abruptly, very tense and very white, his eyes wide as if he’s seen a ghost. His mouth hangs slack, and a little choked noise escapes him, like a desperate attempt at a word.
And then he slumps backwards, boneless, in the chair, his head lolling lifeless onto one shoulder. His open eyes stare blankly into nothing.
Kali huffs, lowering the gun. “I thought we agreed it was my turn.”
The girl at her side has tilted her head back, her eyes shut, inhaling a long, deep breath through her nose. When she lowers her chin and opens her eyes, it’s with a small smile, and a twinkle in her eye as she glances over at Kali. “I’m sorry. I did let you make your speech…?”
Kali huffs again, as the other girl rubs away the drop of blood that’s trickled from her nose. But the smile she turns in the other girl’s direction is fond. “I wish you’d have said something sooner, Sara. You know I worry.”
“There’s nothing to worry about,” Sara says, with another flash of that smile, already turning to leave. “I never make the same mistake twice. Now let’s get out of here. I’m sure the neighbours have called the cops by now.”
Kali shakes her head, but she too turns toward the door of the drab little apartment. Which means she misses the glance Sara shoots back over her shoulder at the cooling corpse slumped in the kitchen chair. Blank eyes stare back from the slack face, already starting to cloud over.
“Princess?”
“Coming!”
When the police do arrive, Kali and Sara are long gone. All that’s left to find is evidence of a break-in, a handful of valuables stolen.
And the renter, one Harry Beecher, former government employee and current night security guard, dead.
Foul play is, of course, suspected. But there’s not a scratch on him. And no sign of poisoning. The autopsy concludes death by natural causes.
It’s still strange, though. The coroner can find no reason for it. Apart from the usual wear and tear of aging, the man seems to be in perfect health.
Except for the fact that he’s dead.
…
There’s something wrong with Will.
Lightbulbs keep popping, all over the house. He stops, in the middle of whatever he’s doing, in the middle of sentences, to stare at nothing with a look of horror. Sudden noises make him jump. The little shocks he sometimes gives off at unexpected touches have gotten more consistent. And stronger.
He thinks nobody’s noticed. Thinks he’s hiding it well. He’s forgotten he lives in a house with Jonathan. And with Joyce. She may not be able to read his mind, but she doesn’t need to. She raised him.
And she knows – she knows – something is wrong.
Even more wrong, if her baby won’t even tell her what it is.
…
There’s something wrong with Barb.
She knows she should be happy for Nancy. And she is. At least, she wants to be. And she is happy that Nancy’s happy. Really.
It’s just – it’s hard, feeling like the third wheel.
It’s hard, watching Nancy laugh, and flirt, and tease, like it’s harmless. Like there’s no version – versions – of this where she ended up falling into Jonathan’s arms instead, no version – versions – of this where she’s still yet to. Like she doesn’t have any idea of how happy he’d be if she did.
Like Barb isn’t the one on the outside of whatever Nancy and Steve and Jonathan’s weird little triangle is. Like the four of them are all just such good friends and they’re all in on the same jokes.
Barb can’t stand to be around them, sometimes. Can’t stand to be around her. Nancy. Her best friend. The one Barb herself said she didn’t want to lose.
So Barb knows there’s something wrong with her even before every last one of her futures goes dark.
…
Something is wrong with Dustin.
He doesn’t come to the cabin or the house as much anymore. And he makes excuses, a word El knows means not a good reason not to, Eleven. About spending time at the arcade or on school projects. New words, and ones she doesn’t fully understand. Places she can’t go and things she can’t do.
She can’t know if he’s telling the truth. But it doesn’t matter. Friends don’t lie. And Papa said, and Hop said too, that excuses can be true or false. All that matters is you say them when you don’t want to do something and don’t want to say so.
And that means Dustin doesn’t want to come.
El’s friends all have school again, every day, from early morning until afternoon. And Lucas stays away at the arcade now too, sometimes, and so does Mike. Even Will, when his mama lets him.
Not so often. And it doesn’t sound so much like excuses. But they still spend more time away from the house, away from the cabin.
Away from her.
El wants to go too. Wants to see this arcade that’s so interesting, with its dragon’s lair. Wants to know if school can really be that bad. But Hop and Joyce both say too risky. Joyce says soon, but they’re waiting for something first, a piece of paper that proves El’s there. Which is silly. She’s there.
Hop just says not until it’s safe, and then changes the subject.
El could ask her friends, about the something wrong with Dustin, about the excuses. But she doesn’t want to make them mad.
And she doesn’t want them to say they don’t want to see her.
So she asks Jonathan. Jonathan makes a face and tells her she doesn’t want to know. El looks at him until he makes another face. She does want to know. Or she wouldn’t have asked.
“All right, if you’re going to be so literal – knowing won’t make you happy.”
El frowns at him. “I’m not happy now.”
Jonathan sighs, but he smiles, and ruffles her hair, so she knows he’s not mad. “You need to talk to your friends if something’s bothering you. I’ll help you out with the words if you need it, but I’m not spying on them for you.”
He looks at her face again, and admits, “It’s not your fault. They all care about you. It’s just something they’re going to have to figure out for themselves. But that’s all I’m telling you.” He pauses, and adds, “Unless you want to hear some new music?”
He doesn’t help.
Neither does Will. Something is wrong with Will, too. But this wrong, El understands better. He needs to be quiet, sometimes. Like her. Needs a warning before he’s touched. She knows what to do when she finds him curled up holding his knees to his chest in the cupboard in the living room, or the closet in the room they share when Hop’s out of town. She only has to crouch quietly in the dark with him and wait.
Now she just needs to know what to do with the rest of her friends.
…
There’s something wrong in Hawkins.
The first pumpkin patch could’ve been a coincidence. An early frost. A really bad early frost.
But a second blighted field – and a third, and a fourth, and a fifth – starts to look a little more suspicious. Especially when whatever weird rot’s struck them all seems to be radiating out from that goddamn lab.
Time was when Jim Hopper would’ve done his damnedest to come up with some halfway plausible rational explanation and then forget about it. But he’s seen some shit. Not just in the last year, either. And this? The more he sees of it, the more sure he is – this is nothing like anything he’s ever seen before.
And there’s a half-finished bottle of prescription antipsychotics – that is, if they weren’t just sugar pills all along - gathering dust in his medicine cabinet that says he’s done doubting the evidence of his senses.
More otherworld bullshit is the last thing any of them need right now. They’re coming up on a year. Joyce’s youngest is still jumping at shadows, worse now than ever before. The kid Joyce and Jim somehow ended up sort of co-adopting (and if that isn’t a sentence he never would’ve imagined himself thinking) is starting to get restless, pushing at the boundaries they put there to keep her safe. Mix in Joyce’s whirlwind summer romance that’s hanging on a little late into fall for comfort, considering the guy still only knows she has the two boys and doesn’t have a clue about what really happened last November, and what you’ve got is a recipe for trouble.
And all that isn’t even considering the little - personal project that keeps pulling Jim away on short notice, chasing down leads that inevitably go nowhere.
If he didn’t know better, he’d think she was trying to avoid him.
Not Joyce. Or the kid. The only other significant ‘she’ in his life, these days. The one he doesn’t dare name, even in his own head. He’s ruined too many good things for himself already. He’s not getting his hopes up about this one before he even knows for sure it’s her. That she’s even still alive.
But.
Actually, come to think of it, trying to avoid him’s got to be exactly what she’s doing. Not him specifically, probably. There’s no way she could know he’s looking for her, not unless there’s a whole lot more she can do that he never knew about. And it’s been years since he stopped looking, that first time. Even if she did know he was looking, too, Jim can’t fathom why she’d try to hide from him.
But – that doctor they’ve got running the lab now, Owens, said it looks like she’d escaped. She and another girl. Another subject.
After seeing the inside of that place…Jim would’ve kept running, too.
So he can’t exactly blame her for making herself hard to find, when the only people who’ve been looking for her are the ones who wanted to take her back there. He’s got nobody to blame but himself. If he never finds her…well. It’s been a while since seventh-grade English, but he’s been helping El with her vocabulary, and he’s pretty sure that’s what they call irony.
Still, though. These last few trips, from the sounds of things, Jim’s been rolling into town just as she was leaving. He’s getting closer.
So it’s just not a great time for the earth to open up and start spitting monsters again.
Luckily, when it comes to weird mysteries that might explode into supernatural crises, they’ve got at least one ace up their collective sleeve. Jim dumps a half-rotten pumpkin on the desk in front of Doc Owens, who honestly might not even be so bad if he’d just stop asking about getting Will Byers in to see him and get off his ass and get El her damn papers, and tells him to check it out. And Jim makes a mental note to ask Joyce’s eldest if his redheaded friend has anything to say about black blight.
But when Jim gets back to the Byers’ at the end of shift, the kid gives him a Look and says, “Peoria,” and it drives every other thought out of his head.
He’s halfway to Illinois before he remembers he was gonna ask about the future, and by then, it’s too late to turn around. But it’ll be all right. Unless this is the trip, the one where he finds her, which he’s already losing hope for, he’ll be back in a day or less.
What the hell kind of trouble can they all get themselves into without him in just a single day?
…
There’s something wrong with Will.
He’s thought it through a thousand times, turned it over and over in his mind, and always comes to the same inevitable conclusion. The hollow, cold ache in his chest isn’t just upset at the things people call him – honestly, ‘Zombie Boy’ isn’t even a good insult. It makes him think of, like – like, Swamp Thing, or Solomon Grundy. A gross weirdo with cool powers.
It also isn’t, like Dustin’s only-half-jokingly suggested, because Will’s missing being special for being the only one with a superpower. And it’s not a bitter sting of envy about how much time Dustin and Lucas are spending trying to get that new girl’s attention, or how much time Mike spends with Eleven, so patient and calm even when she’s frustrated by her lessons or the limits of her vocabulary or because Hopper or Will’s mom had to tell her she couldn’t go downtown with the rest of the Party. There’s nothing to be envious of. Mike practically lives at Will’s house, these days, when El’s there. And he’s every bit as patient and calm with Will, even when Will shocks everyone who gets close.
Because that’s part of how Will knows it’s not just a feeling. His powers are – different, since he got back. Stronger. And a little wild. He used to have to think, to focus, so hard to even summon up a handful of sparks without a wire or a power line or a direct touch to channel them through, without a strong emotion to let them loose. Now, every light in the living room’s blown out before he even realizes he’s doing anything other than drawing. Before he even realizes he’s afraid.
It can be like that. Will knows. He and Jonathan had talked about it, after his mom had given him the awkward, halting talk about puberty. And he’s talked a lot about it with his friends, since last November, since he and El became the Party’s de facto experts on all things superpowers. He knows the others all found out that there was more to what they can do than just what sneaks out when they’re not really thinking about it. And he knows that Jonathan was about the age Will is now when he started really having to put physical space between himself and others, when he started getting migraines from pep rallies and carnivals. Will knew that it was possible, even likely, that his powers wouldn’t stay the same forever. There was a reason he was practicing ball lightning, after all.
But – he’s never really had Jonathan’s issues with controlling it. This wildness, this reactivity – it’s new. It doesn’t – it almost doesn’t feel like him.
At least, not any version of himself that Will recognizes.
He knows Jonathan knows. There’s no way to keep secrets from his brother. But he also knows Jonathan won’t say anything to their mom, unless Will says he can or he thinks Will’s really in danger. It’s part of their longstanding agreement. When your big brother reads minds, you have to set some ground rules early.
It’s okay. Well, it isn’t, really, but – Will’s used to managing. He’ll learn the shape of this new version of his powers the same way he’s learning the shape of these new versions of his family and his Party, until it’s all as familiar and comfortable as it used to be. And then he won’t feel so strange, and maybe it’ll get rid of the hollow, cold ache in his chest.
Will’s told himself that so many times that he’s almost starting to believe it.
And then there’s the night the arcade goes silent and dark around him, the Upside Down crashing back in like he’d never left it, and Will knows: he’s just been lying to himself.
There’s something very, very wrong with him.
…
Peoria is a bust, to begin with.
She’s gone, already, by the time Jim arrives. That’s not exactly a surprise. He’s getting used to being one step behind.
Just because he’s got the kid’s help now, though, doesn’t mean he’s forgotten everything he ever knew about detective work.
The nice thing about being chief of police, even for a nowhere burg like Hawkins, is the doors it opens. The Peoria P.D., like the Cedar Rapids P.D. and the Pittsburgh P.D. and all the others, are only too willing to help a fellow officer out with a missing persons case. Or with an investigation into what looks like a string of serial home invasion murders.
Jim first made the connection back in Billings, Montana. It had taken him a couple days to get out there, and by the time he had, a robbery and suspicious death had made the local papers. A robbery and suspicious death that was a little too close to the date El had said she was in town.
These days, Jim Hopper doesn’t much believe in coincidences.
It’s not the same in every place the kid’s sent him since. But enough places have a suspicious death reported around the same time she would’ve been there that it’s definitely a pattern. If a strange one.
Jim’s not surprised nobody else has put it together. The robbers only seem to strike once in any given city, and the only obvious connection between the crime scenes is the presence of a beat-up camper van, streaked with rust, outside the home in the days leading up to the robbery. The targets look randomly chosen, or at least they would to somebody who didn’t know what they were looking for. The robbers hit huge houses with extensive security and ratty apartments in bad neighbourhoods and everything in between. Nothing seems to keep them out. Half the time, the place is carelessly tossed over, only a handful of valuables taken, less like a robbery and more like somebody wanted to make it look like a robbery gone wrong. The other half of the time, the whole place seems to have been meticulously searched.
Somehow, Jim’s not surprised to learn that the places that got searched belonged to people who were still working for the government.
All of that’s stumped local PDs, who usually only see one anyway, two at most. But for Jim, who’s got a pretty good idea of who’s behind it and what her motives are, it’s pretty easy to add up. What really makes it weird are the deaths.
About half the time – almost exactly half the time, actually – it’s pretty clearly a homicide. Single gunshot, execution-style, to the middle of the forehead or the back of the head. The first time he saw crime scene photos from one of them, it made Jim sick to his stomach. Her face, her smile, and these dead faces, blue-pale with their livid wounds – it’s a couple of mental images he really doesn’t want to have to try and reconcile.
But not all of these vics died of gunshot wounds. And that’s the really weird part.
Because about half the time there’s a suspicious death in her wake – almost exactly half the time, actually – the deceased doesn’t have a scratch on them. Coroners’ reports variously blame the deaths on idiopathic cardiac events, strokes with reabsorbed clots, some kind of metabolic shock. A lot of fancy medical talk for ‘we don’t know’.
Jim doesn’t either. But he’s starting to put together a theory.
It’s a long drive, and already late when he makes it out, so he gets a motel room for the night. Realises about as he’s brushing his teeth what day it is. Tomorrow’s Halloween.
Well, he can make it back in time if he sets out early enough in the morning. He can still keep his promises.
He can’t help thinking, though, that one of these times, he’s not going to be able to. One of these times, he’s going to have to choose between the girl he already abandoned once and the kid he’s trying to do better by. Between the family he already let down and the ones who don’t know yet not to lean on him too hard.
And when it comes down to it…even with those crime scene photos in the back of his mind, Jim doesn’t know which one he’s gonna pick.
He’s just settling in for the night, pulling the curtains closed, when he sees it. Just rolling under a streetlight on the road outside the motel, like it’s so innocent. A beat-up camper van, streaked with rust.
He tries to make out the plate, as it passes under the light. Doesn’t catch the whole thing. But he scrawls down the couple of digits he did catch. He can cross-reference them with his notes from the files later.
And then he throws on a jacket and a pair of pants, grabbing his keys as he goes running out the door. He can’t be sure it’s the same van without checking the plates, of course. But that would take time. Time in which the van will be getting farther and farther away.
And these days, Jim Hopper doesn’t much believe in coincidences.
…
It starts, because of course it does, on Halloween.
If she was feeling more like herself, Barb would have some very sarcastic comments for the universe about that. About cliches, and being a little too on-the-nose, and how the original horror movie she had to live through really wasn’t good enough for a sequel.
But she’s not feeling like herself. She’s feeling cold, and shaken, and she keeps thinking she smells rot on the late-October air. Keeps thinking she can see flecks of drifting white moving in the corners of her vision.
Barb had fled fifth period biology when it had first started to seep in, an icy, somehow slimy, unwholesome cold creeping into every crack and crevice of everything yet to come. Had lost ten or fifteen minutes on the grimy tile floor of a bathroom stall trying to heave up something that wasn’t actually in her stomach, nauseated by the slick shivering inevitability of it in every direction she turned. She’s still got no idea how it hid itself from her at all, let alone so completely, so that by the time she got the first hint of a warning about it, it was already too late.
Unless – unless there were warnings, and she’d just brushed them off as paranoia, after what happened last November. After that – place. It had had the same kind of cold about it, the kind that chilled her almost feverishly, clammy and damp and sickening. Barb’s spent a full year trying to shake the memory off. If some of it hadn’t been memory –
But it doesn’t matter now. It’s too late. There’s nothing anybody can do to stop it, not anymore.
Whatever this is, it’s coming.
Nancy, loyal to a fault, had followed Barb to the bathroom, rubbed her back, and made sympathetic noises while Barb lost her lunch. Now she’s sitting on the concrete steps outside with Barb, breathing in the autumn chill, and Barb can tell she’s waiting for an explanation. Loyal to a fault, maybe, and brilliant and beautiful and determined, but one thing Nancy Wheeler’s never been is patient.
“Sorry,” Barb manages, pulling off her glasses so she can rub a hand against her left eye. The fresh air’s helping the dull throb that’s settled behind it, but the low, bright afternoon light isn’t. At least the nausea’s settled. “That – I wasn’t expecting it.”
Nancy just gives her big melty puppy-dog eyes and puts a slim hand on her arm. It’s warm even through the fabric of Barb’s blouse. “Are you feeling any better now?”
Barb manages a nod.
Nancy glances back over her shoulder at the school before leaning in closer to Barb, pressing their hips and shoulders together. Her hand tightens on Barb’s arm, her voice going hushed as she says, “I saw your nose start to bleed before you bolted. What happened?”
For a second, Barb considers lying. Blame the nosebleed on the dry air and the nausea on the pickled frogs they’d been dissecting or a bad egg salad sandwich or something. Whatever this thing is that’s coming, it’s bad. And there really, really isn’t anything anyone can do now to stop it before it starts. But if Nancy finds out – she’s going to try.
Barb doesn’t want to see what happens if Nancy tries to stop it. And not just because she’s got nothing left in her to throw up.
But then the door behind them is swinging open, with a metallic chunk and a squeal of put-upon hinges. Barb whirls around, heart in her throat even though she knows that it’s not that – that monster –
“Heard you left fifth period sick,” Jonathan Byers says, a crease of worry between his eyebrows, and Barb lets out a long sigh of breath as she relaxes. She won’t be able to keep the truth to herself now, but at least this takes it out of her hands. And – even with everything, it’s good to see him. If Barb had known what a sense of humour Jonathan’s been hiding under that hard shell of misanthropy, they might’ve been friends sooner.
The little twist of smile that crosses Jonathan’s face at that vanishes in an instant, that worry furrowing deeper. “What the hell was that?” he asks, with a piercing look at Barb’s face, settling down on the step on her other side.
Nancy shoots him a confused frown, and Jonathan bobs his head in Barb’s direction. And then they’re both looking at her, waiting for an explanation.
Barb swallows. She can still taste the bitterness of bile on the back of her tongue.
“I don’t really know,” she admits. “But it’s coming here.”
Nancy looks from Barb to Jonathan and back again. “Your vision?”
“Not a vision,” Jonathan says, before Barb can, and flashes her another twist of a smile when she turns to scowl at him.
“Something bad?” Nancy asks, her jaw starting to set in that way Barb knows means she’s got hold of an idea and she won’t let it go until she’s done something about it.
“Something weird,” Barb stresses, even though she’s pretty sure it’s already too late to change Nancy’s mind.
“You were throwing up. That sounds bad to me.”
“What sounds bad?”
Barb turns her head to look, just in time to get a faceful of Steve Harrington’s hair as he ducks down to plant one on Nancy. The smell of hairspray is overpowering. Barb coughs, leaning back out of range of the chemical assault, and collides with Jonathan’s shoulder.
Nancy makes a muffled, annoyed noise and pushes Steve off her, glowering. “Steve! This is serious.”
Steve shrugs, and claps Jonathan on the back with one hand before he settles down on the steps on Nancy’s other side. He tucks an arm around her waist, pulling her against his side, and Nancy shoots him a look that’s just a little too fond to really be annoyed before she settles against him. “Okay. It’s serious.” He leans forward a little, looking around Nancy to Barb. “Hey, you all right? Nicole said the frog dissection made you blow chunks. Don’t feel bad, there’s always one.”
“It wasn’t the dissection,” Barb says, as Nancy smacks her boyfriend in the chest with the back of one hand, not taking her eyes off Barb’s face. “It was the future.”
The joking grin drains out of Steve’s eyes before it fades off his face. “No shit? What was it?”
Barb fumbles for words, before turning a pleading look on Jonathan, who grimaces.
“I don’t really want any more of that slime in my head, either,” he says, which gets a quirked eyebrow from Steve and a thoughtful frown from Nancy.
“It – it feels like – that place,” Barb tries, which gets a look of understanding and what she thinks is a little bit of guilt out of Nancy, and a shake of the head from Steve. “The – Upside Down or whatever your kid brother called it. Where Jonathan’s brother was.” Her throat’s gone dry again, and she has to swallow before she can add, “Where that monster took me. And it’s coming here.”
“Not if we stop it,” Nancy says, after a beat, all flashing eyes and fierce determination, just like Barb had known she would.
“Nancy – we’re not going to stop it.” Barb has to look down at her interlaced fingers, away from her best friend’s face. “I ignored all the early warnings because I thought they were just bad memories, and now it’s too late. It’s coming here. Maybe we can – get rid of it, send it back, once it’s here, but I don’t know yet. And I don’t want to have to look at it again to find out.”
She can feel three pairs of eyes on her, but Barb doesn’t dare look up.
“That is bullshit,” Nancy says, at last, vehemently, and Barb puffs out a sigh. “No. I’m sorry, Barb, but I’m not buying it. If it hasn’t happened yet, then there’s still something we can do to stop it. Got to be. Right?”
“Nothing I could see. Nancy, I don’t want you getting in trouble trying to fight the inevitable, okay?”
“That’s our Nance,” Steve says, a little too fondly, tilting his head down to press a kiss to Nancy’s temple and putting both hands on her waist. Her whole face scrunches up, but she looks like she’s trying not to smile. “Always fighting the inevitable.”
“Steve Harrington, I swear to god if you try to tickle me -”
“Hadn’t even crossed my mind, right, Jonny-boy?”
When Barb looks over, Jonathan’s watching Nancy and her boyfriend with a crooked half-grin, like he doesn’t know if he’s allowed to laugh. “He’s an innocent man, Nancy,” he says, with mock solemnity, and Steve breaks into a huge, shit-eating grin over Nancy’s head at Jonathan before he leans over and blows on Nancy’s exposed neck, making her shriek. He follows it with a loud, smacking kiss to the same spot, and comes up looking like the cat who got the cream.
“See? You should trust me more.”
Nancy shoves him, but she’s laughing. “You’re an idiot, Steve Harrington!”
Barb looks back, sees the fond, soft smile Jonathan’s turned on the two of them, and abruptly feels a million cold, dark, rotting miles away from them all.
She pushes herself to her feet, deliberately looking away from Jonathan so she won’t have to watch his face fall. “I’m feeling better now. Think I’d better go apologise to Mr. Neal for running out on his class before algebra starts. Thanks for checking on me.”
“Barb,” Nancy says, but when she tries to get up, Steve yanks her back down into his lap. “Steve!”
“Oh, oh no, I’m – I’m trying to let you go, but – it seems like – kinda seems like – you ending up in my lap is inevitable?”
“Let me go, you Neanderthal -”
The school door slams shut behind Barb, muffling their voices.
…
Halloween is a new word.
And one El isn’t sure she fully understands. She saw a monster last year, and didn’t get any candy out of it. Unless the triple-decker Eggo extravaganzas Hop can sometimes be talked into letting her eat count.
El doesn’t think they do.
She understands costumes a little better, although how they fit together with monsters and candy is still a mystery she’s working hard on unravelling. Joyce let her help make Will’s costume. Showed her and Will both how to use the sewing machine – and then how to appliqué a patch with a needle and thread when Will touched the sewing machine and it went too fast and wouldn’t stop. How to put together flat pieces to make something with round shapes. Joyce promised that after this, El can pick out a pattern and fabric and they’ll make her a dress. Something pretty, that wasn’t anyone’s before it was hers. Something just for her.
To El, it’s a power. Just like how Jonathan can make photos appear out of plain white paper like magic. Just like how Will can put a pencil on a piece of paper and make a picture of almost anything he can think of. Or how Mike can make her see pictures in her head with his words. Or Dustin can use the library to find out the answers to questions even Hop and Joyce don’t know. Or Lucas can knock down a whole row of cans from a fence with his slingshot and not miss one. The more time she spends with her friends, the more amazing things El learns they can do.
And the more she feels them slip away.
El’s not like them. She can’t do many things. She can’t go anywhere. She works as hard as she can with the old workbooks of Jonathan and Will’s that Joyce found her, and she watches what Joyce and Jonathan and Hop and the people on the TV do and say, and she learns at least one new word every day, and she listens to everything her friends tell her about what they’re learning at school. She even does their homework with them, although she needs lots of help.
But it’s not enough. She doesn’t know half the things they know.
Maybe that’s why her friends spend more time away now. The world out there – where El can’t go – is big and full of things like Eggos and arcades and libraries and ice cream and California and movie theatres and laundromats. Everything out there sounds interesting. More interesting than the same little house every day. The same El every day.
El has shown them everything she can do. Maybe they’re bored.
At the lab, when she’d shown them everything she could do, Papa always asked her to do more. Tested. To see if there was more she didn’t know she could do. It has been a year, now, with no tests. Unless the quizzes Hop gives her sometimes on the things in the workbooks count. El doesn’t think they do.
Or when she looks for her friends. Or the other girl, the sister. That might count. But it’s always the same. And they know she can find.
If there’s more El doesn’t know she can do, she’ll never find out this way. And if Hop and Joyce won’t test her, then maybe she needs to test herself.
She asked, when her friends were making Halloween plans, if she could have a costume too. If she could go trick or treat with them. Her friends had all argued to let her, but Hop had said too risky to trick or treat.
But Joyce had said compromise, which Hop says means halfway happy, so El has a costume. Big glasses with chains on the arms, big sweater with big shoulders, skirt and tights and a pair of Mike’s mom’s lowest heels. “You’re Janine. She’s…sort of a Ghostbuster, too,” Mike had told her, earnestly, explaining the costume. “Just…behind the scenes.”
El doesn’t understand. She won’t understand until the movie comes out on tape and they can watch it in Will’s living room. All she knows is they all have costumes of the same team. But she’s the only one who doesn’t match.
Hop was supposed to come and get her in the afternoon, and take her back to the cabin for candy and Eggos and scary movies all night. But at two-three-three on the clock El is learning to read, Joyce is on the phone, not yelling. “What do you mean you’re in Illinois? We had an agreement, Hopper, I’ve already had to cancel three dates this month -”
She’s silent, for a moment, and then doesn’t yell into the phone, “What do you mean ‘something came up’?!”
“I could go with Will,” El says, feeling hope jump in her throat. Joyce gives her a smile with a twist in it, but then she’s not yelling into the phone again and it’s too late.
“No. No! No, you know I’ve been planning this – no, Jonathan’s going with Will, I am not letting him go out on his own, it’s not safe, Hopper – are you even listening to me?”
El goes down the hall to the room with the bunk beds, the room that was just Will’s, before. It can be hers too now, Joyce says, but El doesn’t think so. It can’t look like she lives here. Too risky, with Joyce’s new boyfriend, a word which means someone you do gross grown-up stuff with, like kissing. Will told her.
Will thinks the boyfriend is nice, but boring. El doesn’t know if he is those things or not. She’s never met him. He doesn’t know about her. Too risky. That’s why Joyce is so mad at Hop for being in Illinois. She wants to see the boyfriend tonight, probably to do gross grown-up stuff with, so El can’t be there.
El doesn’t mind, most of the time. She doesn’t want to meet strange men either. Too many friends-not-really-friends Papa brought to the lab. Too many tests with strange eyes watching.
Tonight, though, there’s a squirming in her stomach when she thinks about being hidden from the boyfriend.
It doesn’t matter. All it means is El spends more time with Hop. And that her things stay at the cabin, the poster Mike gave her from his basement and the books and comics and Nancy’s old clothes and El’s soft stuffed bear. It’s strange, having so many things that are hers now. She doesn’t need Will’s room, too.
But she can go there whenever she wants. Will and Joyce both said so. Will did make a rule, which is knock first. But it’s a rule for both of them, and Jonathan and even Joyce follow it too. And it’s the same as the rule for bathrooms here and at the cabin.
There are no rules about when El can go into Will’s room or when she can come out. There aren’t even rules about her room at the cabin. She can stay in her room all day if she wants, if she comes out for meals and eats her peas. She can stay on the couch in the main room all night if she wants, if she brushes her teeth and gets her own blankets.
It was a dizzying amount of freedom, a year ago.
El walks around the little room in a circle. She stops in front of the shelf where Will keeps his walkie-talkie, when he’s not using it. There’s no rule saying she can’t touch it. The only thing Will says ask before touching is his pictures.
El takes the walkie-talkie down. When it settles into her hand, she settles herself cross-legged on the floor, turns it on, and focuses.
The first person she thinks of is Hop, but he’s still arguing with Joyce and his side is not as interesting as El thought. She wonders for a moment if Joyce knows about the other girl. About the sister. El hasn’t told her. She doesn’t know if Hop has. She doesn’t know why, but she thinks maybe Joyce would be angry if she knew El’s been looking for the other girl. But El tried to find Will for her, last year, so maybe not.
The next person El thinks of is Mike, and the walkie crackles back into static. The voice that comes through is clearer this time. Closer. Easier. This is not exactly a test. El’s going to have to think about what would be.
She thinks Mike’s talking to Will. El pulls a long sock out of Will’s drawer and covers her eyes, holding down the button on the walkie to make it buzz static.
In the dark, their faces take shape, then their costumes. Their words ring out through the silence. El falls into step beside them, walking down a hallway she can’t see but knows is there.
“- so great about her anyway,” Mike is grumbling, and El feels her heart go tight in her chest.
Will shrugs, a little. “She’s new. We don’t get a lot of new kids. And she beat Dustin’s high scores.”
El mouths high scores to herself. She’ll have to check her dictionary.
“Still. He and Lucas shouldn’t have just decided they could invite her to come trick or treating with us. Especially not when El can’t.”
They’re not talking about El. They’re talking about someone else. Another girl.
Another girl who will be going trick or treating with them tonight.
El almost doesn’t realise she’s fallen out of the dark until she’s on her feet, tearing away the sock. If another girl can go trick or treat with her friends, then so can she. Hop’s not here to stop her. He’s looking for another girl who isn’t El too. And Joyce doesn’t even want El here, not tonight. Not when she wants to see the boyfriend.
Everybody has somebody who isn’t El. Who can do things El can’t do. Go places El can’t go.
Well. El will show them where she can’t go.
…
“We’re going to have to ditch the van.”
“We’re going to have to go to ground. I told you it was too much of a risk to do another one this soon -”
Kali Prasad scoffs in the back of her throat. “I led them off on a wild goose chase. We’re safe.”
“Kal,” Mick says, carefully, “they wouldn’t have been following us if they hadn’t found us somehow. We’re not off the hook yet.”
Kali shakes her head, with a slow half-smile. “What happened to the lot of you? I’ve never known you to lack courage.”
“It’s not about lacking courage, it’s about having brains!” Axel protests. “You said we wouldn’t get caught! Having a police car on our tail all the way out of Peoria sure sounds like getting caught to me!”
Sara sits back and rests her forehead against the cool glass of the window, feeling the thrum of the wheels over the uneven road vibrating through it and letting the warm pulse of the argument wash over her. The ditches whip past outside, long wild grasses flickering momentarily bright, gilded in the van’s headlights. Something about the tail Kali’d shaken using an illusion of their van has left her uneasy, and she’s still trying to put her finger on why.
“I’m with Mick,” she says, turning back in towards the rest of the crew and cutting through the shouting match Axel’s picking with Kali. “We should go to ground for a while. Something isn’t right.”
Kali stops in the middle of a sentence, the fire bleeding out of her voice as she drops it back to a regular speaking pitch. Her eyes on Sara are clear and intense. “Are you sure?”
Sara stares back, unafraid. She knows Kali would never let her get hurt. Would never do anything to hurt her. “I’m sure.”
Kali’s gaze lingers on her face a moment longer, before she turns back towards Mick, behind the wheel. “All right. Back to Chicago, then.”
“Do you always do what she says?” Dottie asks, under her breath. She’s obviously not expecting anyone to hear her, because she startles a little when Kali turns to look back over the seat at her and gives her a close-lipped smile.
“Only when she’s right.” Her smile slowly spreads, to reveal sharp, sharp teeth. Even knowing it’s an illusion, Sara can’t help a little shiver. “Do you have a problem with that?”
Dottie looks mutinous for a moment, but then she glances over at Sara, and her determination wavers. “Guess not.”
Kali’s smile snaps back to normal, and she raises her voice a little over the rumble and rattle of the van in motion. “Does anyone else?”
No one answers her.
Kali nods once. “Then it’s decided. We’re taking a well-earned vacation.”
Sara leans her head back against the window, not wanting to meet anyone’s eyes.
She doesn’t mean for it to happen. But her thoughts circle, inevitably, back towards the truck that had tailed them out of Peoria. And the words splashed across its side, that she’d glimpsed as it had blown by them in pursuit of Kali’s conjured phantom. She’s not sure what the Hawkins, Indiana police department would be doing this far from home.
But what really bothers Sara, why she can’t shake off her unease, is the reason why that town’s name sounds so familiar.
Hawkins, Indiana.
Home to the Hawkins National Lab.
…
Beneath them all, deep under the ground, a hole in the world still pulses, like a beating heart.
It has grown.
It is still growing.