Chapter Text
By the time they pulled into the driveway, the sky had gone from gray to charcoal, the kind of early fall darkness that settled fast once the sun dipped. The porch light was already on, a soft yellow halo over the peeling steps.
Joyce killed the engine and sat for a second, fingers still on the keys.
“You look both wiped,” she said, watching Will and Jane through the dim interior light.
“I’m fine,” Will said automatically. “Just… tired.”
“That’s what wiped means, honey.” She squeezed his shoulder, thumb absently brushing a smear of charcoal he’d missed. “You don’t have to prove anything to anyone. If Mrs. Worthington asks you to sleep on that stage, you call me and I’ll storm the castle.”
Will snorted. “Please don’t storm the castle.”
“Oh, I absolutely will,” Joyce said. “I’ve done it before.”
He believed her.
They got out of the car, the air cool against Will’s sweat-damp neck. Crickets chirped from the weeds by the fence. Somewhere down the street, a dog barked twice and then gave up.
Jane flung the back car door open, getting off and taking her bag.
“we’re home,” she announced, as if they weren’t standing right in front of home. She still had paint on her hands, a white streak across the back of one like she’d wiped sweat away and forgotten. Joyce had forgotten to check her hands.
“We are,” Joyce said, stepping around Will to kiss Jane’s temple.
Will smiled, dropping his backpack on the little bench by the door. The living room was warm, the TV flickering silently while Hopper flipped through channels with the volume off. Jonathan sat cross-legged on the floor near the coffee table, a stack of photographs spread out in front of him, a magnifying loupe hanging loosely around his neck.
The house smelled like spaghetti sauce and garlic and the faint tang of fixer from the darkroom down the hall.
“Hey, man,” Jonathan said without looking up, selecting a photo and holding it closer to the lamplight. “Mom said Worthington kidnapped you.”
“She did,” Will said. “But she released me on good behavior.”
“Hmm.” Hopper clicked past the news to some rerun. “Suspicious. Did you roll for good behavior or was it a flat bonus?”
Will stared. “…Have you been talking to Eddie?”
Hopper smirked. “Kid never shuts up about his goblins. Hard not to pick up a few things.”
“They are not goblins this time,” Jane said, offended. “They are vampires.”
Everyone looked at her.
“What?” she said. “Dustin told me. The new campaign is ‘gothic horror inspired.’” She pronounced the quotation marks very clearly.
Will laughed, tension easing out of his shoulders.
“Okay, Wonder Twin,” he said. “Come on. You can tell me about Dustin’s vampire woes while I wash this paint off.”
Her face lit at the nickname, the one Jonathan had once used in exasperation and that Will and Jane had promptly reclaimed for themselves. Wonder twins. Two weird kids sharing a brain cell, as Hopper put it.
“I also need help,” she said, almost in the same breath.
“With…?”
She hurried to the kitchen table and grabbed her backpack, the motion so abrupt the chair squeaked.
“Geometry,” she said, thumping a battered textbook onto the table. “It is terrible. I hate it. Why do we need shapes.”
Joyce sighed in solidarity from the stove. “I asked that question in 1973,” she said, stirring sauce. “Still haven’t gotten a satisfactory answer.”
Will walked over, flipping the book so it faced him. The pages were open to a sea of triangles and x’s, lines labeled with little letters like tiny insults.
“What are you stuck on?” he asked, sliding into the chair beside her.
“All of it,” Jane said, nose wrinkling. “Mrs. Kopec says I need to ‘show my work.’ But when I write the numbers, they do not… connect in my head.” She tapped her forehead, frustrated. “It is like a radio with two stations and they are both static.”
Will glanced down at the example problem she’d underlined three times:
Find the value of x. Show all work.
Two triangles, some matching angles, and a proof scribbled in the margin that looked like a battlefield.
“Okay,” he said, reaching for a pencil. “Let’s turn the static down. Which part makes sense?”
“None,” she said promptly, then frowned. “Maybe… this.” She pointed at the given statement: Triangle ABC is congruent to Triangle DEF.
“Right,” Will said. “So that means they’re the same shape. Like… set pieces.”
“Stage pieces,” Jane echoed, eyes sharpening. “Like if you build two fences from the same drawing.”
“Exactly,” Will said, surprised relief loosening his chest. “If the drawing is the same, the fences match. Same height, same width, everything. So congruent triangles are, like, identical fences, just maybe placed in different spots.”
Jane stared down at the diagram, processing.
“So this,” she said slowly, pointing to one angle, “and this”—she tapped the matching one in the other triangle—“are the same?”
“Yeah,” Will said. “You can even mark them. See?” He drew a little curved line on each corresponding angle. “They’re buddies.”
Her mouth twitched.
“And then they want x,” he went on, circling the side labeled x. “They give you this side over here is, like, seven, right? But if the fences are the same, these sides have to match.”
“So x is seven,” she said carefully.
“Yup. And then for ‘show your work,’ you just… explain that. You write, like, ‘because the triangles are congruent, matching sides are equal.’”
Jane chewed her lip.
“I can do that,” she said. “Maybe.”
“You can,” Will said. “You just did. That’s all a proof really is. You’re just… telling the story of how you got from the start to the end.”
“Like a script,” she said, eyes brightening.
“Sure,” Will said slowly. “Except instead of people kissing or dying, triangles become right angles.”
“That is less fun,” she said seriously. “But I understand.”
Joyce, listening from the stove, smiled over her shoulder.
“See? I knew keeping you around would pay off,” she said. “Built-in tutor.”
“I demand compensation,” Will said. “In the form of more spaghetti.”
“You’ll get compensation in the form of eating what’s put in front of you,” Hopper said, coming in from the hall with the newspaper still folded under his arm. “Which is spaghetti.”
Jane nudged Will with her knee under the table, their own quiet little signal that meant thanks without saying it.
He nudged back: Anytime.
They were sorting through another problem—this one about bisected angles—when there was a knock at the front door. Three quick raps, a pause, then two more.
Jane practically levitated out of her chair.
“Mike,” she said, recognizing the pattern like a code.
“Careful, don’t—” Joyce started, but Jane was already sprinting, socks sliding on the floor.
The door flew open.
Mike stood on the porch, clutching the strap of his backpack, hair damp from the mist outside. His cheeks were pink from the cold or from running—or from being greeted at the speed of light, Will wasn’t sure.
“Hey,” Mike said, slightly out of breath. “Uh. Hi.”
“Hello,” Jane said, and then she was in his space, arms around his waist in a quick hug that almost knocked him back a step.
He hugged her one-armed, the other occupied with keeping his backpack from falling off.
“Hi,” he said again, softer this time. “I, uh, come bearing gifts.”
He lifted a paper bag in his free hand.
“What kind of gifts?” Hopper asked warily from the couch.
Mike froze, posture shifting from boyfriend-mode to nervous-teen-in-front-of-cop-mode in an instant.
“Cookies,” he said, holding the bag up. “My mom and Holly made too many. Holly said I should ‘share with Jane and Will.’ Her words.”
Hopper squinted. “Are they the good kind?”
“Hopper,” Joyce said, exasperated.
Will laughed, pushing back from the table.
“Come in before you freeze,” he called. “We’re doing geometry.”
“yikes,” Mike said, stepping inside and shutting the door behind him. He kicked off his shoes automatically, toeing them into line with the others.
“Is this a social call or did Dustin send you as a Hellfire envoy again?” Jonathan asked, not looking up from his photos.
“Both?” Mike said. “He’s putting together encounter maps and wanted to know Will’s schedule, and also I wanted to see my girlfriend without Dustin monologuing about initiative order in my ear.”
Jane beamed.
“Come see my stars,” she said, tugging at his sleeve. “They are accurate constellations. Mostly.”
“Homework first,” Joyce said, pointing a wooden spoon in their direction. “You guys can talk and look at fake space all you want, but Jane finishes her assignments.”
“We will,” Jane said, earnest. “Will is helping me. We are Wonder Twins.”
“We are,” Will agreed.
Mike made a face of exaggerated jealousy. “Wow, betrayal. Replaced by my own best friend.”
“You are still my boyfriend,” Jane told him, very matter-of-fact. “Will is my twin. It is different.”
Mike went pink again. “Right. Yeah. Obviously.”
He slid into the chair on Jane’s other side, pulling his backpack into his lap.
“So,” he said, peering at the textbook. “What’s the enemy today?”
“Triangles,” Jane said darkly.
“Ah,” Mike said. “A classic foe.”
He leaned in as Will walked her through another problem, chiming in occasionally with reminders about which theorem was which. Between the two of them, they managed to untangle Congruent Triangles Problem Set B into something that looked almost manageable.
Jane wrote slowly, carefully, her proofs neat and almost scripted. Every so often, she’d glance between them, eyes flicking like she was storing their near-identical explanations side by side.
“Okay,” Will said at last, dropping his pencil and rubbing the stiffness out of his hand. “I think that’s as much math as my brain can handle before it melts.
Joyce set a pot holder on the table and placed a steaming bowl of spaghetti in the center, a smaller dish of salad landing beside it.
“Dinner, then fake stars,” she decreed. “And then bed at a reasonable hour.”
“Some of us have to get to work at eight a.m. and not fall asleep in front of a typewriter,” Hopper added.
They ate, cross-talking as usual: Hopper ranting about a guy at work who “couldn’t file a report if it bit him,” Jonathan quietly mentioning a photo lab opportunity, Joyce asking pointed questions about school that made both Will and Jane roll their eyes affectionately.
“So how’s Our Town?” Jonathan asked eventually, twirling spaghetti around his fork. “Mom says you’re basically living in that auditorium now.”
“It’s… good,” Will said. “We finished most of the backdrop outlines today. Mrs. Worthington is happy, which is, like, a minor miracle.”
“Does it look like the sketch?” Jonathan asked. “Or better?”
Will considered.
“Different,” he said. “Bigger. You can’t really see everything at once unless you step back. But on stage it looks like a real place. Kind of.”
Jonathan smiled a little. “That’s the cool part,” he said. “You build something that didn’t exist before, and then suddenly everyone’s pretending they’ve known it their whole lives.”
“Exactly,” Will said, relieved that someone got it.
“What about you, Mike?” Jonathan asked. “Eddie still recruiting random freshmen with dramatic speeches?”
“Oh, yeah,” Mike said. “He cornered this kid in the cafeteria today and told him that ‘metal will save your soul.’ The kid said he was in chorus and Eddie spent the next ten minutes explaining why that made him ‘uniquely suited for the darkness.’”
Joyce made a face. “Is that… good?”
“In Eddie-ese, yeah,” Mike said. “We’re doing a whole gothic thing this year. Lots of vampires. Lots of church bells at midnight. He keeps practicing speeches in the mirror whenever he thinks we’re not looking.”
“I saw him," Jane said quietly. “He did ‘You stand at the gates of destiny’ in the hallway. To Dustin.”
Will snorted. “Of course he did.”
“Speaking of destiny,” Mike said, glancing at Will, “he really wants to know when you’re coming back.”
Will twisted his fork, the noodles sliding back into the bowl.
“I told Dustin,” he said. “After the show. It’s just a couple weeks.”
Mike shrugged. “I know. I told him. He’s… Eddie. Patience is not his strong suit.” He nudged Will’s elbow. “You should’ve seen his face when I told him Chance talked to you today.”
Will nearly inhaled his spaghetti.
“He what?” he sputtered once he swallowed. “Why would you—what—why?”
“Relax,” Mike said, clearly enjoying this way too much. “He’s just obsessed with the idea of a jock defecting to Hellfire. He thinks you’re, like, secretly recruiting him with art or something.”
“I am not recruiting anyone,” Will said, horrified. “We just needed tape. And he asked about banners.”
“Banners,” Jane repeated, interest piqued. “For the game.”
“Yeah,” Will said.
“You should go,” she said simply. “Lucas will like it. And Chance. He invited you.”
Mike listened, eyebrows inching up.
“That’s twice now,” he said. “The invitation thing.”
Will stabbed at his salad.
“It’s just a game,” he muttered. “And I don’t even know if I can. We might have rehearsal.”
Joyce, who absolutely was listening even if she pretended not to be, said, “I already told you, we’ll work it out if you want to go. Mrs. Worthington doesn’t own you, Will. Neither does Eddie.” She pointed her fork at Mike. “Or this one.”
“Hey,” Mike said, wounded. “I just borrow him sometimes.”
“Like a library book,” Jane said helpfully.
“Exactly,” Mike said.
They finished dinner with less perilous topics, Jonathan telling a story about a guy at the photo lab who spilled developer all over his shoes, Hopper arguing with the TV game show contestants like they could hear him.
Later, after dishes and after Joyce had declared “no more talk of vampires, triangle or otherwise,” Jane grabbed Mike’s hand.
“Come see the stars now,” she said, tugging him toward the hallway. She paused, looking back at Will. “you too.”
Will hesitated, then got up. “Yeah,” he said. “Okay.”
They filed into Jane’s room, an odd little procession. The walls were a collage of posters, some Will’s old sci-fi ones, a few new ones of pop singers Jane liked because of the colors rather than the music. Over the bed, the glow-in-the-dark stars waited, matte and pale in the lamplight.
“Turn the light off,” Jane commanded.
Mike did, plunging the room into soft darkness.
The stars bloomed to life: scattered constellations, some vaguely accurate, others pure imagination. They glowed a gentle green, like captured moonlight.
“Whoa,” Mike said under his breath. “Okay, that’s actually… really cool.”
“I told you,” Jane said, satisfaction clear in her voice. She lay back on the bed, still holding his hand, and stared up at the ceiling. “That one is Orion,” she pointed. “And that one is the Big Dipper. "
Will leaned against the wall. He let his eyes trace the constellations, the cheap plastic stars transforming the familiar ceiling into something else entirely.
“Thank you for helping,” Jane said again, voice softer now.
“Anytime,” Will said quietly.
Mike shifted, his gaze flicking between Jane and the stars.
“Hey,” he murmured, “you know if you ever want to see the actual constellations, we can drive out past the quarry. No light pollution. You can see the Milky Way. It’s crazy.”
“I would like that,” Jane said. After a beat, “Will, you'll come right?”
“Of course. We’ll make it a whole… star party.”
“Like a campaign, but for space,” Jane said.
“Exactly,” Mike replied.
They lay there for a while, Jane stretched out on the bed, Mike sitting on the edge, Will leaning against the wall near the door just looking up. The glow softened their faces, made everything feel suspended, like time had slowed down on purpose for once.
Eventually, Joyce called up the hall that it was getting late, and Mike needed to head home.
“I’ll walk you out,” Jane said, sitting up.
“I’ll… be in my room,” Will said, suddenly aware of the way their fingers stayed entwined even as they stood.
“Okay,” Mike said, giving him a lopsided smile. “See you tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” Will said. “Tomorrow.”
He left them to their awkward, sweet goodbye in the hallway and retreated to his room the one he shared loosely with Jonathan now, beds on opposite sides of the space and a curtain they could pull across when one of them needed privacy.
Jonathan was at his desk, a lamp casting a pool of light over a contact sheet. He glanced up when Will came in.
“Hey,” he said. “Geometry war over?”
“For now,” Will said, flopping onto his bed. “We made a dent.”
“Good,” Jonathan said. “She was really frustrated earlier.”
“I know,” Will said. “We found a way to make it about fences and stage sets, so that helped.”
Jonathan smiled, the kind that was more eyes than mouth.
“Of course it did,” he said. “You two speak in… whatever language that is.”
“Dork,” Will suggested.
“Maybe,” Jonathan said. “Or just… you.” He hesitated. “So. Basketball game.”
Will groaned. “Why is everyone obsessed with me going to this game?”
“Because Lucas is your friend and he asked you a bunch of times,” Jonathan said calmly. “And because you haven’t done anything that wasn’t either school, stage crew, or Hellfire in forever.”
“Eddie would disagree with the last one,” Will muttered.
“Okay, but he’s biased,” Jonathan said. “Look, I’m not saying you have to go. I’m just saying… if you want to? It’s okay to want to do different things. To be around… different people.”
He said it pointedly enough that Will felt his ears heat.
“It’s not—” he started, then trailed off. “It’s just a game.”
“Uh-huh,” Jonathan said.
Silence stretched between them, comfortable except for the part where Will’s thoughts were a mess.
“I met one of Lucas’s teammates,” he said finally, staring at the ceiling. “Chance. From art class last year. He… was at the craft store yesterday. And today he came into the auditorium for tape.”
“Oh yeah, I think I’ve seen him at games,” Jonathan said. “Slightly parted hair, right? Backwards cap sometimes. Shoots from the corner.”
Will blinked. “You… remember that?”
Jonathan shrugged, turning back to his photos.
“I pay attention,” he said. Then, casually, “You like him?”
Will’s whole body went hot and cold at once.
“We’ve talked, like, twice. That’s not—”
Jonathan raised his hands, laughing softly. “Okay, okay. I’m not grilling you. I’m just asking. You’re allowed to like people, little brother. Whoever they are.”
The words, simple as they were, landed heavy.
Will stared at the underside of the top bunk. A few years ago, comments like that would’ve sent him into a spiral of panic. Now, it just made his chest ache in a different way—like something was almost ready to be said and he was still working up to it.
“I don’t know what I feel,” he admitted. "it doesn’t make sense. It's... strange”
Jonathan’s chair creaked as he turned fully toward him.
“Actually,” he said, “it makes perfect sense.” He paused. “Do you want my advice or do you want me to shut up and hand you a tape to distract yourself?”
Will huffed a laugh. “Advice, I guess. I could really use it.”
“Okay,” Jonathan said. “You can just…see how you feel. See if it feels good. Or not.”
Curious. The word sat easier in his mind than anything else had.
“And if it doesn’t feel good,” Jonathan continued, “then you know. And if it does, then…take it from there. I’m on your side, okay? Whatever that looks like.”
Will’s throat got tight.
“Okay,” he said, voice small.
Jonathan reached over and squeezed his ankle through the blanket, a wordless I’ve got you.
Later, after Mike had left and Hopper had stalked through the house turning off lights and grumbling about the electric bill, Will lay in bed with his sketchbook balanced on his knees.
He turned past the page with the letterman jacket, the one he pretended was “banner practice” and definitely not a study of Chance’s profile and landed on a blank sheet.
He started with a triangle.
Not a perfect one, just a quick, rough outline. Then another. And another. Some he turned into houses, some into rooftops, some into stylized banners with block letters. In one, he drew a rough basketball hoop, the net hanging like a spiderweb.
Without thinking too hard, he sketched a figure under the hoop, mid-jump. Backwards cap. Curly hair. Arms extended.
He shaded the eyes in last.
“Curious,” he muttered under his breath, using Jonathan’s word as a shield.
He left the page unfinished and let his eyes slip shut, the echo of Chance’s voice: Game’s Friday. If you wanna… see your lettering in action, running together with Jane’s laughter under her stars.
Morning came too early, as it always did.
The alarm clock on Will’s bedside table crackled to life, bleeding in some pop song before he slapped it off with a groan. Gray light seeped around the edges of the curtains, the house still wrapped in that muffled just-before-everyone-wakes quiet.
He lay there for a minute, staring at the ceiling.
His brain immediately started inventory: backdrop outlines, fence painting, geometry, possible banner help, Eddie’s campaign, Chance’s smile—
He threw the blanket back and swung his legs over the side of the bed before his thoughts could spiral any farther.
As he shuffled toward the dresser, there was a soft knock on the door. Three taps, pause, two taps. Their code since everyone decided no one was allowed to just barge in on anyone anymore.
“Come in,” Will called.
The door opened a crack and Jane poked her head through, hair mashed flat on one side like she’d been sleeping on that cheek all night.
“Good morning,” she said.
“Hey,” Will said, rubbing his eyes. “You’re up early.”
“I had a dream about triangles,” she said gravely, slipping into the room and closing the door softly behind her. “They were chasing me. With little legs.”
“That’s horrifying,” Will said.
Jane stepped closer, holding a sheet of notebook paper.
“I tried to do the last problem after you went to bed,” she said. “I think I did it wrong. Can you check?”
He took the paper from her. Two neatly drawn triangles, labeled carefully. Beneath them, her proof:
-
Triangle ABC ≅ Triangle DEF (Given)
-
AB = DE (CPCTC)
-
Angle A = Angle D (CPCTC)
-
Therefore, x = 10.
Her handwriting was a little shaky, but the logic was there.
“This is right,” he said. “Except maybe write out ‘corresponding parts of congruent triangles are congruent’ once, so Kopec knows you know what CPCTC means.”
Jane wrinkled her nose. “That is a long sentence.”
“Yeah,” Will said. “But you only have to write it for one step. Then you can just do the letters after.”
She nodded, processing.
“I will write it for the most important step,” she decided. “The one that makes the answer happen.”
“Good plan,” Will said, handing the paper back. “You’re getting it, you know.”
She looked oddly proud at that, like the idea she could understand math was still a novelty.
“I dreamed something else too,” she said abruptly, perching on the edge of his bed. “We were in the gym. You and me and Mike Max and Lucas and Dustin.”
Will’s pulse skipped.
“Okay,” he said carefully. “What were we doing?”
“Dancing,” she said, as if it were obvious. “There was a disco ball. Like the one from the snowball. And the floor was sticky.”
“That tracks,” Will said weakly.
“You were smiling,” Jane added, studying his face. “You don’t smile at the gym. Usually.”
“It was just a dream,” he said. “Dreams are… weird.”
“Yes,” she said. “But sometimes they are telling you something.” She cocked her head.
“I think this one is just your brain mixing triangles and the gym,” he said. “Too much geometry.”
She considered this and, mercifully, let it go.
“Breakfast,” she said instead, standing. “Joyce says we will be late if you ‘noodle around’ any longer.”
By the time they made it to the kitchen, the house was fully awake. The radio played quietly on the counter—some news segment Joyced tuned out in favor of the weather report. Hopper sat at the table in a faded Hawkins PD t-shirt, reading the paper with a mug of coffee steaming at his elbow. Jonathan, fully dressed but yawning, poured orange juice into mismatched glasses.
“Morning,” Joyce said, sliding a plate with toast toward Will.
Jonathan leaned against the counter, sipping his juice.
“You guys heading to school early today?” he asked. “I can give you a ride if you want.”
Will hesitated.
“I was gonna take my bike,” he said. “But a ride would be fine.”
“bike?” Hopper frowned. “You’ll freeze your asses off. Take the car.”
“He likes biking,” Joyce said. “It clears his head.”
“Yeah,” Will said. “It’s… nice.”
Jane shook her head immediately.
“I do not like walking,” she declared. “It is cold. And the wind is mean.”
“You can ride with me,” Jonathan told her. “We’ll blast the heater.”
She smiled. “Yes. And we can listen to the tapes.”
“Sure,” Jonathan said. “But no Madonna. Too early.”
“Phil Collins?” she bargained.
“I’ll allow Phil Collins,” he said.
Will watched them negotiate, feeling that familiar mix of affection and something like gratitude. For all the weirdness and patchwork edges of their family, this mornings with lukewarm coffee and stupid arguments about music felt solid.
“What about you, young man?” Joyce asked, nudging his toast plate closer. “Any plans after school I should know about?”
He hesitated, the question hanging heavier than it had any right to.
“Just stage crew,” he said. “We’re finishing the base coat on the town today.” He swallowed. “I might… swing by the gym after. To help with banners. If there’s time.”
Joyce and Jonathan exchanged a quick look. Not mocking, not surprised just taking note.
“Okay,” Joyce said easily. “call from the pay phone if you’re staying late. And stay away from any falling cheerleaders.”
Will blinked. “What?”
“Nothing,” Hopper said, folding his paper. “Our high school had a cheerleader incident. It was traumatic for everyone involved.”
Jane’s eyes went wide. “Did she fall from the sky?”
“You’re not helping,” Joyce told Hopper, shaking her head.
They finished breakfast in a tangle of half-finished jokes and reminders about lunch money.
On the drive to school, Jonathan’s car smelled faintly of old fries and the citrusy air freshener he’d hung from the rearview mirror. Jane sat up front, fiddling with the tape deck, while Will took the back seat and watched the houses blur by.
“So,” Jonathan said over a drum fill, eyes on the road. “Game’s still Friday?”
“Yeah,” Will said. “I think so. Unless they move it because of…the weather or something.”
“Are you going?” Jane asked, twisting around in her seat to look at him.
“I don’t know yet,” he said, because it felt safer than saying I want to.
“You should,” she said. “We can go together.”
“Hey, I wanna go too,” Jonathan said. “I can pretend I’m there for school spirit.”
“You can take pictures,” Will said. “Of Lucas making impossible shots.”
“And Chance,” Jane added.
Will sank slightly lower in his seat.
“I’ll… think about it,” he muttered.
“Thinking,” Jane said pointedly, “leads to choices.”
He couldn’t even argue. She had clearly stolen that from Chance and had been waiting for an opportunity to use it.
School felt different when you walked in knowing you might go voluntarily to a sports thing that week.
It wasn’t a huge difference, just a slight shift in the way Will noticed the banners already hanging in the gym corridor, the flyers announcing “FALL TIP-OFF GAME” with badly drawn basketballs. He found himself mentally redesigning all of them, imagining what he could do with better lettering, a more dramatic layout.
At the lockers, Dustin was already mid-rant.
“—and if we give the vampire lord legendary actions, then we can do that thing where—oh, Will, thank God, save me, Mike is trying to tell me vampires don’t need mechanics.”
“They are literally undead,” Mike said, tugging his locker open. “They break all the rules anyway.”
“That doesn’t mean we don’t have to stat them,” Dustin said. “We’re not animals.”
Will shoved his books onto the narrow metal shelf.
“What are legendary actions?” Jane asked, hovering nearby with her history binder clutched to her chest.
“Special powers the boss gets to use outside their turn,” Dustin explained instantly. “They keep things from getting boring. Imagine if Kopec could just, like, interrupt you mid-problem and add extra triangles.”
Jane shuddered. “That is a terrible power.”
“Exactly,” Dustin said. “Horrifying. Anyway, I’m thinking three per round for the vampire lord: charm, summon bats, and—”
“Please no more bats,” Jane said, almost reflexively.
“That’s fine,” Dustin said quickly. “We can do, uh, wolves. Or… spiders. No, spiders are worse.”
“Spiders are worse,” Will agreed.
“Fair,” Dustin said. “Okay, no spiders. I’ll workshop it.”
As they talked, Lucas jogged up, gym bag bouncing.
“Morning,” he said, slightly breathless. “Coach says if I’m late to practice one more time, he’s making me run suicides until I barf.”
“That sounds like a vampire power, actually,” Dustin muttered.
Lucas ignored that.
“Will, you got out of stage crew hell yet?” he asked.
“Not until the show,” Will said. “You know that.”
“Yeah, but… any chance you can come Friday? I mean not just you, everyone” Lucas pressed. “To the game? It’s kind of a big one.”
“I know,” Will said.
And he did know. First home game of the season. The gym would be packed. The band would be blasting some off-tempo version of “Eye of the Tiger.” Cheerleaders. Sweat. Shouting. The whole thing.
“I’m… working on it,” he added, which made Lucas’s face soften.
“Okay,” Lucas said. “No pressure. I just…” He shrugged. “It’d be cool. That’s all.”
“You’d get to see your banners,” Mike pointed out. “Assuming Chance doesn’t screw them up before you save his artistic ass.”
“Language,” Jane said automatically; Hopper’s conditioning had been effective.
Mike rolled his eyes. “Artistic butt,” he amended.
Will shut his locker with more force than necessary.
“I’m not saving anyone’s butt,” he said. “I’m just helping with words. Maybe. When I’m done with my actual obligations.”
“Uh-huh,” Dustin said. “You say that like you’re not going to spend two hours making the perfect letters.”
Will glared at him, but it didn’t have much heat.
They split for class as the first bell rang, the group dispersing like marbles on a floor.
English passed in a blur of essay prompts and Mr. Kline trying to explain symbolism in Lord of the Flies to a room full of people who only cared about the pig’s head. Will doodled banners in the margins of his notebook—HHS TIGERS, GO HAWKS (if they’d gone with their old mascot), DEFEND THE NEST—experimenting with different letter styles.
He wasn’t obsessed. He was just… thinking.
Third period, he caught sight of Chance in the hallway between classes. The jock was skating backwards on the thin edge of a disciplinary warning, pushing two freshmen down the hall on a rolling cart meant for AV equipment. A teacher stepped out of a classroom and shouted, and the whole chaos scattered like pigeons, laughter echoing off the lockers.
Chance looked over, caught Will watching, and gave him a what can you do shrug.
Will ducked his head, biting back a smile.
At lunch, they snagged their usual table in the back corner of the cafeteria. Hellfire club flyers were already being defaced on the bulletin board by the door, someone having blacked out DEVIL and replaced it with “DORK” in sloppy marker.
“Classy,” Mike muttered.
“Eddie’s gonna have an aneurysm,” Lucas said.
“Good,” Dustin said. “Maybe then he’ll stop trying to add more subplots to the campaign.”
As they ate, talk turned inevitably to Friday.
“We should make a sign,” Dustin said suddenly through a mouthful of tater tots. “Like a Hellfire sign for Lucas.”
“A sign?” Will repeated, horrified.
“Yeah, like, ‘LUCAS SINKS ‘EM’ or something,” Dustin said. “Eddie can hold it and scream.”
“Absolutely not,” Lucas said. “You are banned from making signs.”
“He would hate that,” Jane said, puzzled. “Signs are support.”
“Not when they’re designed by Hellfire,” Lucas said. “Our graphic design skills are… not good.”
“Hey,” Will protested. “My design skills are fine.”
“Your design skills are great,” Lucas corrected. “Eddie’s are the problem.”
“Speaking of great design skills,” Dustin said slyly, “when are you going to the gym, Will?”
He hesitated, feeling all their eyes on him.
“After stage crew,” he said finally. “If Worthington lets me go by five.”
“That’s awesome,” Lucas said, real excitement flashing in his face. “You can see how much we suck at free throws up close.”
“I doubt that,” Will said.
“You shouldn’t,” Lucas said dryly.
Jane nudged Will’s arm with her elbow.
“I will wait for you after rehearsal,” she said. “We can walk to the gym together.”
He opened his mouth to protest—tell her she didn’t have to babysit him—then saw the way her gaze was steady, unwavering.
“Okay,” he said. “Deal.”
The rest of the day passed in a haze of classes and half-distracted notes. In art elective, he couldn’t stop thinking about what it would feel like to step into the gym on purpose, with banners as his excuse.
When the final bell rang, he and Jane headed for the auditorium.
Stage crew was less chaotic today, the wild energy of the previous work day replaced with a sort of tired focus. The backdrop had dried enough for Will to start adding shadows, deepening doorways and window frames. Jane and a few other crew members added a second coat to the fences, humming under their breath.
Mrs. Worthington drifted around like a benevolent ghost, scarf trailing, occasionally stopping to offer a metaphor that wasn’t particularly helpful but was very enthusiastic.
“Remember,” she told Will, peering at the houses, “we want people in the back row to feel like they could open those doors and step through.”
“Yes, Mrs. Worthington,” he said, adding a thin line of darker gray under a windowsill.
He fell into rhythm quickly: dip, drag, wipe, step back. The town came alive in careful inches, each shadow giving it more weight.
The distant echo of basketballs and squeaking sneakers seeped in again, rhythmic, insistent. This time, instead of trying to tune it out, Will let it sit in the back of his mind like a looped track.
At four-thirty, Mrs. Worthington clapped her hands.
“All right, my little magicians,” she said. “We’ll call it for today. I don’t want you so exhausted that you start seeing double and painting two suns in the sky. Go home. Rest your brains. Dream of small towns and big questions.”
There was a chorus of relieved noises. People began cleaning brushes, capping paint, stacking drop cloths.
Jane appeared at Will’s elbow, cheeks dotted with white and gray.
“it's time,” she said.
He wiped his hands on a rag, heart thudding.
“You don’t have to come,” he told her quietly as they descended from the stage. “If you don’t want to.”
“I want to,” she said simply.
They dropped their paint rags in the sink and said goodnight to Mrs. Worthington, who reminded them to “hydrate and contemplate” as they left.
The hallway outside the auditorium was quieter, but as they turned the corner toward the gym wing, the noise hit them full force: whistles, shouts, the pounding rhythm of ball on wood.
Jane’s hand found his sleeve, fingers curling lightly, an unspoken question: you okay?
He nodded, even though his pulse had picked up. The gym had never been his favorite place. Too many memories of dodgeballs aimed at his head, of laughter that didn’t feel friendly.
But this was different, he told himself. He wasn’t here to play. He was here to… help.
Jane pushed the heavy gym door open.
Inside, the lights were bright enough to make him squint. The bleachers were pushed back against the walls, bands of maroon and gold paint striping the space. The floor gleamed under the fluorescent lights, polished to a high shine.
The team was running a scrimmage: green practice jerseys over t-shirts, sneakers squeaking as they darted and pivoted. Lucas cut across the key, caught a pass, and took a shot. The ball arced high and dropped cleanly through the net.
“Nice!” Jane said, clapping once before she remembered they were just watching and dropped her hands.
The coach whistle permanently clenched between his teeth blew a sharp pattern and barked something no one outside the court could really hear. The players jogged to the sidelines, sucking air.
“Hey!” Lucas called when he spotted them by the door. He jogged over, sweat shining on his forehead. “You made it.”
“We did,” Will said, trying not to stare at the cadence of the drills.
“Coach’s tyranny ended early. Shocking, I know,” Lucas said. He nodded toward the far end of the gym, where a long table had been dragged out and pushed against the wall. Rolls of paper were stacked at one end, markers strewn across the surface. Chance stood there, one hand braced on the table, the other holding a marker.
“Chance!” Lucas shouted. “Your art guy’s here!”
Will almost turned around to check who he meant, then caught himself.
Chance looked up, wiping the back of his hand across his forehead. When he saw them, his whole face lit.
“Oh, hey!” he called, abandoning the marker as if it might explode. He jogged over, the chain at his neck glinting. “You came.”
Will’s brain, unhelpfully: You noticed.
“Yeah,” he said, hoping his voice came out normal. “Stage crew let out early. Thought I’d… check out the banner disaster.”
“Disaster is right,” Chance said, scrubbing a hand over his hair. “I tried to do the big ‘H’ and it looked like a ladder.”
Jane tilted her head.
“ladder,” she repeated, clearly intrigued.
“Jane. She lives with us.” Will said, gesturing toward her.
“I remember, Will mentioned you at the store, sort of” Chance said, snapping his fingers. “Stars, right?”
“Yes,” Jane said. “Will said you almost killed him with poster boards.”
Chance winced. “Guilty. Again, sorry about that. I swear, I’m usually less of a walking catastrophe.” He glanced between them. “You guys wanna see what i have?”
“Yes,” Jane said at the exact same time Will said, “Sure.”
They crossed the court together, avoiding stray balls. Chance opened his arm in a little half-gesture, like he was clearing a path for them.
Up close, the “banner disaster” was… earnestly terrible. The words HAWKS RISE stretched across the top of a long strip of butcher paper, the letters uneven and swollen. One of the S’s drooped like it was melting.
“Oh,” Jane said. “It is… expressive.”
“That’s one word for it,” Chance said. “Another is ‘ugly.’”
“It’s not that bad,” Will lied, because Chance looked genuinely miserable. “You just… went too big.”
“I thought big was the point,” Chance said. “Coach said ‘big-ass letters.’ His words.”
“You can still do big,” Will said, stepping closer. The smell of the marker ink mingled with the familiar scents of gym floor polish and sweat. “You just need to plan it out first. Like… measure.”
He picked up a marker, uncapped it, and hovered over a blank stretch of paper.
“Here,” he said. “You divide the space. Make guidelines. That way you know how tall the letters are supposed to be and they don’t… fall over.”
“Like fences,” Jane supplied.
“Exactly,” Will said, grateful. “Like fences. Or… stage flats.”
Chance watched as Will sketched faint guidelines, his gaze intent, almost reverent.
“You make it look easy,” he said.
“It’s not hard,” Will said. “It just takes practice.”
Chance leaned in, close enough that Will could see the small scar along his jawline, a thin white line at the curve of his chin. He smelled like sweat and cheap cologne and something faintly citrus, maybe from the locker room soap.
“Can you show me how to do the R?” Chance asked. “Mine always looks like it got hit by a truck.”
“Yeah,” Will said, heart hammering. “Okay. So… straight line down, then curve, then leg. Like this.” He drew slowly, talking through each stroke. “You want the leg to come out more, or it’ll look like a P that forgot how to be a P.”
Chance huffed a laugh. “Mine all look like confused Ps,” he admitted.
“Here,” Will said, stepping back and offering him the marker. “Your turn.”
Chance hesitated, then took it, their fingers brushing for a second. Will tried very hard not to register the way that felt—warm, brief, like a static shock at the base of his thumb.
Chance bent over the paper, tongue poking out slightly in concentration. He followed the guidelines Will had drawn, his R still a little crooked but much improved.
“There you go,” Will said. “That’s good.”
“You’re legally obligated to say that,” Chance said, but there was a hint of pride in his voice. “Art teacher.”
“I’m not a teacher,” Will said.
“Could’ve fooled me,” Chance said. He glanced over at Jane.
As they worked, the team drifted in and out of the banner area. Someone turned the boombox up, tinny rock echoing off the rafters. A couple of the guys made jokes about “art hour,” but they were light, the tone more teasing than cruel. Lucas stopped by to add a sloppy exclamation point to the end of RISE, which Chance immediately made him redo under Will’s supervision.
The three of them fell into a rhythm: Will sketching out letters and layouts, Chance filling them in, Jane carefully drawing little tiger paw prints along the border. The banner slowly stopped looking like a kid’s first attempt at bubble letters and started to look… actually good.
“Okay, okay,” Chance said, stepping back at last. “This is… kind of awesome.”
“You did most of it,” Will said, and it wasn’t entirely a lie. Once Chance understood the guidelines, he’d improved quickly.
“You saved it,” Chance said. “Team effort.”
Will’s stomach did something treacherous at that.
Across the gym, the coach blew the whistle again.
“All right, ladies,” he yelled. “Hit the showers. Tomorrow we go over plays. Don’t be late or I will end you.”
“Well,” Chance said, “that’s my cue.” He wiped his inky fingers on a rag and offered Will a lopsided grin. “Thanks for the rescue, art guy. Seriously.”
“Anytime,” Will said. “I mean… if I’m not stuck in the auditorium.”
“I’ll put in a good word with Worthington,” Chance said. “Tell her it’s for school spirit.”
Chance laughed.
“See you tomorrow?” he asked, backing toward the locker room doors.
“Yeah,” Will said, the word feeling big for something so small. “See you.”
As he watched Chance disappear into the locker room, Will felt Jane’s eyes on him.
“What,” he said, not quite ready to look at her.
“Nothing,” she said immediately.
He glanced over. She was studying the banner, but the corner of her mouth was doing that almost-smile thing that meant she had approximately seventeen thoughts and was choosing not to say any of them. Yet.
“You are smiling.” she said instead, softer.
He hadn’t even realized.
“Oh,” he said, touching his face as if he could catch the expression. “I guess… yeah.”
She nudged his shoulder with hers.
“Good,” she said.
They stood there a moment longer in the warm, noisy gym, looking at the banner they’d just built together, two art kids and a basketball player, lines and shapes and letters turned into something that might, for a minute on Friday night, make a whole crowd of people feel like they belonged to the same story.