Archive of Our Own

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May 17, 2018
 “Now, for the remaining ten percent of your grade I will be assigning group projects.”The class collectively groans. Even Mike, Will, Lucas and Dustin, who are usually fond of schoolwork and nothing short of excited about projects, have to resist the urge to bang their heads against their scratched, faded, disturbingly-adhesive desks from sheer despair at the announcement.The afternoon Indiana sun and the overall stickiness of the classroom make the heat alike to a living beast, drooling high above them all, breath hot and humid on the backs of their necks, and that makes everyone twice as exhausted and thrice as irritable than they’d normally be.Plus, it’s the last class of the day. That, if nothing else, nulls everyone's ability to focus or care about anything being said. “Okay, okay, before you decide you hate me,” Mrs Setter says, in a voice she probably thinks is reassuring, “I’m giving you near-total creative control with this project. Choose any interesting topic relevant to something we’ve studied in class this year and, as long as it’s class appropriate, you’re set. Besides it’s what, fifteen pages between three of you?” She scoffs. “Piece of cake.”The class makes no response. Mrs Setter looks around at the blankly staring faces and sighs, abandoning any attempt at being friendly and understanding. Her voice takes on a harsh, intolerant note, and she addresses the class again with clipped, quick sentences that make it clear she wants reactions now. “Get into groups. If I don’t like any particular individuals working together I’ll make the necessary adjustments.”At this, she shoots Troy and his friends a pointed look, one that says I'm just as tired and miserable as the rest of you, don't make me deal with your bullshit today. “Well? What are you waiting for? Groups! Now! Go!”Mike looks around to the others, beckoning them to come to him with the promise of the electric fan next to him. Lucas and Will unstick themselves from their seats and carry them over to his desk. Dustin stares at the floor for a few moments with an inordinate amount of disappointment, completely unwilling and unable to stand up, before scooting his own chair across the classroom, still seated, squeaking the whole way across, eliciting a glare from Mrs Setter and more than a few odd glances from his classmates. “I can’t believe they’re actually giving us work. It’s the last two weeks of school, I thought teachers stopped caring at this point,” he huffs, once he’s reached the others.“It’s bullshit,” Lucas agrees. “They’re just trying to compensate for all the fails last year, like a hurried project is gonna fix anything.”For the next few minutes, they discuss anything other than productive, class-related things - Dustin's latest crush that he swears is not a big deal even though it totally is, Mike's little sister, Will's chance meeting with Mr Clarke from earlier in the week, and their former teacher's promise to invite the boys to his upcoming wedding. Meanwhile, the rest of the class settles into comfortably predictable groups. Jennifer Hayes and three of her friends gossip idly. Troy spouts curses behind Mrs Setter’s back, the guys on the basketball and track teams stick together as though they are in a pack, and Max Mayfield remains at the back of the room, arms folded, making no move to join a group anytime soon. Her eyes dart apprehensively from side to side, looking for all the life of her like she is trying to gauge which side of the room contains more stupidity.“Miss Mayfield, group!” Mrs Setter had started the class out with a fair amount of patience, but the last dregs of it were beginning to fade away. “I can work just fine by myself,” Max mutters. “Better, honestly.”The teacher is visibly dissatisfied with her answer, and her eyes begin combing around the room. “Maybe you all misheard me,” she says, to the entire class, “but you will be working in groups of three.” Her eyes finally settle on Dustin, who curses quietly – he hadn’t expected to talk to her today, hadn't prepared - he desperately tries to remember Steve’s advice for a situation like this, and when his memory fails him, he starts praying for a miracle to get him out of his predicament. Maybe he could pretend to trip and ask to see the nurse...“Mr Henderson, with Miss Mayfield.”He decides to resort to begging. “But Mrs Setter, we already have a plan for our project!”It is a blatant lie, and one that Mrs Setter does not intend to buy.“I don’t get paid enough to argue with you. Mr Henderson, now!”Dustin grumbles and loudly drags his chair to where Max is sitting, feeling his cheeks heating up already. Steve’s voice finally pops up in his head, and he welcomes it like a drowning man would welcome air, like this classroom would welcome some damn air conditioning, like Mrs Setter's plants would welcome water. Play it cool, Henderson. Show her you don’t care. “So, sucks that they paired us up, right?” It's the first thing he has ever said to her. Okay, maybe not that cool.“Wow, thanks. I’m touched.” Max responds, and resumes staring at a spot on the wall. Dustin can't see any spot on the wall that looks particularly interesting, but he messed up Steve's advice so badly that he begins staring at the wall too out of embarrassment and thinks huh, this wall is more entertaining than my attempt at conversation.  Congratulations, you loser. Their attention is drawn to the front of the room after several uncomfortable minutes of total silence. Mrs Setter is talking to Jennifer Hayes and her friends, the poor teacher at wit's end by now. “Can you count, ladies? I said groups of three. Talk it out amongst yourselves, one of you has to go.”“Go?” the curly-haired brunette next to Jennifer asks. You'd think she's never heard the word before. “Go join the enthusiastic pair at the back,” the teacher clarifies.The girl looks back to see Max, still staring blankly ahead, and Dustin, squinting and picking at a loose thread on his sleeve. “Aw, hell no,” she says.Jennifer sighs loudly and gets up, slinging her backpack across one shoulder. It's a light blue bag, studded with pins yet impossibly neat. “Fine, I’ll go. But you owe me.”“Love ya, Jen!” her friend calls out after her.“Hey,” the blonde says to them, placing her chair beside Max’s desk. She looks as pretty as always, eyebrows sculpted to perfection, long hair tumbling in smooth waves off her back. There's a small silver ring around her little finger. Max, by contrast, has scraped knuckles, chipped fingernails and smudged eyeliner. She is so cool, Dustin thinks, staring at her for what even he realizes is far too long.After several seconds of neither responding, Jennifer speaks again. “So, uh, any topics in mind?”“Aztecs,” Max immediately says. “Human sacrifices, cool culture, what’s not to like? I could also go for Viking Scandinavia."
So cool.
“Right,” Jennifer laughs awkwardly and then grimaces, looking a little spooked. “But it needs to be a topic we studied in class this year. Aztecs aren’t modern history.”“Screw that, so what?” Max says.Jennifer laughs again, this laugh more awkward and forced than the last, definitely like she's hiding annoyance. “I mean, this is worth ten percent of our grade, we can’t just screw that,” she says, using air quotes. “So, I have a few ideas, can I maybe…I dunno, write them down?”Max shrugs. “Go crazy,” she mutters.Jennifer takes out a piece of paper and starts writing topics down. “So…maybe we can do the Suffragette movement…or the Cold War…”“Can’t do Cold War. Mike’s group is already doing that one,” Dustin tells her, not untruthfully. Unwilling as they were to begin yet another school project, the Party had at least gotten around to picking a subject.“Yeah, so? Stacey's doing the Suffragettes. Mrs Setter never said they all have to be different topics.”“I mean, yeah, you're right. Max?”Max snorts. “So my input is important now? I thought neither of you wanted me here.”“Look,” Jennifer lays her hands flat on the desk, “none of us wants to be here, I can assure you, but this project is important and I am not letting you mess up my grade. Can we at least be civil until this is over?”Max lifts her eyebrows patronizingly. “Jeez, sure. No need to get your panties in a twist.”Dustin starts coughing to cover up a snicker while Jennifer looks to be counting to three, eyes scrunched shut. She exhales slowly and smiles sweetly at them. Even her teeth are perfect. “Right. Max, anything to add?”“I'm cool with doing the Cold War.”“There, was that so difficult?” She sighs again. “Okay. We have a topic, now we need to decide what exactly our project will be about.”Max interjects. “Can we do this some other time?”Jennifer balks. “You do realize this is due next week?”“Well…yeah. I just can’t think right now. I dunno.”Sensing that things are about to go right to hell, Dustin speaks up. “How about we go to the library after school? We’ll get better information than on the internet, and we can just focus on the project for a couple of hours. That way we all get a break to think about what to do. Plus, the library has air conditioning.”“Yeah,” Jennifer looks relieved. “Yeah, that’s actually a good idea.”“I think the guys are gonna go there anyways, so maybe we can help each other out.” Maybe they can help me talk to Max, he doesn't say. Something in Jennifer's eyes instantly brightens. “Oh yeah, you’re friends with Will, aren’t you?”She glances to the boy in question, who is currently having an animated conversation with Mike and Lucas. Those sons of bitches, Dustin thinks.They get to have fun. Out loud, he says, “Uh, yeah. Why?”Her cheeks go pink and she looks away. “No reason. I know him from my English class is all. He draws. Sometimes. Um, in his notebooks -” she cuts herself off, clearly embarrassed, and clears her throat. “Well.”Dustin gives her a strange look, but says no more on the subject. They spend the rest of the class in relative silence, occasionally spouting nonsense such as, “ah yes, how historical,” and “only the winners write the history,” whenever Mrs Setter strays too close for comfort. Otherwise, Jennifer texts under the table, Max scratches a Pac-Man ghost into said table with her fingernail and Dustin throws hopeful glances at the redhead in question, willing her to start talking to him. She catches him on the fourth or fifth one, and the look she sends his way is enough to make him mind his own business for the rest of the class.When the bell signalling the end of last period rings, Mike, Lucas and Will linger at the door to wait for the other three. Mike looks particularly tired, or upset, or both, Dustin thinks, but doesn't linger on it. “We’re all going to the library,” Dustin announces, while Will and Jennifer trade friendly smiles.“Okay,” Mike agrees, straightening up. “We’re…biking there? Walking?”“Biking?” Jennifer scoffs, like bikes are something beneath her. “I’d rather not, thanks.”“The library is a half hour away walking,” Lucas points out.“So? It’s nice outside.”They step outside the school and into the harsh sunlight. Jennifer walks a few paces to the side of the rest of the group – probably to avoid being seen with them – and Max splits from the others entirely, instead walking ahead of them, hands shoved in her pockets. Her paces are quick, and she’s soon speeding past the school gates.Dustin goes to Lucas’ side. “Dude,” he begins, “it’s a code red.”“Why?” Lucas makes the face he makes whenever he thinks Dustin is being dramatic. Dustin motions to the retreating redhead frantically. “Max. Madmax.”“You’re still using that stupid nickname from the arcade?”“Lucas, I fucked up. I fucked up bad. Steve said to act like I don’t care, but I was straight-up rude to her, and now she hates me, and I missed my one chance -”Lucas cuts him off. “Dustin, shut up. It’s fine. You’re working with her for a whole week, she’ll change her opinion eventually.”“And if she doesn’t?”Lucas considers her for a moment or two. “Why do you even like her? I mean, she’s pretty, okay, but you barely know her. Plus she’s a weirdo.”“She's no more a weirdo than we are.”“Okay, yeah, but you still don't know her.” He pauses. “And why are you even taking Steve’s advice? Remind me how many successful relationships he’s had?”“Okay, look, that’s not the point.”“It kind of is.”“Shut up, both of you,” interjects Mike. His eyebrows seem eager to sink into a frown. More shit with his parents, Dustin thinks, but doesn't ask. Mike seldom likes to discuss his parents' relationship, which would probably be unstable if it existed at all. Come to think of it, Dustin has had dinner with the Wheelers five times this month and hadn't once seen Ted Wheeler. He follows Mike's gaze over to Will, with whom Jennifer is clearly trying to flirt, if her lip biting and closeness to him is anything to go by.“Uh…should we tell her?” Lucas asks, tilting his head.Mike looks away from a very clearly uncomfortable Will and shakes his head. “She’ll have to figure it out eventually.”Max is already leaning against the wall beside the library entrance when they get there, tapping her foot impatiently.“God, you guys are slow walkers.”“Well, you just zoomed right out of there!” Lucas protests.She looks at him for a second before the corner of her mouth lifts up.“Huh. Zoomed. I like that.” She turns around, long hair whipping behind her, and walks through the library doors.The others follow behind, but not before Dustin spots the strange look on Lucas' face.Half an hour into their library search, they are no closer to getting a project title.“Are you sure can all get away with doing the same topic?” Lucas asks, for about the twentieth time.Jennifer lifts her eyes from the heavy book on her lap. “Again, she never specified anything about that. If you find loopholes, you’ve gotta work the system.”“Will,” Mike says, “did you find anything interesting?”Will looks away from the shelf he is examining. Jennifer has left him alone in favour of a large book of photos from the Eighties, for the time being. “No, but…I had a thought.”“I swear, if this is anything like the thought you had last Halloween…” Dustin trails off.“We’re not eating ten warheads in a row again, man!” Lucas exclaims in the same instant.The girls send Will disbelieving looks, and he responds with a sheepish shrug.“Nah. I was just thinking about those conspiracy theories Hopper talks about sometimes. There were loads of crackpots during the Cold War who talked and thought about little else. They’re interesting, they’re original. Maybe we can look through the archives, the microfiche…”“That’s sounds pretty interesting. I’m in,” says Max.Lucas nods. “It does. Besides, she won’t be able to give us shit about unoriginality. We’d be writing about Hawkins, and we’re not even using the internet. I doubt she’s ever gotten a project like this.”The others are quick to voice their enthusiasm.“Okay,” Will nods, “then we’re set. Dustin, Max, you go ask about the microfiche. Rest of us will search any newspaper articles – apparently there are a bunch of conspiracies about Hawkins Lab, they were involved in a lot of dubious shit in the eighties, so keep an eye out for anything to do with them.“Will,” Max begins, “no offense, but I doubt Dustin’ll appreciate working with me.”Dustin squeezes his eyes shut and curses stupid Steve Harrington and his stupid advice thoroughly.“I’ll go,” Lucas offers, and Max doesn’t appear to have a problem with this. The two are off without another word.“Holy shit,” Dustin exclaims. The librarian glares at him and he lowers his voice to a whisper. “There’s a more recent one about that lady, Terry Ives.”The others crowd around him to see the article.“Teresa Ives hospitalised in mental rehabilitation centre after multiple claims her allegedly stillborn daughter was alive and abducted,” Mike reads aloud.“God, that headline’s a trip.” Max lets out a shaky breath. She and Lucas have long since returned from the microfiche room with information about something called Project MKUltra, and several missing persons reports. The six have spent the better part of the afternoon looking for anything to do with those subjects, and each new find leaves them more engrossed, more eager to learn more. Apparently Hawkins Lab had closed nearly two decades ago after a series of complaints about the mentioned project mistreating its subjects, not to mention a girl dying from leaked toxins from the lab.“I’m just saying, there’s no way Jane was stillborn,” Jennifer states. “The whole thing seems too shady, and Hawkins Lab went to an awful amount of trouble to keep Terry out. They wouldn’t have done that if there wasn’t something to hide.”“They still post guards at the doors, the gates…” Lucas trails off, looking thoughtful. “But the lab closed in, what, late nineties, early 2000s?”“Officially closed,” Max corrects. “They still carry out minor experiments.”“Exactly, minor. Have they claimed to be part of any worthwhile projects recently? Scientists love to publicize this stuff, to get praise and recognition no matter how boring and miniscule their work. The lab went private when it closed down, so it no longer has the army. They’re spending an awful amount of money on guards for them to only be doing minor, non-profit projects.”“Do you really think they’re hiding this girl? Jane?” Mike asks, eyes focused on a photograph of Terry Ives with Dr Martin Brenner, the MKUltra project lead.“Well, the court ruled Terry Ives as mentally sound not four months before she ended up in Pennhurst. That’s really suspicious.” Will thumbs through the papers. “She sued Brenner, the lab, the government…she literally lost her mind because she was convinced her daughter was alive. I think it’s definitely possible.”“There are also all those other missing persons cases,” Lucas adds. “Jane is the…ninth? Tenth?”“Eleventh,” Max clarifies.“Yeah, and the others were either never found, or they appeared again under really strange circumstances.”Dustin frowns. “I mean, what do you think they wanted them for?”Lucas speaks up. “Well, they dosed the MKUltra subjects with psychedelics, like LSD. The project was shut down by the court, but maybe they continued it in secret, maybe they were testing drugs on them? Like, they might’ve been human lab rats.”“Maybe.” Max doesn’t sound too convinced. Even Lucas doesn’t seem to believe his own theory.Jennifer checks the time on her phone and her face falls. “Oh hell, we just wasted three whole hours.”Max makes a face at the other girl. “Wasted? We researched!”“This has nothing to do with the Cold War, or any other relevant topic! It’s just crackpot garbage!”“Will,” Max looks to the quickly panicking boy, “didn’t your stepdad say there were Cold War conspiracy theories?”“Uh -”Jennifer cuts him off, voice rising. “They’re at the same time alright, but please, if you see anything connecting these to the Cold War then enlighten me, because they’re completely unrelated.”Will interrupts before a war breaks out between the two. “He said they were about the Cold War. Conspiracies about the Cold War. Said people still come in sometimes to share some new piece of information. He thinks they’re delusional, but they definitely exist.”“So maybe…” Lucas pauses for a second. “Maybe they were training them to be spies! Or soldiers! Or -”“That doesn’t make sense,” says Mike. “Why would they be abducting and training unwilling children when they had no shortage of adults willing to volunteer?”For that, no-one has an answer.Dustin frowns, flips a page, and realisation spreads across his face. “Guys. Guys! I’ve got it!”“Got what?” Max raises a sceptical eyebrow.“We’re goddamn idiots! We’re looking for conspiracy theories in an archive! Newspapers print facts, not theories!”Max nods slowly, understanding his point immediately. “Or what they want the public to believe are facts.”“Exactly! We’ve been looking in the wrong place. What we need to do,” he turns to face Will, “is to talk to one of those crackpots the Chief goes on about. They might not give us better information, but maybe they’ll connect the dots for us.”“They’ll probably just confuse us more.” Jennifer looks ready to leave.“Or, they’ll shed just enough light so that we understand what we’re not getting. It’s worth a shot, at the very least.”“Sounds entertaining. I’m in,” Max declares.“This is stupid,” Jennifer mutters. “There’s still time, let’s just pick another topic, we’ve wasted enough time on this bullshit.”“It’s worth a shot,” Dustin repeats. “We’re not forcing you to come with us, but we’re gonna do it.”“I’m genuinely invested in this by now. I want to see this through,” Mike says, probably (definitely) more invested than he should be.“It’s interesting. More interesting than anything I’ve seen recently…or ever, to be honest. I’m in, too,” says Lucas.“This is crazy, delusional, probably dangerous.” Jennifer hisses, gathering her books. She dumps them into her bag unceremoniously and stands up. “Keep me out of it. Will, I’ll see you around?”Will nods slowly, and once she’s left he frowns. “Why would she want to see me around?”“Oblivious Will is oblivious,” Dustin quips, making the others snicker.“Oh…right. But -”“It’s fine, Will,” Mike reassures. “She’ll have to get the hint eventually.”“Yeah. Okay.” He looks at the picture in front of Mike, of Brenner and Terry Ives. “Then I’ll talk to my da – to Hopper, tonight.”“Hey, Hopper?”The giant, gruff chief of Police grins in a way that he reserves for only Will and Joyce, and he reaches across the table to ruffle his hair affectionately.(Maybe he used to smile at Sarah like that)“What’s up, kid?”Will doesn’t think his own father – Lonnie, he reminds himself, he’s not your father, not anymore - ever loved him like Hopper does. He was never that man’s son, only a disappointment, something broken he ought to have fixed a long time ago but kept putting off because fixing old cars was more interesting and actually yielded results.Hopper accepts him. He calls him kid, buddy, tells him it’s alright to cry, alright to not always be okay.Hopper’s never called him a –Well.“Well, I was telling Mike and the guys about those old conspiracies you talk about – you know, the Cold War ones?”He waves a nonchalant hand around. “Yeah, yeah, all that nonsense.”“We’re doing a school project, and we thought it’d be kinda cool to write about them. You know, they’re nonsense like you say, but they’re still sort of interesting. All that sci-fi, mind control experimentation stuff…”“I think you’re starting to get to the point?”“Yeah, well, we looked in the library for ages, and we found a bunch of articles but not a lot of conspiracies – not any, to be honest. And I know that there are some people who come to talk to you sometimes -”“A bunch of people? It’s just Murray. Anyone else is only a one-off.”“Well…yeah. So I was wondering if maybe we could talk to -”“Talk to Murray? The man’s gonna fry your brain with one sentence, kid. I’m not sure he’s a great influence, either. Came in drinking a vodka slurpee once.”“I don’t know. We just couldn’t find anything and we have no other ideas, and we – I – just thought that if he talked to us he’d give us more insight and we’d have a better project.”“Well,” Hopper pauses, clearly weighing the options. “Tell you what. I’m not giving you his number – or any other way to contact him – but I’ll give you all the reports he’s asked me to file.”“You’ve filed reports for him before?”“Nah. I couldn’t take him seriously, but I wrote down everything he said so he’d leave me alone, and Flo stored all those somewhere. I’ll ask her to get those out tomorrow, how’s that?”“We have to submit it by next week, so we’re a bit short on time. Could you get them before school tomorrow, so we can have a look at them at lunch?”“If it's that important, I’ll see what I can do.”“Alright. Thank you,” Will finally returns the grin and goes back to his homework.“Hopper gave me all these,” Will says the next day, slapping a heavy folder down on the cafeteria table.The party jumps on the papers like a pack of hyenas would, each grabbing what they can reach. Dustin spills a cup of water with a clumsy elbow and Max curses loudly while the others hastily lift the sheets off the table.She starts wiping the water away with her sleeve and makes a noise of revulsion. “Did you seriously put Cheetos in your water?”“It was for science!” Dustin exclaims defensively.The other three crowd around Mike, who has started reading the files aloud.Lucas frowns. “Most of it is just your dad writing about how Murray is annoying him.”“Hopper,” Will corrects. “Yeah, that…sounds like him.”“He won’t shut up. He is talking about the Russians. Flo is yelling about fruit,” Mike reads, slowly.Max, sweatshirt sleeves drenched, pops her head over Lucas’ shoulder to look at the papers.“Murray? At least we have a name. See if you can get a full name, I’ll look him up.”Mike nods and starts skimming through the pages. “I’m not sure how this is supposed to help us. There’s barely any substantial information in here. The most I have so far is his first name and that he thinks there are Russian spies in Hawkins.”“I dunno,” Will says, “he refused to give me any contact info. He said these files would be good enough.”“Maybe he’s trying to discourage the topic?” Dustin offers.“Probably,” Will shrugs. “Or maybe he forgot there wasn’t anything helpful in here. He spaces out sometimes.”“Honestly, same,” says Dustin.“There! I’ve got a full name. Murray Bauman.” Mike shows Max the spelling and she pulls her phone out, typing rapidly.Jennifer appears, holding a tray, and sits across from Mike. “What did you find?”“What are you doing here?” Dustin asks.Jennifer looks at him in a mix of disbelief and condescension. “Uh, I’m part of your group?”“You said you didn’t want anything to do with any of this!”Max, for once, takes Dustin’s side. “You did. And you literally stormed out.”“Well…” she grimaces. “I’ve changed my mind. It’s interesting. I want to know what the whole deal is.”“Well, what if we don’t want you here anymore?”“Look, I admit it, you were right, I was wrong, what more do you want?” Jennifer looks physically in pain confessing this. “I’m actually sacrificing both my reputation and my dignity sitting here, so will you shut up and show me what you’ve found?”Max scoffs. “Your dignity? At least we display signs of intelligence, your friends have microwaveable pot noodles for brains!”Jennifer raises an eyebrow and looks pointedly at Dustin, who is fishing a soggy Cheeto out of an empty water cup.“You can stay,” says Mike, “but you have to decide now if you’re in fully or not. You can’t only do half the work.”Jennifer makes a face. “That makes it sound like I’m joining a cult.”“Well, you kind of are,” says Dustin, now chewing on said soggy Cheeto. Max gives him a look of pure and plain disgust.“Why would you even do that?” she asks.“The flavour doesn’t wash out,” he declares. Max grimaces and turns away from the scene.“So, are you in or not?” Mike asks again.Jennifer squeezes her eyes shut and nods, albeit reluctantly. “I’m in.”“I’m going to remind you,” Dustin says, “that you’re the one who ranted about how much you hate people who don’t do their work in group projects.”“Yeah, thanks, I’ve got that. Now tell me what you found.”Max sighs and grudgingly motions for Jennifer to sit next to her. “Murray Bauman. He’s a hardcore conspiracy theorist. Will’s stepdad gave us a folder with things he’s tried to report, but they’re not very…well, useful. ““It’s mostly just the Chief complaining,” Mike chips in.“Yeah, but we did get his full name and I looked him up. I’m not finding a whole lot, though. So far all I’ve got is that he used to work for the Chicago Sun-Times. Investigative journalist.”“There’s nothing else?”“Nothing,” Max confirms. “No social media, no follow-up address, no new occupation, nothing.”Jennifer wordlessly slips a cased laptop out of her bag and makes quick work of opening a tab.“What are you doing?” asks Lucas.“Phone book search. Think about it. He’s an investigative journalist and a conspiracy theorist who is actively working against the government, do you think he’d leave his personal information free for anyone with a search engine to find?”“Well…no.”“I’ve got something,” she announces gleefully after a few minutes. “He’s a PI, apparently.”“PI?”“Private Investigator,” Will clarifies.“He doesn’t have much contact information, though…” Jennifer trails off. “There’s only a mailing address. I’m assuming it’s also his home address, since he doesn’t seem successful enough to have an office. I found a website - very well-hidden - and it looks like a shitty MySpace imitation.”“Well then, maybe we could go there,” Dustin suggests.“Isn’t it, like, against the laws of common sense to not visit the house of an internet stranger?” Lucas asks.Mike nods. “My parents would kill me.”Max rolls her eyes. “There are six of us, I think we’ll be okay.”“My parents won’t let me,” says Lucas.Max shrugs “So? Just lie to them. Say you’re going to chess club.”“I don’t go to chess club!”“You so do.” She grins a little.Dustin clears his throat awkwardly and says, with more than a little bitterness, “Guys, hi, not in public please. Spare your heinous activities for other times.”This causes them both to go red and finally shut up.“I’ll go,” says Jennifer. “Since you so badly want me to prove I’m fully in.”“I’ll…I’ll tell my mom I’m at the library,” Mike decides.“Isn’t your mom friends with the librarian?” Dustin reminds him with a snicker.“She is,” sighs Mike. “Then…I don’t know.”“Tell them you went to my house,” Jennifer offers, shrugging. “My parents will cover for me. They don’t really care what I do that much.”“I guess that works?”“Yeah,” Max agrees, and the others follow behind.“So when are we gonna go?” Will asks. “Sunday, maybe?”“Sunday? Hell no, I want to have this typed up and ready to go by then. We’re going today, after school. School's closing early, just text your parents.”“I’m not sure,” Lucas says, slowly, “that you have ever encountered the concept of strict parents. Here’s a newsflash for you – some of us have them. I can't just text my parents.”“You can go home to ask them, and then meet up with everyone else?” Max offers. “I’ll go with you, if you want.”“I mean…that might work? I don’t know. I’ll be delaying everyone else, though.”“Not everyone,” she asserts. “I’ll go with you.”“Yeah,” he nods. “Yeah, okay. Then we’ll meet up with the others…where, exactly?”“Does anyone have a car?” Jennifer asks. Everyone shakes their heads no and she sighs. “We’ll take the bus, then. We’ll probably have to take a few different ones, but we’ll get there.”“So four of us meet outside the school gates, Lucas and Max will join us at the bus station at half four.”“Sounds good.”“They’re late.”Mike paces up and down the footpath, glancing at his watch every five to ten seconds.“Mike, chill, it’s been what, five minutes?”“Five minutes is a lot, Dustin. The bus’ll be here any second now.”“I could try calling him again?” Will offers.“Maybe his phone is dead. Try Max,” suggests Jennifer.“Does anyone actually have Max’s number?”Everyone shakes their head no.Jennifer rolls her eyes. “Typical.”At that precise moment, the bus they are supposed to get rolls around the corner and stops in front of them. People quickly begin disembarking and boarding in an unorganized frenzy.Jennifer immediately abandons the calmness she’s displayed until now and begins cursing. “Sinclair, I’m going to kill you myself.”“Shit,” Dustin is quickly following in their footsteps, his panic increasing visibly. “Shit, shit, shit. Where the hell are they?”Mike breathes out slowly. “Dustin, you try calling him.”“Guys, the bus is getting ready to leave!" Jennifer exclaims. "Will we go without them? What the hell do we do?!”“Can you check when the next bus is?” Will asks.“I already did, it’s at midnight, because of course we had to live in the middle of nowhere and public transport doesn’t exist here!” she brings her hands to her head and appears to be contemplating ripping her own hair out.“I’ll go ask the driver to wait a few minutes,” says Dustin, and leaves to do just that. He returns in a matter of seconds, a glum look on his face. “He told me to fuck off.”“Great,” Mike says. “They’re late, the bus is leaving and the driver hates us. Everything is going great.”As if to emphasize their hopelessness, the bus drives away. The driver waves at Dustin, smiling a smile that's a bit too friendly to not be mocking. Jennifer immediately starts a rant on punctuality and how nobody respects anything anymore. Will leans against the wall, presumably texting Lucas, and Mike panics more.The most Dustin can do is flip off the bus driver.Just when Mike is about to suggest they go home and take on an easier, more boring project, someone beeps a car horn obnoxiously loud. Mike curses, Will jumps and both Jennifer and Dustin shriek, startled.“Get in, losers!” calls Max, wearing a pair of shades, from the passenger seat. The window is rolled down and she is almost leaning outside of the car. “We got Lucas’ dad to let us borrow his car!”“I’m going to kill Lucas,” says Mike, teeth gritted, but he gets in the back of the car nonetheless, soon followed by Will, Dustin, and Jennifer, who barely manages to squeeze in.“Answer your goddamn phone!”“You were calling me?” asks Lucas.“Yes!” Mike, Dustin and Will exclaim at once.“Check your phone.”Lucas does so and discovers seventeen missed calls. “Shit. Sorry, guys, my phone was on silent from school.”This brings on a brand new wave of angry yelling. The car takes off, and the faint sound of enraged teenagers is audible even to pedestrians on the paths.Needless to say, it is a long car ride.“Okay,” Max says, shades perched high on her head, “now make a left turn.”Lucas follows her instructions, and she closes the GPS tab on her phone and checks the number painted on the shabby little shack of a house. There are large metal trashcans like the ones in old cartoons all around the house, as though the garbage is saying yes, this is our domain, welcome. The poor grass is even more dead than Mrs Setter's plants, and the metal roof is rusted.“Yep, 3833 Walker Drive. This should be it.”It's past eight, and the sun is setting.Everyone undoes their seatbelts with no particular difficulty – everyone but Dustin and Mike, who had to share a single seatbelt and struggle with it for a while, cursing and sighing before Mike smacks Dustin upside the head and wrenches the buckle free – and they walk up to the heavily rusted door. Mike presses a button on a speaker and his arm jolts with an electric shock - what a very welcoming place, he thinks. He's near miserable enough that it feels like home. “I’m reconsidering my decision,” Jennifer says, looking around sceptically. “I don’t think anything but rats lives here.”“Thank you very much, I think you look lovely too,” says a sarcastic, disembodied voice. It takes them a second or two to figure out the voice is coming from the speaker beside the door. “Murray Bauman?” Max asks, calm and confident, “we were wondering if it’d be possible to talk to you about -”“One second I’m a rat, the next I’m being hunted by paparazzi. Fame is a fickle thing indeed. Look into the camera.”They comply, and a moment later the door swings open on rusted, squeaky hinges. A bearded, bespectacled man stands in front of them, wearing a patterned robe, arms spread wide open.“Welcome to my humble abode.”“Abode is putting it nicely, but it is humble,” says Max, polite as ever.“Thank you, for that.” The man's arms drop as quickly as his theatrically fake smile falls. Max shrugs. “You’re welcome.”He ushers them all into the kitchen turned living room turned studio and makes them sit down on a ratty old sofa. Mike shifts from side to side, uncomfortable from the spring digging into his leg and the array of stains on the arm of the couch, but says nothing of it - Dustin and Lucas are complaining enough for a group twice their number. “I’m a busy man and frankly I don’t want you menaces in my house for too long, so let’s get straight to it. Who are you, where did you hear about me, what do you want?”Max speaks up again. “I doubt you’re that busy. Can’t be getting a whole lot of business from the look of this place.”Murray looks at her without expression. “I don’t want you menaces in my house for too long,” he repeats.Max grins in a way that says alright, fair enough. "There you have a point, your poor couch is in danger of losing all the dust on it. I'm sure you wouldn't want that." “We’re from Hawkins,” Jennifer says, loudly enough to drown out Max's comments - probably intentional, then. Her speech sounds rehearsed, as though she is giving a dull presentation rather than speaking to a person about something which interests her. “We’ve heard of conspiracy theories surrounding the lab and we wanted to look into it, but all we found were several news reports -”“No. No no no, stop talking."“Excuse me?” Jennifer is taken aback.“No, I want someone else to explain. You’re too stressed out and it’s stressing me out. Gives the whole room bad vibes. Which one of you’s the chill one?” he snaps his fingers several times and points at Max. “You. Red. What do you and your band o' roadies want?”“It's Max.”“Noted.”“We’re researching Hawkins Lab, and from what we’ve read they’re definitely involved in some dubious shit, but we don’t know how exactly. We think it has something to do with a string of disappearances we found. The Chief of Police told us you know some stuff, so we basically stalked you on the internet until we found an address."“And I respect that,” says Murray with genuine admiration. He takes out a pack of cigarettes and lights one with practiced ease.“So…do you actually know anything or did we waste gas on a trip here?”“Oh, I know a lot of things, but first, something tells me that at least one of you took pictures of this research?”Jennifer, now visibly nervous, takes out a heavily bejewelled phone and moves in front of Murray to show him the pictures she’d taken of the articles. While the Party fills him in on their own theories, he zooms in to each one, reading every bit of information before moving on to the next photo. At what is presumably the last one, Jennifer snatches her phone out of Murray’s hand.“Okay, you can stop scrolling now!”He ignores her. “I’m impressed, I’ll give you that. You found all the right information.”“But?” Max's poker face finally drops, and she looks as agitated as the rest of them. “But,” says Murray, and he makes a deliberate pause to take a long drag from his cigarette, “you’re connecting all the wrong strings. I mean, why the hell would the government be abducting and training children as soldiers when they’ve got no shortage of willing adults?”“That’s exactly what we said!” says Dustin.Max, however, seems to have other concerns about Murray’s statement. “So, it has nothing to do with the Cold War?”He makes a tsk-ing noise. “I never said that. It has nothing and everything to do with the Cold War. Oh, they're training soldiers alright. Just not…” he waves his arms around a little, the cigarette stuck in his mouth, looking for the right word, lips moving silently, as though he is chewing his own thoughts. “…traditional soldiers, there we go.”Lucas frowns. “What does that even mean?”“What it means,” another pause, another drag. He flicks the ashes over his own cushions. Most recoil at the smell, but Max’s fingers have been itching towards the pack since he opened the damn thing, and Mike finds himself breathing in deeper than usual.“What it means is that Hawkins Lab has a lot of big secrets, and the people running it are much more dangerous than anyone realizes.”Max rolls her eyes – Mike thinks she must be getting dizzy; she’s been doing that for a while now. “Gee, thanks. I think we’ve figured that out by now. Care to delve into the specifics?”“I will, but first I need to ask you a question.” He takes yet another long drag and exhales, slowly. Mike is contemplating strangling him. “Have you ever read a Stephen King novel?”“Yeah?” Mike, Will and Lucas speak at the same time.“Good. Then you might be familiar with a little thing we call telekinesis…”By the time Murray has finished detailing his theory – and his theory has many details – Max is not only eyeing his pack of cigarettes, but also the bottle of vodka he broke out a half hour ago and keeps thinning out with tap water. The others are equally pale-faced, wide-eyed. Mike is gripping the back of a chair so hard his knuckles have become white.Max crosses her arms over her chest and gives Murray a withering look. “And you expect us to believe your bullshit spun story?”“I don’t expect you to believe anything. You were the ones interested in my conspiracies; you were the ones who sought me out. If you’re not satisfied,” he shrugs,” well, you’re the disappointed ones.”Mike speaks up. “Suppose we buy it,” he says. “Suppose we believe you. It still doesn’t add up. Okay, the government is creating telepathic, telekinetic test subjects to spy on the Russians. But the Cold War ended decades ago, and that Jane Ives girl was kidnapped like, sixteen years past? Why are they still going? Why would they still need her?”“Kid, if you feel the need to ask that question, you’re much dumber than I thought.”“Yeah, Mike,” says Will softly. “It’s over, but the two sides aren’t exactly best friends. Plus, the government has a lot of enemies they’d want to keep tabs on, and even more not-enemies who could be potentially dangerous.”Lucas seems to agree with Murray and Will. “Once you own power like that, you don’t just give it up because of a few lawsuits. Because you don’t need it anymore. You just find new reasons to need it.”“The question you should be asking yourself,” Murray says, and something about his tone sends a shiver through the room. “That you should all be asking yourselves, is if all your research is worth it. Me? I keep a low profile, and besides, I’m your stereotypical crazy, old, alcoholic crackpot to them. Just a lowlife. Nothing too dangerous, people don’t believe me. There’s no need to worry about someone like me. But six young, conventionally intelligent kids? From good, socially respectable families? Good, smart kids, believable as can be?” Murray raises his eyebrows pointedly and snuffs his cigarette out. “Last time someone like you started asking questions, she died from a chemical leak. ”They don’t stay for long after that.Just long enough for Jennifer to note down all the information Murray had given them and for Max to accept the vodka he’s been offering them all.They leave at ten or eleven. The sky has fully darkened and they have a good six hours on the road ahead – luckily they’d informed their parents they were to sleep over at Jennifer’s.“I’m sorry, I’d invite you to stay the night,” Murray says when they start heading out. “But honestly, there are too many of you and most of you stress me out. I’m actually not sorry at all.”“It’s fine,” says Max, only slightly slurring her words. Apparently she has no impulse control whatsoever. “Don’t wanna catch rabies from what’s living in your walls, anyways.”“And I’m looking forward to the rest of my life without you in it,” Murray replies. He holds out his hand and he and Max perfectly execute a long, impossibly intricate handshake that they couldn't have practiced before this moment.“We would’ve been great bros if you weren’t so gross,” she says with a sense of finality, and promptly walks out the door, Lucas following closely behind.The others thank him and join the first two in the car. They don’t start the engine, though. Not for a while.“We’re not gonna go ahead with the project now, are we?” Lucas asks, nervously running a hand over his short hair.The energetic, excited, albeit annoyed atmosphere from earlier is completely gone now. They are all more grim, more scared, somehow more mature.“I’m gonna answer that when I’m sober,” says Max. “Please don’t take my word for anything now. Drunk Max’s word doesn’t mean a thing.”Jennifer mutters something about how she shouldn’t have gotten drunk in the first place, and Mike sighs.“I know it’s crazy, but I want to go ahead with it.”“Mike, are you kidding?” asks Dustin. “Did you not hear what Murray said? If we get any further into this than we already have, we’ll probably be assassinated. I don’t want to risk that for a bunch of imprisoned crazies.”“Imprisoned crazies? They were kidnapped. When they were kids. Their lives were taken from them and the public can’t even do them the courtesy of caring. The most recent one, she’s our age now.” Mike clearly felt strongly about the subject.“So what if she’s our age? A lot of people are our age, and we hate them all the same!”“Yeah, because they’re entitled, pretentious assholes! We don’t know what she’s like, she’s never even been given a chance to just be!”“Thank you for that, Wheeler,” Jennifer mumbles, though nothing in Mike's tone suggested his statement was directed at her. “I just…I feel like we started looking into this for a reason. Like…like we were meant to do this.”“Dude, chill, it’s just a school project.” Lucas says, now looking thoroughly concerned for his friend.“That’s bullshit and you know it! We wouldn’t have driven all the way out here for just a school project. This means something to all of us, don’t even try to deny it.”“Yeah, it means something! It was cool, and interesting, and we all wanted to get involved and be a part of this, but not if it means putting our lives in danger! Are you actually insane?”“I don’t want to forget about all of this, either,” says Will quietly.“Will, don’t encourage him!”“I’m not! I’m just telling you what I think. I think we all care about this too much and just got too scared, but we’ll regret not doing something about it.”“And what, exactly, could we do?” Lucas’s scepticism hasn’t left him at all.“Um, nothing?” Jennifer says. “Other than forgetting this ever happened, we’re doing absolutely nothing about this!”“I just think we should see if this is at all true. We should know what exactly it is we’re abandoning, and if there’s anything at all we can do about it.”“So what do you propose?” Lucas asks sarcastically.“Guys, stop being so loud,” Max groans. “Dizzy.”They ignore this.“There’s only one way to know if this is all worth it,” Will says. “We have to break into Hawkins Lab.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

May 19, 2018
The reaction is as immediate as it is forceful.“Oh my god, you’re both insane!”“Will, what the fuck?!”“We’re all gonna die and you’re digging our graves for us, Byers!”“I’m sorry, what part of dangerous government people did you not get?”Mike, however, doesn’t hate the idea, and he makes his opinion known. “I don’t hate the idea,” he says. “I think that it could work if we did it right. Better to know whether or not it’s worth it now than regret not doing something later.”“Mike!” Dustin yells, his voice cracking a little as he slaps his hands on the back of the driver’s seat, making Lucas wince.“Don’t encourage him, man!”“Don’t encourage each other!”“Wheeler, come on, you’re not that dumb!”Mike raises his hands defensively. “Seriously, guys. Let’s at least hear him out.”They all reluctantly turn to face Will, who gulps nervously, eyes darting to Mike every other second.“Well, we can pretend we’re there on a field trip. They’ll show us around, and maybe…I don’t know, maybe one or two of us can sneak away to see if they’ve got anything suspicious hidden somewhere.”“Like telekinetic kids or a huge water tank,” Lucas mutters sarcastically.“Like telekinetic kids or a huge water tank,” Will repeats, eyes wide, totally serious. Just like that, the Party's agreement clicks into place.“We’ll never pull that off,” says Max. Her words are still a little slurred but she seems to be returning to the here and now, and her mind is sharp as ever. “They don’t let you in anywhere without a teacher’s permission and supervision, and even if a teacher liked or trusted us enough to cover for us, it’s a Saturday.”Dustin’s brows furrow. “Yeah, it’s Saturday, but I can try calling -”“Dustin, that only worked in middle school and only on Mr Clarke, and even that was probably because he pitied you having nothing better to do on Saturday evenings than ask science questions. That won’t work,” counters Lucas.Jennifer’s head turns from Will to Max to Dustin to Lucas fast enough to give her whiplash. She brushes her long hair out of her lashes and gapes at them. “Excuse me, why are we discussing the practicality of this? We’re not fucking doing this, have you all lost your minds?”“We’re a Party,” Dustin states without hesitation. “We trust each other, above all. If we don’t trust each other, then -”“Then we have nothing,” Lucas completes. “He’s right. We need a better plan, but he’s right. I’m in.”“B-but -” Jennifer blurts.“A party member requires assistance, and it’s our duty to provide it,” says Mike. “If you don’t like it, then fine. We don’t need you here.”“Or want,” Max mumbles. In the span of one short day, she's fit in so well Mike has nearly forgotten she wasn't always part of their group. “You were the one who nearly begged us to involve you," Lucas adds.“Well, excuse me for having a fucking brain!”“A brain, but no loyalty. You said you were fully in, then changed your mind. You can’t keep doing that, and we can’t involve someone we don’t trust, so we’ll make the choice easy for you – you’re out,” Mike says ruthlessly. The others nod in agreement.“Like I ever wanted to be part of your stupid Party,” Jennifer says. Her voice is stony but she looks close to tears, and she turns right around, presses her cheek against the window, and says no more.Will, to his credit, looks more than a little uncomfortable.“So, then, what’s the plan?” Dustin asks, doing his best to not look at the fuming blonde.Mike coughs, awkwardly. “Well, there’s another flaw in Will’s idea. I just realised this now. If they’re a small group carrying out dangerous, unorthodox experiments, they all probably trust each other, just like we do. It’s guarded outside to keep strangers out, but I’m willing to bet that inside it’s all minimum security –at least nowadays. Remember, it’s no longer officially funded, like it was back in the eighties.”“Your point?” Lucas asks, hands gripping the wheel impatiently.“I’m getting to that. Will said to tell them we’re there on a school trip, but even if that miraculously works, they’ll know we’re there. They’ll guard – and probably lock away – anything incriminating, eliminating any advantage we might have had otherwise. What I’m trying to say is, they can’t know we’re there if we want to actually find anything. We have to sneak in.”“I have an idea,” Lucas pipes up after a long moment of contemplation. “Dustin, can you ask Steve for a favour?”They reach Hawkins at some ungodly hour of the morning, and though the sun is up and thriving, they are…not, to say the least.After the adrenaline and excitement of their plan wore off, Jennifer’s sulkiness became more and more contagious, until everyone was reduced to an exhausted, snoozing, cramped and increasingly annoyed sort of hive-mind. They spend a few hours in a local diner, seeing how their parents won’t be expecting them for a while, with the intent of eating away their fear and feelings and unfulfilled sleep. Once they are there, however, they collectively realise they are too nauseated for food. They order black coffee and make no attempt to hide their wincing at the bitterness and the burning in their throats, and they don’t talk very much, their words stoppered by Jennifer’s uncomfortable presence.Lucas drops each of them home, Jennifer first, Max last, though the latter isn't particularly eager to leave his company. She lingers in the passenger seat, unsure what to say yet unable to say nothing. Finally she settles for something standard, safe. “Thanks for bringing me home,” she says, the word home more than a little sour on her tongue. “Hey, try and get some sleep, okay?” While the rest of the ragtag group had all dozed off at some point or another during the all-too-long drive, Lucas drove for the whole journey, and his features were heavy with fatigue. “Huh?” he blinks once or twice, trying to process her words. “Yeah, yeah. Just a little tired.”Max takes off her shades, having worn them for the majority of the morning to hide the sooty streaks of day-old makeup and takes a few moments to squint angrily at the sun, now shining at full force. She opens the car door, swings her legs over the seat and pauses. Should she say something else or should she go? She turns to look back at him again. “You know, I would’ve driven for a bit so you could’ve rested.”“Rested in peace, you mean. Or pieces. I’m not sure you noticed, but you were just a little drunk.”
“But see,” her voice adopts an impish tone and she leans back slightly, wanting to mess with him despite the fact that the alcohol had left her system hours ago. “I’m not a sloppy, careless drunk, and besides, Mike offered, too.”He doesn’t take the bait of her teasing banter, which disappoints her. “I can do it just fine by myself,” he mutters, a little bitterly. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”Max frowns, again. Emboldened by some unknown force or another – a blend of caffeine and migraine and exhaustion, probably – she reaches out to grab his hand. “Give me your phone for a second.”“Why?” He doesn’t outwardly appear as nervous as she hoped he’d be, but with her fingers on his wrist she can feel his pulse begin to race. His skin is soft, warm. She finds herself tracing small circles on the inside of his wrist.“Just do it. Unlock it.”He does so, confusion evident in his movements – or it could be weariness, Max can’t tell.She types a rapid string of digits into his phone and hands it back. “Here’s my number. Call or text when you get home so I know you made it back okay. Be careful, alright?”His fingertips brush against hers and she supresses the sudden urge to lace their fingers together, to hold his hand for real.“Y-you can call me other times, too,” she tries to say confidently, but what comes out is barely above a whisper; a weak, stuttering whisper.She sees his eyes widen and her heart hiccups. “I’ll call you other times.”She grins, teasing again. “Tell your dad your girlfriend says hi.”He flushes and ducks his head. “I’m sorry about that. I’ve never brought a girlfriend home, I mean, a girl friend, a friend that’s a girl – and he just assumed -”“I didn’t mind.”She thinks that her pulse must be picking up too and she can’t tell if it’s from too much coffee and not enough sleep or from the fact that she didn’t mind and he doesn’t seem to either. I’ll kiss him one day, she decides, there and then, and hold his hand too.She doesn’t say it aloud. She turns back around, finally steps out of the car, and wishes him a safe drive.Inside the car, Lucas' fingers press into his wrist where she'd touched him, and he grins.Jennifer walks through the front door of her house and finds her dad sitting in the hall, drinking milky iced coffee and reading the newspaper. When she slams the door he only briefly looks up.“Jenny, quiet. You’ll wake your sister.”The shock and anger she’s been suppressing all night finally break through and tears start slipping down her cheeks. “That’s it?”“Pull yourself together. Your mother has guests over.”“No, really, that’s it? I was out all day and all night without any explanation. Several people called you to check if I was here with their kids. I come back close to noon and all you think to tell me is to be quiet?”Mr Hayes doesn’t look up from his newspaper. “You’re always out with no explanation,” he says calmly.“Exactly!” Jennifer nearly screeches. “Exactly! You never even ask me where I’ve been! You don’t even care enough to call and check up on me!”“That’s because your mother and I trust you, sweetheart.” He looks up to see her wiping her eyes, barely holding back her sobs. “Jenny, please, do keep it down.”“Trust!” she exclaims. “I don’t think you know what that word means! I’m not trustworthy! You don’t trust me, I’ve given you no reason to! I always come home late and I’m drunk or I’m hungover or I don’t come home at all and you don’t care as long as I keep it down. You don’t care, that’s what it is!”“Of course we care - that’s why we cover for you, why we let you go out and enjoy yourself.” He sets down his newspaper. “What’s brought this on? Did you have a fight with a friend?”“I wasn’t out with my friends, actually. I was out with people who are friends with each other and not with me, and I saw what real trust looks like and I realized I didn’t know what it was. ”“Honey, don’t be silly, who wouldn’t want to be your friend?”This opens the already struggling floodgates. “Fuck you,” she spits, appalled at her own language but unable to stop it. “You’ve never cared.”“Jennifer, mind your language!” her mother comes out into the hallway, ready to lecture her on being polite but not on being home on time. “What’s gotten into you?”“Let me guess,” says Jennifer, her tone becoming cruel. “My language is bothering your guests.”“Yes!” her mother exclaims, not a hint of irony in her voice. “Keep it down or get out. Spend the day with one of your friends.”Jennifer scoffs incredulously. “Fine,” she says, and rushes upstairs, her mind saying get out get out get out, nobody cares about you, no-one’s ever cared, get out of this madhouse, get out get out get out. She closes the door of her room and lets her backpack drop to the floor with a thud, now making no effort to mask her tears. She doesn’t have time to sit down before her phone starts ringing.She fishes it out of her pocket and stares numbly at her best friend’s name, flashing across the screen, and she feels a kind of wild anger she’s never felt before, born of exhaustion and emotional overdrive and rejection.Her fingers clumsily answer the call. “What do you want, Stacey?”“Jeez, someone’s in a mood,” Stacey laughs and Jennifer hears the commotion on the other end of the line, voices of people she’s viewed as friends until this moment of hyper-awareness. “What, did that queer Byers turn you down?”Jennifer recoils. “He – he’s not – he didn’t –”“Chill, it was just a joke.” Stacey pauses. “Hang on, you weren’t actually with that weirdo all day yesterday. Jen, no. I know you were sitting with him at lunch and I tolerated that, but -”“Yeah, I was with him and his friends. Max Mayfield, too. What about it?”“Jen, that’s…that’s disgusting. But…” her voice turns teasing, conspiratorial – how ironic. “..just between us, what were they like? Total weirdos, right? God, wait till we tell Troy, he’ll have a field day.”The last bit of patience, of rationality Jennifer has snaps at this. “Well, for one, they’re good, real friends who count on each other for more than gossip.”“Jen –”Jennifer hangs up without another word, and realizes she is fed up of everything she has.It’d hurt her, seeing friendship like that, knowing she’ll never have anything of the sort. Really, never will – not after she’s bailed on them yet again.With the delirious and tired part of her brain, still chanting get out get out get out, leading the way, she empties the contents of her bag on the floor and starts packing some clothes and essentials. She’ll go to Will’s house, she decides, knowing he’d be the most lenient, the most forgiving. Maybe they’ll give her one last chance, want to be her friend if she swallowed her pride enough to apologize. She could stay with one of them for a while; build up her own, improved family from scratch.And if not…she almost doesn’t let herself consider it, but she has to. If not, she has enough money to live by herself for a while. She’ll figure something out eventually. All she knows in that moment is the blaringly clear fact that her life is suffocating her, and she won’t let it.It’s with that thought, that hope in her mind that she finds the courage to walk out of the house, shouting out a casual “I’m going out,” to apathetic parents.Will isn’t home. She hadn’t expected him to be, not with their breaking-and-entering plan in full motion. No-one answers the door.Jennifer sits on the porch swing and waits.“Remind me why exactly you shitheads need to get into Hawkins Lab?”Steve Harrington is off-duty on Saturdays, and his police cruiser is replaced by the bright blue minivan he swears was the best, cheapest vehicle he could find. “School project,” says Mike. “We want to see if they’re keeping kidnapped, telekinetic people there to spy on the Russians.”Steve nods and shrugs, clearly deciding not to question it. “Cool, cool. Makes sense. I appreciate you guys, you know? You really never fail to brighten up my life. It’s a Saturday afternoon, my day off, and I guess I could be spending time with my friends - you have to stay in tough with the people you care about, it really is the key to successful relationships - or reading a good book - it's never bad to expand your cultural boundaries, you know? - or with my girlfriend, but I suppose nothing beats time spent indulging the delusional, stress-induced fantasies of four hyperactive preteens.”“Steve, you don’t have a girlfriend,” Dustin reminds him through a mouthful of crisps, of which more have wound up on the floor than in Dustin's mouth. “Or friends. And you hate reading.”“Four hyperactive preteens who constantly remind me of everything wrong with my life. It’s the little things, man.”“We’re sixteen, going on seventeen,” Mike tells him.“You’ll always be my little twelve-year-olds.”“Aww, thanks, Dad,” says Dustin, and Steve affectionately ruffles his hair.
“We were thirteen when we became friends with you, though,” says Mike, wrinkling his nose.Steve points at him with his index finger and winks. “Exactly."Mike frowns, shakes his head, and looks away.“You know you love me, Wheeler,” Steve says, then grimaces. “God, it’s so weird saying that to you, I used to say that to your sister.”“You said you weren’t gonna bring her up!” exclaims Mike. “I really don’t need to hear the details of your relationship with my sister.”“Yeah, but see, I think it’s good that we broke up,” says Steve, and the two teenagers groan as he goes on what is sure to be another ramble. “See, I was kinda an asshole before her. And while I was with her, to be perfectly honest with you. But being dumped by her, man, that changed me. Brought out the best in me. I’ve never liked myself better. And to think, I could’ve been the best version of myself all this time, and all I had to do was have my heart broken by the love of my life…”Will arrives just in time to hear the last part of his speech and he grins. “I keep telling you, you should’ve become an actor and not a cop. Your soliloquies would have been the shit.”“Hey, Byers!” Steve calls, then winces again. “You guys have got to get different last names than your siblings, this is physically hurting me.”"We could," Mike says, "if you gave better relationship advice."Steve shakes his head then returns Will’s grin.“Heard you got the queen bee interested, eh?”“I mean…” Will trails off, his smile slipping.“But you’re not? Fair enough. Hey, where’s the other one?”“Other two,” Mike corrects. “Lucas and Max. They’re on their way.”“Probably off sucking face, you mean,” Dustin says bitterly.“Max? Wait, wait, but isn’t she the girl you like? How did you mess this up so badly?”“I followed your advice is how.”“But my advice is great!" Steve points his finger at Dustin in accusation. "No, this you ruined by yourself.”“I’m telling you, it was your stupid advice!”The two are still bickering by the time Lucas gets there, and his appearance is enough to put any argument to a screeching halt.“Dude,” Dustin says, incredulous, “are you wearing a camo headband?”“It’s a bandana!”Steve snickers. “You seriously lost your girl to him?”“Don’t talk about that now!”“No, no, really. Like, she takes him seriously and all?”“Who, Max?” asks Lucas, confused. “She – she’s just a friend.”“Just a friend, my ass. I saw how you two were looking at each other, which is funny, since you told me just the other day that you thought she was a weirdo.”“Hey, I never said being a weirdo was a bad thing.”“Did too.”“Did not!”“Who’s a weirdo?” asks Max, finally arriving.“Lucas,” says Dustin before the other boy can react. “Look at him, he’s wearing a goddamn headband.”“It’s a bandana!”Max looks him up and down, raises an eyebrow at the offending article. “I think it’s cute.”Steve gives Dustin a meaningful look. “Disgraceful, Henderson. Thought I raised you better than this." he sighs, slapping the back of Dustin’s head lightly.“We’re illegally breaking and entering into a government facility. Like, a military one. With soldiers. Excuse me for coming prepared.”“Prepared with a camo bandana?” Dustin seems to come to a realization and groans. “No. No, don’t tell me you brought your army knife.”“Uh, knives,” says Lucas, pulling several knives out of his backpack. “I also brought the wrist rocket.”“You mean the slingshot?”Lucas glares at him. “I mean the wrist rocket.”“C’mon, nerds. Are we just gonna stand around here all day? There’s a lab that needs infiltrating.” Steve claps his hands together twice. “I swear, if any of you shits gets themselves killed, or worse, arrested, and I have to deal with Hopper...”He trails off as they pile into the minivan, Dustin naturally taking shotgun, and they reach the gates of the lab in a matter of minutes. Steve pulls off a few yards away from the wire fence, kills the engine and turns to face them.“Alright. Let’s go over the plan one more time,” he says. “I bullshit the guards, make a fuss, start a commotion. They will all be distracted, allowing you all to sneak in. You look around, take notes, yada yada. Don’t take too long, though. I’m not sure how strong my bullshitting skills are nowadays, I haven’t had to write a school paper in years.”“How long would we have, exactly?” Max asks as Lucas starts handing out army knives to everyone "just in case."“An hour, at best.”“Good enough.”“Okay, so after you’ve finished nosing around, you get right around the building and to the back of the minivan, which I will keep them away from. I’ll leave the door unlocked, you go in, I apologise for wasting their time and drive away, and we all live happily ever after, if we’re not counting the kidnapped kids in the lab. We can’t all be winners, I guess. It’ll be the perfect crime. Sound good?”They all nod in agreement and move to the back of the minivan, truck door left ajar. Steve starts the engine back up and drives right up to the gate.“Good day to you, sir,” he tells the guard, expression friendly, voice good-natured. “Now, I was just wondering if I could talk to, I think it was, Dr Martin Brenner about his work in the lab? I’m a science major, you know? Science freak. Really interested in anything to do with, well, science. Passed chemistry with flying colours, that I did. Never failed a day in my life. I’d love to do a summer internship with him…”After five or so minutes of Steve talking and talking and refusing to go away, several soldiers inside the premises have the gate opened to see what’s going on. Mike, lurking just under eye-level in the middle of Steve’s vehicle, sees them stop one of their old Lab vans right in the middle of the open gate, making it impossible for Steve to drive through but providing a perfect cover for five teenagers to sneak past, and he whispers their agreed-upon code word.“Waffle.”They silently slide out the back of the minivan and Steve starts making more of a commotion to draw all eyes and ears to him; to his loud voice and his over-the-top hand gestures. The guards don’t as much as glance in their direction.From there, it is relatively easy to find their way inside the building. They stick to the shadows and manage to avoid the outdated security system.Once they are in the main Lab building, they let out a collective breath they didn’t know they were holding. “Man,” Dustin exhales, “who knew skulking and sleuthing would be this stressful?”“Dustin, be quiet!” Max hisses.“Sorry.”Hawkins Lab is very clearly divided into two sections – the smaller, renovated section, obviously still in use, and the old, cracked, peeling side, fallen into disrepair over the years. Mike looks down the corridor of the latter side to see a strange, almost abnormal crack in the wall.“Guys,” he says softly. “Over there. That wall, we should check that out.”Max looks at him like he has two heads. “Wheeler, that corridor looks ready to collapse. It’s nothing interesting, just a hole in a wall.”“Yeah, but -”“Look, they renovated the left side of the building so people can still work there. That’s where any experiments will be.” She makes a good point, and none of the others seem too inclined to disagree with her, and yet...“Fine,” says Mike, still too tired to argue. “You go there, I’ll go down here. Dustin, come with me?”Dustin gives him an awkward look. “Sorry, man. No offense, but she’s right. There’s not going to be much down there.” The other two also mumble halfhearted apologies. “Then I’ll go by myself,” Mike resolves.“Mike -” Will tries.“It’s alright, I’ll be fine. I just want to check that we’re not missing anything important, five minutes tops. I’ll catch up with you guys.”“Are you sure you’ll be okay?” Will seems unwilling to let Mike go.Mike pulls the army knife Lucas gave him out of its sheath and grins. “Positive.”They part ways; Mike going down the dark, broken corridor, the other four going down the well-lit one with squeaky floors and clean walls.As he’d suspected, it isn’t well-guarded at all. The experiments – if they existed at all – are carried out by a small group who clearly trust each other. As much as he dislikes Jennifer’s presence for the most part, he is glad for her making him reach this conclusion.For the first few minutes, he wanders around, checking dusty old empty room after dusty old empty room. From time to time he comes across small hospital bedrooms, scratchy linen sheets yellowed by time. In one room – a child’s room, by the look of it – he finds a toddler’s sloppy drawing, and he feels a twinge in his heart as he eyes the long-empty cot and thinks of his own little sister, of how sad it'd be if she were to grow up here alone, without even the sun to keep her company.Things go like that for a while. And then he hears it.It’s a faint sound, at first. Faint, unassuming. Could have been the wind, wailing, but then he hears a crack, and a thud, and a girl’s voice, clear as day, shouting, crying, “No.”The word is an instant wake-up call, and he can’t stop himself enough to even think things through before he starts following it, as though in a trance.He rounds several corners, nearly crashing into a few walls, the voice getting louder all the time. He is hyper-aware of the army knife’s handle, gripped tightly in his hand.
“No!”
He races, nearly tripping, around one last corner and, finally seeing the source of the noise, stops dead in his tracks. For a moment, it's as though time stops, too. If it hadn't, he would've dropped the knife, but it stays tightly clutched in his grip. A girl, skinny as a twig and wearing only a sterile hospital gown, fights against two grown men trying to shove her through a doorway. Her head is shaved and her nose is bloody, and miraculously, incredibly, she seems to be winning, if the slumped, reddening body of a third man is any indication.Tears are running down her face, mixing into the blood trickling from her nose, dripping onto the floor and onto the hospital gown, and she repeats the word no again, and again, and again, almost like a chant, a song gone shrill with desperation – or a prayer.With an echoing sob-shriek from the girl, one of the two men is lifted from his feet. Mike watches, partly in disbelief and partly unable to register a thing, as he hangs, suspended in mid-air, for a few long, quiet moments.The girl exhales, lets out a heavy, tired breath, snaps her outstretched palm, and the man is thrown backwards with a force so powerful it shatters part of the wall behind him. He drops; a puppet with its strings cut, and his head falls forward, and Mike knows he is dead.The girl falls on her hands and knees, her breath laboured, exhausted. She looks at the last man standing and mutters a faint, barely audible no, but does no more to fight him, trembling too much to even stand up, let alone focus. Her breathing is more sob than inhale.Mike’s mind screams Jane Ives, screams danger, but all he can see is a small, crumpled girl, a fighter who can fight no more, about to be tossed into a room by someone three times her size, and his only instinct is to help her, to get her out of here, despite the rational part of him shouting that Mike, she’s a murderer, she just killed two people.Michael Wheeler looks at Jane Ives and does the only thing he can think of. Not the only rational thing – not by far. Not the only smart thing or only sensible thing. The only thing.With Lucas’ army knife still clutched tight in the palm of his hand, he runs straight for the man.Distantly, he feels the sharp blade pierce the man’s flesh, sees him fall down, knows he’s seriously wounded him (or worse, but he won’t, won’t, won’t think about that) yet all he can focus on is the girl with the bloody nose and the shaved head, and she blocks everything else out, makes all the world melt and fade away.His hand is reaching for hers, sinking to his knees even as he tries to help her up. Their eyes meet and suddenly that’s all he knows – her hand clutching his, her widened, terrified eyes.“Are you okay?” The words feel natural. She shakes her head – obviously she’s not okay – and fresh tears well up in her eyes.“Are you hurt?”She continues shaking her head, though Mike suspects she’s too deep in shock to understand anything. Much like him, then.“We're going to stand up, and then you need to hold on to my hand and run. We have to get out of this place.”“Wonder where Wheeler’s fucked off to,” says Max nonchalantly, bored fingers running over yet another expanse of boring, boring wall.“Having more fun than us, that’s for sure,” says Dustin, looking just about ready to plop down on the floor.Apparently a renovated, more high-tech, more in-use part of the Lab means that all the doors are kept locked. They’d tried handle after handle to find that not one of them would budge – not even, to their immense disappointment, the door Lucas had found and had excitedly waved them over to, labelled Sensory Deprivation Tank.“Well, at least now we know that either they’ve got a lot going on behind closed doors or Murray was spewing a whole lot of bullshit,” tries Lucas.“Yes, wow, that’s such a revelation, that’s completely different from what we knew before breaking in.” Max is very clearly at the end of her patience. She stares a door down and contemplates kicking it.Will has been silent for a suspiciously long time. When he curses in a soft voice, they turn to see him fiddling with a hairpin at the lock of the door which supposedly contains a sensory deprivation tank, whatever the hell that is.“Will, what are you -” asks Lucas, who’d been in the middle of checking his phone signal.“Shh. Quiet. Think I’ve nearly got it.” He barely finishes saying the words when the lock clicks and the door swings open.Will stands up and grins triumphantly, holding up the hairpin. “Lucas isn’t the only one who came prepared.”Everyone is quiet and slack-jawed for a second before the realization sets in and they crowd through the doorway.They climb a rickety metal staircase to enter the main room and immediately notice two things.The first, of course, is the gigantic water tank in the middle of the room, complete with a mechanical trap at the top and sliding metal shutters. It looks futuristic, strange – exactly the type of thing that Murray had described. It would have brought them much more enthusiasm had it not been for the second, much worse thing in the room.They recognize him instantly from the photos. He’s older, his hair streaked with grey and white, cut shorter, but not one of them has a single doubt that the man standing beside the sensory deprivation tank is Dr Martin Brenner. He has a Bluetooth device clipped onto his ear and is talking away about how “the girl isn’t co-operating today” and how he’d sent a man named George to “deal with her” but hasn’t heard back from him yet.The conversation appears to be heated, and perhaps he wouldn’t have noticed them at all had Dustin closed the heavy door quietly behind him and hadn’t let it slam shut by itself, which it does in that very moment. The clanging on metal on metal reverberates around the room for what would be, in other circumstances, a comically long time.Brenner’s eyes snap up and Max has to repress a shudder at the calculating coldness there that the photographs hadn’t quite captured, hasn’t quite prepared her for.“Send a team down to the tank room,” he says without hesitation. “We seem to have unwanted company.”“Abort mission,” Max hears Dustin whisper. “Turn back, turn back.”For once, the group listens to Dustin without question. They make a 180 turn and nearly trip over each other in their rush to get up the stairs and out the door.“Shit, shit, shit, where’s Mike?” asks Dustin, already out of breath.“I don’t know, probably still in the old part?” Max answers uncertainly.“Why the hell did we ever thing this was a good idea?” exclaims Lucas.They barely make it to the main entrance before they encounter the team Brenner had sent for. Six people, tall and intimidating, tasers strapped to their belts – not to mention the holstered guns. They surround their group in seconds.She hears Brenner making his way towards them at a leisurely pace and she glances at the door in desperation. They could make a run for it, she thinks, if only they had a distraction, if only she could inconspicuously inform the others, if only she wasn’t afraid they’d be shot.“I swear,” says Dustin, trying to catch his breath, “I can explain. See, this is a school field trip, completely authorized. Or, at least, it should have been. I’m sure our science teacher will clear things up for you, it was probably just an e-mail mix-up. We were just, you know, hanging around, waiting for our guide. Hey, now that we’re already here and all, maybe you guys could show us around the place…”Dustin rambles on and on and Max starts to pray for a miracle.The soldiers pay no mind to him. One of them pulls out a radio and talks to who Max suspects is the guard currently being distracted by Steve.“-don’t know about any kids, I’m talking to some asshole who won’t go away -”“Robert, tell him to fuck off and shut the gate. Over and out.”Max shuts her eyes in pure despair. They’d sent Steve away, the gate’s been closed – their chances of escaping unharmed are dwindling by the second.Brenner’s nearly reached them, she thinks, judging by the footsteps. But then –That can’t be right. Those are too fast, and coming from the wrong direction. Two pairs of them, too.She opens her eyes and her heart leaps into her throat as she sees Mike careening towards them, holding onto a tiny wisp of a boy with a shaved head who looks even more scared than Max feels.“Run!” yells Mike, his voice breaking.They don’t need to be told twice. The soldiers are too surprised to react, and somehow they’re shoved out of the way by an invisible force, allowing the Party to sprint out the sliding glass doors, shoes squeaking on the waxed floors.She hears, at a distance, a gun being loaded and her heart stills, but then Brenner’s voice pierces through.“Don’t shoot. I want the girl unharmed,”They run mindlessly, going behind the building, trying to take the same unfrequented route that had gotten them into the Lab in the first place but somehow getting lost along the way. They end up in a parking lot packed with old but well-maintained vans, the same logo splashed across each and every one – Hawkins power and light.Max eyes the barbed wire fence, buzzing lightly, and something clicks in her mind.“How the hell will we get out of here?” Dustin yells, swearing up a storm. “They’re after us, they’re coming, shit, shit, shit…”She pulls the knife Lucas had given her, with the thin rubber sheath, out of her backpack and dumps said bag unceremoniously in Dustin’s flailing arms. She sees Mike flinch at the sight of the weapon out of the corner of her eye and files that as a question for later.“Max, what the hell are you doing, they’re coming right this second!” Dustin’s voice takes on a new pitch entirely. She walks up to the closest van and wedges the unsheathed knife into the space between the outer window and the door of the van.“Bear with me. It’s an old van, a manual…”She feels around for the pin of the lock, moving the knife around. God, this would be so much easier if her hands weren’t shaking so much, or if she had resources other than knives and her panicked mind.Knife angled awkwardly, she feels the pin moving and the door of the vehicle unlocking. The rest of the group makes awed remarks but she blocks them out, focusing only on the task at hand.She opens the door and pulls the knife out, fumbling, nervous fingers nearly dropping it. Kneeling before the wheel, she uses the sharp tip of the blade to unscrew the plastic cover on the steering column and finds the wiring harness connector, pulling aside the battery and ignition bundle.“Hurry up!” calls Dustin from outside, and she flips him off in response.“Do it yourself if you think you can do it faster!”She strips two inches off the insulation – the knife is coming in handy time after time, it seems – and twists the two battery wires together. Her hands are sweating from the fear and the adrenaline, and she only manages to connect the ignition after wiping them on her jeans. The dash and radio lights instantly come on, and the Party, looking triumphant on her behalf, starts to approach.“Don’t!” she calls. “Not done yet. Hang on, I need to spark the starter!”“What even is that?”“Don’t worry about it.”Taking a deep breath, she strips a small piece of insulation off the starter wire and, being careful as to not touch the live, bare wires, touches the end of it to her two connected battery wires. She squints at the resulting spark, but the van has turned on.She revs the engine a few times and the others take this as an indication to enter the van.“Holy shit, that was incredible!” says Lucas, eyes wide with awe.Mike, she notices, doesn’t as much as look up from the boy – no, the girl – he’s broken out of the Lab. Now that she's not hyper-focused on something she can see finer features, a figure that a boy wouldn't have. She’s shaking, clutching onto him so tightly Max is sure he must be hurting, but he doesn’t say a thing about it, choosing instead to reassure her again and again.“Wait.” Dustin frowns. “The entire place is under lockdown. We have one of their vans but they’ll definitely check who’s driving past. How are we gonna get out past the gate?”“We’re not,” says Max, revving the engine again in preparation. She keeps her eyes focused on the barbed wire fence ahead, her eyebrows knit tightly together. “Seatbelts on.”Realisation dawns across Dustin’s face. “Max. No. No, no no, Max, that’s an electric fence, Max!”“Hold on tight.”This sets off a tidal wave of yelling in the van. She backs up until she’s nearly reached the building. In the distance, she can see the soldiers running for them, having finally found them.With a crank of the gear stick Max drives, full-speed and full-power, straight for the electric fence.“Shit, shit, shit, shit shit -”The van bursts through the electric fence with no shock at all. They fly out of the ripped barbed wire and over the road and into the beginnings of a forest. It takes Max a few moments to calm down enough to hit the brakes, and they skid to a near neck-breakingly sudden stop inches away from the trunk of a tree.For a few seconds, everyone is silent. The only sound is their own soft, shocked breathing, backed by the quiet hum of the engine.Then all hell breaks loose.
“Are you actually crazy!?”

“Shit, shit, shit, shit -”

“What did you expect me to do, they were coming for us with guns and the -”
It’s Mike’s voice that stops their yelling.“Shut up! Calm down, you’re scaring her even more!”“I’m sorry,” says Max, her voice quiet. “I’m sorry. It was the only thing I could think of, the only idea I had.”“I’m not judging that.” Mike tells her. “I did some stupid things myself today. Doesn’t mean I regret them.”“I think we all made stupid choices today,” Will acknowledges, and they all nod in agreement.Dustin doesn’t seem willing to forgive and forget, though. “Max, that was an electric fence. The van is made of metal. How we’re all still alive -”“It wasn’t running,” she says quickly. “I heard it, when we came in. It was buzzing, but barely. I know what an electric fence sounds like when I hear one. That, there, that’s just some sort of sound effect they put in to trick people. My guess is they couldn’t afford to keep it running, and kept the signs as more of a…caution.”He lets out a long exhale. “Yeah. Okay. That works.”“What now?”“We have to keep going,” Will decides. “Drive right around and go to my house. I doubt they’ll find us – not for a while, at least. We can make a plan there.”“We’re really taking her with us?” Lucas asks, eyeing the girl in the hospital gown sceptically.“She’s coming with us,” Mike says with no hesitation. A fire burns bright in his eyes and not one of them is willing to question him. Max looks down and sees the two have their hands entwined.“To Will’s house, then.”They pull up at the Byers’ porch at four in the afternoon.There aren’t any other cars around – Jonathan’s at NYU and Mrs Byers must still be at work, Lucas supposes.The air is deceptively peaceful, a stark contrast to the living hell they’ve just faced. It’s still ridiculously sunny, and he thinks he can hear a bird or two chirping despite the fact that the only ones in sight are magpies and crows.Max disconnects two wires, killing the engine. She’s flushed, her cheeks pink and her eyes shiny, and her lips are still parted to draw in gulps of air, too panicked to get her breathing down to a normal level.They clumsily open the doors and step out into the daylight. It takes a while for Mike to convince the girl to get out, but she complies once she sees he’s leaving.Will reaches the porch first, and he stops dead in his tracks for a second. Lucas runs up to see what’s happened.“I…Jennifer?”The blonde is sitting on the porch swing, an overstuffed bag cradled in her arms. There are tear tracks running down her face and her mascara is slightly smudged, yet she still somehow manages to look put-together.“Took you all long enough to show up.”“Uh, are you okay?”“What, me? I’m fine, I’m fine. Just, y’know, identity crisis, everyone hates me…same old.”"That's good, because the rest of us have real problems," says Mike.“We were nearly shot, so you can quit seeking attention.” Max adds. She’s never had much patience for the other girl, and she’s about ready to blow a fuse.“Wait, what?”“We snuck into the Lab. Our plan...well, it didn’t go that well. We got out, but it didn’t go what well,” Will admits. “We sort of stole a van and ran through an electric fence.”Mike noticeably gulps and his blood-spattered (not that anyone’s noticed) fingers twitch, but he says nothing.“What? What the hell?” Jennifer finally notices the girl holding Mike’s hand. “Wait, is he? Why is he wearing a hospital gown?” Her eyes widen, just fractionally, but with her eyelash extensions it’s very noticeable. “Did you -”Mike hadn’t liked her before, but now seems to positively spew poison at her. “She’s a girl, and we broke her out of there. I don’t have anything to explain to you.”“I literally came back to apologise to you, but I’m starting to change my mind -”Even Will is becoming impatient. “Jennifer, what do you want?”“I never said I wanted any -”“Look, it’s obvious you want something, so just spit it out.” Max adopts a naturally confident stance, and she looks as if she hadn’t almost had a panic attack ten minutes ago.“Stop cutting me off!” she exclaims. “Yes, fine, I want something. I want to apologise to you -”“Yeah, okay, you want to apologise. Why? That’s clearly just a means to an end.” “I’m fed up with my life!” Jennifer blurts out. “I’m fed up, and you guys…you guys just care about each other so much, and I want to be part of that. I’m sorry, I apologise, I just want back in, and I want to stay with one of you, at least for a while, because I can’t – I can’t – go back home.”Her eyes well up with tears and Lucas can only think of how pathetic she is– it seems trivial to be crying over something like that after seeing the girl holding tightly onto Mike, after knowing the things she must have gone through. By the looks on everyone’s faces, they’re of the same opinion.“You’ve already flaked out on us twice,” he says. “How do we know you won’t do it again?”“I swear,” Jennifer pleads. “I swear, I’m in.”“We’ll discuss that later,” Max decides. “We have more urgent matters now, in case you’ve all forgotten.”“We should go to the police,” says Dustin immediately. “Will, your dad is Chief of Police, he’ll know what to -”“No.”It’s the first word that most of them have heard spoken by the girl, and it takes them by surprise.“No?” asks Lucas, his voice careful.“It's not safe.” Her voice is shaky and small – fragile, and Lucas has an awful feeling she doesn’t get to talk very often.“Not safe how?” this time it’s Max who speaks, and even she manages to tone down on the harshness.“They’re bad people. They won’t listen to po…police.” She points two fingers, mimicking a gun, and aims it at her own temple, then at Mike’s. “Not safe. We need to run.”“Run,” says Max, breath hitching in her throat with sudden fear, and the word creates a solemn atmosphere. They remain silent for a time.“Then that’s what we’ll do,” Mike says. “We have to keep her safe.”Lucas is taken aback. “You want to put all our lives on the line to help some weirdo you broke out of the loony bin?”“Yes, Lucas, I do! She’s not a weirdo, and we broke her out of a lab, not a loony bin. Besides, it’s not just her that’s in danger. We’re all in danger. They’re going to be looking for us, you know they are.”He knows Mike is right, but all the same…“And what about our families, Mike?! They don’t even know what’s going on, and we’re going to leave them alone and unprotected?”“They’ll be alright, I think,” pipes up Will. “The Lab people don’t know our names, don’t know who we are. I mean, they’ll probably find out, but that’ll take them a while, and even then I don’t think they’d do something like hurt them, not when they’re trying to keep a low profile. We’re the only ones in danger.”“Then we’ll go,” finalizes Max. “We’ll go on the run. They’ll be too busy looking for us to harm our families, in any case – there aren’t very many of them. Who’s in agreement?”Everyone – including Jennifer, puts their hands up. Lucas, very reluctantly, agrees with them.But Max has other things to attend to. “What do you think you’re doing?” she asks Jennifer.“Uh, I’m coming with you. Is that not obvious?”“Um, no? You’re not our friend, you weren’t even involved in this. You’re not coming with us.”“Please, you have to take me with you,” Jennifer says, her tone rising at the very implication that she would be left behind. “You have to.”“I don’t, actually.”“I have nowhere else to go!”“Not my problem. Don’t you have your own friends?”“I’m literally begging you, Mayfield! Please, give me one last chance.”Max looks sceptically around, an eyebrow raised. “Is anyone buying her bullshit?”“You can come with us,” Will finally relents, “as long as the majority agrees. Max?”The redhead shrugs. “Don’t look at me.”“I agree,” says Dustin. “Since you’re desperate and all.”“I don’t trust you, but you can come.” Lucas says.“Okay,” says Mike.Jennifer looks close to tears. “Thank you. I swear, you won’t regret it.”“I’m regretting it already,” says Max, striding back to the van. “Will, grab whatever shit you need and let’s go.”They make quick stops at each of their houses, packing a quick bag for the road – luckily it’s a Saturday afternoon and their houses are empty. Max comes beaming back from her house with two duffle bags and a leather jacket slung across her shoulders.“Stole Billy’s jacket. He’s an ass,” she explains to Lucas, who nods.The sun is turning the sky a dusky red by the time they leave town, setting dancing flames across the horizon. The inside of the van is sterile, reminiscent of the Lab, but already hints of perfume and leather are starting to set in, and they feel like this is the start of something that will become home.With summer dust shooting from the wheels and danger tailing them, they drive the hell out of Hawkins.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

May 20, 2018
“What’s your name?”She takes her curious, unblinking eyes away from the window, if only for a second, to look back at him. She tilts her head and frowns a little, and he can see questions in her eyes. After the nature of their meeting, it feels like something impersonal to ask.Colour rises to Mike’s cheeks and he grips the steering wheel yet tighter. There’s blood under his fingernails that hadn’t washed out and his stomach roils at the sight, but staring at it somehow grounds him. Reminds him that this is real, he’s not losing his mind. “I-I’m sorry,” he stammers. “Kinda rude of me, I hadn’t thought to ask before.”It’s currently a dark hour of the early morning, though Mike can see the glowing golden fingers of the sunrise beginning to climb over the edge of the horizon.The others are long asleep, having dozed off one by one. Eventually even Max had muttered some vague direction and passed the driver’s seat over to Mike in favour of a few hours of much-needed rest.As tired as he is, Mike can’t sleep. He keeps reliving those actions that had been so quick – so careless – in the moment of occurrence. Keeps feeling the knife, sturdy and cold, clutched in his hand, keeps seeing the man thrown against the wall like a ragdoll, keeps seeing the floor of the Lab; old and dusty and kissed by blood, and if his waking thoughts are so bad, then Mike reckons he has no business seeing what ghastly manifestations his dreams would offer.The girl hasn’t slept a wink either. She had moved to the passenger seat as soon as Mike had taken Max’s spot, had leaned her head against a window, and scarcely looked away since.He can’t really see what fascinates her so much. All he can see are road signs and corn fields and a dull strip of dark blue sky, but she looks at it as though it will dissolve the second she averts her eyes.She’s wearing the zip-up hoodie he’d given her a few hours back, since he figured the paper-thin hospital gown she’s wearing didn't do much to keep her warm. The soft navy fabric near swallows her up. There’s something incredibly endearing about seeing the long sleeves pulled over her hands.His own short-sleeved, striped t-shirt does little to keep the cold out, but he doesn’t mind it. The air streaming in through the window is cool on his bare arms and keeps him alert; keeps the dreams away.He’s thought of her as Jane until now – Jane Ives, the kidnapped girl, the experiment – but that’s based purely on assumption. She could be a different girl.“Eleven,” she finally says, turning back to the window with a heavy sigh. “My name. Eleven.”He feels a pang of something in his chest. Regret? Sadness? Anger? “That’s – that’s your name?”She nods, extends her arm and pulls back the loose, large sleeve. Mike takes his eyes off the road to see three digits, 011, dark and bold against her pale wrist. She lets the sleeve fall back over her hand.“Eleven,” he echoes, the word cold and cruel on his tongue in a way he’s never imagined a number to be. They didn’t even bother to give her a name, he thinks in indignant anger. She was just a piece of property to be catalogued like livestock. Was, is. They’re all messed-up pieces of trash and they deserve to die.He bounces the last four words around and around in his mind, trying desperately to believe them and hoping they’ll somehow make him feel better about his actions.They don’t.“Well, my name’s Michael, but all my friends call me Mike. If you want, we can call you El for short, since we’re all your friends now. If – if that’s okay with you, I mean.”She nods and gives him a little smile and Mike swears his heart surges at the sight. “El,” she says softly.Neither of them makes any move to address the elephant in the room – well, in the van. Mike doesn’t mention telekinesis, doesn’t mention flinging people away with nothing more than a thought, and El doesn’t talk about the dark, dried spatters of blood on the hoodie’s sleeves.They sit in a comfortable, almost familiar silence until El moves her gaze over to the back of the van, where five forms are toppled over and gently snoring. “They’re my friends?”“Well, yeah,” says Mike. “We’re doing everything we can to get you away from the Lab, from the bad people there. We want to keep you safe. I mean, I’m not sure what Jennifer wants – she’s the one with blonde hair – but everyone else, yeah, we’re your friends. I promise.”“Promise?” She seems unacquainted with the word and says it as though she’s testing it out.“Yeah, promise.” He’s silent for a few moments before realisation hits. “Oh, do you…do you know what a promise is?”She shakes her head slowly; regretfully. “No.”“Oh, don’t worry about it. Just tell me if I say something you don’t know about and I’ll explain it.” He looks at her, tries to fully absorb the expression of curiosity on her face. “A promise is…something you can’t break. Ever. Like, if I promise to do something, I have to do it, no matter what. I promise, I’m not lying to you. I’m your friend, and they are too. Friends don’t lie. You understand?”She appears content with this and leans back, letting out a breath. “Promise.”Dustin is the first of the group to wake up, and he sits still and juggles a single compass from hand to hand for a while. The van is silent save for the occasional rattle of potholes and the sparse, softly spoken words from Mike and the girl with the shaved head.She really freaks Dustin out big time, and he can provide no shortage of reasons why. The strangely eerie hospital gown, for one. Her near-constant bloody nose. The fact that she’d been raised in a lab  and had probably been subjected to dozens upon dozens of freakish experiments. The look in her eyes – an equal and contradictory measure of fear and viciousness and innocence and age far beyond her actual years. The fact that the people blocking her way had all but flown to the side, and all that is without mentioning that she is probably Jane Ives, a myth of a girl who is officially long dead – had never been born, in fact. That alone is enough to make him shiver.He’s not sure what he expected to find, expected to accomplish, by sneaking into the Lab, but something like, oh, breaking Jane Ives out and going on the run had never as much as crossed his mind. Everything had seemed so obviously fake, nothing more than a game, that he’d never even considered the possibility that they might be right. Had never considered the implications of that.Yet here they are.From the few snippets of conversation that Dustin can make out, it sounds like they’re talking about Star Wars – or at least, Mike is explaining the plot while the girl nods and watches him in amusement, interrupting every so often to ask the odd question or two.His lurking is brought to a sudden halt by the sound of Max getting up. She looks disoriented for a moment, in the way that someone might be when lost or panicked or about to cry, but snaps out of it promptly. She hoists herself up and strides over to the front of the van. The abrupt loss of privacy brings the conversation to a halt.Dustin wonders if it’s exhausting to display that kind of confidence all the time. It certainly seems so.“Hey, Wheeler, where the hell are we?”Mike’s eyebrows knit together. “Uh, somewhere in Georgia?”Max all but jumps. “What? Already?”“Yeah. Traffic was light, we made good time.”“Wait, where exactly in Georgia?”“Hell if I know. We crossed over what, ten, fifteen minutes ago?” He looks to the girl for clarification and she nods, as though that means anything. “You said to drive to Georgia, so I did. You were never any more specific.”“You were supposed to know what I meant!”“How?”“I don’t know! Move over.”In the time it takes them to figure out that they’re in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Dustin decides to stop feigning sleep.“Can we stop for a bit? Sign says there’s a rest stop in a couple hundred yards,” he says, stretching as luxuriously as one can in a moving van.“No,” Max replies promptly, eyes focused on the road.“What? Why not? We’ve been driving all night -”“Oh, shut the hell up. We’ll stop in fifteen minutes, we’re almost there.”“Almost where?” Dustin frowns. “Wait, hold up. You actually have a – a plan?”“Well, duh. Why’d you think I want to be in Georgia and not in Okla-fucking-homa?”“Well -”“Oh, shut up.”Mike, kicked out of the driver’s seat, is standing awkwardly near the Lab girl. Dustin fishes a pack of cards out of his backpack and offers them the stack, deciding to swallow his fear and actually talk to her.“Wanna play Go Fish?”Max takes a hand off the steering wheel and turns around in disbelief. “You’re telling me,” she says slowly, “that after I told you to hurry up and only pack essentials because actual soldiers are after us, you took the time to pack a pack of cards?”Dustin nods. “Well, yeah. I figured we’d get bored on the road. I also brought a magnetic chessboard and a travel-size monopoly.”Max shakes her head incredulously and looks away.It takes about twenty minutes for them to reach Max’s intended destination, during which time the other Party members – and Jennifer – wake up.The girl, whom Mike introduces as El, picks up the rules of the game fairly quickly, if she struggles with a few words. There is something relieving about seeing her smile and giggle and strive to win (which she does, although Dustin rather suspects that Mike let her). It humanises her, makes her become more than the dangerous weapon, the spy, that Dustin had known her as.The others wake and join in (with the exception of Jennifer, who instead chooses to scroll absently through her phone), and before long they’re all sitting on the floor in the back of the van, laughing and shouting and having a much better time than they probably should be having under the circumstances, while Max looks on in a fond sort of exasperation.“We’re here,” she soon announces.She pulls up in the near-empty parking lot of what looks to be some sort of rest stop complex, complete with a coffee shop, a gas station, a supermarket, a park and public bathrooms. Further inspection tells Dustin that there are several franchise restaurants and a storage unit to the left of the main building.Max points her thumb in the direction of the bathrooms. “Toilet’s over there. First, we have to go the storage unit, and then you can all wander around for,” she pauses to check her watch, “about an hour.”“Why do we have to go to a storage unit?” asks Jennifer sceptically, as though such a thing is below her.“I have a locker there,” Max explains. “I hacked into my stepdad’s accounts a few years back, been renting it out since.”“Okay, that just made me more confused,” says Lucas, speaking for everyone. “Why’d you rent it out? What do we need it for?”“Phones,” says Max as a way of explanation, and proceeds to hop out of the van.The rest of the group follows behind her, their voices rising in question. El and Mike, Dustin notices, are never more than a few inches from each other.“What do you mean, phones? That’s the vaguest thing you could have possibly said!”They follow her into the storage unit. It’s cool inside, would be pleasantly cool if it didn’t smell so strongly of soured milk. Max walks over to a wall of lockers like she owns the place.They’re smaller than school lockers, Dustin thinks, but look a lot sturdier. Max trails her fingers over the stamped-on numbers, looking for a specific one.“Locker one-nine-eight-four, this is it,” she says, a small key already in her hand. With a click, the locker springs open to reveal…nothing.“Phones,” she repeats, with more urgency this time. She holds her hand out, clearly expecting them to be handed over. “Turn them off and give them to me.”“Wait, what?” Max may as well have insulted each and every one of Jennifer’s ancestors; the look on her face would be the same. “What the hell, why would I leave my phone in there?”Max rolls her eyes. “Oh my god. Look, don’t argue with me over this. Just give me the phone and I’ll explain. Do you want to keep playing Candy Crush or do you want to stay alive?”“Well,” starts Jennifer, but is cut off before she can continue by Lucas complying with Max’s instructions.“Here you go. Why do we have to put them in there, though?”“Because, genius,” Max says, but her voice is not at all harsh, “phones, especially newer phones, have trackers in them. You know, GPS? If they find out who we are, they probably have the resources to follow us no matter where we go. They’ll be safe here.” As Dustin hands Max his long-dead phone - looking back it can't have been that much of a mistake to prioritise packing board games over a charger - it occurs to him that Steve might have called after the group failed to meet up with him after leaving the Lab. Oh, he’s gonna kill us, he thinks, but doesn’t dwell on it too long. There are more stressful problems at hand. The rest of the group puts their phones in the locker, though Max has to pull Jennifer’s out of her cold (not dead, since Max hasn’t quite figured out a way to make glares kill) hands. She dumps it in the locker unceremoniously and locks it, tucking the key into a zipped pocket on the inside of her jacket.“You may as well have cut out my brain.” Jennifer mutters.“Oh, then I wouldn’t worry,” says Max, her voice totally serious, “the loss can’t be all that significant.”Jennifer looks like she’s doing her best to stay calm, and she doesn’t respond, instead choosing to examine her shoes in detail.“How do you know all this?” asks Dustin in newfound awe. “Like, the hot-wiring, the locker plan…”The amusement goes out of Max’s eyes as quickly as a flame being extinguished.“Uh, hot-wiring? I learned off online tutorials and practiced on Billy’s car when he was being especially awful. As for the other stuff…well. I’ve been planning on maybe doing something like this for…well, for a while.”She suddenly looks on the verge of tears and Dustin almost decides not to press the matter, but he’s so, so curious, it’s in his nature. Expecting Dustin to not ask follow-up questions is like expecting Mike to not be the poster child for teenage angst. “Something like this? Like, breaking into - ?”“No. No, nothing that extreme, just…running away. From home. If things got too – too bad.” Her breath hitches at the end of the sentence. She lets her hair fall down over her face and nearly runs out, muttering a quick “I’m going to the bathroom.”The door shuts behind her with a thud.“Dustin, you idiot!” Lucas exclaims. “You saw how upset she was, why couldn’t you just shut up?”“I –I don’t know,” replies Dustin, feeling shaken. “I guess – I didn’t think it would be that bad.”No-one says anything for almost a full minute before Lucas speaks up. “Okay, I’m going after her.”“But – isn’t she in the ladies’ bathroom?” asks Jennifer, as though that’s an important issue right now. A look from Lucas silences her. Without another word, he turns on his heels and goes after Max, and Dustin realises that, really, he never stood a chance.She’s leaning against the wall of a stall, scuffing the heels of her sneakers on the floor and trying very hard not to cry, when she hears the door creaking open.Footsteps approach and she crumples the tissue in her hand in hasty panic, wiping her eyes with two quick swipes.“Go away, Jennifer!” she calls. Her voice isn’t nearly as loud as she’d meant for it to be and breaks, pathetically, halfway through.“It’s not Jennifer, don’t worry,” answers Lucas’ voice. “Unless – unless you want Jennifer here? If you do, I can go away and -”“No.” Max does her best to conceal a sniffle. She wipes her eyes one more time before chucking the tissue into the toilet and kicking the door of the stall open. “God, no, are you kidding? I don’t want Jennifer.”“Well – okay. Uh.” He stands; his stance awkward, clearly not knowing what to do with himself, and somehow that relaxes more than if he’d been a smooth talker who knew all the right things to say.Max sighs and slides down the stall wall to sit on the floor; a questionable choice as some of the dirt on its surface appears close to celebrating a birthday, and folds her arms. After a pointed look from her, Lucas quickly does the same.“Is this floor – well, it’s obviously not clean, but is it -?” he begins.“Probably not.”“Oh.” He’s silent for a moment or two, then – “Are you okay?”“Nope.”“Okay,” he says. “Wanna, like, talk about it?”She gives him an amused and slightly sympathetic look. “I think you can guess what I’m gonna say.”“Right,” he says. “Right, obviously.”Max frowns. “What do you mean, obviously?”“I didn’t mean it in a bad way! Just – you know, you’re not exactly the most emotionally open person.”Despite the near-slight she brightens a little and nudges him playfully with her shoulder. “Hey, I can emotionally open! Sorta. How would you know? We only met, like, three days ago. Maybe you’re the closed-off one.”He finally returns her grin. “I’m not. I can guarantee you, I’m not.” He sighs, long and lingering, and his eyebrows scrunch together. They’re dark and bushy and lovely, she thinks. “It’s weird, to think of that. That we’ve only known each other for three days. It feels like so much longer.”“I mean, not really,” she says. His hand is only inches away – it would be so easy to take it. “Like, we’ve gone through a lot of shit already, yeah, but that doesn’t mean we know each other any better.”“Yeah, you’re right. But I still know some major things.”“Like what?” She finds that smiling is as easy as breathing when it comes to being around him, and in that instant she feels so light, so carefree, that she forgets all about nerves and pretences and reaches out to press her hand to his. Without missing a beat, he lifts her hand and intertwines their fingers. A sort of tingling warmth extends from her fingertips to her chest and suddenly she knows what safety feels like.(Never mind that they’re on the run, chased by soldiers and mad scientists, villains she’d thought existed only in comic books made flesh. Never mind that they’re harbouring a girl who kills as easily as she blinks, never mind that they’re half-crying on the dirty floor of some nameless bathroom on some nameless road.)(Never mind all that because they may be half-crying but they’re half-laughing.)“Like…” he continues, “you can hot-wire a van in record time.”She laughs. “That? That wasn’t fast at all, oh my god. I was terrified, and my hands were shaking so much. Usually I’m quicker.”“I know you’re a fast-paced person in general, then. A zoomer.”She rolls her eyes, though she finds him more endearing than annoying. “I know you’re a boringly careful driver,” she fires back.“Hey, the word is cautious. At least we’re not risking probable death when I drive, you drive like a maniac.”“Well, you’re not wrong,” she says, “but the key is precision. I drive fast, but I know what I’m doing.”“Okay.” A pause. “I know you’re from California.”“I know your parents are strict, but you get on really well with them.”“I know you can’t stand your stepbrother.”Max instinctively flinches as though burnt by a hot iron, but instead of dropping his hand she squeezes tighter.“Billy,” she says quietly. Her eyes focus on a spot on the wall. “To say I can’t stand him is the understatement of the year. Billy is…a psychopath. I’m not even exaggerating, he is. Like, he used to be okay, but somehow his dad messed him up enough for him to stop being...well, my brother, someone I liked and loved and cared about, and become someone who, if I’m being honest, terrifies me”Lucas is drawing little circles on her hand with his thumb, but says nothing.“He doesn’t get physically aggressive all that often. At least, not in the sense that he’d hit me, but he does throw things around when he gets angry. Drives way too fast, faster than I ever would or could, and he’s always shouting. I mean, jeez, he’s turned me into an anxiety-ridden piece of shit. That’s probably the worst part. What his dad did to him, he’s pretty much doing the same to me and that freaks me out the most.”She becomes aware of a muscle in her calf twitching. Lucas still says nothing, instead silently encouraging her to continue.“And I see myself…becoming like him? I get angry too much, and I yell and want to hit things, and it just sucks because he’s not someone I ever wanted to be. I don’t think his dad is something he ever wanted to be. Then I have these moments when I think, I could run away from all this. I could go away, move away, leave them all behind, and I still wouldn’t be leaving him behind.”The tears finally start to fall. Her voice is shaking a little; unsteady. “He’s a part of me now. I’m too much like him. And there’s his father, who makes my skin crawl, because he’s the one who did this to him in the first place. And then there’s my mother, who’s nothing short of pathetic these days. I guess a reason for going into this crazy Lab-break plan with so little caution is, even worst-case scenario, there’s no-one back home I want to go back to. ”Lucas looks more than a little alarmed, and she quickly laughs through her tears.“Sounds bad, doesn’t it? Well, at least I might never have to deal with them again."He’s silent for a long moment. Max figures he doesn’t know what to say – how could he?Then, “I’m sorry you went through all of that. I wish there was something nice I could say to help, but I can’t. It all just sucks.”She sighs. “Yeah. Sucks.”“Do you…” he seems hesitant to ask, but she prompts him with a look and a reassuring squeeze of her hand. “Do you think it’ll ever be safe enough to go back?”She leans a little less on the stall and a little more on his side. Their hands are extended in front of them, neither dropping their arm. “I don’t know,” she answers. “Maybe. After things’ve cooled down, we’ll probably figure something out. I’m not going back home, though. No fucking chance of that.”“Hmm. Maybe we can convince my parents to let you stay.” He says it as a joke, but something about how his words linger lets her know it’s a genuine hope.“Oh, we already blew any chance of that. Your dad thinks I’m your girlfriend, remember?”“Yeah.” His eyes go to their entwined hands, and Max is suddenly hyper-aware of the fact that they’re alone, holding hands; of her head leaning against his shoulder.“Is he right?” Lucas asks in a small, timid, hopeful voice.“I don’t know,” she murmurs back.They nearly subconsciously turn their heads towards each other. Max’s breath gets stuck in her throat. Their eyes flutter and she can almost feel his lips, so very close to hers and then lightly touching – so light, she wouldn’t be able to believe they’re there were it not for the erratic thumping of her heart.The door swings open so unexpectedly it’s like the very air yanks them apart.“Is this bathroom being renovated?” asks Will, clutching the handle of the swaying door. Jennifer and Dustin are behind him, though Mike and El are nowhere in sight.“Wh – what?” Max asks dumbly. Her heart is thumping in her chest and she reckons her cheeks are hot enough to fry an egg.“Is the bathroom being renovated? I mean, you two were taking so long, I assumed the bathroom was only half-done and you were building the rest of it.” He has a very smug look on his face - frankly he appears quite pleased with himself. “We were just talking,” says Lucas. He gets up, pulling Max with him, and notes their numbers. “Wait, where are Mike and the girl?”Mike and the girl, as it turns out, are in the main building of the rest stop, standing at the waffle bar. El seems to be taking a personal challenge on how many toppings she can dump on her waffles, and Mike isn’t exactly doing anything to stop her.The others reach them exactly as she finishes pouring an ample amount of cherry syrup on her already syrup-laden plate. Even Dustin, a big fan of sweets and unusual food combinations, has to grimace at the sight. Mike, who regularly puts syrup even on eggs, simply looks as her as though she’s the best thing since sliced bread. “God, it’s like she’s never seen sugar before,” Dustin says.Mike gives him a look that implies she actually hasn’t, and it shuts him up immediately. He recounts the story of how he’d found her after they place orders, while they eat, and they all become a little bit more scared of her; a little bit more awed.She levitates the pepper shaker two inches off the table and they all curse and duck and Dustin has the strange urge to bow because wow, she’s the most awesome person he’s ever seen. Sure, Mike had briefly mentioned her powers yesterday as they’d driven off, but everyone had been too much in shock then to truly take it in. She seems above humanity, an empress of sorts, yet she’d been nothing but a thing, a prisoner, for all of her years.The realisation of how powerful El is strikes a sort of anger in everyone, and soon enough they’re all yelling at Mike for not thinking, for straying from the plan, for putting everyone in danger.“Look, I understand your thinking,” says Max, who strangely enough seems to be the calmest (other than Jennifer, who doesn’t really talk at all), “I get that you wanted to help her out, but we only agreed to investigate, not to break someone out of there.”“But what would you have done? I couldn’t just leave her there! I was acting on instinct!”“I wouldn’t have strayed from the group in the first place.”“Let me get this straight,” adds Lucas. “You saw a psycho girl with a shaved head kill a bunch of people and your instinct was to break her out of the cell they died trying to put her in?” He shoots El an apologetic look. “No offense, El, but Mike.”They’re back on the road in less than an hour. Max drives, since she claims she’s the fastest, and everyone else mostly plays around with fake identities in case they are questioned.Max, as it turns out, has an actual and very credible fake ID – a driver’s license under the name Diana Mercury. She confesses she had to dish out considerable money for it, but they’re all grateful for it. Being pulled over wouldn’t be as much of a disaster as it could be without it.This inspires everyone to create very intricate cover stories for who they are and what they’re doing, just in case. In reality, it’s more fun than practical – a way to stop themselves from stressing and worrying and thinking about what exactly it is they’re doing. It’s nearly like planning characters for D&D again.Jennifer is most reluctant to participate, but with her one and only distraction – her phone – gone, she has nothing better to do, not with Lucas hogging the only other seat with a window.They come up with a story for El first, since they figure she’ll be the one to bring up the most questions.“She cut off her hair as part of a performance art piece,” decides Will, after Max knocks Dustin’s cult idea flat. “It was…to make a statement about society’s ideals of beauty, and she donated her hair to cancer patients.”“Her full name is Eleanor,” Mike adds. “She can’t speak English all that well because she’s from Sweden.”In truth, El understands about every word they throw at her and speaks enough to have full-fledged conversations with Mike. The only problem is that she seems to be out of practice and often appears not to know how to best string words together. Some abstract concepts confuse her, and her knowledge of slang and pop culture are the definition of non-existent.“I guess that works,” says Dustin.“If she’s from Sweden,” Max calls from the driver’s seat, “then how did she wind up on an American road trip? You need a story for that.”“How about, she’s my cousin?” offers Mike.Will shakes his head. “You two look nothing alike.”“Second cousin! She’s my second cousin, and she’s visiting over the summer because she got into, like, Stanford, and she wants to see if she’d like it here so we’re taking her on a road trip there.”“Good enough,” says Max, “only I think someone else should be her second cousin. People are gonna be weirded out if they see you, well, looking at her like you look at her.”“I have no idea what you mean,” says Mike. He turns to look at El with something Will can only describe as cartoonish heart eyes. “Right, El?”Max snorts. “Exactly my point. Will, you be her cousin.”“Cool,” replies Will.“You guys are ridiculous,” says Mike.“Okay, moving on,” says Dustin. “Will, your parents are from Sweden but moved here before you were born. You and El have the same last name.”“Which is?”He considers this for a moment. “Joysson. With a double S.”“Shouldn’t we maybe change our first names, too? I’ll be, like, Raymond,” decides Will.“Raymond Joysson, Eleanor Joysson,” tests Mike. “That’s good enough. I’ll be -”“You can’t be Han or Solo, we need average and respectable names!” Max shouts from the driver’s seat. “I wasn’t going to say Han Solo! I’ll be…Roger Stephens.”“Wow, that almost makes me believe you aren’t a Captain America nerd.” Max doesn’t turn around again, but they can all nearly hear her rolling her eyes.“Shush. I’m Roger Stephens, I’m friends with Will – Raymond – and I’m going because I want a campus tour of Stanford.”“You guys do realise we’re going in the opposite direction of Stanford, though?” asks Dustin.“Not anymore,” replies Max. “I rented the locker in the opposite direction so they’d be thrown off, we’re heading for Cali now.”“That clears that up.”“I’ll be Edith Bernadette Von Schweetz,” Jennifer chimes in, speaking for the first time since they’d set off again. “I, uh, got the last name from Wreck-it Ralph. I liked that movie.”“So I couldn’t be Han but she can have that ridiculous name?” asks Mike.“Hey, I didn’t make the rules, Wheeler,” says Max.“Actually, you did?”“Can I be Peter Stark?” Dustin pipes up.“I don’t know if that’s from the Avengers or from Game of Thrones, but no. Change the last name.”“Ugh, I can’t think of anything else. Can I be related to Will and El and have the same last name? That way I won’t need an explanation for being here.”“Fair enough. Lucas?”“Walter Deckard,” he answers, without missing a beat. “Deckard from Blade Runner. Walter because I like the name.”For a few hours, they make up increasingly detailed stories of their lives up to now. Mike and El retire early in the conversation to the back of the van, where they talk in hushed, private voices about who knows what. Will looks at them and feels envious of the intimacy they share already. They barely touch, he notes, but the soft tone of their voices is enough to make up for that.Their stories develop into road trip game after road trip game, and sometime in the late afternoon Max pulls up at an electronics store and instructs Dustin and Lucas to get everyone burners and to hurry up.They leave the store with not only several burners but with four high-quality walkie-talkies they’d found on sale.“They’re cool!” Dustin insists upon showing the others. “Besides, we’re practically secret agents. Outlaws. We need cool communication methods!”Then, as they set off again, they start to argue the practicality of radios, and it all feels like the new normal.Mike Wheeler’s known El for exactly a day, and already there’s nothing he loves better than talking to her.She’s very curious. Asks him a hundred different questions before he can finish explaining the last one because he doesn’t want to leave anything unsaid and she won’t waste any moment she’s able to speak her mind now that she’s escaped that terrible place. She doesn’t seem to mind his rambling, or his tendency to stray off-topic, though she does ask about the different words he uses often enough he eventually gets out a piece of paper just to note down questions he doesn’t want to forget.And he does explain everything. From the plots of Star Wars and the X-Men to what school is like to what all the road signs mean.She looks alarmed when he describes stars as big exploding balls of gas, and he laughs and tells her that no, they’re too far away to harm us, and from this distance they’re actually really pretty.She, in turn, doesn’t talk very much about her life in the Lab, and he doesn’t blame her – the only word she’s used to describe it is bad. Bad place, bad people, bad. When he explains what the word abominable means, after a minute-long spiel about Bigfoot, she immediately uses that, too, to describe the lab. “It’s okay now, you know?” he tells her. “We’ve driven too far out for them to find us, and even if they were close they’d have no way of tracking us. We got rid of the phones. She nods and tightens her arms around herself and doesn’t say more.She’s still wearing his oversized navy hoodie, though it’s been joined by an old pair of jeans from Max and the white Converse sneakers Mike outgrew half a decade ago. The hospital gown was ripped up and thrown in the waste bin back at the rest stop.He tells her how he wishes he still had his phone so he could show her pictures of the things he’s talking about. “But Max is right,” he adds. “They were dangerous, they might find us with them.”He doesn’t have to explain to her what danger is.They don’t really join the others again. Max isn’t very eager to let anyone else drive, and Mike knows that everyone is still pissed at him, though they don’t let it on that much. He doesn’t blame them – their current situation is his fault, after all. He wouldn’t change a thing, but it’s his fault.He doesn’t talk or think about the man in the Lab. The one he’d stabbed; probably killed. Nothing good would come out of that train of thought, and besides, maybe he’d lived. The cut hadn’t been that deep, and surely someone had found him soon enough to help.Not that Mike believes that.He doesn’t tell the others about that, of course. That would only make them more pissed at him, and it’s not like they need to know. It’s nothing that will affect any of them. He told El as much, back at the rest stop before everyone else had come back, and she'd agreed with a small nod.“I bet she could make this van fly,” calls back Dustin at one point. They’ve broken out a very intense game of Monopoly, and Will in particular looks very close to flinging the board out the window. Mike rolls his eyes and tells him she’s not a dog, not here to do tricks for his entertainment. El gives him the most impassive stare.Later, when they pull up for a bathroom break, Mike and El sit at a picnic table. She seems a bit distracted, concentrating on something other than his words for once. He doesn’t get it until he sees the blood trickling from her nose. She wipes it away and he looks to the van to find it floating at least five inches off the ground. El blinks and it settles back down, and they share a grin before everyone else comes back.They return right to the back of the van, like it’s an unspoken agreement, and spend the next couple of hours talking.They don’t hold hands or anything, not like Mike’s seen Lucas and Max do when they think no-one can see, but he feels close to her all the same. She doesn’t exactly seem comfortable with physical contact, and he doesn’t want to do anything to upset her. Talking to her is enough. The sky darkens sometime around ten. They’re driving in a rural, mountainous area now, and there’s very little light pollution. Outside he can see the pinprick lights of stars.“Hey, Max, can you pull over?” he asks somewhere around midnight. “It should be fine, there isn’t anyone around. We can get some fresh air.”Max complies, and they pull over to the side of a patchy road. He can hear crickets and the bubbling gurgle of a stream.“Oh,” says Jennifer, looking spooked, “I’m not going outside, there aren’t any streetlights. There could be, like, bears out there. Or serial killers.”“Suit yourself,” Max shrugs. She walks off the road and into the trees, Lucas following behind.Dustin glares at the retreating pair for a moment before shaking his head and walking in the opposite direction.“Hey, Dustin, maybe don’t wander off alone?” Will says. “Like, I know your sense of direction is great, but…”When Dustin doesn’t look back, Will speeds after him.Mike helps El step out of the van. Her glance immediately goes up.“Oh,” she says, sounding shaken. Mike looks up too, only to see countless stars plastered across the sky.“Oh,” she says again. She spins around, neck craned back, as though undecided on what part of the sky she should first absorb.“Yeah, those are stars,” he says. “I told you they’re pretty.”“Pretty,” she echoes, her gaze finally returning to the ground. She steps closer to him – much closer. They’re not more than an inch apart. Her eyes focus on his face for a second before widening, and he finds himself unable to look at anything other than her brown eyes; the gentle slope of her eyelashes. She states very carefully, “you have stars trapped in your cheeks.”Colour rushes to Mike’s face. “W-what? Oh, no, no. Those aren’t…they’re not stars. They’re, like, freckles. They’re kinda lame.”“I think they look like stars,” she murmurs, and she reaches out – not that she has far to reach – to run her fingers lightly over his left cheekbone. “They’re pretty.”He’s torn between being flustered at her words, her touch, the warmth flooding through him, and being troubled at her familiarity with the word trapped. The former wins, this time. She’s too wonderful for him to be able to focus on the bad things. She deserves better, too. The starlight is reflected in her eyes and lighting up her face, and she’s so beautiful and content with being here that he can only think screw everything, it’s all worth it, and, she was wrong, it’s her eyes the stars are trapped in. “Thank you,” he says, finding that he can’t get his voice above a whisper. “You’re pretty too. Really pretty.”The corners of her mouth lift up in a small smile. She looks as breathless as he feels. “Like the stars?”“Better.”He would very much like to kiss her, he thinks, but that’s too much and too soon, and besides she probably doesn’t even feel the same, she’s like a goddess and he’s just some nerdy dweeb who’s helping her out of a tight situation – but then why does she look at him like he may as well have made the stars and hung them just for her?“Tell me more about them,” she says, stepping away and taking all the warmth with her.They sit at the side of the road, on a dry patch of overgrown grass, and he shows her all the different constellations.“See the reddish star in Orion’s shoulder?” he asks after a while, pointing. “That’s Betelgeuse, one of the coolest stars. Both literally and figuratively, it’s actually colder than most stars since it’s a supergiant. Astronomers are expecting it to go supernova any day now. That’s when the entire star collapses and explodes. It’s probably already died, but we can’t see it since it’s so far away. We probably won’t live to see it, when I say any day I mean it in astronomical terms…”His explanation is only interrupted by El’s voice.“Stars can die?”He frowns. “Yeah. Anything can die.”She appears disturbed by this, but says nothing. He draws his hands closer to himself and swallows down the jittery feeling in his chest.Today isn’t right, he tells himself. Today she’s scared, and you’re scared, and it doesn’t matter that she thinks the stars are in your cheeks when they’re really in her eyes. What matters is keeping her safe, and you won’t keep her safe by giving in to selfish feelings.They sit and watch the stars die.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

May 21, 2018
They stop in a small town in the late morning the next day.They’re somewhere in Louisiana by now. Several layers of dust cling to the bottom half of the van, and by half past ten the heat is great enough to choke them.It doesn’t exactly help that the only showers they’ve had access to recently are public restroom sinks from the side of the motorway with varying degrees of cleanliness, ranging from questionable to 19th century rat infestation.They make do with water and with the spray they’d packed before leaving Hawkins. Collectively, they form a storm-cloud of cheap deodorant and misery.After a quick, uneventful trip to the pharmacy for sunscreen, which not one of them had thought to bring, they wind up in the shadowed booth of a reasonably well-frequented WafflehouseMax hasn’t removed her sunglasses all morning. On the contrary, the large shades have been joined by a dark grey cap which she pulls low over her face. Will suspects it had originally been black but has since faded. She sits sandwiched between the wall and Lucas, slinking away from the sunlight.El, by contrast, leans right into the light, splaying her fingers as though she can’t believe the sun is kissing them. Her hood, borrowed from Mike, is flipped up to prevent unwanted attention to her shaved head, though she wasn't particularly happy when Mike suggested to do so. Now, though, her eyes are closed and she looks almost peaceful.Mike sits next to her, unsurprisingly. Not close enough to touch her but close enough that light seems to bounce to and fro between them. He looks at her with the same expression of wonder and awe she holds for the sky.Will drags a chair over to the booth to avoid overcrowding any one side –Dustin is next to Lucas, looking very thoroughly pissed off, and Jennifer sits beside Mike, though she puts enough room between them that she’s close to sliding off the seat. He sits down and cringes as he opens a very oily menu. “Would it kill people to wipe their hands before touching stuff?”Dustin shrugs and opens his mouth to answer, but doesn’t have time to begin the sentence before a waitress is at their side, notepad in hand. She has a large, unidentifiable stain on her shirt, is chewing a wad of gum that has stained her teeth purple and she looks tired.“Hi, can I take your order?” She doesn’t even try to feign perkiness.“Black coffee,” says Max immediately. “Extra strong. Actually, would you be able to dump a couple shots of espresso into a drip coffee?”The waitress looks at her with some hesitation. Beside Max, she appears well-rested. She grimaces but notes the order down. “Sure."“Cool.” Max sits back and folds her arms. “That’s a great idea, how have I never thought of that before? That’s it for me, by the way.”Lucas frowns in obvious concern. “Max,” he begins, placing a hand on her arm, “don’t you think you should maybe eat something?”Will wonders when they got so comfortable.  “I’m not hungry,” she replies, tracing a mindless pattern in the thin layer of grease on the tabletop.“At least, like, drink something that isn’t coffee. Water?”“Nah,” she says. “I’m fine. There’s water in coffee, I’m doing okay.”“Max,” stresses Lucas, but she shakes his hand off and looks away. Lucas clearly doesn’t want to drop it but decides that doing so is a better option than picking a fight with her. She’s intimidating under any circumstances, but her current state is especially terrifying.Will looks up. “Um, I’ll have a latte with extra sugar and a plain waffle.”The waitress nods and writes his order down.Max raises her shades and looks to Will. “That’s an insult to coffee. Straight, black coffee is the only acceptable way to go, your order’s practically syrup.” She sounds serious but it's easy to tell by the tilt of her eyebrows that she's only joking. The corner of Will’s mouth twitches upwards in a half-smile. “Yeah, well, wait till Dustin makes his order.”“Hey!” protests Dustin, though he makes no further attempt to deny his love for sugar. “Besides, straight anything would be uncharacteristic for me.”Max snorts with laughter at this and too late Will becomes aware of Jennifer’s presence, growing steadily more awkward.“Oh,” she says under her breath.Will’s eyes widen in panic. He’s been out to his friends for years now, and Max – well, she hasn’t explicitly known until now, but she probably suspected it and, in any case, she seems like the kind of person who wouldn’t care either way, but Jennifer…she’s another story entirely.The others don’t even register anything is wrong. El probably doesn't even understand, of course, but it’s so normal for Will to joke about his sexuality around his friends that no-one else thinks twice about it.Will feels his heart rate begin to pick up. It’s not that he really cares about her opinion, but he’s endured so much crap from her friends and they hadn’t even known. Now she’d just confirm it for them and things would go back to being as bad as they’d been in middle school –worse, probably. His panic is so overwhelming he doesn’t stop to think that she doesn’t have her phone, that they’re on the run; that they’ll probably never even return to Hawkins. All he can think about is the overwhelming dread he feels.Jennifer turns a bright shade of red, looks away and says nothing.Will’s heart still thuds against his ribcage while his friends place their orders. El, of course, can’t tell that something is wrong, and while Mike shoots him a look that Will's sure is meant to be reassuring he’s too preoccupied talking to El to really do anything to help.Will likes El, he really does. She’s sweet and kind and so unexposed to the world and its conventions that he’d feel safe telling her anything, and of course he’s glad they rescued her. Of course.But…well. Mike was his best friend. Is, he hastily corrects himself. He’s always there when things are bad, is a friend not just in the friends are there and friends don’t lie way but in the if you go crazy I’ll go crazy right along with you just so you’re not alone way. Will has always had the comfort of knowing that, no matter what happens, no matter how bad things get, Mike will always be there for him, but now he’s not so sure. Now Mike’s main priority is El, and Will and his problems – unimportant, miniscule, Will knows, compared to hers – take a backseat. He feels incredibly selfish for it, but not having Mike by his side is a very lonely feeling.Well, he reckons, I was bound to stop mattering one day.He feels guilty for thinking the words in the instant after he does. It nearly feels like betraying Mike - he's always been there for Will, always, he deserves to be supported and accepted in return, but that doesn’t make the feeling go away. Looking to Jennifer, he suddenly has another reason to feel badly towards her. Not only does she more or less hold the strings for the remainder of life in school - provided they ever return - but she has so many people who adore her, has no shortage of perfect friends, has her perfect parents and her perfect life. He bets she’s never once felt lonely.Their food arrives and they eat in relative silence, and when Will thinks his heart is about to leap out through his throat he pushes his half-eaten food aside, claims a headache and goes outside for some fresh air.It turns out that the dusty, overheated air outside is a lot less fresh than the inside of the diner and he immediately missed the air conditioning, but he’s alone for the moment and that’s what he wants.Unfortunately, it doesn’t last.“I’m sorry,” says Jennifer quietly, walking up behind him. She sits down next to him, leaving much more space between them than she normally would have. “I…I really don’t know what else to say, I’m sort of mortified.”Will scrunches his eyes shut and lets out a short breath. Right. Mortified. The only reaction he should have expected.“Look, Jennifer, at this point I’m past caring what others think of it,” he says, ignoring the twinge in his chest that whispers you do care, it terrifies you every second. “Alright, you have an opinion, it exists, but it’s not relevant and it doesn’t matter to me. You’re gonna tell everyone at school about it anyways so I’m not even gonna try to change your mind.”Jennifer exhales in the way that someone might if amused, or exasperated, or both. “Will,” she says, “is that really what you think of me? I’m mortified at myself. I mean, jeez, I was coming onto you so strongly and couldn’t take a damn hint. I’m so, so sorry for that.”“I…” shock, then relief floods through Will’s body. “You’re okay with it?”She nods slowly, eyebrows knitting together in possible incredulity. “Uh, yeah? Why wouldn’t I be? It’s none of my business, for one, and I’m not a complete asshole, for another. It hurts to hear that you thought I’d react like that. You don’t know me well enough to assume that.”Will shakes his head, still unable to believe what he was hearing. “You didn’t know me well enough to assume it was okay to start hitting on me, but here we are anyways! And as for being an asshole, well, maybe you’re not, but your friends weren’t exactly nice about it in the past. And they didn’t even know. How was I supposed to think you’d react? That you’d throw rainbow confetti at me? That you wouldn’t mock me or out me or call me a…well.”At first she looks very pissed off, but then the second part of his statement seems to register and her eyes widen with realisation. “That’s why – oh my goodness, I’m so sorry. Will, I’m so sorry. To be honest, I’m only now catching on to how horrible all my friends were, but I never realised…”Will fidgets awkwardly, now regretting his outburst. “You don’t have to keep apologising about it, it’s not your fault. It’s just that I expected you to react badly, since everyone in your…I dunno, clique, social circle, gave me so much crap for being different.”“Hell. And I was wondering why your friends hate me so much.”“It’s just that it’s hard to disassociate you from, say, Troy, or Stacy, or James. Yeah, they’re being little shits with how they’re treating you, but it’s for a reason. That’s…well, that’s actually another reason why I expected you to take it badly. I thought – this is really horrible, by the way – but I thought that it would somehow justify how awful we’re being to you. Like, we pretty much assumed that you’re a bad person and you deserve it and that was that, but you’re not, and you don’t deserve it, and what we’ve been doing is a really shitty thing to do to someone.”Jennifer is quiet for a long moment. “That’s…I can’t blame you for it. It’s hurtful, yes, but I can’t blame any of you for it.”“You should. It’s unfair, you’ve never done anything bad to us.”“I’ve never done anything good, either. All those years I could’ve asked Troy and his friends to stop, and I didn’t.”“There’s no use blaming yourself for things you had no control over.”Jennifer stares blankly ahead and ignores his statement. “They’ll never really accept me, will they?”“I…” Will doesn’t want to lie to her. “I don’t know. They don’t trust too easily, and they do blame you for stuff, even if it wasn’t really your fault.”“Do they really think I’d choose to go on some death-defying rescue mission with them for the sole purpose of bullying them?”“You didn’t actually go to the Lab with us, you joined later,” he reminds her. "I don't know, I think we assumed it was a really elaborate prank." “Still. It’s still dangerous, and I didn’t have to, but I wanted to help and I wanted to be your friend.”He frowns at that. “I don’t mean to be rude, but yeah, why did you come with us? You didn’t have to, you weren’t really involved, and it’s not like you’re lacking in friends.”She makes that noise again, an exhale partly amused and partly done with everything. “I guess everything just sucked. It has for a while now, I just haven’t noticed. Everyone was awful, and I finally realized that and I wanted out. Then I saw you guys, and you were so different from everything I had. You weren’t fake or toxic in the least and you genuinely cared about each other so much. I just – leaped at the chance to join you.” She scratches chipped blue polish, once immaculate, off her nails and sighs. “I guess I never considered the possibility that I wouldn’t be wanted.”“I’ll be your friend,” Will says then, because he knows how it feels to not be wanted, to be on the outside looking in, better than ever before. “I can’t say or promise anything about the others, but I’ll be your friend.”“I’ll be your friend, too.”Dustin doesn’t really know why Jennifer followed Will outside, or why Will went outside to begin with, but he doesn’t think it spells good news, so he does his best to get everyone to hurry up and leave, for Will's sake. It’s a more difficult task than it should have been, as the other four with him are too preoccupied not-so-subtly flirting to pay attention to a word he says.God. Do they really have to be like this?Eventually it works. They pay the bill, tip the waitress and enter the awful heat outside the diner.Will and Jennifer are having a surprisingly pleasant-looking conversation on the bench of a wooden picnic table. Jennifer seems much more considerate of Will’s personal space than before, but she sits comfortable close. It looks friendly, actually. Dustin resolves to ask Will what happened later.“Right,” says Max upon reaching them. “I don’t know about you but I feel filthy and miserable and I want to get a motel room tonight.”“Room singular?” Jennifer asks, fussy as usual. Nice to know the world as Dustin knew it hadn't completely imploded on itself, then. “Room singular,” Max confirms, apparently too exhausted for snark. “I don’t want to stay in some shady, dirty place, which rules out all the super cheap motels, and we can’t blow all our money at once, so for now one nice room is all we can afford. On to more urgent stuff, I want to put as much distance between us and those fuckers as possible, so I’m not gonna be stopping for food or whatever until tonight. Here’s the plan. I’ll go to an internet café, there’s one right around the corner. I’ll look up a nice motel that’s affordable and, you know, as far away from Hawkins as we can get in one day. While I do that, Mike and Lucas will go to a supermarket, buy whatever. The rest of you can do what you like as long as you watch El and stay in the van. Well, your options will be pretty limited. Just play cards or micro-Monopoly, I dunno. We won’t take long. Questions? No? Good.”It's an overwhelming amount of information. Dustin’s name wasn’t mentioned, so he supposes he’s in charge of the Monopoly, but...“I’ve got a question,” he says. “Shouldn’t I go to the store with them? I’m usually in charge of snacks.”“Uh, no, I’d rather not eat Pez candies for a full day,” says Max. “Mike’s sensible enough, I trust him not to buy a bag full of crap. Just go play cards with El.”El speaks up. “I want to go with Mike.”“There shouldn’t be more than two in the supermarket, you’ll draw attention to yourselves and I don’t think it’s safe, they have cameras in there. We can’t risk someone getting that footage and recognising you.”“It should be okay,” says Mike. “She has her hood up, we’re in the middle of nowhere, the Lab has no way of knowing where we are. I want to keep her safe as much as you do, but she’ll be fine.”“Fine. Just – be careful, okay?” As a last-second thought Max removes her shades and puts them on El. “Okay, now at least you can’t see most of her face.”“Am I still going with them?” Lucas asks. “You said no more than two in the supermarket.”“Yeah, no, you can come with me,” says Max. “Better to travel in pairs. It’s safer.”Safer, my ass, Dustin thinks.They leave and the remaining three return to the van, which is unlocked as keys aren’t exactly an option. The engine isn’t running and neither is the air conditioning, rendering the van uninhabitable. At first Jennifer, Dustin and Will stay outside in complete silence, and when that gets awkward Dustin offers a game of cards granted they keep the windows open.He barely starts shuffling the cards when Jennifer asks, “so, what’s in all of these boxes?”She’s referring to the four metal boxes at the back of the van with latching lids. They were too heavy to lift, and even so it would've been suspicious to leave them behind, just lying around Hawkins. Max had warned that they were covered in their fingerprints, so they'd just been using them as makeshift chairs. “Oh, Max and I looked through those the first day, when everyone was at Mike’s packing stuff,” says Will. “There’s nothing much in them, just generic Lab uniforms, the kind the guards inside were wearing. The fourth one is just boots and rubber gloves.”That doesn’t seem to sound particularly interesting to Jennifer, who regards the boxes with a blank look before walking away, but Dustin is intrigued. Not only does he adore science, but he’s extremely curious about anything and everything as a rule. “Generic Lab uniforms? Were they used? New, old, bloodied? You can’t just say they’re generic and leave it at that!”Will looks to be at a loss. “I don’t know, man, they’re just white uniforms. They didn’t look dangerous, so we didn’t go through them in much detail. I guess they don’t have much use for the vans anymore so they’re like a provisional storage space.”Dustin drops the cards and nearly trips in his haste to reach the closest box. It unlatches with a satisfying click, and inside are layer upon layer of folded white uniforms. He’s about to start inspecting them when he and Will are distracted by a small "hey," from Jennifer.“What is it?” Will asks, his voice nervous already. He walks up to the front to join her at the window.“Nothing bad, don’t worry. I just saw an electronics store, right there.” She points at said store.“Yeah, so?” asks Will, missing the point.“Look at that sign in their window. Used phones starting at fifteen dollars. I’m thinking they can’t trace us with a second-hand phone purchased with cash in the middle of nowhere. We have the burners, but those really suck.”“Fifteen dollars? Jennifer, they’re going to be old Nokias.”“I can spend more than fifteen, just not too much. I’ll buy a crappy old one if I have to, I just need entertainment. I haven’t had a phone for a full 24 hours, I can’t keep living like this. I’m gonna go check it out, be right back?”Will, who doesn’t feel physical pain when separated from a phone, appears a bit uncertain but nods anyway. “Sure, go ahead. Just be careful.”“Okay,” she says brightly. Dustin and Will watch her skip over to the store.“So, are you friends with her or something now?” Dustin asks, turning. “Yeah, she’s cool. I, uh, told her I’m gay, so she’s stopped being weird. You guys should give her a chance.”Dustin would inquire further - he hadn't expected her to be chill with Will coming out - but the open box is just there, waiting to be investigated, so he dismisses the topic for later. They set each item out of its box as neatly as they can. There’s nothing of interest about the boots or gloves, certainly no futuristic sci-fi devices like Dustin had hoped, and the box is empty otherwise.The first box of uniforms seems just as disappointing at first. Some shirts are faded, some are stained, but as Dustin complains, the stains are all “boring tea or coffee stains, nothing cool like blood.”They’re about to give up and put the uniforms back when Will stops dead in his tracks. He runs his fingertips over the front of the shirt in his hand once, twice.“Dustin,” he says.Dustin looks up from a painfully dull pair of trousers. “Yeah?”“Look at the stitching on the front.”Dustin furrows his brow and does so. “Yeah? It says DOE. Department of Energy. I saw that, too.”“Under it.”He squints and then he sees it. Under the prominent DOE logo, sewn in a barely-distinguishable cream thread, was a name. Shepard. “Shit. They have names on them.” Dustin’s voice is slightly above a whisper. “Shepard. Could that be Christopher Shepard? He was a senior when we were freshmen, no-one really knows what he did after graduating except that he stayed in Hawkins? Weird guy.”“It could be.”They scramble to reach the other shirts and find more names. Broker. Matthews. Martin. Some names are on more than one shirt, others are once-occurring.Dustin grabs a card off the floor – the Five of Spades – and removes a capped pen from his pocket. He notes down every name he’s found already on the blank parts of the card then pauses. “Will, you do realise what this means? We have the identities of people who worked in the lab illegally, possibly people who hurt El. We have proof of who they are. If we’re ever safe, we can report them, or sue them, I don’t know, but the important thing is we can get them put away for good.”Will nods, looking as enthusiastic as Dustin feels. Then his face falls. “If we’re ever safe.”They’re silent for a moment or two, then Dustin digs out the last shirt in the box. He unfolds it, prepares to read the name aloud.Then:“Holy shi -”Jennifer walks up to the electronics store, barely able to refrain herself from clapping in glee. Please, she thinks, let them have affordable smartphones.The interior is pleasantly cool, if simple. It’s a small store, most likely family-owned. Two electric fans are running, and to her right and left are glass-encased shelves displaying various used phones.As Will had predicted, the “starting price” phones, while indeed priced at fifteen dollars, are used flip-phones. Ancient, almost completely useless, but damn if their condition isn’t pristine.The smartphones are placed further into the store, near the till. The newer, nicer models are way out of her price range – though she’s brought all her cash with her, she’d still rather not spend too much – but she reckons she can spare just enough for a scruffier one.She approaches the cashier, a dark-haired boy with nervous eyes who looks to be around her age. He gulps very visibly upon seeing her, sets down his book face-down and says, “Hi, can I help you?”Jennifer smiles and turns her attention to a row of old models in the display. They’re barely over the fifty dollar mark, and she shudders at how out-of-date they’ll surely be, but they’re better than listening to Max argue with everyone for entertainment. She picks out the nicest-looking of them and points to it. “Yeah, I want to buy this one.”He leaps up, unlocks the display and examines the phone with surprise, looking back and forth between it and her; her expensive clothes, shoes, highlights. “You want this one? You on the run or something?”She shrugs. “Parents took away my phone and cut off my allowance. I have to be resourceful.”He seems to buy this. “Fair enough.” He sets the phone down at the front desk. “Anything else?”“Yeah, I’d like a SIM card. Also, can I use your account to buy a data plan?”He looks at her doubtfully. “You have a credit card? Sorry, it’s just – I don’t usually run the shop, my parents are out of town. I don’t think I’m meant to buy data plans for customers. But, like, you can set it up yourself fairly easily. You just go to –”“Yeah,” she says, dragging the word out, “that’s not going to work for me. I don’t have access to a computer. Or to the internet.”“W-well,” he stutters, clearly at a loss, “there’s an internet café just down -” He makes a vague gesture in the direction of the café where Max currently is.“I’m in a rush. Like, really in a rush.” She reads the name off his nametag, which was clearly homemade and, thus, quite illegible. “Look, Tommy -”“Timmy,” he corrects. In that moment she sees him, sees Timmy, a pale kid who doesn’t get out much and is probably a bigger nerd than Dustin and Mike combined, who has little experience of social interactions and even less experience of girls talking to him, who’s very clearly staring at her boobs, and she thinks, I can work with that.“Timmy. Look, you seem like a pretty cool guy. Really,” she lies, hoping she is taking the right approach. “I’d actually love to hang out sometime. We could get coffee, talk about…stuff?” She leans forward, forearms balanced on the counter. His eyes widen fractionally, and when he also starts to lean forward she knows he’s taken the bait.  She glances at the book he'd set down, reads the title of a cheesy romance novel, and when she speaks again her voice is a whisper of promise. “Timmy, this could be our great beginning.”His face reddens instantly, and he begins to stutter a response but she cuts him off, twirling a lock of her long blonde hair around her finger.“But, like I said, my parents aren’t pleased with me right now. We’re just passing through this town, you know? If we don’t get in contact now…well, then I’m afraid we might never see each other again.”His eyes widen with panic.Twenty minutes later, Jennifer walks out with an old iPhone, a data plan, Timmy’s phone number and no intention of ever speaking to him again.She gets in the van, slams the door behind her and is about to announce her purchase with smug satisfaction when she sees Will and Dustin huddled over a shirt, both white-faced and slack-jawed.“I was only gone for half an hour,” she says. “What did you do?”“Is Max coming?” Will asks, urgency in his voice.“No?” replies Jennifer uncertainly. “What the hell happened?”“Check if she’s coming. Check the window!” Dustin yells, voice louder with every word, sounding just as panicked as Will.“Jesus!” Jennifer looks out the window. “She’s not coming.”They relax a little, but are still extremely agitated.“Come look at what we found,” says Will.Jennifer sits on the floor next to them and Dustin starts explaining.“We were looking through these boxes and noticed that the shirts have surnames on them,” he lifts up a shirt to show her one such example and she nods, prompting him to continue. “So we started writing them down because these are obviously some of the people who hurt El and all those other kids and this is evidence of their identities. Then -”He swallows, and holds up the shirt he and Will were freaking out over, and she sees what all the fuss is about.“Holy hell, isn’t that -”Will nods rapidly. “Yeah.”“Fuck.”“We can’t say anything,” Dustin declares. “It just – it wouldn’t go down well. Remember what happened yesterday? This would be a repeat of that, but worse, and I don't think she could handle that. She's already stressed and exhausted.”“That would be bad,” admits Jennifer, “but I don’t think we should hide anything from anyone. We’re in this together.”“I don’t want to lie to them, but Dustin has a point,” says Will. “Besides, do they really need to know? It’s not, like, crucial information. If we’re ever safe, then they’ll find out and they might be mad at us for a bit and that’ll be that, but if we tell them now it’ll just distract them.”“So we’re all in agreement? This stays between the three of us?” Dustin asks.“Agreed,” says Will.“I…agreed,” decides Jennifer. “We’d be causing unnecessary pain.” Also, she doesn’t want to piss Max off further. She is pissed off enough already.They place the uniforms back in their respective boxes, hurrying when Will spots a flash of red hair out the window.Max enters the van and squints at them suspiciously. “What did you do?”“Nothing,” say Will and Dustin, at the same time that Jennifer says “I got a phone.”Before Max gets a chance to start chewing her out, the door of the van opens again and Mike and El walk in. Several yellow boxes of frozen Eggos fall to the ground, and there are more in the grocery bag Mike is holding. They all turn to look at him in disbelief and he cringes, sheepishly.“She really likes waffles?”Lucas takes a turn driving, for a change, and despite Max’s protests that she is fine, can do it herself, she conks out after not five minutes on the road – not before giving Jennifer a stern talking-to about not being stupid and logging into an account on her phone, of course.While Lucas drives and Max dozes in the passenger’s seat, the others find their own groups. Jennifer, looking pleased with herself, sits cross-legged between Dustin and Will, taking various online quizzes and announcing each party member’s Hogwarts house. They have all the newfound intimacy of three people sharing a secret – though Mike is too busy to ask them about it.There had been an old man selling used books outside the grocery store, and Mike was quick to purchase all of his favourites for El – the Lord of the Rings books among them. Now they sit together while he reads the first volume to her. She’s more than capable of reading them for herself, he’s found, but said she prefers to rest her head on his shoulder and listen to his voice.About halfway through the first chapter, she whispers to him “your hair tickles,” and she reaches a hand out to weave their fingers together. It’s more difficult to hold the book and turn the pages with one hand, but it doesn’t matter. Her hand is warm and her presence is light and he couldn’t be happier than she’s safe and with them and out of the Lab’s reach. He probably loves her already and the thought isn’t scary or foreign in the least. It feels natural. Normal. Good, as though there was never a time in his life he didn't love her, only a time he didn't realize it.They reach the motel Max decided on just past nightfall, during which time they've managed to eat an entire two boxes of frozen waffles. Lucas parks the van at the back of the motel and Max turns to face the others in the back.“’Kay, Wheeler. You're tall so they'll think you're an adult. Go book a double room on the ground floor, then turn the lights on and off for a bit so we know where you are. We’ll climb in through the window.”“Are – are we not all going in?”“A nice place like this won’t let seven of us in one room. they'd probably view it as some kind of human rights violation,” she explains. “Unless three of you want to sleep in the van, that is, and judging by your smell I wouldn’t recommend it.”“Why do I have to go?”“Let’s see,” the day of rest hadn’t done much to calm Max down. She begins counting off her fingers. “I look like I’ve been doing five different kinds of drugs. I don’t trust her,” she jerks her thumb in Jennifer’s direction, “to pull anything off. El is…El. Will looks like a seven-year-old kid, no offense Will, and Dustin also looks like a kid only the kid is an idiot.” She lifts her shades up and stares Dustin dead in the eye. “Full offense.”“Why doesn’t Lucas go, then?”“I’m not going by myself,” Lucas argues, which Mike takes to mean “I’m scared that Max is going to pass out the second I leave her side," which, fair enough, but he isn't about to leave El's side, either. He doesn’t side with him. “I’m not going by myself either! You guys are assholes, you’re going to freak El out if I leave her with you!”“I’m going with Mike,” says El helpfully.“Fine! You know what, fine, take the nut case with you! I’m sure that’s going to go swimmingly," Max exclaims. “I never said I was taking you with me,” says Mike. He steps out of the van, pulling El along with him by the hand, before the redhead can retaliate.“What’s a nut case?” El asks, crinkling her nose.“Like, a crazy person,” says Mike. “You’re not one, by the way. Max is just a bitch when she’s tired.” He considers his statement, then amends it. “Well, more of a bitch than usual. She likes you, so don’t worry about that. She wouldn’t be here if she didn’t.”El seems to accept this and nods. She doesn’t speak much, but she understands more words than he would’ve thought. She just chooses to express her thoughts in other ways.They enter the reception, El pulling her hood on to conceal her shaved head, and approach the middle-aged woman working the front desk. She watches them with distaste and says in a sour voice, “Can I help you?”“Y-yeah,” Mike gets out. “We’d like a – a room?”“A room?” The woman gives them a once-over and a very pointed look, which makes Mike’s cheeks flood with colour. El’s expression remains blank, of course - she doesn't know what adults think of teenagers booking motel rooms. “Yeah, a double room, on the ground floor if it’s possible.”“It’s possible.” She types something in the computer and then asks, “How many nights?”“Uh, one night only?”The look intensifies, and Mike decides to take his eyes off her entirely, choosing instead to examine his shoelaces. They're spattered with mud. “Name?”“Roger Stephens,” he says, very glad only El is here. She appears to buy this.Take that, Max, he thinks.“Okay then. Checkout is at eleven tomorrow morning. Don’t be late.” She hands him a numbered key and slides a guestbook and a pen over. He fiddles with the pen, drops it once, twice, before he manages to sign his name and the date.They go to their room and Mike manages to unlock the door without once letting go of El’s hand. The room is nice enough – clean and spacious – and the bathroom is paradise compared to what they’ve had these past couple of days. El flips the light switch on and off while he goes to open the window, and in a matter of seconds the rest of the Party is climbing through, bags in tow.Jennifer is last of them to use the shower, and before she goes Mike asks her if he can use her phone to listen to some music.“Sure,” she says, but only after deleting her search history.Max announces she’s going outside to smoke, having nicked a few cigarettes from Billy before leaving. She’s barely swung her leg out the window before Lucas makes to follow her.It’s decided that El and Max are to take the two small beds, as everyone judges they're the most exhausted ones, and the blankets are spread across the floor for everyone else to sleep on. Dustin falls asleep minutes after lying down, and Will announces he’s going to go look for a vending machine.El and Mike remain the only two conscious people in the room, and their words are interrupted now and then by an occasional bout of snoring from Dustin. As the lights are off, reading the rest of the book is out of the question, so Mike gets his earbuds out and gives one to El before putting on a song. He’s lying on the ground beside her bed, and she’s looking down at him. They’re still holding hands.“This is pretty,” she tells him. You’re pretty, he thinks.“Yeah, it’s music. Have you ever heard a song before?”“Old MacDonald,” she says, then, “and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Nursery rhymes. They weren’t as nice.”“No, they probably weren’t,” he agrees. “Who taught you to read?”“A nice doctor.” They don’t want to wake Dustin, hoping to make their rare moment of privacy last as long as possible, so their voices are hushed. “Doctor Owens. He wasn’t supposed to, but he taught me words I didn't know, and gave me sweets, and let me read books. I was never allowed to keep them. Papa couldn’t find them.”“Papa?”“My Papa,” she says, as though that explains it. “He scares me. He always told people to lock me up, and he was happy when I hurt them. He said my mind is incredible. He said he cares about me, but I don’t believe him.”“You shouldn’t,” says Mike. Her words chill him to the bone and he realizes he has no idea what she went through before he met her.“Doctor Owens never said anything like that, but I think he cared about me. He went away, though. Papa found one of my books. He went away the next day.”Mike doesn’t say what he’s thinking – that Owens couldn’t have cared for her all that much if he never tried to get her out of that place. He doesn’t want to take away the only comfort she’s had her entire life, though, so he says nothing. Doesn’t want to make her more cynical of the world than she already is.“Did…did anyone ever try to get you out?”She smiles down at him – a small, sad smile. “Yes. You did.”“No-one else?”“They weren’t supposed to. Everyone was either bad or scared.”“Scared? Of Papa?”“And of me.”The music coming through the earbuds is quiet. A slower, romantic song comes on and he feels personally singled out by the universe. He doesn’t mind, though. “I’m not scared of you.” He realizes it in the instant he says it. She’s all-powerful, and capable of killing with her mind, but he’s not scared of her.“You should be.”“I’m not.”She smiles again, and it isn’t as sad this time. “Good.”