Chapter Text
See, the thing is, they admitted to creating that whole ruse because they wanted to leave camp, and everyone believed them— but Dustin overheard Lori telling Joshua that she doesn't know where the other 'missing' counselors are. Because they weren't a part of the initial plan. That means Dawn and Steph were actually missing and the only ones who believed him when he said that were Suzie, Trevor, Dean, and Steven, but even then there wasn't really anything they could do about it. Camp Know Where was to stay open for a few more days, long enough to arrange for the kids to go home before it closes a few weeks before it's meant to. Before they're forced to leave, they do try searching the campgrounds but they can't find anything that could tell them where Dawn and Steph went. Dustin never forgets about them, or how they could be lost out there or even trapped and desperately waiting for help.
He doesn't forget about the older counselor either and how absolutely no one seems to know who he's talking about, even as he helps Suzie rewrite The Never Ending Story to turn it into a duet for talent night. His mom can't make the drive in a few days and she absolutely hates the idea of flying so Dustin's left with taking a few bus rides until he reaches his cousin's house and can wait there for his mom.
A cousin who he's never met and only knows the address of because his mom told a counselor and they wrote it down for him.
Chris and Paul are the only counselors left that he feels comfortable talking to, not that he has any real need to talk to them. Dawn and Steph are still gone, he hadn't heard anything about police or missing person reports, and he's not trusting the other two after the shit they pulled. They really tried, and succeeded, to ruin a bunch of kids' summer experiences because they couldn't talk to their parents. It's all bullshit but there's nothing he can do to change it. The rest of the older teens that were hired to help out around camp haven't actually bothered with trying to talk to any of them, so Dustin's not going to try talking with them since they clearly didn't want to interact with any of them.
Suzie Bingham, his girlfriend, is set to leave camp the same day he's supposed to take his first bus ride out of there.
She said goodbye to her friends ahead of time, getting some girl named Amy to write her number down so they could keep in touch. Meanwhile, for some reason that he honestly can't phantom, Trevor and Dean both practically forced him to take slips with their numbers written on them and promise to keep in touch with them. The only people he planned on keeping in touch with were Suzie and maybe Steven. Instead, he now has four numbers memorized in case he misplaces the papers they gave him, and promises to call each of them as soon as he possibly can once he's home. Although Suzie explains that she has a large family, and her dad often uses the house phone for work, so she may not be able to answer all the time.
That's actually why he started working on Cerebro, and why Suzie helped him complete it- he needed someone to double-check everything- before they had to leave the campsite. Suzie is absolutely brilliant. He's so-so glad he met her.
Their signal strength will be enough for them to keep in touch with their radios even with her all the way in Utah while he's in Indiana. They don't tell the others about it though, they don't want them trying to radio them especially not when they just want time to themselves. Suzie kisses him goodbye, a quick little peck on the lips but it's more than enough. More than he was expecting. The one who picks her up is an older girl with dark curly hair and basically the exact opposite of Suzie. She introduces herself as Suzie's sister, Eden. Dustin doesn't think she's old enough to be driving but no one else points that out, so he leaves it alone. At least Eden didn't seem to hate him on sight. If anything, he'd say she seemed amused by Dustin and Suzie's antics. The entire time he talked with her, Suzie kept shifting her weight from side to side and glaring at Eden anytime she cursed or made a crude joke.
Dustin thought she was absolutely hilarious.
Both bus rides pass pretty quickly, he does get a few stares because of his bags, and the heavy duffle he's carting around, but thankfully no one bothers him. The bus rides and the night spent at his cousin's house are filled with thoughts of his camp experience. How his learning voyage was cut short and how absolutely no one had mentioned Dawn or Steph since they vanished. He doesn't know their last names or where they're from, he can't go asking any of the others since none of them are home yet to answer if he calls. He never got to know the older counselor's name, and everyone else seems to have forgotten she even existed.
Stopping by her cabin didn't give him any clues to where she went either.
He doesn't know what to do. He— he doesn't have to do anything, but he can't help but feel like he needs to.
This would be so much easier if Steve were here, he could have just driven Dustin back to the camp and walked around with him to see if they could find them. Steve would have believed him about the others, Steve wouldn't have questioned him or doubted him. Why can't there be more adults out there like Steve?
He told himself that he would talk to the others about what happened the moment he was home.
—Then he sat through the car ride back home with an eerily silent radio despite him constantly checking in and letting the others know he was on his way home. No one responded, not once and he had no choice but to give up as his mom grew upset with his cursing at the radio silence. Why weren't they answering him? His mom said that she made sure to let them know he was coming home early… He expected them to try and reach out the moment he was close enough for the radio to work.
Didn't they miss him just as much as he missed them?
He knows why Steve hasn't been able to answer the walkie, and it's not like he usually does unless it's a code Red, so Dustin is willing to wait until he can head to the mall to see him. He just can't understand why none of the party is answering or trying to reach out to him. At camp he couldn't really keep in touch with anyone besides the random call home to let his mom know he was okay— it took him a while to get her to agree to let him go to the camp in the first place, he had to convince her that it'd be perfectly safe and that he'd have fun there.
He did have fun, and she doesn't need to know about anyone going missing or Joshua and Lori's stupid trick.
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He doesn't get the chance to tell the party about what happened at camp. He's not really sure he wants to say anything to them about camp, not when they're going to act like jerks.
He's been gone for a while and yet not a single one of them could even try to pretend they missed him? Seriously? Sure they did end up welcoming him home, but it felt- staged, almost, like they didn’t really mean it. He's not an idiot either, he could easily tell that they weren't really interested in seeing his inventions, they didn't even bother pretending to look interested. That actually kind of hurt since he did put a lot of work into them, and they were acting like it wasn't anything impressive. Whatever. It's fine, Suzie was impressed by it and she even helped him work on it!
They don’t believe him when he tries telling them about Suzie. The pure disbelief they had just because he said he had a girlfriend kind of made his chest tight and his eyes sting, but he ignored it. He ignored it just like he could ignore the way they were mocking him behind his back, pretending they were Suzie and sounding absolutely nothing like her. He doubts they’d believe him about anything else. They couldn’t even be bothered with waiting to talk to her with him. Mike and El left before they even made it up the hill to set up Cerebro, spouting some bullshit excuse that the others complained about before they all left too. At least Will stuck around for a few minutes after Max and Lucas left… but then he was gone too. Wishing him a halfhearted welcome home before rushing away. Was he not worth sticking around for?
Why were they acting so distant with him? What did he do wrong?
Now see, Dustin has a secret. A secret that he wasn’t aware of until he went to tell his friends about his camp experience and found the words getting stuck in his throat. It was like, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t say them. He thought it might be because he was a bit angry with them, that it was some sort of subconscious decision that his body made and the rest of him just wasn’t with the program. He thought it was the anger, the hurt, that kept him from telling them about the missing counselors, about some of the shit that happened… he doesn’t realize that his emotions have nothing to do with why he couldn’t bring himself to tell the others anything.
He remembers how It’s because he couldn’t get the words out that he changed the subject and showed them a few things he made while Max helped Lucas in the kitchen. He told them about Suzie, but he couldn’t say everything he wanted.
He didn’t try talking about anything else that happened at camp until he met up with Steve again and wanted to speak with him for a bit before trying to bring up the code he accidentally overheard. It’s not his fault he wanted just a few minutes of normalcy before bringing up shit about Russians and spies. Trying to force the words out, hurt, and it left him experiencing a weird gasping fit, one where he honest to God couldn’t breathe.
Dustin can remember how he was barely aware of Steve panicking and his co-worker, Robin, racing over toward them. It took a couple of minutes for him to catch his breath, and in that time he overheard Robin practically interrogating Steve on whether or not Dustin ingested anything he was allergic to, to which Steve told her all he had eaten was the ice cream Steve made him.
It wasn’t difficult to realize that the tightening of his throat had only eased up once he stopped trying to talk about the other things he learned at camp.
It freaked him out, and he couldn’t think of why it was happening either. So, he chose to purposely ignore it and focus on assuring Steve that he was okay, and no he didn’t poison him or anything like that. Without thinking, he tells them that the spoonful of ice cream had just gone down the wrong pipe.
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Amid everything with the Russians, Steve and Robin being captured, the goddamn Mind flayer, and all that other bullshit- Dustin forgets about Dawn and Steph, and the older counselor too. He forgets, up until Hoppers' funeral- one El wasn’t even allowed to attend- where he can’t help but wonder if any of them had a funeral. He doesn’t know if any of the counselors somehow made it back home without telling anyone, he doesn’t know if they have families wondering where they are, what happened to them… Dustin cried at Hoppers' funeral, but it wasn’t just the chief he was mourning.
Why did mourning them feel wrong?
He calls Suzie a few days later, making the trek up that hill by himself. He’s a bit hesitant about using Cerebro, but it’s not like anyone can blame him, you never know who’s listening in…
Suzie doesn’t remember Dawn or Steph, not at first. Dustin’s the one who never talked to them and yet he spends almost twenty minutes having to remind Suzie who they were and then an extra ten minutes to try and calm her down once she realizes she forgot about them.
He doesn’t mention the older counselor since she never met her.
Suzie ends up going digging for information, trying to find Dawn and Steph’s last names and anything on whether or not they returned home from the camp. He stays out late, far past the time he promised his mom he’d be home, but it’s fine. She’s working the graveyard shift and won’t even be home to notice he’s not there. There are a few minutes where Suzie goes quiet and has to pretend to be asleep so that her dad and siblings don’t try barging into her room.
She can’t find anything on them, and despite being a science camp, Camp Knowhere was not up to date with their filing system, they didn’t seem to have any digital copies of information on campers and counselors. Dustin’s pretty sure the only way they’ll be able to view the information they need is if they return to camp and find the physical forms. He tells as much to Suzie, who immediately says they should set it up to return to the camp next summer, they still have a few more years before they’re considered too old to attend.
Dustin agrees and he tells her that he’ll start trying to convince his mom on the weekend, or maybe later. He then has to tell Suzie that he was caught up in the incident at the Starcourt mall and his mom has been a bit clingy since then. Telling her about all those who died in the 'mall fire' made him want to scream. Especially when he mentioned Hopper.
By the time they say goodbye and agree to talk again in a few days, it’s nearing one in the morning and Dustin knows he needs to hurry home.
When he does, eventually, get her to agree, Dustin ends up canceling his plans to hang out with the others to go tell Suzie the news. He’s been asking, and mentioning it off-hand for weeks, only taking a break from bothering her about it when it was the Byers’ moving day.
He only feels slightly bad about using them moving as a means of convincing his mom that attending camp would cheer him up. To be fair, it does cheer him up a bit when she agrees, he didn’t realize he was actually feeling down… Dustin doesn’t tell anyone that he’s going to be going away for camp once the new school year ends. He’s not sure why he keeps it to himself, there are definitely enough openings to tell someone about it, but he just… doesn’t.
There’s something weird going on, and he can’t talk about it to anyone besides Suzie, who he can actually speak freely with. It doesn’t end there, no matter how much time passes, he keeps getting the air stolen from his lungs whenever he talks to anyone but Suzie.
Any time he tries to talk about anything involving camp, besides safe topics like Suzie, the camp activities, and the names of a few others he met there, it’s like there’s an invisible hand wrapped around his throat, ready to start squeezing the moment he tries talking about anything else. It’s not just talking about it either, he wrote it down and tried showing it to the others, but they always just saw a blank piece of paper. He even tried showing it to his mom, and she just tilted her head at him and asked if he needed her to write something down for him. Getting caught up in everything that happened after the fiasco with the Mind Flayer and attending funerals, then needing to say goodbye to Will and El, it didn’t feel right trying to bring it up again. It frustrated him though, he couldn’t even try to hint toward anything, not even with Suzie. With her, it was only safe to talk about Dawn and Steph.
The only person who looked through- well, technically, he just listened while Dustin read it out loud, that book he found during camp was Steven. Even then, Steven didn’t really pay attention to anything he was saying because of how bad he is with anything scary.
Dustin could always try calling him, but it feels a bit awkward. The only one he frequently kept in touch with from camp is Suzie, and that’s because she’s his girlfriend. Calling Steven, Trevor, and Dean was just something he did every so often, maybe once or twice a week. Sometimes there's a week or more in between the calls.
The book from camp disappeared from his bag too, when he finally had a moment to himself, he all but ran to get the book from his bag, hoping to be able to show it to the others so they could try to help him figure out what was going on. Only, the moment he dumped his bag out, he saw that it was gone. At first, he thought his mom took it, it wouldn’t be the first time she’s cleaned his room without his permission and taken a few things that she thought were inappropriate for him, but when he asked her about it, she said that she hadn’t gone into his room since he’s been back.
She offered to call those who own the land where the camp was held to see if any of them found the book. Dustin was tempted to take her up on her offer, but something told him that it wouldn’t be there.