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“I can’t believe they’re making us do this,” Carol says, pushing a branch out of her way. “I mean, who do they think they are?!”
“Bored teachers on a powertrip, babe,” Tommy replies, and winches when he gets smacked by the branch as it whips back on him. “You know they always come up with some sort of bullshit at the end of the year. It’s like, to remind us that we’re at their mercy for one more month before summer.”
“But what’s the purpose even supposed to be? Like, what shit did they come up with to our parents to make them sign the permission slip?”
Billy laughs. “Clearly, someone didn’t read the actual note they sent. Or listen when they told us we were going.” He steps on some moss, and seems to sink down into it for a second.
“I had better things to do.”
“It’s supposed to like, teach us to appreciate nature. And how to survive in it,” Steve informs her.
“Maybe they’re afraid there’ll be another war,” Jonathan says quietly. He’s walking behind Billy, probably still hand in hand with Nancy. “And that’s why.”
“Ugh,” Carol says.
“Then again,” Robin says, jumping over a fallen log and almost slipping. “All P.E. teachers are basically sadistic bastards, so as much as it pains me to say it, I think Tommy and Carol are right.”
Carol nods. “Band girl’s right.”
“I take it back,” Robin says. “You’re the worst. My name is Robin .”
“Don’t take it too hard,” Nancy says. “Carol’s just always been a bitch.”
“At least I’m not pretending that I’m more perfect than-“
“Okay!” Billy shouts, before the conversation has the chance to escalate into a full on argument. One hour they’ve been out in the forest, and it hasn’t yet. He’d like to keep it that way. It’ll save him a headache. “Eddie? How long do you think we’ve got left?”
Eddie, walking ahead of the group with the map, rotates it in a way that doesn’t make Billy feel all too confident in his navigation skills. “Eh… two hours?”
Billy and Eddie have had a quiet, mutual respect for each other as fellow metalheads, nodding to the other as they passed him in the hallways, but they’ve had no reason to talk to each other. That was until they ended up sitting next to one another on the bus out here, eagerly discussing music and who the best guitarist is out of Page, Hendrix, Malmsteen, Brian May, Eddie Van Halen, and Ritchie Blackmore.
Carol lets out another groan.
“You’re not exactly inspiring confidence, Eddie boy,” Billy calls.
“Who gave him the map, anyway?” Tommy asks.
“I did,” Billy says. “He likes playing DnD, seemed like he would be good with maps.”
“Just because he likes playing a fantasy game with maps doesn’t mean he’s gonna be any good with real ones,” Carol says.
“Right, and who made you in charge, anyway?” Steve asks. “Why do you get to decide who gets to read the map?”
Billy grins at him. “Oh, but didn’t you hear? I’m in charge of the whole school , Harrington, because you gave up on holding on to your crown. Now, as to whose fault that is, I’d take a gamble on it being those two lovebirds.” He points with his thumb to Nancy and Jonathan behind him.
“Hey-!”
“You don’t get to-!”
Billy holds his hands up, the picture of innocence. “I’m just saying. Not my fault you three had some weird love triangle going on when I got here.”
Tommy laughs, and the other three shut up. They’ve all seemed kind of on edge since the moment they stepped into the forest. Not like Carol, who’s just annoyed by nature in general, but more like there’s something real to fear out here.
Not for the first time, Billy wonders if there’s bears in this forest. But there shouldn’t be, right? Their teachers wouldn’t send them out on a field trip in an actual bear infested forest.
Billy likes nature. He likes being outside.
He prefers California’s heat over Indiana’s fucking forests, but hey. It could be worse.
“Okay, I think it’s my turn,” Tommy says, bundling past Billy and grabbing the map out of Eddie’s hands.
“Hey!” Eddie shouts.
“Tommy…” Billy warns.
“What?” Tommy says. “We’re supposed to learn , right? How can I do that if I’m not even looking at the map?”
“Fuck,” Billy says. “Fine. Whatever. Just don’t let your ego hold you back from asking for help when you inevitably lead us into a ravine, you freckled, conceited prick.”
“Since when is being freckled an insult?” Robin asks.
“You’re freckled, too,” Steve says. “You’ve got a mole on your shoulder.”
“Now how the fuck do you know that, Harrington?” Billy asks.
Steve shrugs. “We share a locker room, man.”
“And you do walk around halfway to shirtless every day,” Nancy remarks.
Which, okay, fair . He just doesn’t like the thought that people - Steve - actually spend enough time looking at him, at his skin , that they notice shit like that. Means they could notice other stuff, too.
The forest’s deep, trees everywhere, everything green or brown as far as the eye can see. It smells like pine and earth, and every once in a while they’ll hear birds singing to each other.
“Wait, guys!” Nancy calls out. “Stop for a second. I think these are the mushrooms they wanted us to pick.”
They’ve got a list with both descriptions and pictures of some edible mushrooms and berries they were told to find. The idea is that they were all dropped off at different starting points, given a map and basket - Nancy’s carrying theirs - and told to find their way to camp where four of their teachers were to be waiting. They’d bbq the hot dogs that their teachers brought with them and eat that along with the mushrooms and berries they’d found, set up tents to sleep in, and in the morning they’d go back to Hawkins.
They all crowd around where Nancy’s crouching on the ground by a group of mushrooms. “What do we think?”
Billy fishes his list out of his jeans pocket and looks down at it, comparing the mushrooms on it to the ones Nancy’s found. Morels, Oyster Mushrooms, Chanterelles, Puffballs, and Old Man of the Woods.
“Yeah, I think so,” Tommy nods. “They look like the ones my mum likes to cook.”
Robin turns to him with a surprised look on her face. “Your mum likes picking mushrooms?”
Tommy looks offended. “No. She likes buying them, and cooking them. She doesn’t go out picking them.”
Nancy scoffs, despite Billy knowing for certain that her mum doesn’t exactly seem like the type to go outside picking mushrooms and getting her hands dirty.
“My mum does,” Steve says, and that actually is a surprise. “Or she used to. When I was younger.”
Robin shakes her head. “Huh. Who’d thought you two would actually be useful in a situation like this.”
Billy chokes on a laugh.
“Real nice, band girl,” Carol says, taking Tommy by the arm and dragging him away.
“ Robin . My name is Robin.”
Nancy does end up picking the mushrooms, and then they’re off again, following Tommy.
At one point the find some more mushrooms, at another they stop to pick some berries.
Billy glances down at his wristwatch. “Hey, Tommy, it’s been two hours.”
Tommy stops, effectively making everyone else do so, too, since he’s the one in front with the map. “No it hasn’t?”
“Yeah, man, it has.”
Everyone knows what Billy isn’t saying. ‘You’ve led us in the wrong direction.’
“Well, we… I mean, we stopped for a while. To pick mushrooms and berries.”
“Sure. But not for that long. We should still be able to see camp in the distance, or hear them.”
“I’m sure if we just continue-“
“Tommy.”
Billy can see he’s getting embarrassed, and angry because of it. “For fuck’s sake, Billy, I-“
“It’s fine,” Jonathan cuts in. “It’s fine, we can figure it out. Just check the compass and we’ll see which direction we should go, right?”
Nancy nods. “That’s right. What does the compass say, Tommy?”
Tommy’s starting to look a bit like a deer caught in headlights. “Eh… It- It says…” He sticks his hand into his jacket pocket, to only now take out the compass.
“Haven’t you been using the compass at all?!” Robin stares open mouthed at him. “Do you- Do you even know how to read a compass?”
Tommy doesn’t say anything for a second. He looks like he wants to sink straight through the moss he stands on. “No?” It’s said very quietly.
Steve sighs and drags a hand over his face. “God, Tommy.”
Tommy turns on his heel to face him, now sounding irritated. “Oh, as though you know how to read one!”
“I don’t, that’s why I’m not in charge of the map!”
Carol knocks her head against his chest and punches him, lightly. “For fuck’s sake, babe,” Billy hears her mumble.
She takes the map and compass out of his hands and hands them to a stunned Eddie.
“How do we know he didn’t lead us the wrong way to begin with?!” Tommy says while gesturing at him.
Robin turns to Eddie. “Can you read a compass?”
Eddie shrugs. “Kind of.”
“That’s good enough for me. Unless someone’s got a better idea?”
They all shake their heads.
“I’m going to try to figure out where we are,” Eddie says. “It… make take a little while.”
There’s sighs and groans from all around the group. They take off their backpacks and take to sitting on either them or any stones or tree stumps.
Within ten minutes, Carol’s complaining. “I’m hungry.” She’s leaning her head against Tommy’s shoulder and looking petulant.
“I mean, we were supposed to take a break for lunch,” Nancy says. “Seems like now might be a good time.”
They’d originally agreed not to do that, instead focusing on getting to camp as quickly as possible so they could set up their tents and sit inside and not have to worry about anything else. Which had suited Billy just fine, since his dad wouldn’t let him bring any, apparently having the idea that if Billy felt hungry he could go ahead and kill some animal like a real man. Or something.
He had been very approving of this trip.
Maybe Jonathan is right, and this is some weird pre-military enlistment exercise. Neil would just about love that, Billy’s sure. Send Billy away to the army where they’d cut his hair and make him exchange his mother’s pendant for a pair of dog tags.
He sits down on a rock and swats at the ants that climb up his legs. He might not have any food with him, but he does have his cigarettes and two water bottles - he stole Max’. She doesn’t have gym today. It’s not like she’ll miss it.
So he sits there, and he smokes, and drinks water, and waits for Eddie to try to figure out where the fuck they are.
“Any luck?” he calls to him about forty minutes later.
Eddie frowns. “Maybe. I think…” he gestures vaguely to the left. “I think if we go in that direction. Although…”
“What?”
“I’m trying to decide if it would be better to try to find some landmarks. Like, there’s supposed to be a really tall hill here,” he points to a point at the map, but Billy’s not sitting close enough to see where. “And if we find that, it might be easier to figure out where camp is. But that might take longer.”
“Put it up to a vote,” Steve says. “We live in a democracy, don’t we?”
“Okay,” Billy says. “Eddie, you don’t get a vote, or we risk a draw. Everyone who thinks we should just try to find camp immediately, raise a hand.”
Four hands go up. Billy’s stays down.
“Camp it is,” he says, brushing his jeans off and standing up. He drops a bit of water on his cigarette, making sure it’s out before he drops it to the ground. He’s not eager to start a forest fire.
Everyone else follows along, putting their backpacks back on and following Eddie as he leads them back through the trees.
Forty-five minuets later and Billy’s getting an eerie sense of deja vu.
“I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade,” Robin says. “But haven’t we already been here?”
“What?” Eddie says, looking up from the map. He looks around them, then back down to it. “No.”
“Yes,” Billy says. He walks up to the rock he says on less than an hour ago, picking up his cigarette from the grass. He holds it up so the others can see.
“Shit,” Eddie says. He drags a hand through his hair. There’s a twig in it, and two loose leaves. Billy doesn’t want to think about what his must look like.
“Eddie,” Nancys says. “Can you drive to figure out where the hill is?”
Eddie rubs at his forehead. “Yeah. Yeah, sure.”
They spend another twenty minutes there before Eddie thinks he knows where to go.
“Wait,” Carol says before they leave. “Nancy. Do you have a highlighter with you?”
“Why do you-?”
“To mark the trees. I don’t want a repeat performance of this shit. So. Do you have a highlighter or not?”
Nancy looks slightly impressed. “I do.” She takes off her backpack and rummages around in it, emerging with a pink highlighter. She hands it to Carol. “Here.”
“Thanks,” she smiles. Sweetly, although on Carol’s face it looks a little bit mean.
Billy ends up in the back next to Robin as they start to walk, with Tommy and Carol bringing up the rear as Carol draws lines on the trees they pass at somewhat regular intervals.
“You’re so smart, babe,” he overhears Tommy say, followed by the sound of a kiss. “We’re gonna have such smart babies.”
Billy smiles to himself, amused.
Robin catches his gaze. “She’ll just read them Hansel and Gretel,” she whispers, smiling when Billy laughs.
Eventually they reach the foot of a hill, all of them pausing and turning to Eddie.
“Is this it, Eddie?” Robin asks.
To Billy’s great disappointment, Eddie shakes his head. “It should be taller. Bigger.”
“But we might get a better view of the landscape if we go up, right?” Nancy asks.
Eddie nods, and so they all start to climb the hill.
If Billy’s honest, he’d been hoping they’d end up seeing camp from up there, however unlikely, but there’s nothing interesting. Just trees. Trees, and moss, and grass, and bushes and stones.
But nothing to indicate there’s any other humans in this whole damn forest.
Billy sighs. He takes a step forward, about to walk down the hill, when he slips on some mud, and goes skidding down the steep hillside.
He chokes on a scream when he falls flat on his ass and his right foot wedges in between two stones, a grinding noise coming from his ankle as it twists between them.
“Shit, Hargrove!”
“Billy!”
“Oh my god!”
The others come hurrying to him, although more careful than Billy was on the way down.
Billy’s ankle hurts so bad he’s getting dizzy and nauseous.
“Shit,” Tommy says once they’ve reached him.
“Think that’s a bit of an understatement, Tommy,” Billy gasps. He thinks he’s crying. “ Fuck .”
It’s a tight fit between the rocks, and the force from which he’d ended up between them pushed his jeans up a little. Billy can feel warm blood trickling down his skin.
“Okay,” Steve says. “Okay, we gotta… We gotta get his foot out from there.”
“Harrington,” Robin says. “I think- I think that’s broken.”
Yeah, Billy’s definitely crying. He’d reach up and wipe the tears away, except his hands are firmly planted on the ground, and he doesn’t want to get mud and dirt into his eyes.
“Yeah,” Steve says. He nods rapidly. “Yeah. Right. Okay. Jonathan, I’ll need you to help me. Tommy, Eddie, can you try to pull him backwards while we try to get his foot out?”
They must nod, because Billy feels their hands on his arms a second later. He’s trying to blink the tears away, but more just keep coming. It hurts .
They lift him up and back, off the ground a little, and Billy can’t help but cry out as Steve and Jonathan start to tug his foot free from the rocks.
“It’s okay,” Carol says, sounding really fucking awkward. Comforting isn’t her strong suit. “It’ll be okay, Billy.”
It’s slow going and the tears start falling faster, Billy’s bitting his lip raw trying to keep from screaming, until finally his ankle pops free from the rocks.
“Shit, he’s scraped his skin,” Steve says. “Okay, fuck. Does anyone have a first aid kit?”
They all shake their heads.
“No one? Fuck. Okay. Tommy,” Steve urges. “Tommy, give me the alcohol.”
“What?”
Steve looks up at him with a long suffering look on his face. “Come on, man, I know you. You did bring a bottle of alcohol, didn’t you?”
“Well, yeah, but… But we were supposed to drink it tonight. Have a little party, you know. Liven shit up.”
“For fuck’s sake, Hagan, who gives a shit about if you get to get drunk tonight! He’s bleeding. That wound needs to be sterilised,” Jonathan says, and there’s actual heat in his voice. Billy remembers being told how Jonathan fucked up Steve’s face the year before Billy moved to Hawkins, and remembers thinking it unlikely. He thinks this is the first time he’s seen him sound anything other than quiet and meek.
There’s one other such person in Billy’s life, but she’s never been provoked to such upset over Billy being hurt. He wonders what it would take for her to find that anger. Probably not Neil hitting her, and at his worst days, Billy wonders if Neil hitting Max would even do it.
Maybe the belt. Maybe the belt to Max’ back. That might be enough.
He hopes he never has to find out.
“I brought weed,” Eddie says.
“I don’t think that’s going to help, Eddie,” Robin says, and she sounds genuinely sorry about it.
“I’ll take the weed,” Tommy says. He’s still behind Billy, so he doesn’t see it when he takes off his backpack but he hears the low thud of it. A few seconds later he sees a bottle being handed to Steve.
Billy’s ankle is pulsing. The pain’s radiating up his leg, like spasm of white hot agony.
Steve only glances at Billy briefly, but in that second Billy sees how apologetic he looks. “I need you guys to hold him down. I’ve gotta get his boot off.”
“No,” Billy says. He can’t imagine how bad that’ll hurt.
Steve closes his eyes, looking pained.
“Billy, your ankle’s going to swell,” Nancy says. Billy thinks she’s used to being the voice of reason. But Billy doesn’t want reason, Billy wants for the last couple of minutes to not have happened. “It’ll be easier to get your shoe off now.”
“It’s going to hurt,” he protests weakly.
Nancy nods. She looks sorry.
Steve opens his eyes and looks from Jonathan to Eddie and Tommy up by Billy’s head. “I need you to hold him down.”
Billy can’t stop the little sob that emerges at that. There’s no use fighting.
The other guys’ hands are all on him again, but this time they’re not lifting him up but pushing him down. At the first touch of Steve’s hands to his boot, Billy’s trying to jerk away. Another pair of hands - Robin’s - joins Jonathan’s on his leg, and Billy grits his teeth and clenches his eyes shut as Steve starts pulling the boot off. It feels like he’s trying to dislodge Billy’s foot from his leg, and Billy can’t help the choked keens that leave him. His hands are tight fists at his sides.
But Steve keeps a steady pace, and within minutes Billy can feel air against his socked foot.
Before he knows it, there’s another stinging feeling that has him straining against their hold on him as Steve pours alcohol over the abrasion.
“Did anyone bring a change of clothes?” he asks.
“I did,” Carol and Nancy say in unison.
They take off their backpacks and hand Steve a clean shirt each. Tommy disappears for a few seconds, returning with a stick that he also hands to Steve, who keeps all of it in a small pile atop his own backpack. Billy hisses as he unscrews the top of a water bottle and pours some water over his leg, too.
Then he wraps it with the first shirt, before taking the stick and wrapping that one along Billy’s ankle and leg to keep it still.
Billy’s still sniffling when he lets go. It still fucking hurts.
The others slump down on un uneven ground in a circle around him.
“What now?” Nancy asks. “I mean, Billy can’t walk. What do we do?”
“I think we should just stay here,” Jonathan replies. “I mean, they’re bound to come looking for us eventually.”
“What? No way,” Tommy says. “You want to just stay here? For hours? Didn’t you- Billy, he… He needs a hospital, right?” He turns to Eddie. “Give me the map.”
“God, no,” Robin groans. “Don’t.”
But Eddie hands it over. They’re sitting almost next to each other, and he leans over to still see what Tommy’s doing.
Tommy points to something. “That’s a road, right? This is where we started, and this is the edge of the forest, and then this is a road that goes all the way to camp. And we haven’t crossed any road, right?”
Billy sees Eddie nod. He’s kind of upside down from Billy’s position lying in the middle of the circle.
“And this area isn’t that big, so the problem is just that we’ve been walking in circles. But if someone, say, Carol and I, went straight ahead in one direction, then we should either end up at the road to camp, the road we came on, or out of the forest?”
“No,” Eddie says. He shakes his head. “No, dude, absolutely not.”
“What? Why not?”
“Because you’d get lost . We’re not separating the group.”
“Why do you get to decide that? We can do-“
“Eddie’s the oldest,” Robin points out. “And thus the wisest.”
Carol scoffs. “Sure, he’s the oldest, but this is also his second attempt at graduating, so I don’t know if I’d call him wise.”
Eddie shrugs. “Hey, I had better things to do,” he says, echoing her words from earlier.
Billy and Robin burst out laughing. It makes him forget the pain for a minute.
“We’re not separating the group,” Steve agrees once the two of them have calmed down. “Besides, we’ve only got one map and compass. If we separate, then one group would be left without.”
“I mean, that’s alright,” Robin murmurs. “It’s not as though Tommy would be able to read them.”
Steve ignores her and turns to Tommy. “I know you’re just trying to help but it’s better if we stick together. It’s safer. And we can see if someone comes looking from up here.”
“I think Billy’s the one who should get to decide that. If he feels like he can wait for someone to hopefully find us before dark.”
And the thing is, Billy’s ankle hurts, so, so bad, but he also doesn’t want to risk Tommy and Carol falling down their own hill and injuring themselves. “It’s like you said, it’s not that big an area. They’ll find us.”
And yet the hours pass - time they spend trying to distract Billy from the pain, either by talking, telling stories and jokes, or, at one point, Nancy bringing out the book she’s brought and reading aloud - until it’s late afternoon, when finally, finally, Billy hears their basketball coach calling their names.
“Harrington! Hagan! Munson! Perkins! Buckley! Byers! Hargrove! Wheeler!” He’s reading from an alphabetic list, the seniors first, then the juniors, repeating it again and again. He appears form between two large tree trunks.
The others jump up, waving their arms around. “We’re here! We’re here!”
Coach turns sharply to them and starts to makes his way to the hill. “What happened with you lot? You were supposed to be at camp almost two hours ago!”
“Billy broke his foot!”
“Hargrove did what? ”
“He slipped down the hill,” Steve explains. “Got his foot stuck between two rocks, but we got it free. Started bleeding a little, too.”
Coach stops at the foot of the small hill and looks up at them. His gaze lands on the bottle of alcohol and he stares at them like he can’t quite figure out how fucking stupid and/or reckless they must’ve been to end up like this. “God, alright then. You’re actually closer to the road than to camp-“
“Hah!” Tommy says.
Coach sends him a look that just scream ‘Really, Hagan?’ before he continue. “So this is what we’ll do. You will all get down to the road, while I go back to camp for my car, and I’ll meet you there. Sound good?”
They nod.
“Hargrove, you’ll be okay?”
“Yeah, Coach,” Billy says.
“Good. Road’s that way.” He points them in the right direction and turns around and heads back the way he came, shaking his head and muttering to himself.
Billy’s about to ask one of them to find him a tall, fallen tree branch to use a crutch, when Steve turns back and tells Tommy and Eddie to help Billy up to standing and take his backpack off.
There’s a bout of vertigo when he’s moved upright that takes a couple seconds to clear. In that time they’ve already got Billy’s backpack off. “What are you-?”
“You’re going piggyback,” Steve informs him.
“What? No-“
“Yes,” he says, and stops with his back to Billy, crouching a little. He holds his hands up above his shoulders for Billy’s own. “Come on, man, don’t argue. This is the fastest. I can carry you. If I get too tired I’ll have Munson take over.”
“I could-“ Tommy starts to say, but Steve interrupts him.
“You and Jonathan are shorter than Billy. Munson and I are taller. But don’t worry, Tommy, you still get to be useful. You’ll carry his backpack.”
If Billy knows Tommy correctly, he’s probably bristling right now, but not only because he doesn’t like what Steve’s saying, but also because he knows that Steve’s right. He and Eddie are still holding Billy up.
And Billy figures there’s no point to argue. He wants out of this forest. He wants pain meds. He’s got his knee bent to keep his foot off the ground, and his ankle still sends spasming pain up and down his leg.
So he reaches out with his arms and lets Steve pull them up over his shoulders until Billy can lock them together over his collarbones. He doesn’t fully manage to bite back the whine when Steve puts his hands under Billy’s knees and jostles his ankle.
“Shit, sorry, sorry, you’re okay. We’re okay. Here we go.” Steve starts walking down the last couple feet down the hill and then in the direction Coach told them, the others beside them.
“We’re not gonna tell them we got lost, are we?” Eddie asks.
“No,” Robin laughs. “ Definitely not.”
Billy rests his forehead against Steve’s shoulder and resigns himself to breathing in that fucking Farrah Fawcett hairspray for at least the coming fifteen minutes.
(It’s not that bad.)