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July 20th, 1989
Jane loves to, what Joyce calls, “bed-hop” when she’s having a rough night. Sometimes Will’s bed is too lumpy, sometimes Jonathan’s is too stiff, but Joyce and Hopper’s bed? It’s always, always just right.
They’ve worked tirelessly to convince Jane to stay in her own bed, and some nights, it works out and she falls asleep with her stuffed lion, not waking until the early of the morning when she hears her old man making his morning dad sounds in the bathroom, but on others, she’s up and wandering the house in search of an unlocked door to pry her way into.
It’s half past one when Joyce hears the bedroom door open. A burst of yellow light from the hallway floods the room, causing Jim to turn over onto his side. He snores loud enough to suck the drapes off the window, while Joyce is wide awake and blinking up at the shadow sidling from the door to the foot of her bed.
“Mom,” Jane’s voice calls. “Mom.”
Joyce lifts her head off the pillow, pretending as if Jane only just woke her up and she hasn’t been tossing and turning all night. She sees Jane standing there, in one of Will’s old shirts and a pair of shorts that look like they came from Joyce’s drawer, her hair a wild mess around her head. She’s not had a good night. That makes two of them.
“Sweetheart,” Joyce says, beckoning her to come closer. Jane does, slinking over to Joyce’s side of the bed. Joyce puts a palm to her daughter’s cheek. “You don’t feel warm. What’s the matter?”
“Can’t sleep,” Jane says. “Bad thoughts.”
“Oh,” Joyce says, stifling a yawn. She knew that. Jane never comes in here because she’s sick; she comes in here because sometimes the intrusive thoughts are running wild and it’s physically impossible for Jane to fall asleep. “You want some water?”
As always, Jane shakes her head. “No. The thoughts are really bad. Scary. I want to sleep here.”
Joyce expected that. She scoots over a little in the king size bed, until she’s pressed up against her husband and leaves plenty of space for Jane to lay next to her. Jane doesn’t move, though. She stares plaintively at the vacant space that Joyce made for her, one hand running over the sheets.
“What’s wrong, honey?” Joyce asks. “You want to sleep here with us, don’t you?”
Jane hesitates, like she’s doing something wrong by asking her mother for this, even if she’s done it before and was met with a warm smile and equally warm hands.
“The bad men might get me if I’m on the outside,” she reasons with her mother, briefly looking up at the door, just in case a bad man barges in and tries to take her from her parents. “Middle? Safe. Please.”
Feeling stupid for even suggesting otherwise, Joyce nods at her and immediately gets out of bed. Jane quickly scrambles in, careful not to wake her old man. She settles down in the middle of the mattress, taking up enough space to be comfortable but not enough space that it would disturb her dad. Once Jane has snuggled up to Jim and found a place to lay her head, Joyce gets back back into bed and gets comfortable next to her daughter, who blinks up at her with those big doe eyes that could move mountains. She doesn’t bring up the idea that the bad men might snatch her instead of Jane now that she’s on the outside. That’s just cruel, and she could never hurt this girl like that.
“Do you want to talk about what you were thinking about?” Joyce asks Jane, combing her fingers through the tousled hair fanned out on the pillow they’re sharing. “Maybe you’ll feel better if it’s not stuck in your head anymore.”
“Every time I close my eyes…I see the bad men and the Rainbow Room,” Jane sorely admits, her precious doe eyes blinking sleepily at Joyce. “I can’t make it stop. I always…see them. I don’t like it. I try to think of happy thoughts; you and Dad, Will, Jonathan, Max…because you make me happy. Safe. But it’s not working.”
“Oh, honey,” Joyce sympathetically murmurs as she draws Jane further into her arms. “I promise you that you are safe here. You are safe with me and your dad and your brothers. We all love you so much, Jane, and you are safe. The Upside Down is gone now. It can’t hurt you anymore. Those bad men will never hurt you again. We are all here, safe and healthy. No one can hurt you. I would never, ever let anyone touch you. You know why? Because I’m your mom, and moms don’t let bad men hurt their babies.”
Jane takes a deep breath. “Okay.”
Joyce presses a kiss to the tip of Jane’s nose and lets her snuggle into her chest. She knows that Jane needs this. Jane has needed a maternal touch and the arms of a mother to hold her for so long now, it probably doesn’t feel real to her at all. But it’s real. Joyce slides a hand up the back of the oversized shirt, pressing her loving palm to the bones that used to protrude much more than they do now, using that touch to bring the girl in tight to chest. She rests her chin on Jane’s head, taking in the familiar scent of the green apple scented shampoo that Jane begged her to buy at Walgreens. She was hesitant to buy it at first, because Jane already had a full bottle of a coconut scented shampoo at home and it was working just fine, but now Joyce understands that she made the right choice. She’ll cherish this scent forever. It will always remind her of her little girl.
“Dad snores too loud,” Jane comments in a mumble against Joyce’s throat. “Need earplugs.”
“He’s a bear,” Joyce giggles. “Sometimes I want to stuff a sock in his mouth.”
“Gross,” Jane sleepily hums. “Stinky socks.”
Joyce nuzzles her hair. “Maybe if you think about your dad’s stinky socks, you’ll fall asleep easier.”
“I’ll try,” Jane says in earnest.
Joyce counts Jane’s breaths and eventually feels her eyelashes stutter against her neck once she gets to 43. Finally, Jane goes slack in her mother’s arms, pressed up against her as close as she can be (any closer and Jane might as well be in Joyce’s uterus), and Joyce just holds her until well after two in the morning.
In the morning, when Joyce has already vacated the bed in favor of having her personal quiet time with a book and some coffee, Hopper rolls over and lands on something—someone—curled up in the recovery position. He startles awake more fully when he notices it’s not his wife he’s on, but his daughter, who somehow, some way ended up here.
“This kid,” he mutters, shuffling himself over to the very edge of the mattress so he won’t suffocate her. “She needs a bell.”
—
The next time Jane bed-hops right into her parents’ bed, it’s that following Saturday night. Will’s door was locked when she tried sneaking in, and she’s quite miffed about it, but she understands privacy needs, so she just learns to deal with the fact that she’s going to have to crash here for the night.
This time, though, it’s not Joyce who finds her lithe shadow slinking into the room like a cat. It’s her dad who takes note of her presence. He’s sitting at the edge of the bed, scratching the back of his neck and looking perturbed by something that probably doesn’t exist anymore. Joyce is fast asleep next to him, just a bundle of blankets and an arm stretched out over the mattress.
“Nightmare?” Hopper surmises in a whisper when Jane walks further into the room, her hand dragging along the edge of the dresser. She nods. “Will’s door is locked again?”
“Yes,” she replies, biting back a huff, but her face tells it all. “Privacy.”
“Right,” he says as he gets up and pulls up the blankets. “Your mom is asleep. Don’t wake her up. She’s had a hard night, too.”
Jane has no intention of waking Joyce, because she really doesn’t feel like discussing the details of her nightmare this time around. Fortunately her father isn’t as pressuring as Joyce can be when it comes to feelings and the talk-it-out method. If Jane needs to talk, he’s all ears, but he rarely ever asks or opens that door himself. He’ll let her come to him when she needs him. It’s been working, clearly, because he knows so much about her, including the fact that when she’s this quiet and reserved, she doesn’t want to talk.
Finally, Jane gratefully slips under the blankets and curls up in the little divot that she calls hers, turning her body so she’s facing towards her mother. She’s careful not to wake Joyce, but she does press her face between her shoulder blades, breathing in the scent of Snuggle and powdered detergent.
The mattress dips behind Jane. Hopper stays on his side of the bed, letting the women cuddle while he coaxes himself to sleep by watching the ceiling fan spin. Jane’s breaths even out and her body melts against Joyce’s. Hopper takes that as his cue to let himself relax and get some real sleep, too.
In the morning, when Hopper wakes to the same ceiling fan spinning, it’s just him and Jane again. She’s on Joyce’s side of the large bed, but with her head at the foot of the mattress, sprawled out enough that one sock-clad foot is nudging his bicep.
“She left me with this kid again,” Hopper mutters as he starts to get out of bed. “Both of them need a damn bell.”
—
The next night, a little after eleven, Jane’s parents’ bedroom is locked. She waits patiently at the door, anticipating the lock to turn, but that never happens, even after fifteen whole minutes of her standing there. She considers knocking to get their attention—because why are they locking her out?—but decides against it when she hears a happy scream from behind the door.
She steps back like she’s been burned, eyes wide and blinking. She’s quick to retreat, stumbling over her own feet as she’s bolting for the stairs. Will’s bedroom is the first door on the left once she hits the landing, and that’s the first door she throws open. Lucky for her, it’s unlocked.
Will is reclined back against his pillow, his ankles crossed. He puts his sketch pad aside when he sees his twin standing in the doorway looking absolutely haunted and afraid. His brotherly instincts overtake him, and he reaches out for her, anticipating her to throw herself into his arms and start sobbing about the bad men and how Max’s eyesight is permanently damaged and how scary the Rainbow Room was.
“They’re making happy screams,” Jane blurts out. “Mom and Dad. Happy screams.”
Will pulls a face; half relief, half disgust. “Yeah, they do that every Sunday night.”
“I was going to sleep in their bed,” she tells him. “Not anymore, I guess.”
“Nope,” Will agrees. He grabs an extra pillow from his closet and sets it next to his, fixing the blankets for Jane to slide in. “Wanna come lay with me instead?”
Jane has never been so grateful for her twin. He’s rescued her from a lot of things, but never the haunting sound of her parents metaphorically making babies (Will says they’re both too old to actually make another baby, which Jane likes, because she’s really enjoying the attention her parents give her as their youngest).
“How come happy screams sound like bad screams?” Jane asks as she’s crawling into bed with Will. “They sound the same. I only know they’re happy screams because Dad won’t ever hurt Mom.”
“Well, they’re using the same vocal cords as when they’re screaming over something bad,” Will says with a shrug. “But you’re right; they will not hurt each other. Those are happy screams. Good screams. But I don’t wanna think about what Hopper is doing to Mom, or what she’s doing to him, so let’s change the subject before I puke.”
Jane giggles. “Can I see what you were drawing?”
Will picks up his forgotten sketch pad and flips it open. She looks over his shoulder, grinning happily when she sees her face sketched in dark pencil. She runs a finger over the outline of her nose, loving the way the paper is a little raised.
“It’s me,” she says, wistful.
“Yeah,” Will says, kissing the side of her head. “It’s you.”
In the morning, in Joyce and Hopper’s bedroom, he wakes first, jolting upright in bed. The sudden movement startles Joyce, who sits up against the pillows and rubs her eyes.
She groans at the pink light bleeding through the drapes. “The alarm hasn’t gone off—“
“I rolled on her, I suffocated her!” he blurts, scrambling to lift the covers to make sure Jane is still breathing. She’s not there, though. Just Joyce in just a shirt and underwear. “Oh. Shit.”
“You’re paranoid,” Joyce yawns. “She roomed with Will. I checked on them when I got up for water. They were curled up like little cats. It was precious. I took a picture with the Polaroid. It’s on the fridge.”
Hopper sighs and leans against the headboard, watching the ceiling fan spin.“Well, I’d know she wasn’t here if I could put a damn bell on her.”
Joyce snorts and makes an attempt to fall back asleep now that Hopper is sure their teenager didn’t die by some kind of big-kid form of SIDS. The alarm sounds off just then.