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“What if I don’t want to go home?” Will asks, his voice shaky, teetering on the edge of dropping deeper. His eyes are open wide, and he resists blinking, afraid if he does the familiar neighborhood around him will transform into its nightmare reflection in the Upside Down.
Mike stops. He was leading the way, walking slightly in front of Will. His hands are half-curved into fists at his sides, like he’s taken his Ghostbuster costume to heart, like he’s preparing to fend off any pseudo-monster that might cross their path.
He glances back over his shoulder. His brow furrows. “What do you mean you don’t want to go home?”
Will huffs, annoyed at the weird emphasis Mike places in the question. No one can talk to him lightly anymore. Everything has to be weighed down by what happened to him, by how lucky he is to be home at all. “I mean, I don’t want to go home right now. We’re bailing out on Trick-or-Treat early, right?”
“Right.”
“So, let’s hang out at your house. I’m actually really sick of sitting at home.”
“Um… Yeah, sure. Okay.” Mike nods, but his expression doesn’t change. He still looks confused. Worried. “But won’t your mom freak? If you’re not where she thinks you are, or if it gets too late?”
Will rolls his eyes, a bitter taste in the back of his throat. “Probably. I’ll call her.”
“Will.” Mike’s tone goes low and serious. He reaches out and grips Will’s shoulder, his hand warm, his gaze steady. “She just cares, you know? It sucked when you disappeared. Like, it super sucked. It sucks when… when anybody you care about disappears.”
Mike looks down and grinds the toe of his shoe into the wet, shiny asphalt beneath them.
Will rubs his shoulder. The place where Mike held him still feels warm. The heat seems to travel all the way down his arm, and he thinks Mike makes a good Ghostbuster. He thinks in a new, strangely admiring way that Mike looks really cool. In his costume. Under the streetlights.
As a longtime best friend, he also recognizes the sadness settling upon Mike’s features, the almost imperceptible drooping at the corners of his mouth.
“El?” Will guesses.
Mike tenses for a second, then grinds his toe into the ground again. “El.”
Will doesn’t know what to say, what to do. He never got to meet El. He’s only ever heard about her secondhand. But it’s a relief to have the chance to comfort someone else for a change, to know he’s not the only one left broken by everything that happened the year before.
Will tilts his head, his eyes drawn to Mike’s hand. For a moment, he has the urge to take it. He imagines slipping his fingers into the spaces between Mike’s, so that neither of them has to feel alone with the shadows of what they’ve lost anymore.
This is nothing like imagining he’s back in the Upside Down. This thought, the thought of taking Mike’s hand, transforms Will’s mind into a bright, happy place—an improved version of their reality, rather than an overgrown, deadly one.
But he’s not sure how Mike would take it, if he’d be okay with Will holding his hand. And they’re outside, and kids are around, with their Halloween masks revealing their monstrous faces.
Will settles for copying what Mike did to him. Will reaches up and seizes Mike’s shoulder. He squeezes. Suddenly, his hand is warm. So warm. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Mike says. He glances at Will’s hand on his shoulder. His features scrunch up in confusion, and then he turns to look Will in the eye. Slowly, very slowly, and maybe—just maybe—knowingly, he smiles. “It’s really okay.”