Chapter Text
“I'm telling you! It'll be funny! It's just a silly video!”
“I don't know, Jess, who would I even ask about it?” Willow stared at her friend.
They were hanging out at the outskirts of Hawkins High after ditching another p.e. class with Mr. Johnson. Jess and she had been scrolling through their phones when the former came across a video of that one trend that had been circling social media during the last couple of weeks.
Jess said that she was thinking about trying it out with her mom, just to see her reaction, and she seemed to think that it would be a good idea for Willow to try too.
“You could ask one of your aunts,” Jess shrugged, her upper body spread across the picnic table they were sitting at as she looked lopsided at Willow. “They probably know some of your dad's past situationships.”
Willow smiled at the wording and hummed, “Maybe.” The reason she was so hesitant about asking her father was mostly because she knew how he reacted every time she questioned him about his childhood and teenage years. He was always avoidant and tight lipped. The few things she knew were small slips that Aunt Nancy had and jokes that she had heard Aunt Max – one of her dad's oldest friends – say.
Still, the video was a great excuse to actually do some research about it. She had a feeling that that was the reason why Jess, being the friend that she was, was encouraging her to do it in the first place.
A ringing sound came from the school. Gym class had ended.
As they walked back, Willow kept turning the idea in her head. “What does it even mean though? ‘I'm so hungry, I could eat-’? I thought that was about a horse?” She smiled at her friend.
“I thought the same thing when I saw it for the first time! I thought it was about that one drawing!” Jess laughed.
They kept talking until they reached the school and had to take their separate ways, not before Jess saying a “Tell me if you decide to do the trend or not!” while she hurried to her next class.
–––– ★ ––––
As it turned out, asking any of her aunts led Willow to absolute nowhere.
Aunt Nancy was almost as hell-bent on not saying anything as her dad, and was constantly trying to turn the questions on her to try and find out why she was asking in the first place. Maybe Willow's excuse of ‘being desperate for dating advice’ wasn't as good as she thought it was.
Aunt Holly was more talkative but she didn't seem to have a clue about Willow's dad's love life, or well, life in general apparently.It was like she truly didn't know anything about his childhood or adulthood and she refused to talk about his teenage years, so yeah, not much information either.
She guessed she would have to investigate more on her own then.
That was where things were going to get more complicated. The only two places where she thinks there would be some information were either in his dad's room or in the basement, AKA, dad's office. Basically the only two places, besides the kitchen, where her father spent day and night.
Willow sighed, sitting on her bedroom floor with her back to her door. She wasn't a big fan of being scolded or making her father angry because of a video… But it wasn't just about the video, was it?
She knew something had happened to her dad's side of the family, something that everyone seemed scared to even get close to mention. She wasn't an idiot. She saw how all of the adults always skipped over a part of their lives, how they would always reunite once a year, always on November 6th, and sent her off to her room while all her family hanged on the basement, Aunt Max and Uncle Lucas being the only ones outside of her family that seemed to be allowed there.
She knew since she was a child that there was something different with her family, from her father never letting her go trick or treating to their general aversion to the ticking of clocks. They were different from any other family that she had seen, and she couldn't help but feel like a stranger for not understanding anything.
This wasn't about a video – she probably wouldn't even record anything, she just wanted to investigate –, it was about finally belonging. She wanted to understand, needed to know.
With her mind settled, she got up and decided that she was going to search in her dad's room first. So she grabbed her phone and opened her door, crossing the hallway and grabbing the knob of his father's door after making sure he was somewhere else in the house. She began to turn it quietly and pushed-
“Willow! Dinner is ready!” Her father's call from downstairs made her jump what felt like ten feet, her phone almost slipping from her grip.
“Coming!” She yelled back, closing the slightly opened door slowly and rushing downstairs.
–––– ★ ––––
Dinners always felt empty in a way that Willow couldn't quite explain.
She didn't even have a lot of memories from before the divorce. It happened so long ago that she couldn't imagine eating at the same table as both of her parents.
But there was something about just two people sitting in such a big table that made her feel nostalgic for a time that she knew she never even lived. It was a feeling that always followed her when her father got to his office to write and she had the house all to herself. Like something she never even had was missing.
It probably came with living in a big, old house, she dismissed.
“So, how was school today?” Dad asked with a voice that was clearly trying to conceal tiredness but was failing miserably. His glasses slid slightly down his nose as he looked at his plate, cutting some meat.
“It was fine.” She answered between munches.
Her father hummed, “Just ‘fine’? Nothing interesting happened?” Willow shook her head and her dad gave a big sigh. “Then why did I get a call from your principal saying you skipped p.e. again?”
Willow cringed. She should have expected this to happen. “I just…don't like that class.”
“Willow, you can't keep skipping it, you can't. Your principal said that she may need to expel you if you keep like this.” Dad moved his hands as he talked, gesturing in the way that he always did when he was trying to be emphatic.
“That's not fair! It's not my fault Mr. Johnson is an asshole!” She snapped at him.
“Language!” He raised his voice slightly before deflating with another sigh. Gosh, her dad was sometimes so dramatic, no wonder he was a writer. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose before continuing. “Look, I'm not angry Willow,” she raised an eyebrow at him, “I'm not. But I can't let you get yourself expelled. Just… talk to me, please. Why don't you like your gym class? And what do you mean with what you said about your teacher?”
Willow slumped over her chair, curling in on herself. She worried her lip, wondering if actually saying the truth was a good idea. She finally decided that she'd take her chances.
Her voice was small as she started, “You know how schools sometimes have these stupid rules that they take way too seriously?” She waited for her father to nod before continuing. “Well, I don't know how it was when you went there, but now they have a strong policy of using the school uniform during p.e., and they don't allow sweaters during that class.”
Willow kept her eyes on her lap, feeling ashamed and exposed even though she knew the feelings were unfounded. It, however, didn't allow her to see if her father was already catching where she was going.
“The shirt is sleeveless, so it doesn't cover my birthmark at all.” She absentmindedly rubbed her right arm over her sweater, where, underneath, a red-ish stain covered almost the entirety of its upper side. “My classmates make fun of it, dad. They call me names, they whisper, they laugh, and Mr. Johnson doesn't do anything about it, he…laughs with them.”
Silence fell over the table for what felt like hours. Finally, Willow looked up to meet her father's eyes only to find them clouded with an anger that she had never seen before; an intense rage with a layer of what looked like sadness behind dark brown eyes. She could tell it wasn't directed at her, though.
“I am going to talk with him and with your principal first thing tomorrow morning.” He said with finality, his voice sounding slightly choked.
Willow paled, “No! That'll just make things worse and would be humiliating!” She shook her head intently as she talked. “Just convince the principal to not let me take that class, just say that I can't! I can earn the credit by doing something else or turning in extra assignments,” she pleaded.
“No, Willow. That man has no reason to treat you like that! I'm not going to let him go unpunished, it's not fair for you! How long has this been going on? Why didn't you say anything earlier?” He said rushedly.
“You don't get it, dad! People are going to find out and it will be worse!” The chair screeched as Willow stood up abruptly, looking down at her father. “You spend all day in your office. Even if I had said something before, it wouldn't have mattered! You never talk to me. All you care about is writing those stupid books!”
She regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth. Her father looked appalled, shook to his core. He moved his lips like he was trying to say something but no sound came out.
That hadn't been fair, she knew that. Of everything that she didn't know, one of the few things that she did was how much writing meant to her dad. Insulting his passion was like insulting his very person.
Willow had to get away. She couldn't stand the idea of receiving the betrayed and aggravated looks that he was sure to give her soon.
“I'm going to my room.” She said between her teeth before sprinting upstairs. She could hear her father calling behind her some ‘Come back’s and ‘Don't go’s before she closed her door, drowning in the darkness of her room.
For all the guilt that she felt for what she said, she couldn't help the anger that also bubbled inside her. He just didn't get it, how could he? He never talked to her, never told her anything. He didn't understand her because he didn't try.
Willow glanced at her desk, where her phone rested and determination settled in her mind. She was going to record that video, if only to piss him off more. If he didn't try to be her father then why should she try to be amicable? It made sense to her.
She grabbed her phone and opened her door, going to crouch next to the staircase to make sure her father wasn't coming upstairs any time soon. Once she heard the door of the basement closing, she knew the coast would be clear; he probably wasn't going to get out of there for hours.
She stood and crossed the hallway before opening her father's door, stepping in and closing it behind her. Willow was greeted with a room that she had not been in for years.
The dim light coming from the gap under the door and the moonlight peeking through the curtains were enough for her to make her way around the bedroom.
It was emptier than she remembered it. Most of the things that she recalled probably belonged to her mother and the rest must have been moved to the basement. Shit. She had been hoping to be quick.
She looked around, searching on the desk, under the bed, on drawers and nightstand, not finding anything. As she sat next to the bed her eyes fell on the one place she had yet to search at. The closet.
Willow walked towards it, sliding the folding door to one side, and, turning on her phone's flashlight, she came face to face with multiple boxes lying on the floor.
She made quick work opening and searching through all of them. Most contained shoes, books and even an old writing machine that looked terribly rusty, but nothing significant enough to give her any sort of information.
She was about to give up when she opened the last box, one that had been in the back of the closet. As she took off the lid, the first thing she noticed was how dusty the entire thing was, with dust clouds rising up and getting in her clothes.
The second thing she saw were pictures.
They were pale with age but they were still clear enough for her to make out various groups of children and teenagers. She picked up one that had a single boy standing in a Ghostbusters costume with a grimace on his face. Turning it around, black letters in neat handwriting confirmed what she was hoping for.
Mike’s Halloween Costume – 10/31/1984
These were photos of her father in the 80’s. Willow found what she was looking for. She was so happy she could cry – well, that was probably the dust, actually.
She put the picture back on the box and closed it, putting it aside as she put back the rest of the boxes, hoping they were in the same order as they were before and made her way back to her room.
Not bothering to turn on the lights, she put the box on the floor gently and dropped to her knees beside it, opening it once more and looking at its contents with more calm.
Besides the one from '84, the other pictures seemed to be older, or taken with a cheaper camera. There was one with a boy and an older girl baking something in a kitchen. Willow recognized it as the very same kitchen that she had stormed from only minutes ago. The back read: Mike and Nancy's Christmas Cookies – 12/24/1982.
Another had an older-looking Nancy with curlier and shorter hair posing in front of a building with the name The Hawkins Post hanging from it. 06/29/1985 – The Best Future Journalist – Love, J. Byers was written behind it, the handwriting was different from the other two, Willow noticed.
There was something about the name Byers that sounded familiar, but Willow couldn't tell where she had seen it before. She decided to look into it later, focusing on the other two remaining pictures.
The first one had a group of four little boys dressed in different costumes, an older girl was in the back, also dressed up. All of them were smiling at the camera. Willow easily recognized Aunt Nancy and her father, she also saw who she assumed were Uncle Lucas and that one other man that they’d always call every November 6th. The other kid seemed to be dressed as a wizard. Turning it around, it only had a date in the same handwriting as the last picture: 07/23/1979.
The final one showed two young boys hugging each other standing in front of what looked like a branch fort. Willow noticed that the boy besides her father was the same kid that she couldn't recognize. This one had the writing on its front, in the bottom of the frame. M & W – Castle Byers – 02/18/1982.
Willow left the pictures resting on the ground and grabbed the only other thing in the box. It was a hard-cover book with golden letters that read Hawkins High – Class of 86. A yearbook, Willow concluded.
She flew the book open, expecting to see photos of her father and his classmates, but she was met with the name ‘Nancy Wheeler’ being the one marked as the owner of the book. It was her aunt's.
Opening the book on its last page, Willow traced her fingers over the multicolored signatures of different people. Her eyes fell over the one in the corner: You deserve all the honors. Congrats! – Love, J. Byers. Accompanied by a heart.
Huh. That was that name again, and that handwriting. Willow quickly looked for the B in the yearbook, finding that there was no one listed as ‘Byers’ in it. Either they were in a different class or they went to another school.
So, whoever J. Byers was, they probably were very close with Aunt Nancy, to the point that they hung out with her from a very young age and apparently also babysat Willow's dad at some point, judging by the picture with the other boy, ‘W’. And, talking about that photo, what was ‘Castle Byers’? What did it have to do with her dad if J. Byers was her aunt's friend?
And who was the boy in the photo? Why was he the only one Willow didn't recognize out of her dad's friends?
Willow shook her head. This was leaving her with more questions than answers. She got up and grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil, deciding to write down what she knew.
So. Firstly, it seemed like the box was probably not his dad's. It must've been either her aunt's or her grandma's, judging by its contents.
Secondly, her dad apparently really liked dressing up as a kid and his whole friend group seemed to enjoy it too.
That was another thing. She had always assumed that her dad's friends group was composed of Uncle Lucas, Aunt Max and the other man who she was pretty sure was named Dusky or something. But not only was Aunt Max completely absent from these photos, it seemed like there was a fifth person. Why is W never in her dad's hang outs?
Looking back at what she learned, Willow realized that now she knew a bit more about her aunt, but her father was still the same old mystery, just with new layers.
She closed the box and kicked it under her bed; sighing, she threw herself over her covers. There had to be something that connected the name Byers with her family. It repeated itself too much and she couldn't shake the feeling that she had heard it before, seen it somewhere else.
Willow was decided. She had to learn more, and her next stop seemed evident.
She had to search in the basement.
–––– ★ ––––
“Willow, you've barely touched your pancakes.” Her father spoke as he picked up his empty plate.
“I'm sorry, dad. I don't feel very well, I don't want to eat.” She pushed some pieces of food around with her fork, looking down.
Her dad exhaled, “You have to try eating something.” He made his way around the table and pressed a hand to his daughter's forehead, “You don't seem to have a fever. What are you feeling?”
“I don't know, I just…feel pretty bad… Could I stay home today?” She hugged herself around the middle.
Willow heard her father sigh. “Is-” He began before cutting himself off. She saw from the corner of her eye as he shook his head. “Yeah, no, it's fine. Stay and rest.” He patted her shoulder in what was, honestly, a kinda awkward gesture, and grabbed her plate too, taking it to the kitchen, “I'll leave this in the microwave in case you get hungry later.” He turned to the kitchen and was soon out of sight.
Okay, he was acting more awkward than usual, but at least he didn't suspect anything and she was going to be able to stay home. Step one was completed.
Look, she felt kinda bad for lying to her dad, alright? But she needed to get answers and if she wasted half of her day at school she would have less time to search around. This was the only way for him to let her stay and she needed it.
Besides, she wouldn't have to create a plan and investigate if he just were willing to talk to her in the first place. So, really, it was his fault that she had to take desperate measures.
So step one, Stay at Home, was done, now came step two, Get the Old Man Out of the Basement – she was still working on the names for this operation.
Willow went to her room, trying to figure out how she could manage to get her father out for enough time for her to go to the basement and rummage through the boxes.
She weighed her chances as she paced. Her father only left the basement for cooking, going to sleep at basically dawn or whenever he had to leave the house. Those were the only three windows that she had to sneak in his office.
She quickly dismissed the first two. He would still be downstairs if he were to be cooking, he could very easily hear her and question her. The second option was a bit better, but even though she could get up at like 4 a.m, it was still too risky; he would be at the end of the hall after all, a wrong move and he could hear her sneaking out of her bedroom. So those two options were discarded.
That only left her with one. She had to get him out of the house somehow.
But, how? She couldn't just go to him and say ‘Go and take a walk!’, he would suspect immediately! No, she had to be more clever about it, it had to be something that could assure her enough time.
As Willow walked back and forth around her room, wondering what she could do, she bumped her hip against one of her cabinets, which was loosely opened. She pushed it, trying to close it but it just kept opening itself, there probably was something loose about it.
She was about to walk away when she realized what was inside it. An idea formed in her head.
She knew exactly what she was going to do.
–––– ★ ––––
Her father was preparing lunch when Willow entered stumbling into the kitchen.
“Dad, you know how I told you that I was feeling bad?” She stretched out the last word as she reclined over the door frame.
“Yeah, how are you feeling now?” He kept his eyes on the carrot that he was chopping, seemingly ignoring his daughter's dramatics, which, rude.
“Well, I know what's wrong,” she continued, ignoring her father's question. “I'm starting to get cramps… I think my period came early.” Willow saw as a look of discomfort fell upon her father's face at the mention of the female cycle. Men. “Can I ask you a favor, dad?”
He came out of his slight stupor with a shake of his head and kept bussing himself with the knife. “Of course, Willow, what is it?”
“Can you buy me some pain pills, please? I ran out of them last month and I forgot to buy more. Here,” she pulled out of her pocket an empty box of period painkillers, one of the boxes that were in her cabinets, “try finding these ones, please. And if they don't have them you can bring these ones,” she gave him a piece of paper with a name scrambled in it, “Jess told me these were good too.”
Her father put both the box and the paper in the pocket of his jacket, “Alright, I'll go after I finish with this.” He gestured towards the unfinished meal.
“Thanks, dad.” Willow left the kitchen feeling satisfied. She knew he wasn't going to find any of those pills. The ones she used to take stopped being transferred to Indiana after some legal issue a few years ago and the other ones weren't even real. She had sent him on a wild goose chase.
The only three pharmacies in Hawkins were all the way across town and her dad's old car would take ages to go through all of them. It should give her enough time to enter the basement and search for a few minutes. She trusted her father to actually try to search in all three establishments.
So she waited and waited, until the food was eaten and the car was turned on. Willow sat by her bedroom window as she saw the car go up the road until it went left and got lost from her sight.
As soon as she couldn't see the car anymore she sprinted downstairs and came face to face with the basement door.
A sudden wave of anxiety hit her. It was silly, really, there was nothing to be scared or nervous about, but she hadn't entered the place in years, so she couldn't help feeling that this was a whole new level of rebellion and defiance that not even entering her father's room reached.
She shook her head. She had already made all this way, she may as well finish her journey. It was all for the sake of researching and having a good laugh, right? Right.
Willow stubbornly pushed down the slimmer of doubt that tried to cling to her as she pushed open the door, the basement stairs and the dim light that her father had left on, greeting her.
She climbed down a few steps and took a look around the place from where she stood. There were multiple paper sheets stacked in piles laying around in an untidy way, alongside two or three writing machines. There were also two different tables; one had a closed laptop with four cups half-filled with coffee scattered around, a chair sitting in front of it all. The other table, a smaller one, was pushed to one of the side walls, where multiple boxes with different sizes and an old TV lay all around it. Even though there were many things in the basement, it somehow looked empty.
Willow didn't think twice before jumping over the last couple of steps and rushing towards the boxes when something else catched her eye. In the wall behind the stairs, the one that could only be seen by being all the way down, there were multiple paintings and drawings hung up in the otherwise empty space.
She made a quick scan over them. Some seemed professional, framed and everything – she was pretty sure they used to be up in the living room, actually –, and there was also that one with the monster that she loved when she was little, but most of them were different, they looked almost… childish. Willow recognized some of her own old drawings in a corner but she had no idea where the majority had come from and, based on the yellowed, kind of destroyed papers, she guessed they were old.
She decided to properly look at them later. First, she was going to focus on the boxes.
Boxes were opened and boxes were closed, dust flew around erratically, and yet Willow kept ending up empty handed. All that she could find were board games, books, tapes that she didn't know how to reproduce, and clothes that clearly once were meant to be donated.
Minutes had already passed when she found a box labeled Graduation ‘89, and her eyes filled with wonder. Her excitement came crashing down, though, as she realized that it was almost completely empty. Almost.
Willow picked up the year book and flew it open. I'm the first page, the name ‘Michael Wheeler’ was scribbled in the same ugly way that characterized her father's way of writing. How he became a writer with such awful handwriting was beyond her.
She searched page by page, going first through the clubs and categories like ‘cutest couple!’ – she realized her father was in neither, unsurprising somehow – before getting to the individual photos.
As soon as she looked at the first names, Willow noticed a big hole in the page that seemed to be unconnected to any picture. She turned the page to find that it corresponded with the beginnings of the letter C, the one that should be the first one, to be exact. There was a possibility that it was the endings of the B since there wasn't any separation between letters, but she scrapped the idea, the last one was already followed by U.
It was still weird, though. Willow went straight to the W, looking for her father, but where the Wheeler was supposed to be in, there was another hole identical to the last one.
That made her frown but upon better research, Willow realized that there were six missing pictures, each of which seemed to be the entirety of her father's friend group – she could see where the other three of his friends would fit, but aside from the first one that she saw, there was another one around the H that she couldn't explain.
There wasn't any type of signatures in the end either, it was completely blank.
She put the book aside, sighing loudly. Why couldn't she find anything? Why was it so hard to find any sort of information? Was it too much to ask to know a little bit more about her own family?
Willow looked back at the box and grabbed the other thing in the box. It was a note with a picture.
Well, calling it a note was probably a stretch. It actually was just a piece of notebook paper badly ripped with a ‘Have a good summer, sucker!’ written on top of it in messy writing. Glue attached the note to the polaroid in a way that surely would have had Willow's grandmother recoiling and complaining about ‘destroying a nice memory’ if she were to see it.
The picture showed six people, all standing in orange graduation robes as they smiled widely at the camera. It was slightly faded with age and dirt but she could easily recognize Aunt Max's wild, red hair. The rest were simple to figure out, most of them at least.
Between her Aunt Max and her father, there were not one, but two people that she couldn't pinpoint: a girl with dark hair falling over her shoulders, who had an arm over the redhead, and a boy with slightly lighter hair and small sideburns that was side hugging both the other girl and Willow's father. Both of them had bright smiles.
She looked at the back of the photo and, scrambled around, there were five different signatures written in a thin black marker. Willow skipped over Lucas Sinclair and M&M – seriously, Aunt Max? – and Dustin H. – so that was his name – as she focused on the other two. The first one was in a messy writing, it read J.E. Hopper, Willow had no idea who it could be. The other one, however, caught her attention as she focused on the last name. The words W. Byers stood in front of her, in a handwriting that could only be described as artistic: it spinned and twirled in a way that seemed that, whoever wrote it, put thought and care in every trace; it certainly stood amongst the other signatures.
Willow was also sure that she had seen it before, and, this time, she knew where.
She left everything on the ground as she moved towards the wall on the other side of the basement, her feet felt like they were moving on their own over a path that she walked multiple times as a kid.
Willow came face to face with the painting with the red monster and the four fighters, and right in the left corner, there it was. In the same artistic handwriting, it read W. Byers.
It had always been there, in the place that she used to play as a child, that she used to spend hours at, and was more or less banned from years ago.
Her eyes slipped into the other paintings, the ones that were framed and looked newer, and in every single one the same signature repeated itself over and over.
It didn't make sense though. Wasn't Byers her aunt's friend? And didn't their name start with J? Unless it was another Byers. It clearly was either the boy or the girl from the photo with the note, but which one?
Willow went back to the box and grabbed the polaroid before heading upstairs towards her room. She was pretty sure she had all the pieces of this puzzle now, she just had to decode them.
Once inside, she grabbed the other box from under her bed and laid all the pictures on the ground. And finally, finally, things started to take shape.
The picture with the two boys hugging each other read M & W, she could figure out that the M stood for Michael, but the W, alongside the so-called ‘Castle Byers’ in the background seemed to point towards the other kid being W. Byers. Which meant that the guy in the graduation photo was the mysterious person that Willow had been looking for.
Even though she was extremely curious – she couldn't help notice that her name started with the same letter as his, one that isn't very common for that matter – Willow also felt confused, and, honestly, slightly disappointed.
Deep down she had been wishing to find something about her family's past. Something to explain their strange behavior and that would help her understand not only her father but also the rest of her relatives. And even if it wasn't that, Willow had hoped that at least she would get some good romantic gossip about his father. Instead, it seemed that all she was finding was something about some type of secret friend that nobody seemed to talk about anymore for some odd reason.
So it wasn't much, but she guessed that knowing a little bit more, as mundane as it seemed to be, was better than knowing nothing at all. And, who knows, maybe the video would be funny at the end of the day.
There was something that was still missing, however. Willow had yet to know the full name of this mysterious person and it seemed to be omitted everywhere. There had to be a way for her to discover it, there had to be.
Looking back at the photos, her eyes centered on a person that repeated in quite a few. If there was someone that she could trust to explain – or at least trust herself to get an explanation out of him –, it was Uncle Lucas and Willow was going to call him. He clearly had been there since the start so he had to know who W. Byers was, his full name and maybe even who he was for Willow's father or why they don't talk about him anymore. If someone knew something about this mysterious guy, it had to be Uncle Lucas.