Chapter Text
California was nothing like Hawkins.
That was the first thought that came to Will’s mind when the sweeping glass doors of the airport slid open with a whoosh, spitting them out into blazing heat. Sizzling pale cement, hot wind shaking the precisely placed palm trees, green wafting against the aching blue sky. The colours blindingly bright, jarringly different.
“Jesus Christ,” he heard Jonathan mutter to himself somewhere behind him.
Jesus Christ indeed.
It was hot. It was loud. It was crammed with glistening bodies, rolling suitcases, yells and chatter, and everybody had a twang in their accent.
Everybody sounded like Max.
Like Billy.
The wind smelt like salt and sand, ice cream and suncream, like a never-ending holiday to hell, people dressed in bright tropical shirts and slapping flipflops. They bustled past the four of them; Joyce, Jonathan, Will and El, like water running past a blockade.
It was too hot. Too much.
Will squeezed his eyes shut, took a breath. The noise was deafening, like being back at Starcourt Mall, under that tall glass ceiling and those dizzying bright lights, too many bodies and too much noise. He felt El stiffen beside him at the people, at the bright burning sun.
Will had died. He’d died and gone to hell – physically, at twelve, physically again at thirteen, and now, aged fourteen, he was dying mentally at the front of the airport, squinting in the light. This sucked: how many times could one person possibly die?
Hawkins was 2,274 miles away. The sap in the dense trees, the mud trail to his back garden, the ruins of Castle Byers, all just gone as Joyce gently pushed Will towards the nine-seater minibus that sat waiting to whisk them away to their new life. The man beside it held up a sign: Byers.
Jonathan piling their luggage into the boot, Joyce talking rapidly to the driver, throwing her hands around, describing their new house, their new life, making sure he had the address right. Will kept his head down and his lips pressed tight, not trusting himself to speak without a sob pushing up this throat. He climbed into the back row. His face was probably a mess, tear tracks dried on his cheeks from the plane ride, hair ruffled from sleep.
On his other side, El’s knee bumped against his.
He pulled his away.
He couldn’t look at her. Not right now. Not after everything that had just happened, these last few months. Not with the way El, without even meaning to, had slid into Will’s place in their friends’ lives and left Will stumbling behind. Not after El had saved his life again, over and over. Was it fair to take it out on El? No. Did that stop Will from feeling a bitter twist in his stomach at the thought? Nope.
Jonathan and Joyce climbed into the row ahead of them, the doors finally slamming shut, the tyres squeaking in the heat, the engine roaring, and the airport sped away from them. Brown grass, swaying palm trees and colourful clothes raced past in a blur.
It was like watching his old home slip away all over again, and he took a deep, shaky breath. The tears in his eyes burnt like the air.
Day one of California. Forever to go.
He felt … weirdly numb.
His entire life had been ripped away by the government and they’d unceremonious dumped him here, away from his home, his friends. Away from Mike, and his stupid, stupid crinkled face and loud mouth and puffy hair. Away from the sunburn on his nose and the watch that glinted on his wrist. Away from his biting words poured out in the rain.
There was no rain here, though, for Mike to yell under. No Mike full stop.
Maybe a part of him should’ve felt glad; being away from Mike should’ve been easier than being around him all summer – hell, all his life, if Will was being serious with himself. Maybe being apart would cure the ache in his chest every time Mike snorted at a funny joke, every time he bumped his elbow with Will’s when they were laughing, any time his eyes lingered on Will’s for just a fraction too long before being ripped away by El.
Always by El.
Who was sat right beside him, sniffling, too, God dammit.
Maybe, in another universe, being away from Mike was a good thing, and in that other universe Will Byers could enjoy the blazing warmth that Hawkin’s could never give him, enjoy the endless blue sky, the rolling brown hills in the distance, the drawling accents. Maybe, somehow, a version of Will could exist happily without Mike Wheeler.
It was not this version though.
Give it time.
That’s what Joyce kept saying to him, again and again. Give it time.
It had been approximately five minutes since California airport had spat them out into the blistering heat and aching blue sky, and it felt like he was dying all over again.
“You okay back there?” his mom asked, turning in her seat to look between Will and El. El, who had curled up on her side by the window and had her head turned away. Will, determinedly looking out of the other window, chin in hand.
No, he wanted to say. We are not okay.
“Fine, Mom,” he said instead, voice flat.
He caught the shared look between his mom and brother and resisted the urge to roll his eyes. They worried. He knew that. Perhaps for good reason. But he didn’t want to feel babied today. He didn’t want to feel babied ever again.
He had to grow up, like everybody else, eventually. That’s what Mike had said.
Stupid Mike.
Besides him, El sniffed.
Stretching behind them on the highway, from the tail end of their minibus, through California customs, through the wide sky and seeping throughout Hawkins, lay the heaviness and grief that had followed them here. Nobody had addressed it, nobody had dared to breach the topic; it had been a month, and Will wasn’t sure why his mom hadn’t brought something up yet, why El didn’t talk about it, why he couldn’t bring himself to say the words out loud.
The deaths. The sacrifices.
Billy, flayed.
Hopper, gone.
His mom’s lips stayed sealed tight, eyes darkened by grief, never speaking a word about them. El, eyes glazed with unshed tears, refusing to come close to the topic. And Will. Stuck in the middle. Unable to process. Unable to believe it.
He hadn’t seen himself possessed; murky memories that weren’t his own plagued his nights, kept him bolting upright, gasping in air as the Mind Flayer curled his long smoky fingers through his dreams and tried to take back over again. It had consumed him, nearly killed him, would’ve killed him, if it wasn’t for his family. For El. For stupid Mike Wheeler. If he didn’t think about it, if he tired himself out enough during the day, kept his mind busy, kept his fingers gripping moving boxes and stacks of comic books and donation bags, if he didn’t think - he could push it deep down and pretend it hadn’t happened. It had, obviously. But Will was good at pretending, and he hadn’t seen it. That made pretending easier.
But he had seen Billy possessed.
And it had opened the fissure in his chest like a gaping cavity. He had seen the Mind Flayer take somebody else. He had seen it kill.
It should’ve been him.
And so, he kept his mouth shut.
“You okay, buddy?” Jonathan, this time. His voice was soft, like coaxing a stray dog towards him. Will took small satisfaction when his head hit the roof of the minibus as they drove over a particularly nasty pothole, too busy worrying about Will to watch what he was doing.
“I’m fine.”
“You sure?”
Will pulled his eyes from the rolling, simmering hills around them and frowned, hand still on his chin, the other clenched in his palm. Jonathan raised an eyebrow and said, lightly: “You get carsick.”
Oh.
Will raised his eyebrows in reply, and Jonathan’s lips pulled up into a half smile. Will couldn’t help the small smile back, and Jonathan turned back around again to gaze out of his own window. Will dropped the smile.
Was he okay?
It was an age-old question he honestly didn’t know how to respond to. Not since he had been taken, not since the Mind Flayer had curled itself around him and – and in him -
He pressed his lips together in a hard line.
Don’t think about it. Don’t feel it.
Watching Billy die in front of his eyes had shifted something inside him. Kids weren’t meant to see such things. Kids weren’t supposed to be okay after seeing the things Will had seen.
Besides him, El sniffed.
And his heart ached for her too.
“You get first pick of the bedrooms,” said his mom when they climbed out of the minibus, shuffled up the wide flat driveway to the flat, brown house, and unlocked the front door.
The driveway was paved, like an actual driveway, like Mike’s and Lucas’s and Dustin’s houses back home. The hedges outside were neat, the sold sign in the front yard swinging in the warm breeze. A patch of yellow grass sat outside, a tree hung a dappled green shadow over the walls, and the air tasted sweet, almost nut like. Almonds.
A moving van sat there waiting for them parked on the road, and two men stood by the front, shaded from the sun, smoking. Doctor Owen’s must’ve pulled some pretty strings to get them this house, Will figured, as they stepped through the front door cautiously. It was wide inside, open planned, glass panels by the door, shiny wooden counter tops in the kitchen, a sliding glass door to a -
Was that a garden? A proper, gated, yellowed grass garden?
Will’s chest tightened.
“Which room do you want?” Jonathan’s voice echoed around the bare house, too loud, too shaky. He stepped around Will and El to peer around the corners, eyes wide. He looked tired. More tired than Will had ever seen him. “I don’t mind going in any, it’s up to you guys.”
“El can choose.”
At Will’s voice, El looked up, snapping out of her daze, eyes widening.
“No – I –”
“It’s okay,” said Will. He really meant it. How many bedrooms had El ever been able to choose for herself before now? Besides, he told himself, he didn’t really care; nothing could compare to his bedroom back home. Not really. “I don’t need a big room anyway,” he told her, making up a lie on the spot. “My D&D stuff took up most of my room back home, you can have the biggest room. I’ll just … I’ll take one of the others.”
El chewed her lip, uncertain. She looked from Will, to Jonathan, to Joyce, who was now dragging in boxes from the driveway and dumping them inside the entry way, her hair plastered to her face. Sunlight filtered lazily around them. It seemed unfair, to have such warm bright weather, when everything felt so cold and dark.
El’s voice was low. “I don’t have many things either, anymore. The – cabin –”
At the door, Joyce stilled. Jonathan looked away, and Will curled his hands into his pockets and pulled his shoulders in. Hopper’s cabin had been destroyed under the battle between El and the Mind Flayer, El’s room smashed into splinters, her new clothes, her stereo, the teddy she kept on her pillow, the photos of her and Mike; all of it gone. All El had left was a few of Hopper’s old shirts, oversized and smelling of cigarettes, and a blue hair tie on her wrist.
She played with it now, head low.
Will chewed his lip. “You choose first.”
“But –”
“I mean it, El, it’s fine.”
El’s eyes flicked up to his, watery. Her lip wobbled. “It’s your house.”
“It’s ours,” jumped in Jonathan immediately. “You’re with us now, El.”
“That’s right,” Joyce said, inhaling sharply, putting down the box by the front door, moving around Will to press a hand onto El’s shoulder. “We’ve got you, honey. You can take any room you like, and maybe later we can go shopping and pick you up some of your favourites for dinner tonight, hm? Does that sound okay?”
El blinked up at her, Joyce’s words clearly spinning around and around her mind, over and over again like a carrousel. Jonathan on one side, Joyce on the other, Will felt himself curl inwards as he watched them.
He couldn’t help it – something bitter twisted deep inside him at the sight.
El deserved this. She deserved a mother. She deserved to have love.
Will couldn’t be jealous over that.
“I can … leave?” El asked doubtfully, eyes widening.
Joyce glanced at Jonathan.
“Of course, honey. Why – why wouldn’t you?”
“The Don’t Be Stupid Rules,” she whispered, and her eyes flashed wet, suddenly, and Joyce frowned, moving to loop an arm around her shoulder, holding her close.
“The what, baby?”
“It’s – it’s what Hopper said,” El said into her shoulder, sniffing. “To – to keep me safe. From the Bad Men.”
Hopper.
His name alone made the whole house suddenly feel cold.
Joyce stiffened, but an arm stroked El’s anyway, comforting the way she always was. Will saw the tightness around her eyes, though. The grief.
“Well,” she said, voice thick. She pulled herself off El to hold her gaze and smiled, shakily. “We don’t need Don’t Be Stupid Rules, here. Okay? It’s a new start for us. For you. We’re safe here, honey, we’re safe.” Joyce tried a smile. It didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Why don’t you guys grab some bits from the van, and we can – we can delegate the rooms out in a bit?”
They all moved quicker than necessary, moving faster than natural, back out of the house onto the sizzling tarmac driveway, back into the sun.
Away from where the heavy coldness that had settled amongst them from Hopper’s name.
Away from the way Will’s family held El close, and his stomach twisted painfully.
Black vines and coils spread from beneath him, in every direction, over grey fields and miniscule houses, over little picket fences and up telephone poles. It was dark the way it always was, and the sky lit up the dark in flashes of red, like splatters of blood, and it showed him the little brown house in the far distance. It was hidden from the rest, half obscured by trees. He knew that house. He knew that shed, too.
The figure at the door was tiny, a simple pinprick of a person, pale and insignificant against the sheer size of him – but he had noticed the figure, because he had not allowed him in. The boy had wandered in by mistake, a slip, an error through time and space.
He knew that boy.
He hadn’t anticipated the boy coming back to him yet, hadn’t planned it to be this soon. The boy hadn’t finished his art, hadn’t finished initiating the plan yet; he had come back too soon.
But … he was here. He had torn through the fabric of time and space to be here, to be with him again. That meant he was getting stronger. That meant he was nearly ready. And he rolled his head around to look at the boy properly, to take him in; the paleness in his face, his wide eyes, his trembling body. He was scared. But that was okay, that was understandable.
He wouldn’t be, soon.
It would all be over for him soon.
“What’s it like?” asked Dustin, voice crackling over the phone.
“It’s … uh … it’s nice.”
Will twirled the coil around his fingers, eyeing the stack of boxes by his leg. It had been a week. One whole week of living out of cardboard boxes, of furniture arriving to the house in bits, of a dismantled sofa Joyce had never ordered, courtesy of Doctor Owens. One week of tiptoeing around each other, not really saying anything, not bothering to fill the silences. One week of nightmares. Will kept his Walkman on most of the time, blasting out music to drown out the heaviness. He had barely spoken to El.
She had taken the biggest room. The one upstairs. Will couldn’t blame her; she had a view of their yellow back garden and the flat roofed expanse of houses around them. Some of them even have pools in their yards, she’d told Joyce over dinner one night, and Will wondered if Doctor Owens budget had run out before he could splash on a house with a pool for them. Not that he had great memories of pools exactly, but August heat in California was a hell of a lot more persistent than back home in Hawkins.
“Just nice?” echoed Dustin impatiently. “Dude, you’re in Cali! Have you been to any beaches? Is it hot? Are there palm trees everywhere?”
Will laughed a little, quietly, his voice travelling down the little landing outside his own room. The house was on a slant; where it dipped, the house did too, lending them a small staircase down to one more level of the house. This was where Will and Jonathan had found their rooms. Jonathan had gone out job hunting. Joyce was in the kitchen, fussing over a (again, not ordered) blender, and El was in her room. He thought. He actually couldn’t be sure.
“We aren’t next to a beach, so no, not yet, but I’ll update you when we go to one,” he promised. “And yes, it’s hot. Like, really hot. I think I’ve got sunburn already, and Mom’s practically coated herself in suncream and she keeps chasing us around with a bottle of the stuff.”
He heard Dustin laugh, then sigh. “I’m so jealous of you Byers, honest. School starts this week and we’re all stuck in doors while you’re living it up in California. Life’s unfair.”
Will bit his tongue. Yeah. Life was … unfair.
Bob was dead and Hopper was dead and Billy was dead and Will should be dead –
“School starts for me, too,” he said, exhaling shakily. Push that thought away. Not now. “At least you guys are together.” It hadn’t meant to sound bitter. It probably sounded bitter.
Dustin huffed. “Yeah, but it’s not like anyone’s been much fun around here lately. I mean – Max is obviously bummed out about Billy, and she’s been – I don’t know, weird. She hasn’t hung out with us, like, once.”
“Her brother just died,” Will said quietly.
Dustin paused. “I – I know. Sorry. I mean, I get it. It’s just … weird here. All the time. Like, we can’t ever just have one year go by without something fucking it all up, you know? And Lucas has been moping around because Max won’t talk to him, and Mike hasn’t left his house in days now –”
At the mention of Mike’s name, Will’s chest ached. Will had tried to call Mike’s house first, and Karen had said Mike was out.
He leaned against the wall, eyes stinging.
Mike hadn’t left the house in days.
So, he was … avoiding Will.
Which was great. Just great.
“– Suzie is so hard to get hold of because her dad found out about me so she’s had everything taken off her, can you believe that? So, I’ve had to give Cerebro over to Mike so he can talk to El, which is such bullshit because I made it, not Mike –”
“You gave Cerebro away?” Will frowned. “Does it even work if it isn’t on Weathertop?”
“I hope not,” snorted Dustin. “At least then that’ll be two of us who can’t talk to our girlfriends. Oh, hey, three, if we’re counting Lucas.”
“We’re not,” hummed Will.
“Worth a shot. How’s El – uh, Jane holding up?”
Will shrugged. Then realised Dustin couldn’t see him. He shifted the phone from one ear to the other, fiddling with his watch absently. The same one Mike had back home. The one Mike had gotten him for his birthday years ago.
“You know. It’s … hard.”
Hard. Hopper was dead. Billy was dead. El’s powers had been snatched away by the Mind Flayer in a greasy, fleshy form, buried under her skin and sapped out of her by force. Hard. It was hard.
Dustin clicked his tongue. “She’ll get them back.” He sounded so confident. So self assured. Like he was discussing El having lost her favourite colouring pencil or something. Not her powers. “Then maybe she can come back and help me rearrange my living room for my mom.”
“Why are you rearranging the living room again?”
“Ever since Mews, my mom gets weird about the cat getting stuck behind furniture.”
Ah, Mews. The cat eaten by Dart. Yes. That made sense.
Will shuddered. He didn’t like to think about Dart. About the way he had leant over his cold bathroom sink and retched and retched and – slippery and cold up his throat – crawling along his tongue –
“Listen Byers, I gotta go, it’s already ten here and my mom’s big on bedtime since – well, since everything.”
“Yeah, sure.” Will cleared his throat, voice tight. “Night, Dustin.”
“Night, man.”
Sunsets in California were a spectacle of colour. The sky felt so much wider here, blue bleeding into oranges and pinks and soft reds on the horizon, the wide empty streets laced with long grey shadows, the sound of skateboards outside his house as Will walked, slow, hands in pockets, along his road. Joyce had made a pretty burnt pasta bake, and nobody had stuck around long afterwards to chat. That just … didn’t happen anymore. El had slinked off back to her room, eyes red, Jonathan had offered to wash up and then he too had disappeared. Joyce had settled down on her half-made sofa with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other and gazed at the opposite wall, and Will needed to get out.
He watched the kids on skateboards for a while, and it reminded him of Max.
This summer, he had spent more time with Max than he could ever remember doing before – or maybe it had just felt that way, because of Starcourt. Sneaking into the cinemas with Dustin, Lucas, Max and Mike, sharing their sweets on the back rows, using Steve to get free ice creams afterwards and biking home, bellies full and mouth stretched into laughter. Joyce had finally eased up for the first time in two years, and Will had actually been allowed out later than nine pm. He and Mike would stay up late in his basement playing video games at the start of summer.
But it had all sort of … slipped away from him. Suddenly Mike wasn’t there anymore, he was at Hopper’s cabin. With El. And Dustin had left to go to his summer camp, and Will had really thought that was it for him then. He’d have nobody. All the couples were together again. He was alone.
Max and Lucas had made sure that didn’t happen.
He didn’t want to third wheel, which is what he had told Lucas after the first few times the three of them trailed around the mall, not doing much, just browsing and chatting. Lucas and Max didn’t hold hands around Will, or kiss, or do any of the stuff Mike and El did. They didn’t leave him out of conversations; they didn’t pile up their own inside jokes for Will to just stand and listen to – they involved him. They were nice to him. Which, Will thought to himself, was a pretty low bar to begin with. But Lucas had promised he wouldn’t be a third wheel, that they wanted him there, and he’d kept his word. For a while, Lucas and Max were the only consistent things in Will’s life.
And then El was allowed out to the mall, and Dustin came back from camp and Will had hoped maybe that meant the six of them could be together again properly, finally, that the awkward separation was finally over – but instead, Dustin had unleashed a whole base of operations under said mall, and El had rediscovered the Upside Down, the Mind Flayer got a hold of Billy, and then Billy had died, and Hopper had died, and El’s powers were stolen – and – and –
The summer ended, and Will had been moved 2,274 miles away from his friends, and there wasn’t even Lucas or Max left for him now. He was alone.
He had El.
But he might has well have been alone.
When he had been taken, a legend of a girl with superpowers who had saved the day had been born. She had fought monsters and flipped vans and moved into Mike Wheeler’s basement while Will – well, while Will ran from monsters and cried for his friends and cried for his mom and could do absolutely nothing on his own. And then she was gone by the time he had come back, and he listened to the stories about her and half of him wished he could’ve met her, the other half of him envious that she had been here at all. When she came back a year later, she saved his life again, had smiled at him when the Mind Flayer finally released him and said his name like she had known him, but he didn’t know her. And she had hugged his friends and hugged his Mike and –
No. Not his Mike.
Just Mike. Just stupid Mike with his stupid fluffy hair and stupid freckles and matching watch, 2,274 miles away from Will.
Mike, who was dating El. El, who Will didn’t really know, who was his only link to his home, who was wallowing in in a grief Will could only too easily understand but couldn’t put words to. El, who he was, okay yes, kind of envious of, but also in awe of, who could fight and cry and be brave and vulnerable and all of those things were okay for her. She was everything Will wished he could be, but untouchable.
Will watched the skateboarders until the sky went from a flurry of colours, into pale dusk, into deep blue, and finally into night. The kids on the boards whooped and yelled and then eventually skated away back to their own houses, and the stars blinked into existence, and all Will wanted to see was the stars above the forests of Hawkins.
Dear Mike,
It feels weird to be writing you letters like we’re in the olden days, or in some medieval village swapping secret codes back and forth to each other – we used to have our walkie talkies for that, and I kind of miss mine now. I suck at writing letters, it feels like I’m talking to myself.
School starts for me this week, I guess I’m kind of nerv wishing I knew somebody there already. I think I’m just missing us all being together. I got so used to riding our bikes to school every morning and now I don’t even have a bike anymore, it feels like part of me is missing how I imagine people whose cars break down all the time feel, and suddenly they have to walk everywhere all over again. I think Mom will eventually get me a new bike, but she’s been worrying busy with unpacking all of our stuff lately, so it might take a while.
Jonathan got a new job in a newspaper office, and Mom sells stuff on the phone all day every day, so every time me or Jon want to call somebody we have to wait for her shift to ends, and I swear it never ends. If you call us, just leave a message so Mom can hear it and I’ll ring you back, okay?
This is the issue with letters – I just asked you a question and now I have to wait weeks to read you say “okay!”
Did I mention I suck at letters?
I’ve been having dreams about weird stuff again. I know it’s probably not a big deal, I get bad dreams loads from when from that year, but I just kind of thought it would’ve stopped by now, you know? I’m sure you have dreams about it too. Maybe we should just start jotting down all our weird ones and swapping dream stories to make them less scary weird? Like, I could tell you all about the one I had about Mr Clarke and the wormhole, that one’s pretty funny. And I have another one about Mike the Brave getting eaten by a horse. Also really weird. Do you think they mean anything? Not the one about the horse and the wormhole, I mean the other weird ones. They don’t, right?
Sorry, I’ve asked you about ten questions that you can’t exactly reply to, so you might need to bullet point your answers in your letter.
Write back soon,
Miss you,
Love From Will x
“Alright, tell me what’s going on with you – tell me about this episode you had.”
Machines swirled around them. Sterile smells and bright lights and crisp white lab coats, wires curling around his head.
His voice sounded faraway, not really his as he heard himself say, “well … my friends were there and then they … weren’t … and I was back there … again.”
Something sharp scratched on paper.
“In – the Upside Down?”
Machines bleeped. Pencils scrawled.
“All right … so what happened next?”
“I … heard this noise. So … I went outside, and it was … worse.”
A prompt. “How was it worse?”
Heart rate speeding up. “There was this … storm.”
“Okay … so how did you feel? When you saw the storm?”
“I felt … frozen.”
“Heart racing?”
“Just … frozen.”
“Frozen, cold frozen? Frozen to the touch?”
Beeping. Whirling machinery. Wires poking around his head. Cold to the touch. “No. Like how you feel when you’re scared, and you can’t breathe or talk to do anything. I felt … felt this evil, like … it was looking at me.”
“It was evil?” Hesitation. A chair squeaking a little. Shuffling bodies. A cleared throat. “What do you think the evil wanted?”
Beeps. Heart pounding. A pencil snapping. “To kill.”
Whirring.
“To kill you?”
“Not me.” Pause. Heavy. Deliberate. “Everyone else.”
Lenora High was bigger than Hawkins High, easier to hide within. Will kept his head down, just the way he did back home. At least he had had his friends back home, though – here, he was alone.
El wasn’t starting with him this term. Joyce had figured – rightly so – that El, having never been to a school in her life before now, was probably not in the best position to be going to a high school, and she had decided on home schooling. Jonathan had agreed. The seniors at Lenora High studied in a different building in another part of Lenora, so Will couldn’t even lean on Jonathan like he’d hoped he’d be able to. Jonathan set off to school early and when he finished, he walked straight to work; he’d found himself a job in the local papers, just like he had back home, and Will wondered if he missed Nancy, if he thought of her every time he dressed in his shirt and slacks, camera around his neck, coffee in his hand at the kitchen counter. Will missed Mike. He missed Lucas, and Max, and Dustin. He missed the smell of pine and the sound of tires on mud tracks, of early morning yawns as the five of them biked to school together. He missed his old house.
His bedroom was in an array of boxes, unorganised and unpacked. His clothes lay in bin bags around the place, and he hadn’t touched his art supplies. It was just too much to handle. Every part of him hurt to think of his friends starting their first day at Hawkins High without him. Not that he’d loved school back home – he had long since grown used to the snide comments, the queer and fairy jabs, the sidelong looks at his clothes and his hair. But he had had his friends, and that had always been enough before.
Will was determined this be better. Nobody knew him here. Nobody knew his brother, who had been labelled as a freak in his first year in high school and the name had stuck. Nobody knew Joyce as the local crazy lady (though Will loved that about her, it had saved his life). Here, he was just Will. Will, with a bowl cut he was slowly, finally, starting to grow out, and his striped shirts and red shorts.
Even his clothes made him yearn for home.
Will’s first week of school was uneventful until Friday, when he finally finished and poured out of the school with the rest of the bodies, the smell of lingering perspirant and perfume and laughter in the air. The sky was pale and empty, tall and vast, the ground dry and brittle, the smell of almonds and heat in the air.
He walked it home from school now, after Joyce had finally been convinced by Jonathan that this wasn’t Hawkins; Will was safe here, Will could walk home if he wanted to.
And Will did want to. It gave him time to think. It gave him time to kill.
He rounded the side of the school towards the bike rack – a subconscious choice, given he no longer had his bike; just another one of many items left behind for someone else to pick up and love the way he had. The bike rack was emptying around him as he realised his mistake, dithering for a moment. He was three hours behind his friends; Mike, Lucas and Dustin would’ve gotten home from school hours ago on their own bikes. He wondered if they missed him.
He wondered if they cared.
He was just turning to head back around to the front of the school again, when a noise caught his attention.
A clicking.
A harsh noise.
Low mutters.
Will frowned. He followed the noise down the side of the building, shadowed between the two walls of his school and the gymnasium, away from the crowds and harsh sunlight. In the shadow of the gym, he rounded the corner and saw it.
The graffiti was crude, massive, stretching up to the top of the wall; every time the spray can shook, it clicked and clacked pleasingly. The boy who shook it had his hood pulled low over his head, dressed far too warmly for the weather, his backpack discarded on the ground, a battered skateboard by his feet – the other boy with him, a dark skinned boy with a buzzed head and a grin on his face, was saying something, laughing, leaning against the wall.
Will watched them for a second.
The painting was crude, for sure, but it was also … impressive? A massive skull, cross eyed with its tongue out, the words Fuck Lenora scrawled across the lolling purple tongue in bright yellow font. Spray paint ran down the wall in drips, and the boy shook the can again, reaching back up to add more to his work of art, when –
“Mr Byers! Mr Javis! Mr Heath!”
At the yell, all three boys spun around, back to the direction Will had come from. Mrs Kennedy was marching for them at breakneck speed, sweating through her shirt, lips pursed in fury. Will’s heart sank.
He’d made it one week without going noticed. Not ideal.
“Who the hell are you?” the dark skinned boy asked Will, eyes wide at the stranger suddenly appearing with no noise.
The boy with the can didn’t stop to ask questions, just lurched forward, grabbed Will’s arm with a paint stained hand and said “run!”
Will didn’t need to be told twice. The boy dropped the can into his bag, looped it over his shoulder and grabbed his board; the three of them ran for it, along the back of the building, up the steps, throwing open the back door. They skidded down the wide beige corridors, shoes squeaking on the shiny floors, taking random doors here and there to lose Mrs Kennedy. She was panting, wheezing somewhere behind them; Will didn’t look back to check. He followed the two boys through hallways he hadn’t memorised yet, and finally into a science lab, the windows thrown open to disperse some nasty odour left behind from some experiment.
“Come on!” the boy with the paint said, already climbing onto the windowsill.
Will gave it one second thought – just one – and followed. They dropped out of the window onto yellowed brittle grass with small oomfs, the boy’s board bouncing as it hit the grass with a clatter, and then stayed crouched low, backs to the wall. Will’s eyes were wide in shock, heart racing, a flush on his cheeks.
What – the hell – was happening.
“Where the hell did you come from?” hissed the second boy, looking past his friend to stare at Will. Will opened his mouth to reply, no words forming in his mind to offer, when the other boy flapped his stained hand in the air, signalling them to shut up. Inside, above their heads, the sound of Mrs Kennedy gasping for breath floated out of the open window in the science classroom. The other two boys silently laughed, eyes on the window above, chests heaving with adrenaline. Will kept perfectly still, breathing in and out slowly, forcing himself to remain calm.
A few more seconds passed.
The boy with the buzzcut slowly stood, half knelt, to check the coast was clear. He flopped back down again with a breathy laugh and tilted his head back to the sky. “Fuck me!”
The three of them stayed still for a moment, not speaking, just breathing heavily. Will didn’t even know what to say, just that he hoped to God Joyce’s new telemarketing job would keep the phones occupied for the next few days in case Mrs Kennedy decided she wanted to call his house.
Joyce wouldn’t be impressed.
“Nice running,” said the boy with the paint, finally pulling off his hood, revealing a cheeky grin and a mop of blonde hair. He looked, Will thought, like the epitome of a Californian. Blonde hair, tanned skin, blue eyed, faint freckles on his cheeks. And his fingers were stained purple and yellow as he hit Will on the arm lightly.
“Where did you even come from?” the second boy asked again, shaking his head. “Didn’t even realise you were here until Kenny said something; you scared the shit out of me.”
“Sorry,” Will said, face flushing automatically as the two of them groaned and stood, stretching their legs. The blonde boy scooped up his bag from where it slipped from his shoulder, and Will heard the faint rattle of cans inside. Now that he wasn’t in immediate danger of being expelled on his first week, he rose slowly, checking the dark classroom behind them carefully. He looked back at the bag. At the paint stains on the boy’s hands. “How did you –” he stopped himself, shaking his head, the question sounding suddenly stupid as it was leaving his mouth, but the blonde boy didn’t seem to think so; he just waited for Will’s question expectantly, face bright with excitement. Will tried again. “How – how did you do that? With the paint?”
“Spray paint,” said the boy easily.
“I mean, I got that bit.”
“It’s easy enough,” said the boy with a laugh.
“Yeah, if you don’t let Kenny find you,” said the other boy with a look back into the window beside them. “Come on, we’d better move it.”
Will followed the boys back around to the front entrance, the last few students milling around the grounds, cicadas singing in the air. The blonde boy pulled his hood up again as they got within eyesight of the main doors, but Mrs Kennedy in her purple shirt was nowhere to be seen, and the three of them stopped by the road, all grinning like they’d gotten away with murder.
Well. Not murder.
No more of that.
“Have you been doing that long?” Will made himself ask, glancing at the bag on the boy’s back. “Spray painting, I mean?”
The boy shrugged, a little bashful. “Few years. You never try it?”
Will shook his head.
The other boy peered at him. “Where are you from?” he drawled in his Californian accent. So much like Max’s. Like Billy’s.
Will swallowed. “Indiana.”
“Oh, shit.” They exchanged a look between them. The blonde boy spun his skateboard in his hands idly. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“My mom got a new job,” Will shrugged, opting for the lie they had set themselves up with. Joyce had a new job, Jonathan wanted to go to a new school far away, El and Will had no choice; it was an easy enough excuse.
“When did you get here?” asked the boy with the buzz cut.
“… two week ago?”
They exchanged another look, loaded with something Will didn’t understand. “What?”
“You moved here two weeks ago and you’re already at school?”
Will blinked. “It was – uh – last minute.”
“I’ll say.” The buzzcut boy lifted his chin. “I’m Ben. Ben Health.”
“I’m Elliott Javis.”
“Will Byers.”
For a moment, none of them spoke; Will giggled into the new awkward silence and they grinned back at him. They didn’t look at him strangely. They didn’t call him Zombie Boy, or fairy, or fag. They just knew him as Will, and it was a rush of relief, to be seen like that. It was weird as hell.
“Do you skate?” asked Elliott into the fresh silence, spinning the board between paint-stained fingers again.
Will shook his head. “I had a friend back home who did, though. She let me try hers a few times.”
“You should come to the park with us,” said Elliott. “You can use my board.”
“I’m really no good!” Will insisted, face flushing now. “Seriously!”
Ben folded his arms and clicked his tongue. “Dude, I can’t skate for shit, I eat dirt every time, you’ll be fine.”
Will licked his lips. Dithered. “You sure?”
“Come on, dude! I’ll teach you.” And Elliott’s smile was so big and bright and infectious, that Will felt his twitch too, warmth settling inside him. He wasn’t exactly swimming with friendship opportunities; he’d never even made friends on his own before. What harm could it do? This might be his only chance.
“Okay. Okay! But if I fall and break any bones it’s on you.”
“Deal.”