Joyce
"I see Will the Wise is back," I said, peering over his shoulder to see his drawing as I made breakfast. "What's that shooting out of his cane?"

"Fireballs." He shrugged. "I couldn't find the red crayon, so that's why it's green."

"Oh, well . . . if he's so wise, why does he need fireballs?" I asked, placing his breakfast on the table. "Can't he just outsmart the bad guys?"

"Most of the time, yeah, totally," he said. "But . . . sometimes the bad guys are smart, too. You know?"

"Yeah. So he needs the fireballs?"

"Yeah, to burn them to a crisp." {He's so cute OMG}

"All right, well, I don't know who's been raising you, but I'm gonna need to get you some new crayons because it looks like he's shooting cabbages."

He chuckled, continuing to draw little green circles, and I ruffled his hair.

I hear a pounding sound coming from the living room and get up to investigate. Lonnie is there, nailing boards to the hole in the wall.

"What are you doing?" I ask.

"What does it look like I'm doing?" he retorts. "You want to freeze to death all winter?" He continues nailing.

I notice the lights coiled on the floor. "I told you not to take these down!"

"They were in the way, babe. How long are you gonna keep those up? I mean, really?"

I proceed to hang them back up.

"You know, it's a shame what they've done to this family," he says.

"What?" {The Duffers? Yeah, I agree.}

"The Sattler Company. I went to the quarry on the way over here. I just wanted to look around, you know? Couldn't believe it. I just couldn't believe it. No warning signs, no fence, no nothing. Ought to be held accountable, if you ask me."

Hopper
I wake up, gasping, drenched in sweat. I look around everywhere, realize I'm in my house, and grab my gun, running outside. No one's there, but I have no idea how I got back to my house. The last thing I remember is being caught by those guys from Hawkins Lab and blacking out. Somehow, they got into my house and left me there.

I head back inside and know they must have done something. So I start looking everywhere—in the lightbulbs, couch cushions, everywhere. I ransack the entire house until it's a mess, and finally find it in the ceiling light in the living room—a bug.

.^.^.^.^.

Someone knocks on the door, calling for me, and I jump, grabbing my gun before answering.

"Jesus, Chief, you all right?" Powell asks, standing next to Callahan on my porch steps.

"What are you doing here?" I ask.

"We tried callin', but—"

"Yeah, the phones dead," I cut him off angrily.

"Ey, so, Bev Mooney came in this morning all upset," Callahan says. "Said that Dale and Henry went hunting yesterday, and they didn't come back home.

"She thought they were on another binger, but she's not so sure now," Powell says.

"I think this whole Will Byers-thing has everyone on the edge," Callahan says.

"Where was this?" I ask.

"It was at the station," Callahan says.

"No, no, where did Henry and Dale go hunting?" I clarify.

"Oh. Uh, out near Kerley."

"Mirkwood," I mutter.

"What?" Powell asks.

"Okay, you go back to the station," I say. "I'll take care of this, all right?"

"You sure?" Callahan asks.

"Yeah, leave it," I say.

"Oh, hey, they found Barbara's car," he says, stopping me as I head back inside.

"What?"

"Barbara Holland's car?" Powell says. "Seems she did run away. Staties found it last night at the bus station."

"Funny, right? They keep doing our job for us," Callahan says.

"Yeah," I say, fakely chuckling. "Funny." I go inside and slam the door.

Brenner
I listen in on the conversation between the kids—the Wheeler, Sinclair, Henderson, and Byers boys, talking about how the Byers kid can't hear them but they can hear him.

"She was there," I say, handing the headphones to a lab worker.

Nancy
"This is where we know for sure it's been, right?" Jonathan asks, crouched with me behind a gate in the cemetery, showing me a map marked off of places the monster's been.

"So that's . . ." I point to a red X on the map.

"Steve's house," he finishes. "And that's the woods where they found Will's bike"—he points to another red X—"and that's my house." He points to the X next to the other.

"It's all so close," I think aloud.

"Yeah. Exactly. I mean, it's all within a mile or something. Whatever this thing is . . . it's not traveling far."

I look at him. "You want to go out there."

"We might not find anything."

"I found something. And if we do see it . . . then what?"

He sighs. "We kill it."

He walks over to his car and gets in the passenger's seat. He breaks into the glove compartment.

"What are you doing?" I ask.

"Just give me a second." It opens and he grabs a gun and a box of bullets.

"Are you serious?"

"What? You want to find this thing and take another picture of it? Yell at it?"

"This is a terrible idea," I say as he gets out of the car and closes the door.

"Yeah, well, it's the best we got," he says. "What? You can tell someone, but they're not gonna believe you. You know that."

"Your mom would," I say.

"She's been through enough."

"She deserves to know."

"Yeah, and I'll tell her. When this thing is dead."

(Y/N)
I take a breath and look at my reflection in the bathroom mirror of the funeral home. I know this is all fake and Will is alive, but . . . he's obviously not safe. What if he doesn't survive the Upside Down? Sure, he's alive now, but what about by the time we're able to save him? I mean, we don't even know how to get to another dimension, let alone if we can. And what if we can't? What if he's stuck down there forever? What if we can't save he save him? What if I never see him again?f

What if, what if, what if. Stop it, (Y/N). Pessimism and what-ifs are getting us nowhere.

I turn on the cold water and splash myself in the face. I look at myself again, droplets dripping from my face. My eyes water uncontrollably.

"Don't cry, (Y/N). Don't cry," I whisper to myself.

All of a sudden, the water splashes at me and shuts off and I jump backward, my chest soaked in water. Slightly stunned, I walk over to the paper towels to dry myself off. Before I reach the roll, the lights start blinking on and off. My brain says to run away, but something keeps me standing in place.

"Will?" I ask softly, shakily. Then, all of a sudden, they stop. I dry myself off, still shaken up, and leave. When I get back out, the boys are talking to Mr. Clarke, hopefully getting some information about parallel dimensions.

"So, theoretically, how do we get there?" Lucas asks as I join them at the table. Mike gives me an odd look, probably wondering why I'm wet. I shake my head dismissively.

"You've been thinking about Hugh Everett's Many-Worlds Interpretation, haven't you?" Mr. Clarke says. "Well, basically, there are parallel universes. Just like our world, but just infinite variations of it. Which means there's a world out there where none of this tragic stuff ever happened."

I think I can speak for all of us when I say I wish I lived in that dimension.

"Yeah, that's not what we're talking about," Lucas says.

"Oh."

"We were thinking of more of an evil dimension, like the Vale of Shadows," Dustin says. "You know the Vale of Shadows?"

"An echo of the Material Plane, where necrotic and shadow magic—"

"Yeah, exactly," Mike says. "If that did exist, a place like the Vale of Shadows, how would we travel there?"

"Theoretically," Lucas adds.

"Well . . ." Mr. Clarke grabs a paper plate and a pen. "Picture"—he draws a couple lines—"an acrobat"—he draws a stick figure—"standing on a tightrope. Now, the tightrope is our dimension. And our dimension has rules. You can move forwards,"—he draws a line pointing to the right—"or backwards." He draws a line pointing left. "But, what if, right next to our acrobat,"—he makes a dot next to the stick figure—"is a flea? Now, the flea can also travel back and forth, like the acrobat. Right? Well, here's where things get really interesting. The flea can also travel this way,"—he draws another arrow underneath the line—"along the side of the rope. He can even go"—he draws curvy arrows around the line—"underneath the rope."

"Upside down," the boys and I mutter in unison.

"Exactly. "

"But we're not the flea," Mike says. "We're the acrobat."

"In this metaphor, yes," Mr. Clarke says, "we're the acrobat."

"So, we can't go upside down?" Lucas asks.

He shakes his head. "No."

"Well, is there any way for the acrobat to get to the Upside Down?" Dustin asks.

"Well . . . you'd have the create a massive amount of energy," Mr. Clarke says, "more than humans are currently capable of creating, mind you, to open up some kind of tear in time and space, and then . . ." He folds the paper plate in half and jabs the pen through it. "You create a doorway.

"Like a gate?" Dustin asks.

"Yeah, like a gate. But, again, this is all—"

"Theoretical," Lucas finishes and Mr. Clarke nods.

"But . . . what if this gate already existed?" I ask.

"Well, if it did, I think we'd know. It would disrupt gravity, the magnetic field, our environment. Heck, it might even swallow us up whole. Science is neat. But I'm afraid it's not very forgiving."

No freaking kidding.

Mike
At home, I explain to El what Mr. Clarke explained to us. I draw the acrobat, flea, tightrope, arrows, and fold the paper in half, poking a hole through it, and because of which she jumps. "It would take a lot of energy to create something like this. But that's gotta be what happened. Otherwise, how'd Will get there, right?"

"Right," she says.

"What we want to know is do you know where the gate is?" (Y/N) asks.

She shakes her head.

"Then how do you know about the Upside Down?" Lucas asks, annoyed.

She looks down, then over to Dustin, who's walking every which way with a compass in hand.

"Dustin, what are you doing?" I ask. "Dustin? Dustin!"

"Dammit, Dustin!" (Y/N) shouts, gaining his attention.

"I need to see your compasses," he says.

"What?" I ask.

"Your compasses," he says, "all of your compasses. Now!"

So, we look around for my compasses and spread them all out on the coffee table.

"And the point of this is . . . ?" (Y/N) asks.

"Well, they're all facing north, right?" he asks.

"Yeah, so?" Lucas asks.

"Well, that's not true north," Dustin says. {The number of times I type "sasy" instead of "says" is uncountable.}

"What do you mean?" I ask.

"I mean exactly what I just said. That's not true north. Are you all seriously this dense? The sun rises in the east and sets in the west, right? Means that's true north." He points to what apparently is true north. {The only way I remember my directions is by remembering this quote.}

"So what you're saying is the compasses are broken?" I ask.

Dustin sighs. "Do you even understand how compasses work? Do you see a battery pack on this? No, you don't because it doesn't need one. The needle's naturally drawn to the Earth's magnetic North Pole."

"So what's wrong with them?" Lucas asks.

"Well, that's what I couldn't figure out, but then I remembered you can change the direction of a compass with a magnet. If there's a presence of a more powerful magnetic field, the needle deflects to that power. And then I remembered what Mr. Clarke said. The gate would have so much power—"

"It could alter the direction of the needles," (Y/N) finishes.

"Exactly," Dustin says.

"So if we followed the compasses' north . . . , " Lucas says.

"They should lead us to the gate," Dustin says.

Woooot woooot I got this in on time.
Oh yes.
I'm great at this.
Sort of.
Okay, wait, question—did anyone see the cast's lip sync battle performances? 50 Ways To Say Goodbye just came on my Spotify and I was thinking of Gaten's lip sync battle and just nnnggg it was the greatest. They don't have the fulls on YouTube though :p Only for Finn and Caleb. Speaking of Finn, I'm so excited for Calpurnia's new EP!
Those thoughts were all over the place.
Welp bye.