STEVE HARRINGTON WAS SICK OF EVERYTHING at this point.

        He was sick of his parents never being around when he needed them the most. He was sick of school giving him such a hard time. He was sick of his basketball team never following through and winning when they had every chance to do so. He was sick of Tommy and Carol never treating Nancy with the dignity and respect she deserved.

        He might have seen Nancy as a quick fling at the beginning, but she had become so much more to him. He was falling for her, which was why he had been so hurt upon discovering her with Jonathan after she'd declined to go to the movies with him. So he masked his pain by standing there and letting Tommy spray those foul words onto the marquee for the whole town to see.

        But that other girl – Amara – she said she'd been with them last night, so perhaps Nancy wasn't cheating on him after all? Steve didn't know the whole truth but he wanted to. He wanted to know what Nancy was doing with Jonathan and Amara but Jonathan had been arrested and they had gone with him. And it was all his fault.

        His face ached from blows he knew he deserved. Why couldn't he have just listened to Amara instead of letting his emotions get the best of him? Perhaps it was a curse from his parents never being there, learning to keep his feelings buried in a locked box in the back of his mind, only for them to come flooding out the second he opened his heart to the possibility of being trampled on. His head was still throbbing but he was thinking so much clearer, now able to see that Nancy would never cheat on him. He was the one that didn't deserve her, in spite of what Carol and Tommy said about him being out of her league.

        As he drove far away from the alley and the police, all he could think about was making amends, even if Nancy wouldn't have him back. He needed to make things right, if not for her then for himself.

        "I found this," Carol simpered as soon as they'd parked the car and stepped out at Fair Mart, shoving a folded piece of paper into Steve's hands. "It was sticking out of that other girl's pocket. Wonder if she's a stalker, too."

        "Maybe she writes love letters about the creep," Tommy inferred, wrapping an arm around his girlfriend's shoulders and lighting a cigarette. "God, how sad would that be."

        Ignoring their comments, Steve let his curiosity get the better of him and unraveled the paper, not expecting to find what he did. It was a drawing of the woods, only it had noticeable differences. The sturdy tree trunks and fallen leaves were still there but were overrun by ropelike tendrils that looked like vines. The atmosphere was dotted with particles that looked almost like snow, only none of it was sticking to the ground. A layer of fog obscured the trees in the background. It was unlike anything he'd ever seen before.

        What had they gotten themselves into last night?

UNTIL TODAY, AMARA HAD NEVER seen the interior of the Hawkins Police Station. As she mindlessly tapped her fingernails on the arm of the chair she was occupying, waiting for Jonathan to be released, she became increasingly anxious as the hours ticked by. She didn't know what they were waiting for, only that Jonathan wouldn't be leaving anytime soon. Of all the days for a petty fight to get in the way, today was the worst.

        She subconsciously dug her hands into the pockets of her black coat, her mind returning to her body as she became aware that they were both empty. Turning them inside out, she saw that her portrayal of the dimension that was so similar yet different from their world was missing. And though Jonathan still had a picture of the monster, her piece of evidence of the place in which it resided was lost.

        Amara could only guess that she'd somehow lost the drawing amid the pandemonium of Steve and Jonathan's brawl.

        She soon heard footsteps that were rapid in comparison to the slow movements of everyone inside the workplace and glanced up to see Joyce Byers and the Hawkins Chief of Police, Jim Hopper, enter the room. Joyce immediately rushed over to where her son was sitting next to Nancy, still in handcuffs. Amara stood up from her chair and moved to join them, resting her elbows against the table.

        "Hey, Jonathan?" Joyce called, causing Jonathan to look up and face his mother. "Jesus, what... what happened? Why is he wearing handcuffs?" she demanded of Officer Callahan as he too joined the group congregating around the table.

        "Well, your boy assaulted a police officer," he explained as though it was obvious. "That's why."

        "Take them off."

        "I am afraid I cannot do that."

        "Take them off!"

        "You heard her. Take 'em off," Hopper interjected. Amara was confused as to why he was siding with Joyce over his own subordinates but recalled that he was the one who had been leading the search party for Will over the last couple of days. Perhaps he had discovered something meaningful after days of receiving minimal answers.

        "Chief," Officer Powell spoke up, "I get everyone's emotional here, but there's something you need to see."

        Shit, Amara thought as Powell and Callahan led Hopper outside in the direction of Jonathan's car, shit, shit, shit!

        She was right to have been apprehensive, for a few tense moments passed before the officers returned to the room with the box of weapons from Jonathan's trunk. Hopper dumped it onto the table in front of Joyce, her face screwing up in confusion as she peered inside. "What is this?"

        "Why don't you ask your son?" Hopper suggested. "We found it in his car."

        "What?" Joyce questioned her son as Jonathan inquired, "Why are you going through my car?"

        "Is that really the question you should be asking right now?" Hopper asked, leaning forward against the table. "I wanna see you in my office."

        "You won't believe me," Jonathan insisted, just as Amara had said to Steve before chaos had broken out. At that moment in time, she was reminded of just why she believed that they were on their own in this. Most of the town believed Will to be buried in the ground, not trapped in a dimension that looked like Hawkins out of a nightmare, constantly on the run from a bloodthirsty monster. While people still mourned for the boy and his family, they were slowly moving on, going back to their normal routines and feeding themselves the lie that Hawkins was a boring, uneventful city. The townspeople wanted to believe that they were safe even if they weren't, and that collective force made it next to impossible to tell them that Will was alive and their town wasn't really secure.

        The only way to convince the town of Hawkins that Will was still alive was to show them that he was.

        So Amara was stunned when Hopper faced Jonathan again and said, "Why don't you give me a try?"

AMARA WAITED YET AGAIN inside Hopper's office alongside Nancy as Jonathan and Joyce talked privately outside, the boy's handcuffs having been removed promptly. Hopper had left them momentarily to deal with a woman and her son, leaving the two girls alone. Amara was surprised that Hopper believed them, but it made more sense after he revealed that he'd sneaked into the morgue and unearthed that Will's body was indeed a fake. That had to mean that the people behind it were also responsible for the movement of Barb's car.

        "Um, I just wanted to thank you," Nancy said out of the blue, and Amara shifted her attention to her. "For sticking up for me back there. You didn't have to do that."

        Nancy Wheeler had lost so much in a matter of days. Her best friend, her boyfriend's trust, and her innocence altogether. She was involved in this case because it was personal to her, unlike Amara who had only joined because she'd just so happened to see the creature in the middle of the road. Nevertheless, she strongly believed that she had made the right decision by investigating the flaw in the picture-perfect town of Hawkins, just as she had in standing up to Steve at the expense of him finding out about her diagnosis.

        "It was the right thing to do," Amara stated.

        A second later Hopper burst into the room, startling the two of them. "We have to go," he informed them.

        "What?"

        "C'mon, just follow me," he insisted. Nancy and Amara rose to their feet and followed him, Joyce, and Jonathan out of the station. None of them said a word until they entered Joyce's Ford Pinto, the three teenagers piling in the backseat together. Amara found herself squished in between Nancy and Jonathan to her great misfortune, but she let it go. They had more important matters at hand.

        As they drove in the direction of the Wheeler household, Amara learned that Nancy's younger brother, Mike, had attracted the attention of the Hawkins National Laboratory. From what Hopper knew, Mike and his friends had defied his orders to stay home and went searching for Will on their own, encountering a missing lab experimentee in the process and sheltering her from the prying eyes of the lab. Nancy had gone very quiet upon learning this news, leading Amara to conclude that the last interaction the two siblings had shared was an unpleasant one.

        Hopper parked the car a block away from Nancy's house and stepped out, Nancy and Joyce doing so as well. From a distance, Amara watched a group of well-dressed men loading boxes from the house into equally fancy cars. She knew without a doubt that these people worked at the Hawkins Lab, and while she was unsure of the purpose the lab served, it had to be responsible for the deceit surrounding Will and Barb's disappearances.

        "I have to go home," Nancy told Hopper, her knuckles turning white as she gripped the car door tightly.

        "No, you can't," Hopper responded calmly, still observing the men through his binoculars.

        Nancy wasn't ready to give up yet. "My mom... my dad are there."

        "They're gonna be okay," Hopper assured her, but Nancy ignored him and attempted to walk home. Hopper quickly grabbed her arm before anyone could see her, but Nancy protested, trying and failing to wrench her arm out of his firm grip. Amara understood her fear, knowing that she would react a similar way if Kevin or her parents were in jeopardy. However, all of them risked being in danger as well if they were caught.

        "Hey! Listen to me. Listen to me," Hopper insisted, crouching down to her height and forcing her to look at him. "The last thing in the world we need is them knowing you're mixed up in this."

        "Mike is over there – "

        "They haven't found him," Hopper cut her off. "Not yet at least." He gestured at a helicopter circling above the nearby trees.

        "For Mike?" Nancy questioned as Hopper led her back to the car. She reluctantly joined Amara and Jonathan in the backseat as Hopper got in as well, shutting the door and facing them.

         "Look, we need to find them before they do. Do you have any idea where he might have gone?" he asked Nancy.

        "No, I don't," she said, still visibly anxious.

        "I need you to think."

        "I don't know," Nancy repeated. "We haven't talked a lot. I mean, lately... "

        Joyce spoke up next, aware that Hopper was only adding to Nancy's stress. "Is there any place that your... your parents don't know about that he might go?"

        "I don't know – "

        "I might," Jonathan piped up, causing everyone to shift their attention to him. "I don't know where he is, but I think I know how to ask him," he elaborated.

        "What do you mean?" Hopper queried.

         "Will and his friends use walkie-talkies to communicate when they're not together," Jonathan explained. "Will's is probably somewhere in his room, and if Mike has his with him we can contact him."

        With that, Hopper drove the car back in the direction from which they came. As they sped down the road at a pace that would surely land Hopper a speeding ticket if he wasn't a cop himself, Amara checked her watch and saw that it read half-past six. She resisted the urge to groan; if they intended to locate Mike and his friends and find a way to rescue Will and Barb from the abandoned warehouse, Amara wouldn't be home for hours. It made her wish that she had told Eurydice she would be at Robin's until Sunday.

        While Amara had seen the Byers residence from a distance the previous day, she hadn't entered it until now. It was in absolute disarray, with several overturned chairs and wooden planks covering a hole in the wall. The alphabet was painted on the opposite wall, and Christmas lights were strung over every surface. Amara recalled what Kevin had told her the morning after Will's fake body had been unearthed, about how the only time Joyce had gone to Melvald's was to buy Christmas lights. She didn't know what they were for but wondered if they had anything to do with what Jonathan had mentioned about Joyce contacting Will due to how her flashlight would blink when she was in close proximity to the monster.

        Jonathan led them to Will's room, marked with a NO TRESPASSING sign, and they began searching for his walkie-talkie. The walls of his room were plastered with drawings and his bookshelf contained a litany of Dungeons and Dragons books. Jonathan wrenched open his desk drawer and rummaged through it while Nancy and Amara combed through his closet and Joyce peered underneath his bed. Suddenly there was a cry of "I got it," as Joyce stood up straight, holding Will's walkie-talkie.

        Nancy took the walkie-talkie from Joyce and sat down on Will's bed. Pressing one of the buttons, she spoke into the radio, "Mike, are you there? Mike? Mike, it's me, Nancy."

        After a few moments of receiving no response, she tried again, "Mike, are you there? Answer. Mike, we need you to answer. This is an emergency, Mike. Do you copy? Mike, do you copy?"

        "He might not be there," Amara muttered from her position near Jonathan.

        "I have to try again," Nancy asserted. Pressing the button once more, she said, "I need you to answer. We need to know that you're there, Mike."

        Eventually, Hopper realized that if Mike was indeed listening, he might be more willing to respond to him than Nancy. Grabbing the walkie-talkie from Nancy, he spoke into the radio, "Listen kid, this is the chief. If you're there pick up. We know you're in trouble and we know about the girl. We can protect you, we can help you, but you gotta pick up. Are you there? Do you copy? Over."

        After a beat of silence, Hopper set the walkie-talkie on Will's dresser. "Anybody got any other ideas?"

        Amara didn't have any ideas that didn't involve the five of them leaving the safety of the Byers house and venturing out into the open to search for Mike and his friends without being witnessed. Not even Hopper's status as the Chief of Police could protect them from the government, and the fact that they were being hunted was a major hurdle in their efforts to find Will and Barb before it became too late for them. They were treading in dangerous waters, defying an institution that would rather save face than admit its failures, and time was running out for them to figure out a solution.

        "Yeah, I copy," a voice unfamiliar to Amara resonated from the walkie-talkie. "It's Mike. I'm here. We're here."

AFTER RECEIVING THE WHEREABOUTS of Mike and his friends, Hopper left to collect them and bring them back to rendezvous. Nancy had insisted on going with him, overwhelmed with trepidation for her brother, but Hopper reminded her that she was in just as much peril as Mike if she was discovered to be involved. And so she stayed and waited alongside Amara, Jonathan, and Joyce for them to return.

        It was nightfall by the time Hopper's van pulled into the driveway and they rushed out the door. There stood the infamous Party, or three-quarters of it: Mike Wheeler, with his dark hair and pullover sweater; Lucas Sinclair, with his camouflage bandanna and war paint; Dustin Henderson, his baseball cap perched atop his mop of curly hair; and a girl in a pale pink dress with hair nearly buzzed down to her scalp and delicate features filled with apprehension: the lab experimentee.

        "Mike. Oh, my God. Mike!" Nancy exclaimed, catching her brother in a hug that he didn't anticipate but nonetheless welcomed. She pulled away, her hands on his shoulders. "I was so worried about you."

        "Yeah, uh... me too," Mike responded in a tone that implied that he hadn't expected her to be worried about him.

        "I don't think I know you," Dustin approached Amara and stuck his hand in the space between them. "Dustin Henderson, at your service," he flashed her a toothless grin.

        "Oh, I'm Amara," she smiled back and shook his hand, baffled at how much had changed recently. Just last week she had been keen to avoid social interactions with anyone who wasn't Robin or her family, but an alternate dimension and a faceless monster made having autism feel like less of a weight on her shoulders than usual because it was so insignificant compared to everything they were dealing with. No one was going to pay as much attention to how Amara acted before thinking or struggled with social cues when locating Will and Barb was the main priority.

        Eager to escape the frigid November air, the group made their way inside and sat in the living room. As they explained to each other what they had found out over the last few days, Amara learned several new things:

        – The Hawkins National Laboratory was operated by the United States Department of Energy to disguise the fact that they abducted and experimented on children, and that Eleven (or El as the Party called her) had telekinetic abilities.

        – Joyce had used the Christmas lights and alphabet wall to communicate with Will in the abandoned warehouse Upside Down, and she had last contacted him two days ago.

        – Eleven had unintentionally opened a gateway to the Upside Down the same day Will disappeared. This gate was located in the Hawkins Lab, and unlike the temporary portal in the woods, was still open and was their way in.

        – They were all fugitives and in danger.

        They all agreed that if they were lucky enough to break into Hawkins Lab without being caught, it wasn't the smartest idea to recklessly search for Will and Barb in an alternate dimension inhabited by a vicious Demogorgon (as the Party called it) without pinpointing their location. They migrated to the kitchen and gathered around the circular table. Eleven only needed photos of Barb and Will in order to find them, along with white noise to help her concentrate.

        The room was silent other than the static from Will's walkie-talkie. Eleven's eyes were closed but moving around as if she was in a dream, her palms flat on the table. Everyone was watching her with anticipation, and Amara hoped their collective gaze wasn't making her more nervous than she already was. Suddenly the overhead light flickered, and Amara wondered if she had found either or both Will and Barb.

        The light stopped blinking no sooner than it had started as Eleven opened her eyes, which were glassy. "I'm sorry," Eleven whispered, her gaze focused on Joyce in particular.

        "What?" Joyce questioned, still grasping Jonathan's hand tightly. "What's wrong? What happened?"

        "I can't find them." Eleven's voice broke.

        Eleven retreated to the bathroom in shame, and Amara glanced at her watch yet again. It was almost ten o'clock at night, and she still hadn't informed her parents of her whereabouts. She knew that they wouldn't mind her staying an extra night with Robin, but it was uncharacteristic of her to do so without telling them, and she had already lied to them more times than she could count in the past few days. And while Amara was aware that Joyce wouldn't mind her using her phone, she was worried that the government would intercept her call and target her family.

        "Whenever she uses her powers, she gets weak," Mike's voice cut across Amara's thoughts, bringing her back to the present moment.

        "The more energy she uses, the more tired she gets," Dustin added.

        "Like, she flipped the van earlier," Lucas told the older group, all of whose eyes widened.

        "It was awesome," Dustin cut in.

        "But she's drained."

        "Like a bad battery."

        "Well... how do we make her better?" Joyce inquired, acknowledging that their window of time when her son was alive was rapidly shrinking.

        "We don't," Mike muttered sadly. "We just have to wait and try again."

        "Well, for how long?" Nancy questioned, also worried for her best friend.

        "I don't know."

        "The bath," a quiet voice spoke, and everyone swiveled around to find Eleven standing near them. Her face still showed signs of having cried, her eyes red-rimmed and cheeks splotchy, but something had changed while she was in the bathroom. She looked determined and was holding herself differently, as though she had figured something out. And figure something out she had indeed.

        "What?" Joyce queried.

        "I can find them," she told them. "In the bath."

        "Sensory deprivation tank," Dustin breathed. "Of course!"

        "What is a sensory deprivation tank?" Hopper muttered, his face creased in deep thought. "Wait, was that what that water tank was?" he asked Eleven, who nodded in response.

        "No way the lab will let us use that one, though," Amara pointed out.

        "So we have to build our own," Dustin concluded, clapping his hands together. "Wait, does anyone know how to build one?"

        Everyone in the room shook their head no.

        "Well I know just the man for the job," Dustin declared, walking over to the handset. "Hope he's still awake at this ungodly hour," he murmured as he dialed the number before pressing the phone against his ear. For a few moments, the dial tone was the only noise that came from the phone until the person on the other side picked up.

        "Hello?"

        "Mr. Clarke? It's Dustin."

        "Dustin? Is everything okay?"

        "Yeah, yeah. I just, I... " Dustin stammered as he tried to phrase his question in a way that didn't make it seem as though he was out of his mind. He eventually went with, "I have a science question."

        "It's ten o'clock on a Saturday. Why don't we pick this up – "

        "Do you know anything about sensory deprivation tanks?" Dustin interrupted. "Specifically how to build one?"

        "Sensory deprivation? What is this for?"

        "Fun," Dustin tried, cringing at his own response.

        "Okay. Well... Why don't we talk about it Monday? After school, okay?"

        "You always say we should never stop being curious," Dustin challenged Mr. Clarke, his patience running thin. "To always open any curiosity door we can find. Why are you keeping this curiosity door locked?"

        Evidently, that was all it took for Mr. Clarke to cave. Dustin joined the rest of the gang at the table, where Joyce provided him with a pencil and notebook to write down any important information. He was able to learn the required amount of water, temperature, and salt so that Eleven would be able to float. After obtaining everything he needed to know, he bid Mr. Clarke goodnight and hung up. Facing Joyce, he asked, "Do you still have that kiddie pool we bobbed for apples in?"

        "I think so," Joyce answered. "Yeah. Yeah."

        "Good," Dustin stated. "Then we just need salt. Lots of it."

        "How much is 'lots'?" Hopper asked.

        "1,500 pounds."

        "Well, where are we going to get that much salt?" Nancy inquired.

        "I might have an idea," Hopper spoke pensively before abruptly standing up. "Pack your bags, everyone. We're going on a late-night school trip."

        It didn't take much time for them to gather everything they needed, given that most of the materials they required were at school. The trickiest part was lugging the pool to the back of Hopper's van, but that was mostly because Dustin and Lucas kept complaining about how heavy it was and Amara had to step in and help. It was a quarter past ten by the time they departed for Hawkins Middle.

        Their plan seemed absurd, but what part of this universe Amara had become entangled in wasn't? This week alone she had become acquainted with a faceless monster from an alternate dimension that had abducted residents of Hawkins to said dimension, a lab that was culpable for these casualties and had resorted to obscuring the blood on their hands instead of making an effort to clean them, and most recently a product of the lab's purpose: a girl robbed of her innocence and inflicted with the ability to move objects with her mind. Amara was shocked the most by how quickly she had let herself become involved, throwing aside the routine that kept her grounded. Deep down, she knew that there was a part of her that yearned for the thrill of uncertainty that came with unraveling the mystery within Hawkins.

        What Amara knew for sure was that she, Nancy, and Jonathan were not alone as they had previously thought. Following Will's disappearance, his mother, his best friends, and the police chief had all been searching for answers on their own. And now that their paths had merged, they stood a better chance at finding Will and Barb, killing the monster, and restoring peace to Hawkins.

published to quotev: 5/30/22
published to wattpad: 6/22/24