┏━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫
𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐣𝐨𝐞𝐥
𝟏:𝟐𝟖 ———|———— 𝟏:𝟑𝟗
♯ 𝐀 ♯ 𝟎𝟕
𝐯𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐦𝐞 : ▮▮▮▮▮▯▯▯▯
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Thursday, Nov. 10, 1983.

COREY SITTING CASUALLY on the couch, shoeless feet tucked underneath her and tossing popcorn into her mouth with startling accuracy, is not at all an unusual sight in the Davis-Reyes-Holbrook household—Briggs is still working on that, what to call their place, considering his mom hyphenated her maiden name and new last name but Briggs kept his dad's surname. Davis-Reyes-Holbrook is sort of a mouthful.

No matter what he calls his house, Briggs can recall countless occasions on which he's strolled past the living room and seen Corey in this exact position, not a care in the world but whatever was on the TV and casting flickering sheets of color over her intrigued face.

What is not normal, though, is the fact that Briggs returns from school to find Corey in this position, seemingly unruffled and occupied by the TV, the day after her best friend died.

Back in the darkroom, Briggs and his nonsensical group of apparent would-be monster-hunters agreed the best course of action would be to hunt down the faceless thing tomorrow, after the funeral—no school because of Veteran's Day—the more pressing course of action being tracking down Corey and Mike and, by extension, their little gang of gamer scientists. Briggs dropped Mack off at home and swung by the Wheelers', not seeing any of the kids' bikes in the driveway.

Meaning either Corey was home, or...God, he didn't want to think about where else she could be.

And arriving home to find Corey safe and sound, while unexpected, is a blessing, a flood of relief that wraps around Briggs' bones like a fleece and whispers it's okay, you can breathe now. Briggs doesn't know who picked her up from the Wheelers' or dropped her off at home, but as he toes off his shoes in the entryway and observes her through the open stretch of wall, every cell in his body sings something along the lines of thank the Lord. Thank the Lord Corey is sitting innocently in the living room and not out hunting monsters with a bunch of overconfident thirteen-year-olds.

But.

Briggs knows Corey, despite the months he spent trying not to. She's never been one to shy away from emotions, to pack them down and tuck them into hidden places behind her ribcage until they boil over the way Briggs is so prone to. No, Corey's always been the one to let the tears flow, let the thoughts fall unbidden from her lips until everything is in the air, in the open, off her chest.

So the fact that she seems to have wholly recovered from the news that Will Byers' lifeless body was pulled from the quarry last night just doesn't sit right with Briggs. Maybe last night she cried out all the tears she had, maybe she just needs a break from the emotional trauma of losing her best friend. Maybe this has shaken Corey up on such a deep level that she's forgotten her own grieving process.

Or maybe...she knows something.

Maybe Joyce Byers really does know Will inside and out, could pinpoint that it wasn't her son's body on the coroner's table like Jon talked about in the school darkroom, the dim red lighting failing to direct attention away from the thinly-veiled hope evidently blooming in his chest at the possibility of a different outcome. They have photographic evidence of some sort of monster, after all, don't they? A monster they're trying to kill.

And so it's possible—not likely, not something Briggs should be getting his hopes up about, he thinks, trying to shove those embers of possibility deep down where he can't even detect them—that Corey knows or suspects Will is not dead, that that's why she's not out seeking vengeance or sobbing or having literally any response to what must be, if last night is anything to go off of, soul-crushing grief.

Briggs shakes off the weight of his thoughts as he tugs off his jacket, the black windbreaker with Hawkins High Swim & Dive embroidered on the breast, tossing it on a hook in the entryway. With Corey safe now, he's not letting her out of his sight. If she tries to sneak away after the wake tomorrow, he'll notice.

He'll follow.

He's desperately trying to quell the hope rising in his chest. That Will and Barb are alive, that they can be found. He knows he's just going to be let down, that this whole situation is far-fetched and wild and impossible.

But it's happening anyway.

"Hey," Briggs calls, and his sister startles mildly as her attention shoots to where Briggs leans in the doorway.

"Hi," she says through a mouthful of popcorn. Briggs wrinkles his nose.

"Gross. How was Mike's?"

Corey shifts her gaze back down to her bowl of popcorn, the beat-up blue one she seems to reserve for popcorn and popcorn alone. She shrugs.

"Fine."

"You, uh," Briggs hesitates, not wanting to push but at the same time needing to know, "doing okay?"

"Fine," Corey says again, burrowing a little deeper into the couch cushions. Briggs frowns, trudging over to the couch and flopping down on the other end. An episode of Family Ties dances across the TV.

She glances away from the screen when Briggs shifts the weight of the couch cushions with his presence. In response, he reaches into his half-zipped backpack and pulls out a thoroughly abused copy of Animal Farm. He waves it in the air with a grin.

"I owe you my life."

Corey smiles, and the sight of it warms Briggs' heart, her expression stretching wide with pride and satisfaction.

"You're welcome," she says, and proceeds to throw a piece of popcorn at Briggs' face. He tries to catch it in his mouth, but instead it nails him right between the eyes and sends Corey into a fit of giggles. She snatches the book from Briggs' hand, examining it for a moment in both hands before her jaw drops. She glares up at him with offense written on every feature.

"What?" he mutters, hands up in surrender, already feeling defensive over whatever his sister is about to call him out on.

"You dog-eared your book?" she says slowly, almost dangerously, like Briggs has genuinely committed some sort of criminal offense. He scoffs and snatched the book back, smacking her on the head with it lightly before returning it to its place in the chaos of his backpack.

And then he says something that he knows will make Corey mad. Smirking, he admits, "Only to make it look like I started reading it."

"Bridger!"

The next few minutes pass in a flurry of domestic warfare, popcorn flying across the couch as Corey shrieks and Briggs wrestles her nearly onto the floor, messing up her haphazardly tied back hair in the process. The fight ends with Corey flopped dramatically over Briggs' outstretched legs, grinning up at him, both popcorn and Family Ties forgotten.

Corey takes her opening when she sees it, knocking the elbow Briggs is leaning back on out from under him with a swift kick and sending him toppling off the couch in the off-balanced aftermath. Back flat on the ground, he glares as Corey peeks over the couch cushions and declares, "I win!"

She throws a piece of couch-popcorn at him, a casualty of battle. He catches it in his mouth, head thrown back on the carpet, defeated.

"Thanks," he says, then frowns. "Did you burn this?" Corey snickers. It's a futile question, really. Corey always leaves the popcorn in a little bit too long, always winds up leaving that dusty scent of an accident wafting around the kitchen for a few hours.

Briggs hauls himself back onto the couch, yawning as he nudges his sister with as shoulder. And the next several episodes of Family Ties past without much sound, just occasional laughter and Corey wrinkling her nose at every dumb comment, responding with quick retorts to some.

Briggs isn't sure how many episodes they actually watch before he decides to break the trance.

"Can we be real for a minute?" he asks, and Corey's brows furrow slightly.

"Uh. Sure," she says, but it sounds like a question.

"What's going on with you and your friends?"

"What?" Corey responds instantly, cocking her head like a dog. Strands of loose hair fall into her gray-blue eyes with the motion. "What do you mean?"

"I mean I know you guys are up to something. I don't know where you've been running off to, but...if it's anything related to Will–"

Corey flinches at his name, and Briggs feels a pang of guilt.

"–you gotta let me know, Cor. Please." He levels her with a look, not a harsh one, just...pleading.

Corey opens her mouth. Shuts it. Hums.

And then Briggs does the same, hesitating. Because he could start. He could tell her about the white van and the guys in suits and the monster and the way Joyce doesn't think Will's body is real.

The pros and cons bounce around the back of Briggs' mind like a rogue pinball. If he's just making assumptions, drawing lines where there aren't any connections, he'll drag Corey into something she shouldn't be involved in. But if he's not, if Corey is already knee-deep in something scary and complicated and dangerous...

The sound of a car stuttering to a stop in the driveway tears Briggs from the conversation—or lack thereof. Ma and Danny must be home.

Briggs hates how the realization makes his heart fall. He loves his mom. He loves Danny. He loves when they're home and can all pile onto the couch and watch pointless television together. But if they're home, he's not getting anything else out of Corey today. If she won't divulge the nature of her suspicious behavior in private, there's no way she'll do it in front of Danny, in front of Ma.

Leah, Corey calls her. Ma has never tried to replace Corey's mom, not really. The love is there, but she's stuck to her side of the silently drawn boundary—a friend, a guardian, even a parent sometimes, but not a replacement.

So Briggs just gives Corey a tight-lipped smile and goes to open the door.

▮▮▮

A shrill ringing interrupts Briggs halfway through his sandwich-making process, and he groans, tossing his head skyward before stumbling into the hall to grab the phone. Whoever decided to halt the sacred creation of his turkey on rye better have a good reason.

"Hello?" he sighs into the yellow phone, again hesitating over his greeting—Davis-Reyes-Holbrook residence—but he doesn't get too much time to think about it.

"My dad is here," Jon mutters without prelude. "Telling me my mom is sick. And it's not—God, he's making everything worse."

Briggs' heart starts a slow descent into his stomach, sandwich forgotten.

"Fuck," he curses. "I—man, I'm sorry."

"Language!" Ma calls from the living room.

"Sorry!" Briggs calls back, turning his back to the other room and angling the phone closer to his face. "Do you need to crash here tonight?"

"No," Jon says. "Thanks. But I can't leave them alone together." He's talking low and quiet. His parents must be in the living room.

"Well. If you need an out, I'm here."

"I know."

Briggs almost smiles at that, that Jon can trust him this way.

"He's telling her she's losing her mind, isn't he?" Briggs asks quietly, and the huff of Jon's breath on the other end of the line is the only confirmation he needs.

"I was coming home to tell her I believe her, and now he's gonna make her think it's all in her head. He's gonna make her think I'm crazy." A beat of silence passes. "She put an axe through the wall."

"She what?" Briggs makes a face despite knowing Jon can't see him, one that asks something along the lines of did you tell me in the most casual tone of voice possible that your mom became an indoor lumberjack?

"She took an axe and just broke right through. There's a massive hole in the front now. And—and she said she did it because there was something in there."

"The, uh—" Briggs scrambles for a word that isn't monster, because his family is in the next room and he doesn't want to sound like a psychopath. "The thing from today?"

"Not this time," Jon murmurs, "She said she heard Will."

"Oh," Briggs breathes.

He could be alive. Maybe.

But that makes no sense. They found his body, pulled it out of the quarry.

"I just—I was thinking. If it's smart enough to be able to hold someone hostage..."

"It's gonna be harder to kill," Briggs finishes grimly. He threads the loopy phone cord between the fingers of his right hand, unable to keep still.

So many ifs in this mission of theirs. So many risks relying on maybes. But Briggs won't bother lying to himself now. He's always been a risk-taker, always liked the walk the line between reaching and falling, savoring the rush of adrenaline at the edge of a cliff with no safety net.

Briggs has never hunted a monster before. But if this thing is real, if it took Will and Barb and is ready to pose a threat to anyone and everyone else in this town...

He wants to kill it.

▮▮▮

Friday, Nov. 11, 1983.

The funeral makes everything feel so very real, tales of monsters and disappearing children pushed into the category of Briggs' mind that screams fiction.

By the minute, he finds it harder and harder to believe that the body being lowered into the ground isn't Will. Half of Briggs wants to see into the casket, to see that there's nothing inside it but empty air or a mannequin or anything other than Will. The other half doesn't want to know, for fear that it is Will.

The gathering is small, but for Hawkins, it's massive. Kids from the middle school and the high school, concerned parents, shop owners. Mr. Clarke. Ted and Karen. The Sinclairs.

Not everyone, though. Briggs notices a few guys from the swim team scattered around the crowd—McCoy, Wright—but no Steve, not that he has any reason to be here, not that Briggs gives a shit. No Carol and Tommy either, thank God.

Those in attendance crowd around the designated place in the cemetery, a pile of roses placed neatly atop the sealed brown casket as Pastor Charles reads aloud about how now isn't the time to turn away from the Lord.

Right, Briggs thinks. There's a murderous monster with no face on the loose. I believe in God more than ever.

But more than a monster, more than a body, more than Joyce's chopping a hole through the wall of her own house—it's Dustin who peaks Briggs' suspicions.

He huddles near Lucas, Mike, and Corey on Briggs' right, and under the drone of the pastor's voice, the kids keep shifting their weight back and forth and murmuring under their breaths.

Halfway through the service, Dustin turns to Mike and smirks.  He mutters something unintelligible as he looks across the huddle of black-clad mourners. Briggs follows his gaze to a girl who must be around the same age as Corey, crying quietly. His brow furrows.

And then Lucas smiles. Smiles. Karen Wheeler shushes them in that clipped, hushed exasperated way mothers do.

Corey elbows Lucas in the ribs, and he tries and fails to muffle an offended squeak. She mouths something that looks suspiciously like later.

Corey acting weird. Dustin laughing during the funeral. Lucas smiling.

Three strikes, we're in, Briggs thinks, biting the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling at his revelation. A lead, a confirmation, a clue—a resounding you're not crazy, something's going on.

Briggs follows Mack in the line of people dropping single flowers into the hole in the earth. A yellow carnation. He watches it fall.

The flower, uprooted, will last hardly any time at all before it withers down there. How utterly pointless.

Will, uprooted, would have lasted how long in that monster's hands? Claws? Paws? Whatever?

But Dustin and Lucas had smiled. Corey had almost laughed. Something isn't right and he knows it, and as absurd as it seems to be attending a funeral for someone Briggs isn't sure is truly dead...there's hope.

And even if by some miracle, that body in the ground isn't Will's...there's still Barb to think about, the girl always at Nancy's side, the girl whose absence from Mack's life is burrowing a deeper sorrow every day, no matter how he thinks he's hiding it.

And if this monster was somehow responsible for killing Will, or for somehow burying a replica of his body, Briggs wants it dead.

Joyce looks awful, bundled in a black jacket, responding to nobody. Instead, Lonnie greets people and thanks them for coming, sandwiching Joyce between himself and Jon.

Briggs and Mack walk right past Lonnie, crisp fall cemetery grass crunching underfoot. There is no room in Briggs' heart for that man. He squeezes Joyce on the shoulder, and she doesn't say anything, but she does lift her head to meet his eyes, and that's enough.

He wraps Jon in a hug, and Mack does the same until they're all just embracing one another in the middle of the cemetery. It's a reassurance and a hope and an I'm so sorry all at once.

Eventually, as people start to drift away, Lonnie puts a protective arm around Joyce and leads her toward the church. Nancy shuffles over the boys, a look of apprehension clouding her gaze but also something a little like excitement.

"Nance," Mack nods, nudging her with a shoulder in acknowledgement. She smiles, tight-lipped but not unkind. Briggs clears his throat to grab Jon's attention, which was captured the moment Nancy entered his line of sight.

"Show her the map," he says, low to avoid being heard by any lingering funeral-goers. On the phone last night, Jon had explained his new plan of action, which Briggs had then relayed to Mack.

"Meet you inside," Jon says, and starts to lead Nancy across the grassy area to a fence they can crouch behind.

Mack takes the lead toward the church, more familiar with its layout than Briggs has ever been. Briggs falls into step beside him.

"Did you see Dustin?" he asks, shoving his hands in the pockets of his secondhand suit jacket to ward off the November chill.

"Yeah," Mack says immediately. "Dude could have a little more tact. It's like they're asking for us to ask questions." Briggs smiles as Mack precedes him through the open door.

"Not like they've ever really been discreet," he mutters, scanning the room for his sister and her friends who should never pursue acting.

Thin glass vases adorn the tables, a few white and red flowers in each one. Paper cups litter the room. Joyce sits alone at one table, dejected and silent.

Mack and Briggs slide into empty seats at another with their parents, watching Mr. Clarke sit at a table with Mike, Dustin, Lucas, and Corey, chattering indistinctly. The kids are rapt with attention, staring at Mr. Clarke as he talks.

Mack glances at Briggs with a cocked brow. Briggs shrugs. He doesn't know what the hell they're on about over there.

"How's work been, Selah?" Ma asks.

Mack's mom shrugs with a half-hearted smile. "Oh, you know. Early mornings, late nights."

"You're a better woman than me," Ma says fondly, squeezing Mrs. Gibson's shoulder. "I could never be a nurse."

"And I could never deal with preschoolers all day. You're a saint, Leah."

Briggs hates small talk, but he tears his attention away from the kids and Mr. Clarke, attempting to be polite and join the conversation. He's always liked Mack's mother. She patched him up a fair share of times after skate park mishaps when the boys were younger.

Mr. Gibson nudges Mack with a shoulder. "I'm always sayin' this one has the chops to be a doctor." Mack smiles, but it comes off more as a grimace. "Thought any more about med school?"

Briggs tries to maintain a smooth, easy expression instead of saying something like stop fucking asking about your son's career plans at the funeral of a little boy.

Mack frowns, shaking his head. "You know how I feel about med school, Dad."

Briggs decides joining this particular conversation is actually a horrible idea and shares a look with Ma. Mr. Gibson is a nice enough man, but he's always pressuring Mack about the future, his grades, his habits. Always trying to force his son into a life he doesn't want. He's a lawyer himself, and between that and Mrs. Gibson's work as a nurse, the expectations for their son have always been high.

"I'm just saying, the income would be more sustainable and—"

"Honey, maybe now's not the time for this kind of talk?" Mrs. Gibson suggests gently.

"I'll think about it, Dad," Mack says placatingly. His dad raises a brow skeptically, and Mack sighs, leaning back in his chair. "I promise."

Mr. Gibson nods, satisfied for now.

Dustin is shoving Nilla Wafers into his mouth, a pile of them in front of him on a napkin. Corey glances at him and steals one while Mr. Clarke has his attention. His curls bounce as he swivels and gapes at her, and she just pops it into her mouth, staring him down.

Her attention only wavers when Mr. Clarke pulls a pen from the inside pocket of his jacket and draws something on a plate. Even here, he's a teacher. It's some sort of a diagram.

Jon and Nancy enter the room then, dividing Briggs' attention right as Mr. Clarke folds the paper plate in half and stabs his pen right through it. Dustin looks thrilled.

Briggs furrows his brows and pushes up from the table, nodding to Mack. The two of them shuffle over to Nancy and Jon, now hovering by the far wall.

"They're scheming," Briggs whispers, sidling up next to Jon. "Look at them."

Nancy frowns, looking even more serious than usual dressed in all black. The color seems to amplify the severity of her features, the melancholy set of her jaw as she gazes around the somber room.

"You're right," she says. And then the kids stand. They split across the room, each one beelining for their parents. Briggs already knows they're asking to go to Mike's, probably under the pretense of needing to be with their friends.

He watches each kid get a reluctant nod and a pat on the back, Corey included, and has to hold himself back from cussing under his breath.

"They're going to yours," he tells Nancy, and holds up a hand when she tilts her head to the side and opens her mouth to ask how he knows. "Keep an eye on them. If they leave before we get there, call my place."

Jon glances at each of them in turn. "Same plan?"

Briggs frowns, eyes darting to Corey across the room. "For now."

"Hey," he calls, walking over to Ma, stood with an arm around Danny next to the table. "Corey going to Mike's?"

Danny nods, smiling. "Said she left something there and it'll be short. You going with Mack?"

"Yeah. We're gonna change and probably go to the skate park or something. You want me to pick Corey up before we go?"

"Oh, that'd be great, honey," Ma says, giving Briggs a quick peck on the cheek. "Thank you. We'll see you later, then?"

"Mhm. Love you," Briggs calls, already backtracking toward Jon, Mack, and Nancy. He gestures to Mack. "Let's change. Gear up. Then we're picking up Corey. We'll see what we can get out of her."

"Oh, I'll get everything," Mack promises solemnly. "You know me. Smooth talker." He winks exaggeratedly at Briggs, who slugs him on the shoulder.

"Sure."

Nancy raises a slim brow, disbelieving.

"Okay, fine," Mack concedes. "I might be awkward at times. But c'mon, Corey loves me. We're this close," he says, pinching his thumb and index finger together with the tiniest gap in between.

"Cute," Briggs says dryly. "You can have her, then." Mack's always complaining about being an only child, anyway. In turn, Briggs meets Nancy's calculating gaze, than Jon's. "We good?"

Two nods, a handshake, and a slap on the back, and Briggs and Mack are out the door.

▮▮▮

As it turns out, Briggs' home is woefully ill-equipped with weapons to fight a children-stealing monster.

Curtain rods? Too big. His old baseball bat from third grade has been sitting broken in the garage for years now. No guns, no monster-slaying machetes...

Ah. Briggs snags his tool bag from the corner and roots around inside, grabbing the first heavy metal object he finds. He shoves the wrench into his pocket. Good enough.

Mack's fiddling with the Jeep's radio when Briggs slides back into the driver's seat, trying to find that sweet-spot volume that'll let Billy Joel set the mood without interrupting conversation too much.

Backing out of the driveway with a glance over his shoulder, Briggs hums along for a moment, then slaps Mack's hand away from the volume controls after one too many sudden blares of sound.

"Hey," Mack protests with no heat behind it.

"Straw."

"Okay, Leah."

Briggs wrinkles his nose. It's something Ma has said for as long as he can remember, every time Briggs called hey as a greeting or in protest. Hay, straw. Sometimes Danny likes to tack on hay is for horses, and then Corey groans like she has the most embarrassing father in the history of fathers, but she smiles every time.

It's a horrible joke, but apparently he's picked up the response.

"Do you think she'll actually tell us anything?" Mack asks, tapping fingers along the dashboard impatiently. Briggs pulls up to a stop sign and scans the intersection, not bothering to come to a full stop before continuing. "Dude."

"Nobody's here," Briggs dismisses him. "And honestly? No. But it's worth a shot."

Mack's halfway out the door before Briggs even parks the car in his driveway, and Briggs rolls his eyes.

"You're just like Corey," he calls as the boy darts into the house, three fingers held up as he pushes through the front door. Three minutes. Yeah, sure.

Five minutes later, Mack breathlessly flips back into the passenger seat, suit and tie exchanged for a nondescript gray hoodie and worn jeans.

"To the kid," Mack announces.

"To the kid." Briggs turns around and aims for the Wheelers'.

Nancy stands in the garage, hair in a ponytail and wearing a red jacket lined with fleece. White fingerless gloves. Trepidation lining her face like someone about to do something she's not used to. And she's...holding a bat.

And Steve Harrington is walking down her driveway, hand in his pocket, keys swinging around in his other hand.

His collar brushes the hair at the nape of his neck, getting long despite the swim season being in full swing, and he walks with that easy sort of confidence Briggs only associates with Steve. With the window cracked, Briggs can hear him singing something under his breath.

Until Briggs pulls to a stop in front of Nancy's house, and Steve looks up and makes eye contact through the windshield.

He freezes and glances back at Nancy. Then he scoffs, shakes his head disbelievingly.

Shoving a hand in his pocket, he looks back up the driveway, back at Nancy, and then turns to stare at Briggs.

Fuck, Briggs thinks. He knows exactly what this looks like. But there's no time for this, no time to explain, no reason or way to explain the absolute mess they're in.

And he doesn't owe Steve an explanation.

So Briggs just meets the boy's glare with a hard look of his own, not reacting when he gives him a very rude gesture, only resisting the urge to do it back. He watches Steve get in his car and drive away.

Damn it.

"He seemed happy," Mack chirps. Briggs shoots him a flat glare, sliding out of the Jeep and slamming the door behind him.

"Why didn't you use that on Harrington?" Briggs calls to Nancy as he walks up the driveway. She smiles, tinged with a little bit of sadness.

"He was being nice," she defends. "Aren't you supposed to be nice to your team captain or something?"

Briggs shrugs as Mack trots up behind him. "Not when he's an asshole."

"Who's an asshole?" Mack asks, then pauses and purses his lips. "Stupid question. He's complaining about Steve again, isn't he?" The question is addressed to Nancy, who smirks and tilts her head in a nod.

The interior garage door bangs open and the kids pour out, chattering lowly. Before Lucas notices the older kids and violently shushes his friends, Briggs catches same plan and meet there.

Corey spins and finally realizes Briggs' presence.

"Hey," she says. "Hi, Mack."

"Why are you always more excited to see him than me?" Briggs asks, and Corey sticks her tongue out in eloquent response. He raises a brow at Mack.

Mack sticks his tongue out too.

"I hate you both," Briggs announces. "Cor, meet you in the car?" Corey nods and trots down the driveway after fist-bumping Dustin, Lucas, and Mike in turn. Well, kind of. When she gets to Mike, she slides her hand under his fist and then comes up behind it with a peace sign.

"Snail!" she shouts, and then runs away.

Kids.

Briggs rolls his eyes and waits until Lucas and Dustin coast down the driveway on their bikes and Mike retreats inside the house before turning back to Nancy.

"Listen. I think we need to split up," Briggs says, voice hushed and coming out sharper than he'd like. Nancy raises her brows.

"You know that's how everyone dies in the horror movies."

"Didn't take you for a horror fanatic, Wheeler." Nancy rolls her eyes. "Look. Someone needs to follow them," Briggs protests, even though Nancy is right, that is how everyone dies in the horror movies. "They're gonna get themselves killed."

Nancy groans. "Yeah. Okay. Jonathan and I will stick to the plan, search the woods. You guys go after the kids."

"Are you going to his?" Mack asks, meaning Jon's place, and Nancy nods.

"He has a gun, apparently." She shoves a hand in her pocket, the other still gripping the baseball bat. "Wanted to practice."

Briggs frowns. "He has a—no, okay. He literally has the shittiest aim of anyone I've ever met. Please take that from him." Nancy grins.

"One of you guys, call my place at ten. If you don't, I'm gonna assume something's wrong, and I'm gonna come find you."

Nancy nods resolutely, swinging her bat again and almost nailing Mack in the head. He screams a little.

"If you don't answer, we're gonna assume the same," she says determinedly. "Don't do anything stupid."

"Says the one with a baseball bat."

"I see the wrench in your pocket."

Briggs frowns. Checkmate.

"Well," Mack says to Nancy, shaking his head in faint disbelief, a wow, we're actually doing this, then. "Uh. Good hunting."

▮▮▮

Corey is a horrible liar.

"Just reading," she says in response to Mack's casual inquiry about her afternoon plans. "You got stuff going on?"

"Nah, we'll be at the skate park," Briggs lies, surveying Corey's reaction in the rearview mirror. She tries to hide a grin behind the collar of her jacket and fails. Briggs flickers his gaze over to Mack and makes eye contact, a silent told you so.

"Whatcha reading?" Mack asks. He turns back in his seat to look at Corey, who immediately rattles off three different titles she's simultaneously working her way through, two of which Mack has also read. Briggs rolls his eyes. Absolute dorks.

"Wrap it up, bookworms," he calls as he pulls into the driveway, but Corey is already unbuckling the seatbelt. "Corey—"

It's no use. She swings the door open and hops out of the car before he can pull to a full stop. Briggs glares at Mack.

"I'm pretty sure she didn't always do this. You're a bad influence."

"I'm a great influence. She reads books. I'm raising a genius."

"You have two brain cells."

Mack is probably the smartest person Briggs knows, but he likes to act the opposite.

"When was the last time you read a book?" Mack demands as Briggs throws the Jeep into reverse and backs out of the driveway.

He has no answer, so he just turns up the radio as he stops the car around the corner from the house. Four minutes later, Corey coasts down the driveway on her bike, heading down Oak toward Forest Hills Park, black coat traded for her favorite denim jacket. Mack shakes his head.

"Little sneaks," he muses.

"Don't sound so impressed." Briggs throws his head back and sighs. "I knew she was gonna do it, but honestly, I was hoping I was wrong."

Mack shrugs sympathetically. "In her defense, you snuck around all the time in middle school."

"Whose side are you on?" Briggs jabs as he pulls the Jeep back into motion.

"Never yours."

"I feel so loved."

Briggs parks along the curb a few blocks from the park, sort of by the McCorkle farm off Mulberry, and sees a few sets of bike tracks that have left indents in flattened leaves, painting a path presumably in the direction of the kids.

And the tracks lead right up to a bush. Mack tugs away the branches to reveal a bunch of bikes haphazardly stashed beneath the boughs, and then glances toward the empty railroad tracks leading into the swath of forest.

"Fuck," Briggs groans. The tracks follow a skinny forest path, a straight shot lined with tree trunks too thin to hide behind, far too many crisp leaves on the ground to make following the kids' path directly impossible.

Even from the mouth of the trail, the boys can see the kids' backs as they make their way right down the center—and he sees one more than usual, right at the back beside Mike. Blonde hair and a pink dress. What?

"Who's that one?" Mack murmurs. Briggs' lips pull into a frown and he shrugs. He doesn't think he saw her at the funeral, at least not with the other kids.

"Baby Wheeler's got a girlfriend."

"Least it's not your sister."

He shudders at the idea. But maybe Mike's love life is going better than his sister's. Briggs pictures Steve's glare, the irritated huff of breath released so often when they're in proximity, his disbelieving expression today on the Wheelers' driveway. Stop.

What did Nancy tell Steve? What would he do if he found out they were running off into the woods to hunt a creature that doesn't—shouldn't—exist?

"We can't go this way," Mack says, and Briggs just nods and jerks his head to the right. He and Mack know these woods all too well, years spent running around doing things they shouldn't. So they know exactly where this path leads.

They book it through a shortcut to the junkyard. The alternate path brings them nearer to the voices of Corey and her friends twice, but never too close—either way, they prove to be very easy to follow undetected, mostly because none of them will shut up and the chaos of their several conversations overlapping drowns out any sounds Briggs and Mack might be making in their pursuit.

As soon as the boys break the treeline and enter the junkyard, Briggs tugs Mack down behind a car.

"Now what?" Mack whispers, and Briggs bites his lip, knee bouncing up and down at a mile a minute. He hates this part.

"We wait."

For a moment, silence hangs in the air, apprehension making Briggs' nerves buzz just under his skin. He watches Mack, the way his eyes are glued to the ground. He's fiddling with his shoelaces uncomfortably.

"Hey," Briggs says, and Mack glances up at him. "It's gonna be fine. We're gonna get them back."

Mack swallows hard. "Both of them?" His voice comes out soft, too soft, like if he speaks any louder the words won't be true anymore.

"Both of them," Briggs nods. "And listen, we don't even know if that's...where Barb went. She might be fine, Mack."

He inhales sharply, leaning back against the passenger door. "Yeah." He clears his throat. "They should be here by now."

Briggs glances down the path, partially blocked by the car he's crouched behind.

"It's not that far," Mack says. "And it's not a big enough distance to justify them just getting lost."

Briggs bites his lip. By taking the shortcut, they'd lost eyes on the kids, but they didn't really have any other choice.

"Should we go—"

But just as Briggs is about to suggest they loop back to look for them, voices pick up to the right. Briggs grabs Mack by the sleeve and pulls him to the back side of the car so the kids can't see them as they pass, pressing up against chipping orange paint and peering just around the edge of the bumper.

Dustin leads the procession of kids, Corey on his tail, all of them—save the blonde girl—looking down at something in their hands periodically. Briggs picks up on a flash of silver. At first he worries they got their hands on lighters, but then Dustin holds his up to get a better look at it.

It's a compass.

The kids slow in the middle of the yard, and Dustin turns slowly to face the rest of them. Despite the distance and the baseball cap shadowing his features, Briggs can tell something's not right, that he's worried.

"Oh no?" Lucas demands after a minute. "What's oh no?"

From this distance, Briggs catches a glimpse of the blonde girl's face. The dress she's wearing is old and frilly, the jacket a little loose on her shoulders, and she has white socks pulled up to her knees. She definitely wasn't at the funeral.

"What are they doing?" Mack whispers, and Briggs glares at him in warning, a silent shut up. Mack rolls his eyes and peeks over Briggs' shoulder to see better. Dustin points back in the direction they came from, and the rest of them spin to look, Briggs included. Nothing there but the setting sun.

He can only catch bits and pieces of the conversation, Lucas' voice rising as he says something to Dustin, clearly upset. The five of them start milling around, holding their compasses to the sky, murmuring in confusion. Briggs catches direction and gate and a good number of what the fricks, the latter coming exclusively from Corey.

"I don't think they know how to use compasses," Mack says dryly. Briggs frowns.

"No, I don't think... that's not the problem," he murmurs back, a little absently. Corey is smart. Really smart. All her friends are, especially Dustin, and Briggs is pretty sure they're capable of using compasses to navigate, so whatever this is... he doesn't think it's just them being stupid.

Lucas has now turned to the blonde, a finger hovering in the air, accusatory. She keeps her distance from the rest of the group, looking awkward, out of place. Lucas takes a step toward her and she flinches back. What?

He's ranting now, a string of words lost in the sudden fall breeze that sweeps through the junkyard, but Briggs catches, "because she's a traitor!"

"Traitor?" Mack asks incredulously. "What are they, secret agents–"

"Mack," Briggs grits out, shushing him.

Lucas approaches her, slowly and with fist clenched at his sides, and Briggs suddenly thinks maybe he needs to step in and protect this little girl. Mike hurries over to them, yelling at Lucas to leave her alone, to drop it.

"Admit it!" Lucas shouts, grabbing her arm in a sudden, harsh motion. Briggs surges forward and Mack manhandles him back down behind the car.

"Don't—"

"He's gonna—"

"Stay down, dipshit."

"Lucas, come on!" Mike shouts. The girl doesn't seem to even be talking. If she is, her voice is too quiet to reach Briggs' ears.

"Lucas," Corey calls, a warning in her voice, but the boy doesn't stop. Briggs loses track of the string of accusations as Lucas turns to face away from him, but Mike yells, "Bull!"

Corey stands idly off to the side, muttering something to Dustin. She doesn't seem overly concerned with the boys' behavior—Mike and Lucas butting heads is nothing new. But now Mike seems upset with the blonde, too.

The boys gravitate toward an old bus and Briggs shifts to the other side of the car to keep out of sight, Mack crawling behind him. Mike and Lucas are engaged in a full-on screaming match now, the girl out of sight on the far side of the vehicle.

Dustin tries to intervene, pushing the boys apart, and Lucas throws his hands in the air with a "No!" Dustin stumbles back. "She used us! All of us!"

Briggs feels like he's watching a sit-com in another language without subtitles.

"Hey!" Corey shouts suddenly, storming up to Lucas and placing herself between him and Mike. "Stop being dumbasses," she demands, staring at Lucas and Mike in turn. But Lucas is riled up now, and he's not having it.

He just side-steps Corey and her protests as Mike shouts, "Screw you, Lucas!" and Lucas shoots the same insult right back.

They keep shouting, and Mack turns to Briggs with wide eyes. "Should we do something?"

Briggs bites his lip. "I don't—I mean, what's the worst they can do, right?" But he's not convinced, and neither is Mack, if his darting, worried gaze is anything to go by.

"Wake the hell up!" Lucas shouts.

"Shut up!" Mike yells back, and then again, stronger, "Shut up!"

Lucas shoves Mike, a hand to the chest, and then Mike goes after Lucas, getting on top of him. But Lucas is more athletic, stronger by a long shot, and takes back the advantage within seconds. The girl starts shouting, "Stop it! Stop it!"

"Hey!" Corey demands, taking a step forward like she's going to march between them and force them apart, but Dustin holds her back. She angrily shakes rogue strands of hair from her face to glare at him.

And then the blonde girl screams, and Briggs stares as Lucas goes flying across the yard, up in the air, nobody and nothing pushing him but the sound of this girl's voice, apparently. What the hell?

Mack tries to spring to his feet, but Briggs snags him by the back of the shirt and yanks him back down as Corey, Mike, and Dustin rush over to where Lucas has hit a pile of junk metal and slumped down in front of it. Corey shakes the boy frantically and Mike whirls to face the blonde again.

"Why would you do that! What's wrong with you?" Mike screams, his voice shrill like Corey's gets when she's being chased down the hallway. "What is wrong with you?" Briggs can't see the girl's reaction, but she takes a small step back as Mike rages at her.

"Does he mean she did that?" Briggs gapes at the girl, several inches shorter than Mike and notably thin, pale. He isn't sure whether he's more concerned about Mike screaming at her or the fact that she's apparently some kind of telekinetic wizard child.

Clearly, she didn't need anyone protecting her.

Mack makes a muffled screeching sound in the back of his throat. "That's impossible."

"Kid-stealing monsters are impossible," Briggs snaps back. Mack tilts his head, thinking, and then shrugs, like yeah, fair.

But Briggs is pretty sure he's losing his shit. "Jesus."

"I'm high, right? You drugged me," Mack says without taking his eyes off the scene, voice bordering on hysterical. "Tell me this is a trip."

Supergirl, Briggs thinks to himself stupidly. He grounds himself in the weight of the wrench in his pocket. At least if the kid goes crazy and starts throwing people into buses with her mind, he has a weapon.

They're crowding around Lucas now, calling his name urgently and shaking him by the shoulders, but he's not waking up. Briggs realizes it's probably not going to sit well on his conscience if the kid dies in this junkyard while he watches.

"Fuck this," he hisses, and then he stands up and storms around the car. Mack scrambles to his feet, wheezing something that sounds vaguely like hypocrite.

Briggs sees the moment his presence registers on Mike's face, his eyes widening like he just got caught sneaking into Nancy's room, and Corey whips her head around and freezes like a deer in headlights.

"What the fuck is going on?"

▮▮▮

a/n:

sorry it's been sixty years! i lived in england for three months and then took a month-long writing course that killed me a little bit. but i'm back now with the first update of 2023! hope you liked.

we'll be getting into much more steve and briggs content soon, don't you worry. the next chapter's one of my favorites...

also:

[ word count | 7.5k ]