𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐓𝐰𝐨:
𝐌𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠

Stormi despised homework almost as much as she despised the teachers who gave it out, her least favorite being Mrs.Ellawitz. It wasn't that she didn't pay attention in Spanish class; her notebook was filled to the brim with translations, vocabulary words, and exercises they'd done during fifth period. Mrs.Ellawitz was just the kind of teacher to have pop quizzes on topics they hadn't even covered yet and belittle the students when they didn't understand the subject matter.

It was a Tuesday night and her parents were away on a business trip, leaving the teenage girl alone for the rest of the week. Usually she would've taken advantage of their absence and thrown one of the school's biggest winter parties. She would've "borrowed" wine from their cellar, filling the empty bottles with water since they weren't supposed to be opened for another twenty years anyway, and host the tenth consecutive Hawkins Ping-Pong Tournament between the football and basketball teams in the backyard next to the pool. Losers were forced to strip down to their underwear and run from her house to Town Hall and back.

But no, not tonight. Not when Mrs.Ellawitz was one bad grade away from flunking the teenage girl. Despite being in her senior year, this was the first time in a long while that she'd started taking her grades seriously. Her record hadn't been too bad since she was a natural science wizard and could flirt with most of her other teachers to raise a C- to a B+, but Mrs.Ellawitz was a new hurtle Stormi had yet to jump.

Just as Willow had mentioned on the way to school Monday, Stormi and her family weren't over-the-top Bible-thumpers either. They definitely didn't say blessings before their meals, but ever since her quizzes started coming back with giant 'F's written across the top, Stormi had become an avid prayer every night she did her homework and studied the hell out of her Spanish book.

She'd hardly finished her normal 'Dear God, please help me pass this class,' when the familiar sound of the doorbell filled the open door of her bedroom. At first, she just ignored it. In order to stay focused, Stormi had also unplugged the house phone from the wall only a few minutes prior. Of course, she'd told her parents beforehand so they wouldn't freak out if they called and no one answered, but it was necessary to keep her mind on track with her studies. It was a trick her ex-boyfriend taught her before the brainiac broke her heart around Halloween.

The doorbell rang again, this time consistently as whoever was at the door continued to press the button over and over before pounding their fist on the wooden door.

"Alright! Alright, I'm coming!" She yelled and set her papers and notebook to the side. Considering the fourteen different past-tenses of Spanish she needed to memorize by the end of the week, there was no way she was going to pass. Regardless, she got to her feet, stepped into the hall, and made her way downstairs. The doorbell continued to chime over and over and over again. "I said I'm coming!" Stormi yelled once more before wrapping her hand around the doorknob and pulling it open.

Standing on the other side was a barrage of children, all of them panicked and talking at once in a flurry of jumbled words and phrases. There were four of them in all, each one as recognizable as zit on the center of her forehead. With arms casually folded over her chest behind the cluster of kids and a look of annoyance seemingly super-glued to her face at all times, Willow observed the chaos as it ensued.

"Why the hell aren't you answering your phone?"

"Do you have any idea what's happening?"

"We called you a million times!"

"Hey! Hey! Hey!" Stormi shouted and the pestering stalled. "One at a time! What the hell are you munchkins freaking out about?"

Kayla was the ring-leader of the squad, sporting a short bob-haircut and stood an inch or two taller than the rest of the rugrats. Her cheeks were dappled with freckles, nowhere near as many as Dox, but still enough to occasionally be called "Pepper Face" by the bullies at their school. Though she had extreme potential to be considered annoying when she didn't get what she wanted, Kayla was ultimately the glue that held the pack together. And the first person to speak.

"Have you not been watching the news?" She questioned and shouldered her way past Stormi into the house. "It's all over Channel 5," The three others of the posse - Anna, Dox, and Evan - followed her without a second thought.

"Hey, I never said you could-" Stormi huffed under her breath and Willow patted her arm, shaking her head and tsk tsk tsk-ing in mock-disapproval as she slid by the teenager as well. As much as Stormi loved the group of miniature psychos, there couldn't have been a worse time for them to crash her study party. With a sigh of resignation, she pulled the front door shut behind them. "Isn't it past your guys' bedtime anyway?"

"We left that shit behind after what happened last year," Anna, clad in her usual navy blue science-camp sweatshirt and backwards baseball cap, vaulted over the back of the living room couch and landed with a satisfying 'thud' on the cushions. Kayla quickly made her way over to the TV and turned the device on before switching the channel to the news, while Dox and Evan, a spindly-looking boy who didn't say much, plopped down on the floor in front of the sofa.

"Do your parents know that you're here?" Stormi asked. She leaned her shoulder against the doorway, but no one cared to answer after the late-night news began to blare through the room.

"-morning, the Hawkins-county sheriff's department received a call about an abandoned car-wreck on the outskirts of the town," The reporter on screen began in an emotionless drawl. "When authorities and paramedics arrived, it was revealed that the truck involved belongs to Sheriff Jean Harper, a long-time Hawkins local."

A recent picture appeared on the television next to the reporter's face, a picture of Jean and her son on a fishing trip with proud smiles on their faces as they held up their catches. Stormi had never seen Evan smile so wide before. She felt her stomach roll and cast a glance over at the sheriff's son, who looked to be on the verge of tears.

"With the slew of tragedies and conspiracies of human experimentation revolving around the Hawkins National Laboratory surfacing in the past three months, investigators suspect foul activity due to rumors of the sheriff being one of the key individuals involved in exposing the lab to the media."

"Holy shit," Anna murmured under her breath, then clicked the TV off when a segment on fundraising for a new swimming pool began to play.

It was stupid of them to think that after everything they'd been through, the threat would've just disappeared and left them alone. If their record was any indication, trouble was always coming back for them - Joan just happened to be the first victim in the third round of the fight. Last time, they got a year between the beast rearing its ugly head. It had barely been half a semester.

"But we had nothing to do with that," Dox exclaimed, getting to his feet in a fit of rage.

"Doesn't matter," It was Evan who squeaked, his voice so soft that Stormi thought it might've just been her imagination. Stemming from his upbringing, Evan had barely been able to talk at all when they were first introduced. But then he continued; his eyes were solemn and his chest heaved with a single deep breath. "We need to do something."

"Wait, hold up a second," She didn't know why she even tried anymore. The kids were up and moving before Stormi could even comprehend what was going on. "Where do you think you're going? It's a school night- you guys need to go home and get to sleep!"

"Stormi, we're taking your car."

"No, you're not!" Anna had already grabbed Stormi's keys off the hook on the wall. Two minutes ago, she was upstairs studying like her life depended on it and now she was being forced into another last-minute babysitting session. If there was ever a perfect time for her plans to spiral out of control, this sure as hell wasn't it. "Anna! Diana Abernathy, give me those keys right now!"

"We don't even need the keys," Kayla smirked as she followed the other three outside. "Willow can just drive us. How do you think we got here from across town?" Stormi turned and narrowed her eyes at the sour-faced teenager in leather; Willow just shrugged.

"Your car is really easy to hot-wire."

"You-!" Stormi's eyes widened in anger. "You hot-wired my car?" Willow shrugged once more, this time smirking a bit as well.

"Come on, you can make sure your BMW doesn't end up like my Camaro."

***

Fifteen minutes later, Stormi was pulling her car over on the side of the road and taking a flashlight out of her glove box. She'd leave the headlights on too, just to be safe.

The site of the wreck was just as creepy as it would've been in a horror movie: a slight breeze blowing through the trees, causing them to ache and groan as the ground beneath them lay covered in dewdrops and patches of melting snow. The only other source of light besides the car was the moon and stars, shining dimly through cob-web clouds. If she knew better, she would've driven the kids straight home.

There was no way she was going to pass that test in the morning.

"They towed the truck to the shop already," She said over her shoulder to the group of kids huddled in the back. There were only three spots in the backseat to be filled legally, but the troop of munchkins were used to making it work. "The police would've already searched the area too, so don't get your hopes up too high, okay?"

"If anyone can find something the cops missed, it's Evan," Kayla announced and the other three nodded in agreement. They weren't wrong; Evan always had something crazy up his sleeve that ended up leaving Stormi in awe. Despite having known him for only a couple months, there was already a list of non-explainable phenomena produced by the kid that Stormi had no way of understanding no matter how hard she tried to rationalize the situation. She sighed.

"Just stay together, okay? No running off alone, and yell if you find-" The doors slammed shut before the parent of the group could finish her lecture. "-anything useful." Willow let out an amused huff from the passenger's side. "Hey, if something happens to one of them, my neck isn't the only one on the chopping block."

Her socks were soaked through her sneakers in a matter of seconds as Stormi slammed the driver's side door shut and Willow followed suit. Despite the circumstances and general tone of the environment around them, Stormi almost felt content. The fact that Willow had been the one to pick up Anna, Evan and Kayla showed that something was changing in the girl's attitude- or her willingness to participate in her little brother's adventures, at least. It was a good change and Stormi couldn't help but hope that it would continue to grow.

Maybe they'd end up being friends someday after all.

"Kayla, catch!" Stormi called out and tossed the flashlight to the ring-leader of this circus. Anna already had a headlight in the kangaroo-pouch of her sweatshirt, which she put to use as the four kids began looking around the road and ditch.

"How long do things like this usually last?" Willow questioned at her side as the duo began to follow the bunch. The trouble-maker took out a lighter and a pack of Camels from her pocket before taking the cigarette between her lips. Stormi had never been a big fan of smoking, but she didn't bother pestering her acquaintance about it. They were Willow's lungs, not hers.

"What? A search-party?" Stormi raised an eyebrow, the sound of their footsteps seeming to echo down the empty road. Willow shrugged and took a puff. "I have no idea, not with these kids. With all the crazy shit they've been through, it'll be a win if we even get back home tonight."

She wasn't exaggerating, and Willow was well aware of it.

"Does this happen often in this town?" She was referring to the news, of course, with the drama involving the laboratory and Evan being part-god. "You guys could market off this, like the next Roswell. Make it a tourist destination." Stormi let out a chuckle at the mention of turning Hawkins into a star on a map.

"Yeah, except the insane tourist-attractions would actually eat the tourists," She laughed at herself, but it had more truth to it than she wanted to admit. Almost as soon as she said it, she wanted to take it back. After watching two kids be devoured by a monster from another dimension, she should've just kept her mouth shut. Willow exhaled and a cloud of smoke drifted from her mouth.

"Trust me, no one's getting eaten anytime soon."

It was the key moment that brought the two together in the first place: failing to beat the big bad monsters before they could cause any real damage. Stormi sighed, watching the beams of light from the kids pan around the perimeter of the road and ditches.

"I hope you're right."