CHAPTER THREE.
1x03: Holly, Jolly

The next day, Sam "left for school" early to "study." This directly translated to: I'm going to Mike Wheeler's house so we can find Will Byers with the help of Eleven—this bald girl with superpowers!

Lying was becoming more normal than Sam wanted to admit.

There wasn't time to dwell upon it now. Sam, Lucas, Mike, and Dustin were gathered around their D&D table, Eleven sat on the basement's couch. She was once again playing with Mike's walkie-talkie. She really seemed to like it.

"We just tell our people we have AV Club after school," Mike said, trying to finalize their plan. "That will give us at least a few hours for Operation Mirkwood."

Sam nodded in understanding, as did Dustin. Lucas eyed Eleven on the couch.

"You seriously think that the weirdo knows where Will is?" he asked.

"Just trust me on this, okay?" Mike said, causing Lucas to begrudgingly nod. "Did you get the supplies?"

"Yeah," Lucas responded, now rummaging in his backpack. He listed his items as he pulled them out: "Binoculars... from 'Nam. Army knife... also from 'Nam. Hammer, camouflage bandana... and the wrist rocket."

"You're gonna take out the Demogorgon with a slingshot?" Dustin asked, unamused.

"First of all," Lucas said, offended, "it's a wrist rocket. And second of all, the Demogorgon's not real. It's made up. But if there is something out there, I'm gonna shoot it in the eye," he stretched the elastic of the wrist rocket toward Dustin, "and blind it."

Sighing, Mike nodded to Sam. "Sam, did you get anything?"

Upon being addressed, Sam lit up.

"Okay, so," she started, unzipping a separate bag she brought, pulling clothes out and addressing Eleven. "I've been thinking about it all night, and I just know you'd rock the grunge look." She tossed Eleven all the clothes, to which Eleven did not catch. "I brought you a green flannel, which will complement the black tee, and a pair of jeans. But if I'm being honest, the sweatpants you're wearing would work too. Plus, they're comfier. Oh! This part is my favorite," she commented, holding up a pair of black combat boots. "I don't really know your shoe size, but—"

"Sam," Mike interrupted, sounding annoyed.

Sam stopped in her tracks. She stared at the boys obliviously. They all looked the same.

"Yeah?"

"When we said scrounge around your house," Lucas said, "we did not mean dress up the freak like she's some Barbie!"

Offended, Sam gaped and gave Eleven the combat boots. "Excuse me. These clothes are cute, and if you think I'm gonna let her wear Mike's stinky clothes for however long we ally with her for, then you're dumb."

"Hey!" Mike interjected, a wounded expression on his face.

"You completely missed the point!" Lucas argued, ignoring Mike. "Anything would have better than 'grunge clothes.'"

"What did you want me to bring, Lucas? A gun?" she snapped.

"It could've been more helpful than this!"

Sam pointed at him with much chagrin. "When you see her in my cute clothes, you're gonna be thanking me! That way we don't have to stare at two little Mikes dressed like they're walking out of GAP Kids!"

"Hey!" Mike interjected again.

Ignoring him, Sam gestured to the left of her. "Dustin, what did you get?"

Instead of pulling out everything one by one, Dustin dumped his entire backpack onto the table for them to see. Sam was confused to see only food items on the table, but Dustin didn't seem the same.

"Alrighty. So we've got... Nutty Bars, Bazooka, Pez, Smarties, Pringles"—Sam, Lucas, and Mike shared looks that said, Are you hearing this guy right now?—"Nilla Wafers, apple, banana, and trail mix."

Lucas raised an eyebrow. "Seriously?"

"We need energy for our travels," Dustin insisted. "For stamina. And besides—why do we even need weapons anyway? We have her—"

"She shut one door!" Lucas exclaimed, aggravated.

"With her mind!" Dustin shot back in retaliation. "Are you kidding me? That's insane! Imagine all the other cool stuff she could do. Like..."

Being struck with an idea, Dustin rushed over to an armchair in the basement. He lifted up the throw blanket to reveal Mike's toy Millenium Falcon.

"I bet she could make this thing fly!" Dustin held it in front of Eleven. "Hey. Hey! Okay, concentrate. Okay?"

Dustin dropped the Millennium Falcon to the ground, hoping Eleven would make it fly, but the toy just clattered to the ground lifelessly. Eleven eyed it with a blank expression.

"Okay, one more time!" Dustin said, continuing his positivity. He picked the toy back up in his hands while everyone else silently judged. "Use your powers, okay?"

He dropped the Millennium Falcon again.

Nothing happened.

"Idiot," Lucas muttered under his breath.

Sam sent Lucas a very disappointed look as Mike rushed forward. He grabbed the toy Millennium Flacon from the floor, so that Dustin couldn't try dropping it again.

"She's not a dog!" Mike scolded.

"Kids!" Mrs. Wheeler called from upstairs, scaring all of them. "Time for school!"

╰━━━ ◦ ✸ ◦ ✸ ◦ ━━━╯

The party took their opportunity at recess to hang around the grass behind school; Sam, Lucas, Mike, and Dustin searched through the scattered foliage. Lucas wanted to find a rock that would fit his slingshot—wrist rocket.

"Hey, Mike," Sam said, holding one of the biggest rocks she could find. "Think fast."

Sam pretended to throw the rock right at Mike's head, to which Mike screamed in terror, flailing like mad.

Sam cackled in amusement, her head thrown back. Sometimes it actually was fun being friends with boys. Mike's reaction was hilarious—she hadn't thrown the rock anywhere near him, and it was still firmly in her grip.

"You're not funny, Samantha!" Mike snapped, his voice drowned out by the sound of her laughter.

Sam continued to laugh, pointing at Mike. "You should've seen your face!"

"Can we just keep looking?!" Mike's face was flushed with either embarrassment or anger. "This is serious."

Sam dropped the large rock when she raised her hands up in surrender. She waved her hands mockingly, as if pretending to be scared, although she very much wasn't. She shot a look at Lucas, and they shared amused smiles they attempted to hide from Mike to cover hers, Sam bent down again to search for more rocks.

"This one smells like piss," Dustin commented, promptly before he threw the rock into the far distance.

"This one looks like shit," Sam muttered.

For a few moments, there were more sounds of rustling as the group searched for an acceptable rock.

"How about this one?" Mike asked from behind.

Sam stood up and turned around to take the chosen rock Mike held out to her. She examined it for a moment, internally calculating the variables of how it would realistically act in the wrist rocket.

"Too big for the sling," she decided, then dropped the rock to the ground.

Mike frowned, but Sam sent him a shrug.

"It was good though," she tried to comfort him, "almost there."

"What size do you think would be best?"

"Something dense but not massive," she began, her voice shifting into lecture mode. "You want a rock heavy enough to carry momentum but small enough that the sling's elastic can actually accelerate it. Think marble-sized, maybe a little bigger. About, I don't know—" she held her thumb and forefinger apart—"three or four centimeters in diameter, give or take."

"Jesus," Lucas muttered.

Sam shrugged. "He asked."

"Okay, Professor Hughes," he said. "Can you just help find us one that works before recess ends?"

Sam grinned at him. She wordlessly continued searching for a viable rock.

"So," Dustin rambled, now that the physics lecture was over, "do you think Eleven was born with her powers, like the X-Men? Or do you think she acquired them, like... like Green Lantern?"

"She's not a superhero," Lucas refuted. "She's a weirdo."

Mike took on a defensive stance. "Why does that matter? The X-Men are weirdos."

"If you love her so much, why don't you marry her?" Lucas teased.

Sam snorted, but at the sight of Mike shooting her a nasty glare, she covered her mouth and pretended to wipe her nose.

"What are you talking about?" he asked impatiently.

Lucas stared back at Mike, only to realize his friend wasn't joking. "Mike," he scoffed, "seriously?"

"What?"

"You look at her all, like... 'Hi, El! El, El, El!" Lucas launched himself at Mike, making his voice even whinier as he wrapped Mike in a mocking embrace. "El, I love you so much! Would you marry me?!"

"Shut up, Lucas." Mike glowered as Lucas got down on one knee, looking up at Mike in faux-admiration. Sam and Dustin chuckled quietly.

"Yeah, shut up, Lucas!" a crude voice interrupted.

Their laughter dissipated and Sam deflated.

Troy and James.

"What are you losers doing back here?" Troy leered.

"Probably looking for their missing friend," James taunted, smirking.

The party stiffened in unison. "That's not funny," Sam snapped. "Shut up."

"Yeah, it's serious," Dustin chastised. "He's in danger."

Troy raised an eyebrow, mocking a genuine expression. "I hate to break it to you, Toothless, but he's not in danger. He's dead. That's what my dad says. He said he was probably killed by some other queer."

The two shared vile laugh that while a new anger arose in Sam. She was always protective over Will, so this kind of fire was warranted. She urged to say something, but Mike grabbed the sleeve of her jacket. He sent her a stern look.

"Come on," he muttered. "Just ignore them."

Mike tried walking past Troy and James, with Sam following right behind him—she wanted to be done with this conversation immediately. But Troy discreetly stuck out his leg. This caused Mike to fall down, which caused Sam to fall down after him. Mike's chin collided with the huge rock Sam previously faked him out with. Sam's face slammed right on a thick root sticking out of the ground; her glasses flew off her face, a few inches away. They both let out pained yells.

As Lucas and Dustin ran straight for their friends, pain coursed through Sam's face. She groaned as Troy jeered, "Watch where you're going, Frogface. Annie."

Sam's head slowly turned up to glare daggers at Troy. The hard expression actually hurt her, and Sam found this was because there was a cut across her cheekbone. Blood was dripping down her cheek that she wiped away while Dustin tried helping her up.

"You guys alright?" Lucas asked, trying to steady both Sam and Mike. He handed Sam her glasses, which were now miserably broken because of the fall. The right lens was cracked, and the frame was split in the middle.

"Yeah," Mike croaked, wiping his bloody chin.

"My uncle's gonna kill me," Sam muttered. She looked down at her glasses while the boys looked over at her.

"Shut, Hughes," Lucas breathed, upon seeing the blood running down her face. Worried the sight of it would eventually make Sam pass out, he darted forward and used the sleeve of his jacket to wipe the wetness on her face. "There you go. Try not to think about the blood, alright?"

"Alright," Sam echoed quietly, feeling a little light-headed. She admittedly couldn't think much about anything after that.

While her eyes were trained on Lucas, Lucas's glare was narrowed dangerously on Troy on James retreating in the distance. So was Mike's. Dustin tried lightening the mood by bending down. He picked up another rock with an optimistic look.

"Hey," Dustin said, gaining Sam's attention, although her other two friends were still glaring. Dustin handed Sam a new rock. "How about this one?"

This caught Lucas and Mike's attention. A smile found its way back onto Sam's face as she cradled Dustin's rock in her hands.

"Yeah," she said, nodding happily at Dustin.

"Yeah?" Dustin repeated, clapping Sam on the shoulder.

Their smiles were contagious, and Mike and Lucas started smiling too. Sam passed the rock to Mike to put her broken glasses back on (the crack in the lense was annoying, and the break of her frame was aggravating, but it was still better than her regular eyesight.

"Yeah," Mike confirmed, beaming. "This is it."

He gave the rock to Lucas, and Lucas's excited grin made up for everything that had just happened. "Oh, yeah!" he said, holding up the rock proudly. "Yeah, this is the monstah killah! Woo!"

Sam laughed, wiping off more of the blood falling down her cheek. She couldn't bring herself to look away from him to stare down at the crimson. 

╰━━━ ◦ ✸ ◦ ✸ ◦ ━━━╯

School ended promptly at 3:15, but instead of going straight home, Sam, Lucas, Mike, and Dustin went to go pick up Eleven. When the party biked over to where Eleven was waiting, Sam was happy to find Eleven was wearing the clothes Sam had picked out for her.

Just like Sam theorized, Eleven did rock the grunge look.

"El!" Mike called, noticing Eleven's back was turned to them. It seemed as if her mind was somewhere else. She turned around, watching the four party members trudge up the forest hill, walking their bikes. "You okay?"

She nodded wordlessly, though she didn't look okay. But they didn't have time to dwell upon it. Sam turned her bike around, so they could go down the hill they'd just walked up. All the boys copied her actions.

Mike patted the back of his bike, as it was able to hold two people. Lucas was the only other party member whose bike had this cool attribute—but he wouldn't dare to let Eleven ride with him, the only person who had gotten on the back of his bike was Sam when they were younger, and Mike wanted Eleven on his bike anyway.

"Hop on," Mike said. "We only have a few hours."

Hesitantly, Eleven got on the back.

They all started riding.

The group of five pedaled all the way back to Mirkwood's forestry; this time, it was bright and clear skies, so they could actually see. They trekked through the piles of foliage covering the forest floor—Mike and Eleven a few feet ahead of Dustin, Sam, and Lucas.

"I told you, Lucas," Sam said, breaking their comfortable silence. "I told you cute clothes were helpful."

She nodded to where Mike and Eleven were walking ahead of them. Her vision was slightly altered because of the crack in her lense, but everything was still visible. Sam had wrapped tape over her frames to reconnect the broken halves, and Mr. Clarke gave Sam a Hello Kitty Band-Aid that was over the cut of her cheek. She knew she looked a mess, but there was nothing she could do about it at the moment.

"They're your cute clothes," Lucas corrected, aggravated. "And I don't know why you would let the freak wear them."

Sam sighed, but not unkindly. "Okay, I get being apprehensive about Eleven, but you're acting like she personally victimized you, Lucas. Why can't you trust someone for like, once?"

"I can't," Lucas stressed. "Because you trust everyone, and Mike will trust anyone who needs his help. And, well, Dustin..." He trailed off, because Dustin wasn't really a part of this debate, but it felt wrong to leave him out.

Dustin peeped forward to smile and wave. "Hi," he chimed.

"Hi," Sam said, returning a smile and nod. She glanced at Lucas again. "I don't trust everyone."

"You do. And I'm not—I'm not saying you shouldn't. It doesn't have to be a bad thing. But some people don't deserve the benefit of the doubt."

"Some people do," Sam countered.

"Not everyone," Lucas warned.

Sam sent him a look. It was a sad and fond smile, all in one. "You don't have to put your guard up all the time for us. We can protect ourselves, you know?"

"Oh, yeah." Lucas rolled his eyes, nodding to the cut on Sam's face. "Yeah, you're perfectly fine on your own."

Sam's face went deadpan. "That was Mike's fault. I was following him too closely."

"Which is a totally ironic statement considering the conversation we're having right now," he pointed out.

"Lucas."

Lucas sighed, shoulders deflating. He refused to look at Sam when he confessed, "We already lost Will, Sam. I'm not... I can't lose anyone else."

Sam frowned in empathy.

"Will's not lost. We're gonna find him," she told him, sounding confident despite the anxious thoughts telling her the opposite. To brighten up the mood, she nodded at Dustin and teased, "We have Dustin's snacks to save us."

Lucas grinned at Sam's joke, grateful for the subject change. He looked at Dustin too, who just whipped his head over dumbly. Ironically, Dustin was eating some of his Pringles.

"Huh?" he asked them obliviously, muffled by his chewing.

Sam and Lucas shared humored looks, very amused by Dustin's irony. The second they made eye contact, both party members broke out into hysterical laughs. Their laughter only increased the more confused Dustin became.

And just for a foolish moment, it felt like things would be okay.

╰━━━ ◦ ✸ ◦ ✸ ◦ ━━━╯

They had been searching Mirkwood for so long that night had fallen all around them. Sam shouldn't have been surprised that they'd found nothing so far, yet the decimating hope was still crushing her anyway. Sam and the boys continued following wherever the hell Eleven was taking them, but Sam was growing suspicious with how much time she was wasting.

Or maybe Sam's conversation with Lucas just had her on edge, and she should ignore the creeping suspicion.

The whole group was now walking downhill, somewhere that definitely wasn't Mirkwood. They weren't even in the woods anymore.

"I'm pretty sure this place feels familiar," Sam commented, only seconds before they walked past the rows of trees and stumbled upon someone's house.

Will's house, to be exact.

"Oh," Sam said, a little stupidly.

Eleven stopped her trek and turned to face Sam and Mike. "Here," she stated proudly.

"Yeah...?" Mike said, confused. "This is where Will lives."

"Hiding," Eleven said, as if that helped them understand any better.

Sam leaned on her bike, throwing her head back. She was tired, exhausted, and thoroughly done with today. Now Eleven was giving them more riddles to solve, and believed Will was hiding in his own house. For the first time in her life, Sam wanted to return to the Gray household.

"No, no, this is where he lives," Mike countered. "He's missing from here. Understand?"

When Lucas and Dustin reached Sam, Mike, and Eleven, they threw their bikes down exasperatedly.

"What are we doing here?" Lucas asked, his hands thrown up.

"She said he's hiding here," Sam answered, shrugging her shoulders.

Lucas examined the terrain around them, and his expression became more judgmental with every second. "Um... no!"

Dustin gaped. "I swear, if we walked all the way out here for nothing—"

"That's exactly what we did!" Lucas exclaimed. "I told you she didn't know what the hell she was talking about!"

Mike's body swiveled from Lucas and Dustin to Eleven. "Why did you bring us here?" he demanded.

"Maybe she has a good explanation," Sam reasoned. "Eleven?"

But Eleven met her stare with a disturbed expression.

"I—"

"Sam," Lucas interrupted. "Mike. Don't waste your time with her."

"What do you wanna do then?" Mike snapped.

"Call the cops, like we should've done yesterday."

That was when Sam heard a very faint noise in the distance. Faint, but it was still there. She turned away from the ground around her, and instead faced the direction the sound was coming from.

"We are not calling the cops," Mike ordered.

Sam furrowed her eyebrows. "Hey, guys?"

"What other choice do we have?" Lucas ased Mike.

"Guys," Sam begged.

But Lucas and Mike continued to fight. Desperately, Sam walked in between and past the boys. The more she focused on the noise, the more prominent it became. And that wasn't the only odd thing. They almost sounded like...

Sirens.

"GUYS!" Sam shouted, panicked.

The bickering boys finally shut up. They joined Sam in looking out at the road far away from them. Amidst the tense silence, it was very easy to make out the sound of blaring sirens from police cars and wailing cries from an ambulance.

No.

A police car sped in and out of view almost instantaneously. Its red and blue lights were flashing.

Then another police car zoomed past.

Then another.

Then the ambulance.

No no no no no—

"Will," Mike mumbled.

No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no.

The kids all sprinted for their bikes as quickly as they could. They scrambled over one another, everyone desperate to hop on their bikes.

╰━━━ ◦ ✸ ◦ ✸ ◦ ━━━╯

It didn't feel real.

Sam wasn't at the quarry, where it was dark and crowded with ambulances, police cars, paramedics, and fire engines. It was a fever dream, the fact that Will wasn't here with them to skip rocks across the suspicious-colored water.

It wasn't real, how they pulled the body out of the water.

"I-It's not Will," Sam said, but it came out choked and shaky.

Mike shook his head in disbelief. "It can't be."

But there it was—a small figure that wasn't breathing. A blue, pale, lifeless body that couldn't have been Will, because Will was alive.

Because Will was alive. He was.

The longer Sam stared at the limp clump of bones and blue veins, the more she began to recognize it. She felt a sudden urge to blind herself.

"It's Will," Lucas croaked. "It's really Will."

Sam's hands cupped her nose and mouth.

It was really Will.

Her vision almost immediately blurred. The five kids stopped peering from beside the fire truck to just stand behind it. Anything so they didn't have to see the corpse. Will's corpse.

When Eleven saw Mike's heartbroken confession, she tried, "Mike—"

Mike slapped her hand away that she was trying to place on his shoulder. He moved quicker and more fiercely than Sam had ever seen of him.

"Mike?" he yelled at her, whilst Sam shook her head back and forth, hands still over her mouth. "'Mike' what?! You were supposed to help us find him alive. You said he was alive! Wht did you lie to us?! What's wrong with you? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!"

But Mike's voice was breaking and cracking, masking sorrow with anger. It was all so agonizing. His berating finally made the tears fall down Sam's face. She choked into her hands that were cupped around her mouth and nose.

"Mike..." Eleven tried again.

"WHAT?" Mike dared. He stared at her, venom in his features, waiting for Eleven to try him.

But Eleven was thoroughly paralyzed with fear. Mike gave up and ran to grab his bike.

Then, when Eleven was thoroughly paralyzed with fear, Mike ran to grab his bike.

No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no—

"Mike, come on," Lucas choked. There were already tears streaming down his face. "Don't do this, man... Mike!"

But Mike wasn't listening. Mike was hopping on his bike instead.

"Mike, where are you going?" Dustin cried. "Mike!"

"Mike, please!" Sam begged, and her voice cracked on the words. Her hands were now clenched into fists at her sides. "P-Please don't go. Mike. Please don't go!"

But Mike ignored them.

Mike left.

╰━━━ ◦ ✸ ◦ ✸ ◦ ━━━╯

Sam threw her front door open, barely even able to see where she was going. The tears clouded her vision, and her glasses were still thoroughly cracked. She felt like a wound, open for everyone to see—to look at, to know that Sam was breaking down from the inside out.

Sam wasn't supposed to be the one that cracked, but this was Will. Her first friend, Will the Wise, the sensitive soul, the soft and quiet sweetheart, the artist, the best of them.

The one who was dead.

She didn't even realize what she was doing, but she heard the door slam shut. She felt her knees hit the floor.

Corey, who had been sitting on the kitchen counter, eating cereal for dinner, immediately jumped off it at the sight before him. "Oh, shit," bewildered and terrified.

Sam couldn't stop crying. Her arms were wrapped around her torso, she was curled over herself, and she was crying, crying, crying.

"Sam?" Corey ran up to his younger cousin, but she did not give any indication that she heard him. He crouched before her, completely unsure of what to do. "S-Sam, what's wrong? What is it? What's wrong?"

Corey felt a spike of fear stutter down his spine, his heart racing, because this was—this was really bad. He didn't think he'd ever seen Sam like this in his life. When her parents died, Corey wasn't there for her initial reaction, just the horrid funeral where she was numb and dazed. Now she was sobbing so hard that she was hyperventilating. She clung to herself so tightly that it was like she thought there was something trying to yank her away.

In a panic, Corey gripped Sam's shoulders, trying to get her to look up. He got what he wanted, Sam's head whipping up for him to see her bloodshot eyes, damaged glasses, and bandaged cheek. It was a harrowing sight. This expression was so wrong on a face born for smiling.

"What is it, Sam? What do I do?"

And then, suddenly, Sam began crying so much harder. She threw herself into Corey. She would have knocked them over if not for Corey's arms hastily swinging up to wrap around her—everything was going from zero to one hundred so fast that Corey could barely keep up with it all.

She fisted one hand in the front of Corey's shirt, clinging, and she chanted, "He's gone. He's gone. He's gone. C-Corey, he's gone—"

Sam just kept repeating the same words over and over, and she was quite literally falling apart in Corey's arms.

Corey was admittedly panicking, overflowing with worry, and not sure what the hell he was supposed to do. Sam just kept sobbing against Corey's chest, her entire body shaking so hard that Corey was genuinely terrified. The lights were flickering like crazy, something that only furthered his frenzy.

He lifted his hand to cup the back of Sam's head, shakily pushing his fingers through her hair.

"He's gone, he's gone, he's gone, he's gone—"

"Come on, Sammy, you have to breathe," Corey whispered, because he could literally hear her struggling to. She was practically gasping for air through her deep, guttural sobs, only seeming to grow more distressed by the second.

"Sam—Samantha—Sam—" But as much as he tried, Sam wouldn't come out of it. Corey wasn't sure she would even stay conscious for very much longer in this state, and it genuinely scared him. He had never done this in a long time, but he was desperate, so he yelled, "Mom! Mom, please, help! It's Sam! MOM!"

But Sam couldn't stop crying, for Will was dead, dead, dead.

╰━━━ ◦ ✸ ◦ ✸ ◦ ━━━╯

Published: January 13, 2024
Re-published: October 30, 2025

BAILEY YAPS...

Corey saying Sam has a face born for smiling.
Corey saying Sam has a face born for smiling.
Corey saying Sam has a face born for smiling.
Corey saying Sam has a face born for smiling.
Corey saying Sam has a face born for smiling.

Rip Will Byers man I'm sure you're so dead