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C H A P T E R  N I N E  :

" THE GEOGRAPHY TEXTBOOK "

･ ｡ﾟ ⋆✩⋆  ･ ｡ﾟ

･ ｡ﾟ  ･ ｡ﾟ

| D E C E M B E R  24th , 1986 |

H a w k i n s , I n d i a n a

"SO, LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT.."

Steve rubbed his temple—the note that held the supposed message from Hopper and Y/N was resting in his palm.

The entire gang migrated to the basement for better confidentiality, and they all sat and stood as they watched Steve, Robin, Billy, and Nancy try to understand what they were trying to say.

"Y/N and Hopper are still alive, but all they give you is this super complex message?"
Steve continues to ask, holding up the piece of paper while Mike's eyes followed it like it were gold.

"Yeah, what the hell is a 'Kamchatka' ?"
Billy asked, gesturing to the note Steve held in his hand.

"Why do you think we called everyone here? That's what we're trying to figure out, dude."
Mike answered, throwing his head back to meet with the couch, huffing with impatience.

"Is he going through puberty or some shit?"
Billy asked nobody in particular with irritation, only snickering at his own remark.

"No.." Max answered, glaring at her brother's inconsiderate remark. "Worse. He's lovesick."

This was enough to perk everyone's attention, even Billy's.
Mike, however, did not like the attention.

"Wait, lovesick? You mean, for Y/N—.."
Nancy began to ask before Mike cut her off.

No one knew that Mike loved Y/N.
They knew that Mike and Y/N were best friends and that they really care about each other, but they didn't know how Mike truly felt about her.

"Can you all cut it out? Jesus.."
Mike snarked defensively.

Mike was, in fact, lovesick.

And he had a terrible case of it.

"Alright, so how could this message even say anything about Hopper and Y/N? I really don't see what you guys see."
Steve admitted, rereading the note over and over again as if it were going to help him figure it out any better.

But Nancy and Robin seemed to be pondering even harder.

"That word sounds familiar..
Nancy stood next to Steve, taking the note from his hand before walking over to Robin.
"Right?"
Nancy held the note out to Robin to help her decode it, both of them mumbling the message to themselves.
"Maybe..maybe from Ms. Johnson's world geography class?"

"Wait.."
Robin said, her eyes lighting up for a moment before becoming fearful.

"Steve. Remember that delivery guy at the Family Video store earlier today?"
Robin asked, her thought process was jumbled with possibilities.

Steve took a moment to remember before his own eyes lit up and his mouth shaped itself in a circle.
"Oh, right!" He agreed, his eyes wide before they turned cautious. "Do you really think..?"

"I mean..maybe..maybe it could?"
Robin and Steve had been having their own dialect, completely excluding the rest of the group who were listening intently.

"What? Maybe what?"
Mike tuned in, trying to get the teens' attention who continued to talk incoherently to each other.

"Steve!"
Dustin tried to get Steve's attention, only to be ignored once again as he continued to mumble to Robin.

"Well, this was pointless."
Murray muttered to Joyce, referring to the fact that he made the drive all the way to Hawkins with complex information, only to be ignored by a group of children.

Joyce scoffed, shushing Murray so that she could hear the kids talking.

She believed in these kids—in her kids.

"Could someone please tell me what the hell you guys are talking about?"
Billy barged into the conversation that Steve and Robin had, and Mike was eavesdropping to hear mentions of Russia.

But then their conversation came to a stop, and silence fell over the teenagers.

Robin and Steve looked at the group with knowing eyes, giving each other reassuring worried glances before turning to Mike and the party.

"What? What is it?"
Mike asked eagerly, now scooting so that he was sitting on the edge of the couch—impatient and worried as the rest of the gang sat next to him.

"Well, we have this theory.." Robin began, but held her hands up to halt Mike from speaking because she could see his face light up.

"B-But we don't know if it's a good one."
Steve finished for her, his hands on his hips as he stood in his motherly stance—still in his Family Video uniform.

"J-Just tell me, already!"
Mike bursted, the overwhelming adrenalin at the thought of Y/N being alive was coursing through him.

He was anxious. He was impatient.

"Please.."
Mike settled down, his voice came out as more of a plead as he looked up at the teenagers with hopeful eyes.

He would do anything to even talk to Y/N again.

Because of the simple and irrefutable fact that he was utterly in love with her.

The mere possibility of Y/N being alive, sparked this fuel and energy inside him that he hadn't had ever since the battle at Starcourt Mall.

The mere thought of Y/N returning home—to Mike, and in his arms, was the only thing that kept him sane anymore.

He wanted to see her so badly.

"So, today..," Robin begins to explain while holding the note securely in her hand.
"After Dustin called us to come here, we got this delivery of cassettes from our usual delivery guy. Totally normal, right?"

The group blinked as they followed what she had said so far, which then prompted Steve to further explain.

"Except it wasn't. This delivery guy is the same delivery guy that delivered us our shipments at Scoops Ahoy. He worked at the mall, and now all of a sudden he works for the delivery company that delivers for us at Family Video?"
Steve asked rhetorically, holding his hands up for emphasis.

"Not to mention, that this delivery that he made today after Dustin called us, was a fake. I always make the calls for restock shipments, and I never called for this delivery he made today."
Robin added, her eyes wide and her arms up in the air at her breakthrough.

"So, what are you saying?"
Murray asked, his hand on his knee as he furrowed his eyebrows in question.

Steve and Robin stole a glance from each other, reassuring themselves that their theory was good.

"We think he may be a spy. Maybe even a Russian spy, we don't know."
Steve breathed while rubbing his temple, looking to Robin to finish for him as he seemed to be out of breath.

"But what we do know, is that someone is keeping tabs on us. Someone is watching us."
Robin finished, looking to Murray and Joyce who seemed to have figured something out themselves.

There was shift of tension in the room, and everyone could feel it.

"And if I remember my geography correctly from Ms. Johnson's history class, I think that this," Robin said while pointing to the
words, 'Kamchatka, Russia' on the note.

"..could be a location."

Robin finished, looking at Steve as he nodded in agreement.

"So, if we find out that this could be a location, and where it is, then that means we can find
Y/N and Hopper?"
  Joyce asked Robin, and she inhaled for a moment.

"That's what we hope for, yes."

The group seemed to be in awe of the newfound clue, and it was Mike who sprung up from the couch first.

This was all Mike needed in order to feel his heart race.

"Nancy, where's your geography book?"
He asked quickly, pointing to his older sister as she stood next to Jonathan.

"In my room, I think?" She said, watching Mike as he sprinted up the basement stairs to disappear at the top.

His heart raced as did his mind with all the possibilities of the ways he could see Y/N again.

He mindlessly shuffled through his sister's desk to look for the text book, frantically throwing and tossing things out of his way.

But as the seconds had past, they felt like agonizingly long hours where he couldn't find the geography book, and his heart sank as he panicked.

It has to be here.

His heart began thumping through his chest at the absence of the book that could answer all their questions.

His anxiety seemed to peak when he couldn't find the geography book at all—it was nowhere to be found.
  His heart sunk and his depressed anger took over him as he began to throw things across the room.

He tossed and threw anything that wasn't the geography text book.

Papers flew everywhere, notebooks fell to the ground.

He was frustrated and impatient.

It has to be here.

It wasn't just about him not finding the textbook.
  It was more than that.

It was the worry that he wouldn't find Y/N.

If he couldn't simply find the textbook that could hold the potential answer to decode the message of where Y/N could be, then what was he supposed to do?

The papers that he threw everywhere now all drifted to the ground—all except this one solitary piece.

One of the papers stood out to Mike as it seemed to take extra care and time to drift to land strategically near a certain textbook across the room.

And when the paper guided Mike's eyes, they landed on a thick book on the floor next to the piece of paper that drifted atop it across the room by her bed—he immediately ran over to retrieve it.

He held it up with hope, only to hold it up and see that it was a psychology text book.

Psychology was her one of her favorite subjects..

He felt his breaths become more jagged as he inhaled sharply through his nose—his hands clenched the book in his hands before slamming it on the floor.

He couldn't take it. The pain of being so close to finding Y/N, yet so far, was agonizing to him.

He groaned with frustration, leaning his back against Nancy's bed as he slid to the floor—pulling his knees to his chest.

All his feelings and frustrations and just overall sadness that he's been suppressing for the past couple months just suddenly bubbled and surfaced.

He just broke inside.

He felt his eyes well with glossy tears, running his hands aggressively through his hair—pulling at some strands in his fists.

He knew he was having an anxiety attack, but he didn't hold it back this time.

He needed to let this out.

If Y/N were here with him, she would be able to calm him down.
She was the only one who knew how to, since she was Mike's best friend their whole lives.

He just wanted her back.

He buried his head in his knees, closing his eyes as he allowed himself to fall even further into the darkness.

He focused on the last time he saw Y/N, desperately wanting to see her.

Her pale e/c eyes, her h/c hair flowing, her funny laugh, her blinding smile.

Her voice—her soothing voice that dripped like honey in his ears.

He imagined that Y/N was right there with him—soothing him and calming him down from his attack. And he even felt his breathing slow.

And for a moment, he felt that he could see her.

He saw her beautiful eyes and her blinding smile.

He saw her.

He could've sworn that he felt her presence there with him—like she was there beside him, soothing him just by being there.

At least, he wished that she was. 

He was so deep underneath his mind—drowning in his own thoughts, that he didn't hear someone coming up the stairs and enter Nancy's room.

"Mike?"
Mike heard a voice call to him, and it was like a hand reaching down beneath a sea of waves that drowned him in his thoughts.

He thought it was Y/N's voice at first, only to be shaken wrong.

Mike lifted his head slightly to look at the shoes of the person, seeing the signature pair of boots that belonged to Billy.

"What?"
Mike sniffled, his eyes were reddish with a gloss of teary film.

Billy didn't as anything as he watched Mike try to compose himself in front of them.

He took a look around Nancy's room—papers were littered everywhere on the floor, books and textbooks were scattered around the desk.
It was a mess, one that Nancy would surely kill Mike for.

But Billy knew what Mike was going through.
He knew him well enough to know that he was really hurting.

Billy's boots clicked on the hardwood flooring of Nancy's room before he stopped to place a hand on Mike's shoulder, squeezing it reassuringly before mumbling for him to get up.

He helped Mike to his feet before he just sat on his sister's bed, his mind wandered endlessly.

And Y/N was always there.
She was always on his mind.

It wasn't until Billy tugged on Mike's arm, urging him to lift from his sister's bed that Mike snapped out of his thoughts.

"Come on. We're going to the library."
Billy said, pulling Mike forcefully yet nicely at his side as they exited Nancy's room—Mike with dried tear streaks on his face.

Together they left the room, unknowingly leaving the geography textbook alone and unfound in secluded spot—peeking from underneath her bed where Mike had been sitting.

That was where the single piece of paper was meant to strategically land..

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Authors Note :

WOW, so i hope that chapter confused you guys a little bit because that's what i was going for ;)) (especially that very last part.. ) :3

you're gonna wanna pay attention to that last part, it was important ;)

that was a weird chapter, i know :/

in the next few chapters, things are gonna start happening so be prepared..

it's gonna go DOWN pretty soon..

.

what do you think so far ??

any theories so far? any predictions?

thanks for reading.. stay tuned !!

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