• 𝙾𝚗𝚕𝚢 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙶𝚘𝚘𝚍 𝙳𝚒𝚎 𝚈𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚐 - 𝙱𝚒𝚕𝚕𝚢 𝙹𝚘𝚎𝚕 •

"Ow!" Beatrice yelps as Martha brushes the knots in her daughters hair.

Both of the girls in the bathroom were wearing black dresses. Their strawberry blonde hair laid beautifully on their shoulders.

"Honey, you need to hold still. I'm almost done." Her mother says, finishing up.

Bea flinches. She sighs before wondering, "Any news about Barb?"

The Holland's — besides Beatrice — think that Barbara is missing and/or ran away. Her car is missing and everything, too. Today was Will's funeral, so it was already a sad time for the town.

"No news yet, but we'll find her. She's a smart girl. Just like you." Martha kissed her on the cheek, then patted her shoulders as she looked at her youngest in the mirror.

Mrs. Holland has been nonstop crying for days on end. She wants to believe that her eldest is okay, but she can't seem to push the bad thoughts out of her mind.

Walking out of the bathroom, Bea's mom takes note of paper and colored pencils on her daughters desk. "I see you're drawing again." The woman softly smiles.

"Uh, yeah. I've been dabbling." Bea awkwardly admits as her mom walks up to the drawing of a young boy she has never seen before.

"Who's this?" She asked, picking up the picture. "I don't think any of your friends have this type of hairstyle. Wow, are his eyes blue!"

"Oh, um, I don't know. I guess I drew that for no reason. We should get going. Don't want to be late." Bea rushes her mom out of her room to meet her father. They jump in the car and drive to the funeral home.

Lately, Bea has been drawing random things. She doesn't quite know why. She doesn't know who that boy is in her drawing. She's never seen him before.

•••••

At the funeral, Beatrice couldn't pay attention to what the priest was saying. It was all irrelevant since Will isn't actually dead.

Bea was snapped out of her trance when she heard Dustin whisper, "Just wait until we tell Will that Jennifer Hayes was crying at his funeral." Mrs. Wheeler shushed the boy as Beatrice elbowed him in the ribs. "Ow!" He whisper shouted.

Why would Will care about Jennifer?

As Bea threw her flower down onto the casket, she couldn't help but cry a little. She knows that Will's not dead. She knows that. But just the thought of him actually being dead — or of any of her friends being dead, for that matter — it just makes her want to be locked in a room and cry forever.

Like how she felt about Barb.

As Lonnie Byers was saying his "thank you's" to the people leaving, Beatrice walked up to Joyce.

"Mrs. Byers—" Bea started.

Joyce looked down to the girl with a strained smile. "Sweetie, how many times have I told you to just call me Joyce."

"Right, Joyce. Um, I just wanted to say..." Bea leaned into Joyce's ear and whispered, "I know that Will is alive. I don't know how, but I know. And I promise you that we will find him alive."

Joyce pulls the girl in a hug and cries into the young girl's shoulder. "Thank you. I know how much you care about my boy."

You have no idea.

•••••

"Mr. Clarke?" Mike grabs the attention of the party's science teacher. They were currently at the funeral reception. Mr. Clarke was standing by the table full of food.

"How are you holding up?" He solemnly asks the group of friends.

Lucas spoke slowly, "We're in mourning."

"Man, these aren't real Nilla Wafers." Dustin complains, earning a slap on the arm from Beatrice. "Why do you always hit me?" He whispers harshly.

"Why do you always have the worst timing?" She remarks. Dustin was about to retort something back to her, but was pulled out of the conversation when Mike was waving him and Bea to a table where he, Lucas and Mr. Clarke sat.

When they sit down, they heard Mike ask, "So, you know how in Cosmos, Carl Sagan talks about other dimensions? Like, beyond our world?"

"Yeah, sure. Theoretically." Clarke nods along.

"Right, theoretically." Mike mutters.

"So, theoretically, how do we travel there?" Lucas wonders. Both boys waved their arms around as they spoke.

"You guys have been thinking about Hugh Everett's Many-Worlds Interpretation, haven't you?" Mr. Clarke asks, earning no response. "Well, basically, there are parallel universes. Just like our world, but just infinite variations of it. Which means there's a world out there where none of this tragic stuff even happened," he says solemnly.

"Yeah, that's not what we're talking about." Bea dismissed, shaking her head, resulting in her teacher saying, "oh."

"We were thinking of more of an evil dimension, like the Vale of Shadows." Dustin explains before eating a cracker. "You know the Vale of Shadows?"

"An echo of the Material Plane, where necrotic and shadow magic—" Mr. Clarke responds before getting interrupted by Mike.

"Yeah, exactly. If that did exist, a place like the Vale of Shadows, how would we travel there?"

"Theoretically." Lucas adds.

"Well," Mr. Clarke starts as he picks up a paper plate and pen to demonstrate. "—picture an acrobat standing on a tightrope. Now, the tightrope is our dimension. And our dimension has rules." He continues to explain.

Beatrice tunes out the rest of Mr. Clarke's description as her mind goes back to the drawing on her desk. Who was that boy? Why was her drawing so detailed? From the gelled back hair, to the diamond face shape. Where did he come from? She's never seen this boy in her life.

She's going to soon. Way too soon.

"Honey?" Bea's mom's voice snaps her out of her thoughts.

"Yeah, mom?" She asks, standing up from the table with the boys and Mr. Clarke.

"Um, they found the car. They found Barbara's car."

•••••

Beatrice told the boys before she left that she'll meet them at Mike's house later on. She needs to be with her parents when they go to the police department.

Officer Callahan and Powell sat across from the Holland's with paper on a clipboard and a blue pen each. Beatrice sat in between her parents, no longer in her black dress.

"So, Beatrice—" Powell started.

"Bea." The young strawberry blonde cut off the officer.

He cocked his head to the side, "I'm sorry, what?"

"It's Bea. Please, just call me Bea."

The deputy's nodded. "Okay, Bea. Uh, when was the last time you talked to your sister?"

She took a sharp inhale. "Over the phone. I was at the Wheeler's and slept over." The two wrote on their papers.

"What was the call about?" Callahan questioned.

"It was about the party that she and Nancy Wheeler went to at Steve Harrington's house. I told her to be careful." Ironic, Bea thought.

"Did she say anything to you about leaving? Did it ever seem like she wanted to run away?" They directed their question to Mr. and Mrs. Holland.

She beat her parents to the punch. "No. She always said that she wasn't going to leave until I graduated. We would travel the world together. Just us. The Holland sisters."

Beatrice and her parents were interrogated a little while longer before they were dismissed from the station. On the way home, her parents dropped her off at Mike's house. It was perfect timing too because they were getting ready on their bikes to leave.

•••••

The party — including Eleven — were walking the train tracks, following their compasses. Dustin and Lucas were in the front with Mike, while El and Bea were staggered behind them.

Beatrice was laughing at something she just said to El, only to be cut off by her, "Girlfriend?"

"Huh?" Bea mumbles, turning her head to the girl in a blonde wig.

"Girlfriend. What is a girlfriend?" El clarifies.

"Oh, yeah, that. Um, well. When a girl and boy are dating, the girl is a girlfriend and the boy is a boyfriend." Beatrice was only 11-years-old, so this was her only description of what a boyfriend and girlfriend are.

Like many words, "Dating?" was one Eleven didn't know of.

"Yeah. Like, when you really like someone and they like you too and you want to be together, so you date." If only it was that simple.

"Can girlfriends have girlfriends?"

Bea smiled brightly. "Yeah, of course. And boyfriends can have boyfriends. Not a lot of people are okay with that, but I hope they will be soon. It's all about love."

This could go on forever. "Love?"

"Yeah—" Bea was cut off by Mike walking back to them, taking her spot to talk to El. Bea winked at Mike before walking up to Lucas and Dustin.

"Are we there yet?" Bea asks like a child on a road trip, wrapping her arms round both of the boys shoulders.

"Does it look like we're there yet?" Dustin's sarcasm will never get old.

The girl rolls her eyes and ignores the curly haired boy's comment. Lucas then asks, "How was it at the police station?"

"It was okay, I guess. They asked a couple of questions. Apparently they found Barb's car. Obviously no Barb. Because she's dead." Bea whispers the last part as she looks down, taking her arms from their shoulders.

"Hey, we don't know that for sure." Dustin tries to assure the girl, "I mean, we haven't seen a body so..." He trails off, remembering how they found Will's 'body' but he's still alive, "never mind."

•••••

Reaching a junkyard, Dustin realizes something is wrong, "Oh, no."

"'Oh, no'? What's, 'oh, no'?" Lucas asks, irritated.

Dustin turns towards his friends. "We're heading back home."

"What?"

"Are you sure?" Bea glanced from her compass to Dustin.

"Yeah, I'm sure." Dustin confirms, "Setting sun, right there." Pointing behind them. "We looped right back around."

Lucas throws his arms in the air. "And you're just realizing this now?"

"Why is this all on me?"

Beatrice ignores their little argument and turns her attention to El. "Hey, you okay?" El only nods stiffly. The girl was standing in place. She seemed scared from all the yelling back-and-forth.

Bea turns back at the boys when she hears Lucas' accusations about Eleven. "If she can slam doors with her mind, she can definitely screw up a compass."

Mike looked bewildered. "Why would she do that?"

"Because she's trying to sabotage our mission." Lucas says, not even glancing at Mike. "Because she's a traitor!" He spits at the girl before taking slow steps towards her.

"Okay, slow down there buckaroo." Bea tries to calm his clearly agitated state. Why is he accusing Eleven?

"Lucas, what are you doing?" Mike asks, walking up to them. He was protective of the girl. He didn't know why, but he felt the need to make sure his friend wouldn't scare her.

"You did it, didn't you? You don't want us to reach the gate. You don't want us to find Will." He interrogates.

Mike shook his head at the accusation. It obviously isn't true! "Lucas, come on, seriously. Just leave her alone!"

"Admit it. Admit it!" He grabs her arm showing blood on the blue jacket she's wearing. "Fresh blood. I knew it." He pushed her arm away.

"Lucas, come on!" Mike practically begs.

The boy spins to his best friend. "I saw her wiping her nose on the train tracks! She was using her powers!"

"Bull! That's old blood. Right, El?" Mike asks, trying to prove her innocence. No reply. "Right, El?"

"It's... not..." El chokes on her sobs, "it's not safe." She begins to cry.

"Hey, hey, hey." Bea cooes as she places her hand on El's arm, trying to calm the girls sobbing, while Dustin tries to calm down the boys. Lucas and Mike are fighting about Eleven, arguing whether she's actually trying to help or not.

"—but did you ever stop to think, that maybe she's the monster?" Bea listens to the end of Lucas' rant. The boys turn to them.

"Okay, that's too far." Bea says when Mike shouts, "I said shut up!" He grabs Lucas and tackles him to the ground, wrestling.

"Stop!"

"Knock it off, you idiots." As caring as ever Dustin.

"Stop!" Beatrice shouts from beside El.

"Stop it! Stop it!"

Eleven makes an ear piercing scream which results in the kids to cover their ears and for Lucas to get thrown off of Mike into some plywood. As the kids go to check on Lucas, El stays back. They were trying to wake him up and check for injuries. Mike yells at Eleven, which only makes matters worse.

"Mike, stop it! Stop yelling at her!" Bea shouted as her and Dustin continue to slap their friend into consciousness.

He stands up to look taller than his friend. "I want to know why she would do that!"

"Maybe she thought she was protecting you!" She stands tall, too. He is not intimidating to her at all.

"By knocking out Lucas?" Mike yelled.

"Obviously she didn't mean for him to be knocked out!"

The pair sees that Dustin was able to wake their friend up. "Lucas, are you okay?" They fall to their knees to check on him.

"Lucas, how many fingers?" Dustin questions, holding up three fingers on his left hand. "Lucas, how many fingers am I holding up?"

Mike goes to check his head for any bumps. "Get off of me!" Lucas shouts, slapping his friends hands away from him.

They all stand up quickly as Lucas walks away. Practically sprinting away from the people he called his best friends. Mike jumps to reach him, but was pulled back.

"Let him go." Dustin says.

Beatrice furrows her eyebrows at their surroundings. "Where's El?" "Where's Eleven?" Mike and Bea question at the same time.

The three kids then start to shout for the missing girl, wondering where she could've gone off to.

•••••

(🕰) T TIME!

i like to think i'm funny 🤭

fun fact: i am.

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