╭ ╮
━━━━  " 📂 "

𝙏 𝙃 𝙀  𝘾 𝙃 𝘼 𝙄 𝙉

╰ ╯

JOSIE WAS WOKEN UP BY A BUZZING IN HER EAR. She hummed back a groan as she sat up, heel of her palm pushing into the mattress as she fussed under the pillow to turn off the alarm. Dragging back the hunk of plastic, green digital letters blinked back the time.

Five in the morning, nothing but four hours since she had gone to sleep. She figured she could sleep on the bus anyway, which is where she was planning on going with the overly-large bag she had stuffed full of her prized possessions and clothes the night before. As much as she could take, and as soon as she left she knew her dad would pack up the rest. He had told her not to come back after all.

Josie could only hope Joyce would welcome her back, would accept her apologies and allow her to try and help find her brother. She had been an awful sister, an awful daughter, an awful person, and she wouldn't blame them if she ended up back with Cynthia and Lonnie anyway. But she could only hope that her plan worked, and quietly she climbed out of bed, changing out of her bed and pulling on the jeans and sweater that took up too much space in her bag.

Everything else was left in neat piles, ready to be placed haphazardly in boxes (most likely by Cynthia; her dad was too much of a drunk sleaze to do anything nice) and slowly, she unlocked her door, and went through the kitchen in a blind darkness, using her purposely free hand to find her way along the walls.

Getting to the living room, she flicked the light on with her thumb, a little more urgency in her movements as she dumped both the drawstring canvas bag and the backpack of necessities for the bus journey there on the sofa, dropping to the floor to unlace the sneakers she had left there the night before, half pulling on her jacket as she did so.

Bare footsteps on the kitchen tiles made her freeze, her stomach dropping as she came to stand, reaching for her bags in case of a need for a hasty escape. One of her laces were still undone, but she knew she could make it to the end of the road without having to worry about tripping. If it was Lonnie, he was probably too hungover to run, the pile of cans by the kitchen sink was enough to tell her that. And, well, if it was Cynthia, Josie supposed she had a head start and she would only have to pray that she couldn't wake up her dad.

Her movements were stilted as she heard the running water in the sink, the muffling as it began hitting the bottom of a glass. The knob was twisted off and the water stopped, and Josie thought she had almost gotten away with it as she heard the steps going the other way. But then they stopped, and turned around, and she used the moment to haul the backpack over her shoulders and the singular strap attached to the other over her chest.

Cynthia appeared around the corner, eyes wide and a butter knife gripped tight in her spare hands. She was wearing sweatpants and an old t-shirts of her dad's, that had transferred from him to Jonathan, back to him and now his girlfriend, the old stain of when Jonathan dropped half his bowl of spaghetti and meatballs down it still there. She didn't say anything when she saw Josie, just stared between her, the muddy sneakers on her feet and the two bags strapped to her back.

"I don't think a butter knife is really the best choice of weapon," Josie murmured her comment, probably aware that it wasn't the right time to make it. "The water would've been better... the shock factor."

"I know." Cynthia held her chin high. "You're going back to Hawkins?" She asked.

"Yes. My brother is missing and Lonnie is an ass." Josie looked similarly confident as she spoke, gaze not wavering.

Cynthia didn't say anything, not even to defend her boyfriend from his daughter's harshness. Perhaps she thought it was true, but even so, that would never be voiced. Instead, she lowered the butter knife. "Okay." The woman nodded. "Get there safely." She added, almost as an afterthought. "I'll lock the door behind you."

Josie nodded, albeit cautiously, because her eyes stayed on her even as her hand reached for the lock, sliding the chain away and turning the door knob. "Thanks, Cynthia." She said, sending an actual smile her way before slipping out of the door, and closing it gently behind her.

It was still dark outside, the streetlamps casting shades of amber over her as she paused to do up her other shoelace before turning her back on the house she had stayed in for a year and began the unfamiliar journey to the bus station. She hadn't needed to go there too many times during her time there, but she had managed to find an old guidebook that one of her old friends had given her as some sort of joke before she left that would lead her to where she already vaguely knew where to go.

Her bus - which was really a bus to Fort Wayne with a stop at Hawkin's bus station - was to set off at a quarter to seven, the earliest one she believed herself able to get to on time considering the early hour. Any earlier and she most likely would have missed it - not that she would be unable to get on another, just that she preferred at least a little planning to her life rather than just wishing for the best, particularly for these sorts of things.

She purchased her ticket from a sleepy-looking man behind a counter, who tipped his cap at her with a smile and said something about not being able to get his bacon and blueberry pancakes for another two hours because the diner he usually went was so understaffed. Josie just smiled and nodded and stepped away to wait on the bench outside, observing the city life unable to do much else because she was too paranoid that Cynthia was going to tell Lonnie anyway - Josie just couldn't tell - and every car that drove past made her heart thump in terror during the early morning mist.

The sun was just beginning to rise, breaking through the damp fog that lay low over the city. Street lamps were still her primary source of light, although the world was becoming brighter by the moment, and just as the worry that had plagued her since the night before was settling for another gut-wrenching half hour of waiting, she watched as the Greyhound bus, in it's red, white and reverent American blue glory, chuntered up to it's stop, slowly backing into place.

Josie stood up from her bench, as did a small number of others who had been awaiting the same early bus to transport them. None were remotely close to her own age, all dressed in business suits and crisp skirts and blouses and looking far more prepared for their day of work ahead than she was for running away. Some ignored her as she joined the queue to board, others eyed her warily, as they could think of no good reason for a teenage girl, half awake and hoisting a particularly large bag over he shoulder, to be travelling that early.

She ignored them, climbing up onto the bus and showing the driver her ticket, turning towards the back of the bus where she settled on the stretch of itchy seats, bags sandwiched in the small corner between the window and the seats in front of her, legs kicked up onto the seat (which she knew to be bad etiquette really, but she wasn't in the particular mood to care), and Walkman in her lap. Bowie.

Jonathan would be proud.

✧

The bus chuntured into the small station within the confines of Hawkins around two hours after they set off. By 8:45 the town had already settled into its usual day-to day quietness; school had started forty-five minutes previous, work was about to start and many already in offices, which left the most minute hum of foot traffic from the stores in the centre of town and a number of moms and their youngest bobbing about on their morning walk.

It was a sight that Josie had not missed, the reminder of a complete lack of anything exciting in Hawkins happening. Until now, at least, she supposed, because Will had gone missing and that was why she was back there, trying not to think about the fact she had to see the mom and twin brother she had abandoned, or the fact that she was only seeing them because something that awful had happened.

There was indecision in her movements as the bus continued on, rumbled away to its next stop in the next town over because it it's very best, Hawkins was a pit stop off the highway and certainly not a final destination for most travellers.

She didn't move, as though her feet were stuck to the slabs of concretes that made up Hawkins only bus-stop, her eyes flickering about the sights; the beige store fronts, the brick of the older buildings, the trees planted as a special project by Larry Kline because he'd promised to draw more appeal to their little corner of Indiana; as though she had never seen them before.

The lone traveller, with a duffel bag hanging from her back almost as big as she was, took a final look towards the old grocery store a couple blocks down the road from her and turned, resolutely, in the opposite direction.

Marching to the beat of some song by The Clash that Jonathan had introduced her to years ago, Josie Byers lugged her bag around behind her and it swung painfully from her right shoulder as she approached the police station, noticing a familiar truck outside before pushing the swing doors open and stepping within.

Her headphones hung around her neck, the wire connected to a lump of black plastic in the back pocket of her jeans and she approached the stained oak desk, dumping the duffle against it and leant on the counter top, between the tiny little knick-knacks that Flo decorated her small area with, and waited.

With a kid missing, she didn't expect for there to be many people waiting around the police station for answers, and resigned to counting the number of miniature china cats, having reached twenty-seven before her attention slid away to the noticeboard to her left.

Her nose scrunched as she tore away one of the posters.

"You know the printer's broken, we don't have many more copies of those we can put up, and I'm not going down to the Xerox place." The weary voice of the elderly secretary snuck up on her as another door closed.

"Figures." Josie murmured without looking up, because she didn't want to tear her eyes away from the smiling face of her brother that stared back at her. "Mrs Larkin, I'd like to speak to Hopper."

"Young lady, as I'm sure you're aware, Chief Hopper is extraordinarily busy at the moments If you would like to tell me what you are wishing to speak about, I'm sure I can redirect you to one of our other-"

"What, is he doing paperwork?" Josie scoffed. "C'mon, everyone knows he hates paperwork."

And leaving her bag exactly where she had dumped it because she was certainly not lugging it around a police station, Josie pushed away from the desk and made her way through the swinging doors, the poor secretary tottering after her as she crushed blue carpet beneath her feet.

"Young lady, Chief Hopper is a busy man-"

"I know. Just looking for a little chat but hey, thanks for showing me the way." And without waiting, or knocking even though she knew her dad would have her for her manners but Christ, a lot of love had been lost since leaving Hawkins a year before, Josie pushed open the door to Chief Hopper's office and entered, leaving Florence to barely keep up with her and stop halfway down the hallway, defeated.

Jim Hopper, the big city cop who she had met for the first time when he had busted the second party she ever went to, looked up from his desk as though he hadn't heard nothing of the commotion outside. He knew her, much less than he knew her mother and unfortunately, her father but knew her all the same, because Josie Byers had made a pretty big name for herself after the first time he had caught her and her new boyfriend sitting on the front steps of the town hall at three in the morning smoking something other than a cigarette.

"Flo's quite a nice woman, I don't think she deserves to be chasing some teenager down a hallway." He said, indifferent.

"Yeah, well, apparently you were only doing paperwork and I wasn't going to let that stop me." Josie replied suddenly all bite and no bark and nothing was going to slow her down. "I come all the way back and you're doing paperwork?"

"Josie-"

"No.. no." She shook her head, wafting the black and white poster as if he had never seen it before. "No. My brother is missing, Chief, and you're sitting here doing paperwork?"

"Josie-"

"And you didn't think to call Lonnie? Or have one of your officers drive up to check it out because hell, I got here from Indiana and Will is easily smart enough to figure out if he could get up there if he wanted to." Josie shook her head, and all the upset that has built up inside of her since the night before was spilling out in uncontrollable, drowning measures. "But after everything with my mom and dad you let my mom make the call to see if he's there? We didn't know. He's been missing for two days, two full days and nobody thought to let us know?"

"Josie - Listen, kid." Hopper repeated her name firmly, and it stopped her in her tracks. "Sit down."

She didn't say anything for a moment, before sitting down in one of the offered chairs and crossing her arms over her chest, tight. The poster clutched in her fist crumpled unceremoniously beneath her.

"I know that hearing about Will going missing will upset you, and hearing about it several days after the fact isn't going to help." Hopper began.

"No shit." She sniped.

"Alright, alright," The Chief waved his hand about. "Josie, I know you're upset and it's an... an uncertain time for you and your family. But I can assure you that we are doing our very best to find Will. Search parties, we looked all night... investigations... everything we can to find him."

Silence hung between them for a moment, the misdirected anger that had boiled over in the girl stilled. Josie stared at her feet. Hopper watched her carefully.

"The earliest bus rolls in at what, quarter to nine?" Hopper asked. She nodded. "It's ten past now. I'm guessing you haven't gone home." She shook her head. "C'mon, kid, I'll drive you."

✧

When Hopper pulled up that gravelled track half a mile off of Cornwallis, a half mile and a gravel track Josie had walked in all sorts of weather just to reach her old boyfriend's house, Josie realised that absolutely nothing had changed.

Nothing.

Nothing in the year that she had been gone had changed.

Anything.

She had expected a coat of paint or something. Her mom had always said she wanted to repaint the house because it was the same colours as when she and Lonnie bought it and the chips and the cracks were even worse now. The chairs were still on the porch, the washing line hung from a pole in the ground and the nearest tree.

The shed had police tape that was once perhaps strapped over the door, but now dangled haphazardly down one side, ripped away. But nothing had changed.

Her mom's car was parked adjacent to the track, on the overgrown lawn that was still recovering from the heat of the summer, even in the beginning of November. The police chief stopped his car beside her's, muttering something about it being the second time he had driven out there that morning.

Somehow, in the midst of her upset and decision to leave Indianpolis behind, Josie had not exactly come across the the fact that her return to Hawkins would inevitably mean awkward reunions. Her mother, Jonathan, Will, when they found him, Steve eventually; he did live there after all, and her friends. Joyce, though, was perhaps the biggest obstacle of all.

And though there was a swell in her heart that came from the reunion, it was paired with the impenetrable sense of impending doom. She followed behind Hopper, slow in pace as she attempted to delay it all, think of something to say - what kind of apology would be somehow enough to make up for the previous year.

Her mind came up blank; nothing would ever be enough, not really; her heartbeat thudded merrily away as if trying to lead her to an early grave and it truly seemed like her fate as Hopper knocked.

The door was open in seconds.

"What? What is it, Hop - did you find something about the phone call already?" Joyce sounded as though she had been crying, and Josie gripped her duffle bag even tighter, knuckles turning white. "It's not... it's not even been an hour - have you... is there news?"

"Joyce... Joyce." Hopper replied, firmly. "It's not about Will."

"No? Then what is it? Why are you here?" She pushed. "Hopper, you have to tell me."

"Did you call Lonnie last night?" He asked. The woman nodded. "Thought so. I brought back your kid after she hurled abuse at me for five minutes straight as soon as I got to the station this morning."

"What?" Joyce frowned, and all of a sudden there was pale face peering over Hopper's shoulder, gaunt and worried and entirely confused. "Josie?"

Josie didn't say anything. She couldn't, not really, any form of greeting she had stuck in her throat. She couldn't smile, nor pass any other expression than the utmost sullenness like a disgraced child, eyes flitting down the ground to avoid whatever expression on her mom's face.

And then she was being hugged, tighter than she had been in a long time and all at once everything rushed over her and her duffle bag was discarded somewhere on the porch as, at long last, she was home.

Her eyes squeezed closed, relishing in that familiar smell of something like coffee and hot cocoa and cigarettes, and the memories of that awful night the day before her dad packed everything up in boxes and left. A hand squeezed her shoulder and she looked up, seeing Hopper passing on his way back to his car.

"I'm so sorry, Mom." She breathed out, as the truck door slammed shut and the engine started. "I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have gone with Dad, I shouldn't have said... I was so mean."

"No, no. You were just confused." Joyce's hand clasped the back of her head, fingers stroking through her hair.

"I shouldn't have left, I don't know why I did." Her words felt sticky as she spoke, her throat thick. "I'm so sorry I left."

"No, you don't have to be." Joyce smoothed over her hair. "You don't have to be sorry about anything, okay, sweetie? You're here now, so all of that... that whole crappy situation didn't happen at all."

"But it did and I left and now... now Will?" She shook her head, pulling away. "I'm so sorry, Mom."

"I know, I know." Joyce's hand fell to rest on her shoulder. "None of that matters right now. Nothing that has happened is your fault." And as if it was all truly nothing, she reached for the duffle and went to lift it. "God, Josie, what did you put in this? Bricks?"

She smiled and sniffed back the lump on her throat. "Everything but the kitchen sink?" She offered, and reached for the other end of the strap.