All she’d done since she’d come back from the shower was just sit in SILENCE. It hadn’t been pleasant, for one, passing through the gateway to that… place. But seeing that thing there too? That MONSTER? Knowing that it had taken Jonathan’s brother and Barb… They needed to figure out how to find them, save them, but right now she wasn’t sure how. Still in a state of shock from being stuck in there herself, and now all she could think about was Will and Barb, how LONG they’d been lost there… How, if it hadn’t been for her, if she’d just left Steve’s with Barb, then maybe, Barb wouldn’t have gone missing.

“ Steve… ” She stopped him, before he could say anymore because, well… She didn’t want to hear him put himself down even more than he already was by saying he didn’t deserve her. In truth, Nancy really liked him, and had no idea why he was interested in her.

She wouldn’t have said that she was unpopular — she had friends, though her best friend was Barb, and neither of them exactly lived up to the standards of Steve Harrington and his friends. Not in her eyes anyway. Maybe it was stupid to think about it all like that, but, she was a teenage girl in high school, after all, and that’s how it worked sometimes. That was her world right now.

                    “You just BEGIN to talk. If there’s something that                      bothers you specifically, we can start there. Or                      anywhere. NOTHING will leave this room, Nancy.”