𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐞

october 2015 — hawkins, indiana

The house on Maple Street still remembered.

It remembered little things. Like the way the front screen door didn’t close all the way unless someone lifted it an inch first, and the way the hallway light flickered when someone flipped the switch too quickly, like it needed a second to decide if it wanted to work. It remembered bigger things, too. The kind no one could point to, not exactly. The kind that lived in the walls and settled into the carpet padding and waited behind closed doors.

Natalia Wheeler stepped carefully anyway, like she didn’t want to wake it.

She wore socks that didn’t match, one pale blue, one white, because she’d grabbed the first two from her overnight bag without thinking. Her jeans were a little too long and bunched at the ankles. Her hair, brown with the faintest wave of curls in the strands, fell forward when she looked down, hiding her face the way she liked it hidden.

Upstairs, the house creaked softly as it cooled. The radiator clicked once, then went quiet. Somewhere in the living room, her grandmother’s television murmured low, not quite loud enough to make out words, but enough to fill the space. Enough to feel like someone was there even when they weren’t.

Natalia stood at the top of the basement stairs with her hand on the knob.

The knob was cold.

She paused with her fingers curled around it, listening. She could hear her grandma moving around, slow, familiar footsteps. A drawer opening. Then closing. The sink running for a second. Normal sounds. Safe sounds.

She swallowed.

She wasn’t scared of the dark. Not really. She told herself that all the time, and mostly it was true. But there was something about basements, about the way they swallowed sound and kept secrets and made the air feel older than the rest of the house.

Still.

She turned the knob and opened the door.

The basement smell came first, warm and stale all at once, cardboard and old laundry detergent, dust, and something faintly metallic. The staircase descended into dimness. A single bulb hung from a cord, its glass cloudy with age, throwing a weak yellow circle onto the concrete floor at the bottom.

Natalia stepped down one stair at a time.

Wood groaned under her weight. The railing was rough where paint had chipped away, and she dragged her fingers along it anyway, liking the texture, liking the proof that this was real wood in a real house and not something slick and new like in Boston.

Boston was noise. Constant noise. Cars and sirens and people who didn’t look at you and didn’t want you looking at them.

Hawkins was quieter. Even the quiet sounded different here, like it had more room to stretch out.

She reached the bottom.

The basement opened into a low-ceilinged space crowded with the past. Boxes now stacked in uneven towers. A folded card table leaning against the wall. A shelf lined with jars that once held nails and screws but now held nothing at all, just dust and the ghosts of metal.

And in the far corner, half-hidden behind an old couch with a floral pattern, was a long plastic storage bin with a lid that didn’t quite fit.

Natalia’s heart did something small and tight.

She hadn’t come down here for anything important. Not at first. She’d come down because the house felt too big without her moms in it.

Nancy and Robin had left twenty minutes ago, maybe thirty now. Natalia had watched from the front window as they climbed into the car under the streetlight, their figures briefly overlapping in the glow. Robin had leaned across the seat to say something that made Nancy smile, the kind of smile that wasn’t for strangers.

Then Nancy had reached over and tucked a strand of Robin’s hair behind her ear like it was the easiest thing in the world.

Natalia had pretended not to see it.

Not because it embarrassed her. It didn’t. Not anymore. It just felt… private, like walking in on a moment that belonged only to them.

They were happy.

That was the strangest part, maybe. Not that they loved each other, Natalia had never questioned that. It was in the way Robin’s hand always found Nancy’s back in crowded places, guiding her gently through. It was in the way Nancy checked locks twice before bed, then checked again anyway, and Robin teased her but still checked with her. It was in the way they both, both of them, paused to kiss Natalia’s forehead before they left, like it was a ritual that mattered.

“You’ll be okay here?” Nancy had asked, her voice soft, careful.

Natalia had nodded because nodding was easier than speaking.

Robin had crouched to Natalia’s height and grinned like she was trying to make the world lighter with her face alone. Ruffling her hair in that playful manner she always had with her. It made Natalia smile.

Then the door had closed behind them, and the house had felt too quiet.

So she’d wandered.

And wandering had brought her here.

The plastic bin waited like it knew her.

Natalia walked to it slowly, stepping around a pile of rolled-up rugs. Dust motes drifted in the light. The air felt thicker near the corner, like it didn’t get moved around as much.

She crouched and slid the lid aside.

Inside were binders.

Not school binders. Not the kind kids used for homework. These were older, thicker, worn at the corners, their plastic covers scratched cloudy. Each one had a strip of tape along the spine with a name written in block letters.

The letters looked like someone had pressed down hard when they wrote them, like they needed the ink to last.

Natalia leaned closer.

MAX

LUCAS

DUSTIN

WILL

MIKE

Five.

She stared at the names until they stopped looking like names and started looking like something else, like labels on evidence.

She knew those names.

Not all the people, not really, not the way her moms did. But she knew the names like you knew characters from a story you’d heard so many times you could recite the lines without thinking.

Uncle Mike.

Will Byers, she already knew him as the boy that had disappeared and come back to life in 1983.

Dustin Henderson, who apparently talked a lot and never stopped.

Lucas Sinclair, who her moms said “had more sense then all of them combined”, though Robin always rolled her eyes at that like it was some inside joke.

And Max Mayfield. The name that made Nancy quiet for a moment, every time.

Natalia didn’t ask about Max. She’d learned early which questions ended conversations.

Her fingers hovered over the binders.

The basement felt very still.

Natalia lifted the one labeled MIKE.

It was heavier than she expected.

She held it in both hands and shifted back onto the old couch, which sighed under her weight like it had been waiting for someone to sit there again. The fabric smelled like old perfume and time.

She opened the binder.

The first page was graph paper, now yellowed slightly, the edges curled. Neat handwriting filled it, tight and precise. There were lines drawn in darker ink, boxes and symbols. A map. Notes in the margins.

It didn’t look like something a kid would make.

It looked like something a kid would make if the kid thought it mattered.

Natalia flipped carefully.

There were drawings, little stick-figure heroes, monsters with too many teeth. Lists of items. Spells. Something called hit points. Something called armor class.

Natalia’s eyes scanned faster as her curiosity sharpened into something more focused. She’d seen some of this before. She’d sat at the kitchen table in Boston with Uncle Mike’s books spread out, listening to him explain, while he was visiting, why a paladin couldn’t just do whatever they wanted, actually, because oaths mattered.

Natalia liked his books. She liked how they were adventure and rules at the same time, like the world could be dangerous but still follow a pattern one could understand if they paid attention.

She turned a page and found a section divider.

On the tab, in the same pressed-down block letters, was one word.

CAMPAIGN (‘89)

Natalia’s breath caught.

This was it. The thing her mom had once called their game, like it was a memory that could be held in a palm.

Natalia read.

At first it was confusing, like stepping into the middle of a story where everyone already knew the characters. But the binder was organized, Mike had made sure of that, and the further she went, the more it became clear.

There was a party.

A paladin.

A cleric.

A bard.

A ranger.

And a… zoomer.

Natalia paused at that word, her eyebrows pulling together.

Zoomer?

She flipped back and found a note in the margins, half amused, half annoyed.

Max insists it’s a real class. It’s not. But she’s threatening to quit, so…

Natalia stared at that for a second, and this time she did smile. Just a little.

Then she kept reading.

Hours didn’t pass. Minutes didn’t. Time did something weird in the basement. It folded in on itself. Natalia sat with her legs tucked under her, the binder on her lap, and the rest of the world narrowed down to paper and ink.

The campaign was different from Uncle Mike’s books.

Similar bones. Different skin.

In the books, the Mage was more like a legend. A bright, impossible figure who made Natalia feel… something she didn’t know how to name. Like hope, maybe. Or like grief. Maybe both at once.

In the binder, the Mage was part of the party. Real. Present. Loved.

Natalia flipped to the last section without meaning to, drawn forward by the weight of it. She found the endings.

The final pages were written more carefully than the rest, as if Uncle Mike had slowed down on purpose.

Natalia read the first ending. Then the second. Then the third.

Her throat felt tight by the time she reached the last.

The Mage.

Natalia’s eyes moved over the words, and her skin prickled.

“When she casts Sunbeam, she expended the last of her energy and she vanished. But has anyone ever asked themselves how she cast that spell? The Suppression Stone… she couldn’t have used her magic. In the excitement no one even noticed. But you see, the mage’s very clever, a cleverness only matched by her sister, who upon hearing the pleads of the Paladin had a change of heart. Together the sisters devised a plan, a plan to protect the mage from the Order of the Black Hand, who remained hellbent on stealing her powers. So, in order to trick them, she had to make everyone, including her friends, believe that she was dead. And so, the sister casts a spell from far away, safe from the power of the Suppression Stone. The spell of invisibility. Once the mage escaped, the sister cast one final spell. The mage you saw die was not real. She was an illusion… No one knows where she went. No one will ever know. But I’d like to imagine she’s in a beautiful land somewhere far away. She finds a small town to call home. Safe from the danger of the Black Hand. And it is here, at last, that she finds peace. That she finally finds happiness…. We don’t know if it’s true… not for sure. But I chose to believe that it is. I BELIEVE.”

Natalia’s lips parted.

The last two words, I BELIEVE, were underlined so many times the paper was indented, the pen marks bruising the page.

Natalia stared at it until the letters blurred.

It sounded familiar.

Not because she’d read this before. She hadn’t. She would remember.

It was familiar because she’d heard it in another form.

Natalia blinked hard and reached for the book she’d carried downstairs without thinking, her favorite, the one Uncle Mike had given her on her tenth birthday, last year, and then pretended not to care when she read it three times in a row.

The Mage and the Three Waterfalls.

The cover was now worn soft at the edges. The spine had a crease from where Natalia cracked it open too wide. She held it like it was something important, like it was a key.

She opened it.

Her fingers flipped to the dog-eared page near the end, the one she always came back to because the words felt like a secret meant for her.

She read silently at first, then, without deciding to, she whispered it out loud.

Her voice sounded too small in the basement.

“It’s… the same,” she murmured.

Not exactly the same.

In the binder, the Mage vanished into a beautiful land somewhere far away.

In the book, Uncle Mike had made it… specific.

In the book, the Paladin told the Mage about a place.

A place with three waterfalls.

Natalia’s eyes tracked over the paragraph. She read it again. And again.

The basement air seemed to sharpen around her, cold threading through the warmth of the stale dust.

She let the passage sit in the silence.

And then her brain did what it always did when something didn’t line up.

It pulled at the thread.

Natalia looked back down at the binder.

Paladin.

Cleric.

Bard.

Ranger.

Zoomer.

Those were the five binders in the bin.

Natalia turned her head slowly and stared at the other spines like they might rearrange themselves if she looked hard enough.

MAX. LUCAS. DUSTIN. WILL. MIKE.

Five.

But there were six characters in the party.

Natalia’s pulse ticked up.

Her fingers tightened on the binder rings.

Someone had to be the Mage.

Someone had to have been the Mage.

But there wasn’t a binder.

There was only the story about the Mage disappearing.

About everyone believing she was dead.

About a trick. A plan.

Natalia’s throat went dry.

She thought of the way her mom, Nancy, sometimes went quiet when she saw something on the news about missing kids, even if the story had nothing to do with them. She thought of the way Robin always reached for Nancy’s hand in those moments, steadying her without making it obvious.

She thought of the way certain names didn’t get said.

Natalia swallowed.

Her eyes flicked over the pages again, searching for a name, for a clue, for anything that would make the missing space feel less like a hole.

And that’s when she noticed the radio.

It sat on a shelf near the back wall, an old portable thing with a cracked plastic handle and a dial that looked like it had been turned a thousand times. The kind of radio that belonged in a garage, not a basement like this.

Natalia didn’t remember seeing it earlier.

Maybe she just hadn’t looked.

She stared at it.

The basement was quiet enough that she could hear the faint hum of the bulb overhead.

Natalia’s fingers went numb.

Then…

The radio spurted to life.

Not a gradual crackle. Not someone turning the knob upstairs. It was sudden, violent, like the sound had been shoved into the room.

Music exploded out of the speaker, tinny and loud.

Jim Croce.

“You Don’t Mess Around with Jim.”

It hit right in the middle of the chorus, the beat bouncing off the concrete walls like the basement had turned into a tiny, trapped dance floor.

Natalia jerked so hard she nearly dropped the binder. Her foot slid off the edge of the couch cushion. Her balance tipped.

She fell.

The impact wasn’t huge, just a thump and a scrape as her elbow hit the concrete, but it felt enormous in the sudden loudness.

Natalia’s breath came out sharp.

The song kept playing.

You don’t tug on Superman’s cape…

You don’t spit into the wind…

The radio was old, wood-paneled, the kind that belonged in a different decade. Grandma said it hadn’t worked in years. Grandma said it was just decoration now, something Jim, Grandpa Jim, the one Natalia had never met, but knew he wasn’t actually blood-related, had loved too much to throw away, so he gave it to her Grandma.

But it was working.

And it was loud.

You don’t pull the mask off that old Lone Ranger…

Natalia scrambled upright, heart hammering so hard it made her ears ring. The binder lay open on the couch, the underlined I BELIEVE glaring up at her like it had teeth.

And you don’t mess around with Jim…

The music kept playing.

The bulb above her flickered once.

Natalia snatched her book from the table by instinct, except it wasn’t there. Her hand hit paper and plastic and the MIKE binder shifted under her palm. For one dizzy second she thought she’d imagined bringing her book downstairs, thought the campaign notes were the book, thought she’d crossed a line without noticing.

Then her eyes found the real thing, The Mage and the Three Waterfalls, lying on the floor where she must’ve dropped it when she fell without thinking.

Natalia grabbed it, clutching it tight to her chest like it could shield her.

The song blared.

Natalia didn’t look back at the binder.

She didn’t look back at the tub.

She didn’t look at the radio again, because something in her knew that if she did, she’d see something she couldn’t unsee.

Her feet hit the stairs. She took them two at a time, silent except for the soft slap of socks on wood.

Halfway up she risked a glance over her shoulder and found the basement was still empty.

Just shadows and light and the radio singing like it had always been alive.

Natalia reached the top and shoved the door closed.

The latch clicked.

And the music stopped.

Not faded.

Not softened.

Stopped like someone had cut the sound out of the world with scissors.

Natalia stood with her back against the basement door, book crushed to her chest, breathing fast through her nose because breathing through her mouth felt too loud.

She didn’t call for Grandma.

She didn’t call for anyone.

When she got spooked, she kept to herself.

The hallway was dim, lit only by the small lamp in the living room. The crocheted blanket on the couch looked like a hunched figure in the low light. The house held its breath around her, listening.

Natalia stared at the closed basement door.

Her fingers slowly loosened on the book cover, then tightened again.

Somewhere deep inside the house, the clock kept ticking.

And in Natalia’s mind, like a page she couldn’t stop rereading, the underlined words burned bright and stubborn.

november 6, 1987 — hawkins, indiana

The last thing Robin remembered clearly was the taste of dirt.

Not the metaphorical kind. The actual grit that got between her teeth when the wind picked up and the street turned into a sandblaster, when the world on the right side of the gate looked like a dying photograph, washed in orange and smoke, while the world on the wrong side of it screamed in colors that didn’t even really exist.

They had all stood there, in a loose, stunned semicircle, with their shoulders hunched and their eyes raw, watching the place where Eleven had been.

Watching where she wasn’t anymore.

The soldiers hadn’t said “thank you.” They hadn’t said “we’re sorry.” They hadn’t even said her name.

They had said “Step forward. Hands where we can see them”. And then, like it was the most natural thing in the world to treat a group of kids and their exhausted, bleeding adults like fugitives, “against the truck”.

Robin’s cheek had pressed to cold metal. She could still feel the ridge of a bolt under her skin like a bruise forming in advance. Someone behind her, Steve, she thought, because Steve always made noise when he was trying not to, had hissed out a breath and then gone quiet when a rifle barrel shifted.

Her wrists had been yanked behind her and cuffed so tight her fingers tingled. The zip-tie plastic bite of it had felt weirdly similar to the vines from the Upside Down, except these didn’t move or hunt. They just hurt in a clean, efficient way.

And while all this happened, Vickie had just stood there.

She wasn’t shoved. She wasn’t cuffed. She wasn’t even touched.

She just stood there, a few feet away, arms crossed over her jacket, weight on one hip like she was stuck in line at the DMV and someone in front of her was asking too many questions.

Robin had tried to meet her eyes, because that’s what she did when she needed an anchor. When she needed to know there was at least one normal human being in the universe who could look at her and see her, not a rumor, not a hazard, not a “security concern” as the military would say.

But Vickie’s expression hadn’t changed. If anything, she’d looked annoyed. Like Robin was the one dragging things out.

Now, hours later, after the questioning, after Dr. Kay’s clipped voice and the fluorescent buzz and the way the air in military buildings always tasted faintly of bleach and stale coffee, Robin still couldn’t get that picture out of her head. Everyone else lined up like suspects, and then Vickie, just standing off to the side like she’d been issued a visitor’s pass.

They later released them in chunks.

First the kids, then the adults, then the stragglers they “needed to clarify a few points with.” Hopper had been one of those. Joyce too, because Joyce couldn’t answer a question without her hands shaking, and that made women like Dr. Kay think she was hiding something when really she was just Joyce. Who’d just lost a daughter.

Robin hadn’t been released until later, until the soldier escorting her seemed bored enough to forget she was supposed to be a threat.

Outside, the air was cold in that Indiana way that didn’t feel like winter yet but promised it. The sky looked scrubbed raw. The parking lot lights made everything too bright and too flat, turning their faces into masks.

Nancy stood near the curb with dried blood at her hairline and a smear on her cheek she hadn’t noticed. Her jaw was set in that way it got when she was holding herself together by force. She looked like she hadn’t blinked in hours, but she still held Holly close to her.

Steve was there too, one arm now in a sling that was improvised from someone’s torn shirt, his hair flattened in odd places where he’d leaned against walls and trucks and whatever else the night had shoved him into. He tried to make a joke, something about government hospitality, but it came out thin, like a radio signal in bad weather.

Jonathan’s hand hovered at Steve’s elbow, protective without being obvious. He had that thousand-yard stare Robin had seen on soldiers in movies, except Jonathan was just Jonathan. A skinny photographer kid from Hawkins with nicotine-stained fingers and a face that seemed older every year. He kept glancing up, like he expected the sky to split open again.

Mike, Dustin, and Lucas clustered close, their shoulders knocking. Will stood half a step behind them, quiet in the way he got when he was listening to something nobody else could hear. Max still sat in her wheelchair, stubborn as ever, her eyes red-rimmed from tears she’d been silently crying since what happened to Eleven. Erica was talking too loudly about how they should sue, because Erica didn’t know what else to do with grief besides turn it into ammunition.

Mr. Clarke looked like he’d aged ten years in one night. Murray’s mouth was set in a hard line, his eyes darting like he was already building theories, already rehearsing the next fight. And Robin, Robin felt like she was a hollowed-out bell, any sound hit her and just rang.

They dispersed under orders.

Not spoken orders, not exactly. It was more like the invisible pressure that came from being watched, from knowing there were men in uniforms who could decide your entire life was classified.

Dr. Kay had given them a speech. Something about “ongoing investigation” and “national security.” Something about “not discussing the events of the past forty-eight hours.” She hadn’t said anything about Eleven, who died to close the gate. She hadn’t said anything about the fact that if they hadn’t been there, her men would’ve been meat.

Then she nodded once, the soldiers had stepped back, and it was over.

“Go home. Pretend this never happened.”

Vickie’s car was parked at the edge of the lot, an older sedan that smelled like peppermint gum and old French fries. She had offered the ride like it was obvious. Like Robin should be grateful. Like it wasn’t weird as hell that Robin had been cuffed and dragged and Vickie hadn’t.

Robin slid into the passenger seat and immediately regretted having bones. Her entire body hurt in that deep, shivery way that came after adrenaline stopped doing its job. The seatbelt cut across bruises she hadn’t earned in any fair fight.

Vickie got in, shut the door, and turned the key. The engine rattled to life. The heater blew air that smelled slightly like dust.

For a while, neither of them spoke.

Robin stared out the window as the military facility fell away behind them, swallowed by darkness and the flat line of trees. Hawkins at night looked like Hawkins always looked, quiet streets, familiar houses, porch lights glowing weakly against the vastness of the dark.

It should have felt comforting.

But it didn’t.

Robin’s mind kept replaying the Upside Down like a VHS tape that had gotten stuck. The way the air had been thicker there, like breathing through a wet towel. The way everything was layered with ash. The way they’d all moved like they were underwater, their flashlights cutting narrow tunnels through the gloom.

She remembered all of them climbing the radio tower, and when the Abyss was colliding with the Upside Down, and rocked the tower, she remembered how he slipped, his whole body pitching backward into open air.

She remembered her own heart turning into ice.

Jonathan had lunged, fast, too fast for someone who’d been running on fumes, and grabbed Steve’s wrist. For a second it had looked impossible, like gravity was going to win just because gravity always won.

Jonathan’s face had twisted with effort, and Steve had made this strangled sound that wasn’t a joke, wasn’t anything except fear.

Robin had wanted to yell at him when Jonathan pulled him back up. To tell him he was an idiot. To tell him that next time he decided to fall off something, he should at least leave a note.

But there hadn’t been time.

There had never been time.

Then the plan. There was alway a plan. Their plans had become these frantic, desperate little machines they built out of duct tape and hope. They made maps. They made lists. They assigned jobs like they were a trained team instead of a bunch of people who were very, very tired of being the only ones who knew the truth.

And in the Abyss, Nancy had done what Nancy always did when there was a decision nobody wanted to make.

She offered herself up.

“I am”

She’d said it like it was nothing. Like she was volunteering to wash dishes.

Robin remembered looking at her, really looking, and seeing how pale she was, how her hands trembled when she thought nobody noticed. Nancy had been scared. Of course she had. But she’d still stepped forward because she was Nancy Wheeler and she couldn’t help it.

Robin hadn’t been able to breathe. Not then.

Even thinking about it now made her chest tighten.

Because the idea of losing Nancy, of that sharp, stubborn, brilliant person, just gone, hit Robin in a place she tried not to touch.

Because Robin had feelings she wasn’t supposed to have. Feelings she’d tried to file away in a place she couldn’t touch.

And then, there was Eleven.

Robin’s throat tightened again.

El was just a kid. A kid who had carried Hawkins on her back like it was her job. A kid the government had chased and used and caged. A kid who’d looked at them all, eyes shining with something like acceptance, and gone back.

Someone had shouted. Robin couldn’t remember who. Maybe it was all of them, at once, the sound blending into one raw plea.

El had just looked at all of them, and Robin had seen her face framed by that awful, swirling light. The gate had looked like a wound in reality. The “shield generator”, that writhing, glowing ball of wrongness, had pulsed somewhere in the Upside Down like a heartbeat.

Nobody could stop the record from finishing.

“Purple Rain”. Robin had chosen the album, her stupid, brilliant choice. It had been the only thing she could think of that felt like a promise and a goodbye at the same time. It was also much better than what Mike had chosen.

The music had been playing for a while, and the bomb timer had synchronized, and for one second, one impossible second, the Upside Down had felt like it was holding its breath as “Purple Rain”, the actual song, came to an end.

Then the explosion came.

Overbearing light and heat and a sound like the world was tearing.

And both the gate and Eleven were gone.

Robin’s nails dug into her palm now, hard enough to hurt. She welcomed the pain because it was actually something she could understand.

Vickie’s voice finally cut through the silence.

“You didn’t have to snap at me,” she said, and even now, even after everything, there was irritation in it, clean and personal and small.

Robin turned her head slowly. “What?”

“On the radio,” Vickie said. Her hands stayed steady on the steering wheel. She kept her eyes on the road. “You told me to shut up.”

Robin let out a short laugh that didn’t sound like laughter. “Yeah. I did.”

Vickie’s jaw tightened. “I was trying to help.”

Robin stared at her profile. The curve of her cheek. The line of her nose. How normal she looked. Like the most supernatural thing she’d ever dealt with was a blown fuse at WSQK.

“You were trying to help,” Robin echoed, and her voice came out flat.

Vickie glanced at her then, quick, defensive. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“That tone.”

Robin’s mouth tasted like metal. “Vickie, I watched—” She stopped. Because if she said it out loud, she would fall apart in a way she couldn’t afford while trapped in a moving car with someone who still didn’t get it.

Vickie’s gaze flicked forward again. “You’re exhausted. We all are.”

Robin’s laugh came again, sharper. “Yeah. We all are.”

Vickie gripped the wheel a little harder. “I’m serious, Robin.”

Robin turned back to the window. The streets blurred past, someone’s mailbox knocked crooked, a darkened storefront, a stop sign reflecting the headlights like a warning.

“You didn’t even get detained,” Robin said, the words slipping out before she could stop them.

Vickie didn’t answer right away. The car kept moving. The blink of a turn signal filled the pause with an infuriating calm.

“Because I didn’t… do anything,” Vickie said finally, like that explained it.

Robin’s head snapped toward her. “Are you kidding me?”

Vickie’s face flushed. “What?”

Robin’s chest tightened again, but this time it wasn’t grief. It was anger. Hot and bright and almost relieving because it wasn’t sorrow.

“I was shoved against a truck,” Robin said. “I was handcuffed. I think Nancy was bleeding. Steve could barely stand. There were kids, Vickie. Kids. And you stood there with your arms crossed like you were waiting for someone to finish a conversation.”

“That’s not fair,” Vickie snapped.

Robin leaned forward, voice rising despite herself. “Not fair? You wanna talk about fair?”

Vickie’s eyes flashed. “You left me in the dark! You’ve been leaving me in the dark for weeks. Canceling, lying, disappearing—”

“I wasn’t—” Robin started, then stopped. Because she had been canceling. She had been lying. Not maliciously. Not because she wanted to. But because the truth was a loaded gun and Hawkins was already full of holes. Literally.

Vickie took the hesitation like a victory. “See?”

Robin clenched her hands. Her wrists still ached where the cuffs had been. “I was trying to keep you safe.”

Vickie let out an incredulous sound. “Safe? Robin, I volunteered to. I’m not a toddler.”

Robin’s head throbbed. “Then why don’t you act like it?”

Vickie’s shoulders stiffened. “Excuse me?”

Robin heard herself inhale, sharp. She couldn’t stop now. The words were coming like a dam breaking.

“Because you still don’t understand,” Robin said. “You still don’t get that this isn’t about your feelings being hurt because I canceled a date. This is about—” Her voice cracked. She tried again. “This is about people dying. This is about monsters. This is about the government—our government—looking at a child and seeing a weapon.”

Vickie’s mouth tightened. “I get that it’s serious.”

Robin let her head fall back against the seat for a second. She could feel tears gathering, but she was too angry to let them fall.

“No,” Robin said softly. “You don’t.”

Vickie’s expression hardened. “You don’t get to decide what I understand.”

Robin turned fully toward her. “Then explain it to me. Explain why you weren’t cuffed. Explain why you weren’t even touched. Explain why Dr. Kay looked at you like you were… I don’t know, like you belonged there.”

Vickie’s grip on the steering wheel tightened until her knuckles went pale. “Because I told her what I knew.”

The car seemed to go quieter around that sentence. Like even the engine held its breath.

Robin’s heart stuttered. “What?”

Vickie’s eyes stayed forward. Her voice went defensive, faster. “I told her there was something going on. You all left that stupid plan, your map, your notes, out. Max and I were left with it. What was I supposed to do? Just—just pretend I didn’t know anything?”

Robin’s vision tunneled. “You told her?”

“I didn’t—” Vickie started, then stopped. She swallowed. “I didn’t tell her everything.”

Robin stared at her like she was seeing her for the first time. The realization clicked into place, ugly and clear. Vickie hadn’t been spared because she was lucky. She’d been spared because she’d been useful.

Robin’s voice came out low. “So you ratted us out?”

Vickie flinched. “Robin—”

Robin shook her head, sharp, dizzy. “Don’t.”

Vickie’s eyes flicked to her again, pleading now. “I thought—I thought they would help. I thought if I told someone in charge, they could stop it and then you wouldn’t have to—”

“You thought the government was going to help?” Robin’s voice cracked, halfway between a laugh and a sob. “After everything I told you yesterday? At the hospital?”

Vickie’s mouth opened, then closed. The memory was there between them. Hawkins Memorial, fluorescent lights and antiseptic, Robin trying, desperately trying, to explain in fragments because there was no way to describe the Upside Down without sounding insane. And Vickie, she didn’t believe her. She still thought Robin was a druggie who stole Benzos for her own pleasure, until the Demogorgons attacked and reality tore the argument to shreds.

Robin had wanted to forgive that. Robin had wanted to be patient.

Now, patience felt like something she’d spent every last drop of.

Now, patience felt like something she’d spent every last drop of.

“I didn’t mean for you to get hurt,” Vickie said, voice small.

Robin stared at her. “You didn’t mean for it,” she repeated, and it sounded like an accusation.

Vickie’s chin lifted. “You’re not innocent here.”

That hit like a slap.

Vickie’s voice grew sharper again, as if anger was the only way she could sit in the same car with Robin’s grief. “You kept canceling on me. You kept ditching me. You made me feel like I was going crazy for thinking something was going on. And then tonight I go along with all of your plans and suddenly it’s soldiers and guns and—” She cut herself off, breath shaking. “You used me, Robin.”

Robin’s first instinct was to deny it. To say no, never, to scramble for some explanation that would keep this from becoming what it was becoming.

But she was tired of scrambling.

She was tired of protecting everyone else’s comfort at the expense of her own truth.

Robin swallowed. Her throat ached. “I canceled because I couldn’t be the reason Nancy’s plans failed.”

The words hung there, heavy.

Vickie turned her head fully this time, eyes wide. “What?”

Robin’s hands clenched in her lap. She stared straight ahead now, because looking at Vickie was unbearable.

“I canceled because every time we were supposed to go out,” Robin said, voice unsteady, “something happened. There was always another crawl mission, another late-night meeting, another emergency, another—” She inhaled, shaky. “And I—I couldn’t be the reason Nancy had to do something alone. I couldn’t be the reason she didn’t have somebody with her at the station.”

Vickie’s voice dropped. “You ditched me… for Nancy Wheeler.”

Robin didn’t answer immediately, because the truth was complicated and sharp.

It wasn’t just Nancy’s plans. It wasn’t just the missions.

It was Nancy’s presence, steady and fierce, even when she was afraid. The way she looked at Robin like Robin’s rambling actually mattered, like Robin’s brain was an asset and not just noise. The way she didn’t flinch when Robin got too loud or too fast or too much.

And it was the fact that Robin had feelings she wasn’t supposed to have, and she’d been trying to outrun them while the universe kept throwing monsters in their path.

“Yeah,” Robin said finally, and the single syllable felt like stepping off a cliff.

Vickie stared at her. The streetlights slid across her face in stripes, bright then dark then bright again.

“You’re joking,” Vickie whispered.

Robin shook her head once, almost imperceptible. “I’m not.”

For a long moment, the only sound in the car was the tires on the road.

Then Vickie let out a breath that trembled. “So what, all this time—”

Robin’s voice went hoarse. “I’m sorry.”

Vickie’s laugh was short and brittle. “That’s all you’ve got? Sorry?”

Robin closed her eyes. Behind her eyelids, the explosion replayed. The white light. The sound. Eleven’s small figure swallowed by violence.

“Yeah. I don’t have anything else,” Robin said. “I don’t have anything left.”

Vickie’s silence this time felt colder.

They drove the rest of the way with that silence wedged between them like a weapon.

When they pulled into Robin’s driveway, the Buckley house sat dark and still, a square of familiar safety that didn’t feel safe anymore. The porch light was off. Curtains drawn. Robin’s parents were probably asleep, or pretending to be, or maybe they’d been told by someone official to stay inside and not ask questions.

Robin stared at the front door like it might open on its own and save her.

Vickie turned off the engine. The sudden quiet made Robin’s ears ring.

“Robin,” Vickie said, voice gentler now, like she was trying to rewind the last ten minutes and start over.

Robin reached for the door handle. Her fingers shook.

“You shouldn’t be alone,” Vickie added.

Robin paused, eyes still on the dark porch. “I’ve been alone for a long time,” she said, and hated how true it sounded.

Vickie’s mouth tightened. “That’s not what I meant.”

Robin finally looked at her. Vickie’s eyes were glossy, angry and hurt and confused all at once.

Robin felt something in her chest twist, pity, guilt, exhaustion, but it didn’t soften what she knew.

“You didn’t care,” Robin said quietly.

Vickie blinked. “What?”

Robin swallowed. “Back there. With the soldiers. You didn’t care what was happening to me. Or Nancy. Or Steve. Or—” Her voice cracked, and she had to force the next words out. “Or Eleven.”

Vickie’s face went pale. “That’s not—”

“No,” Robin said, and this time she didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t need to. “You keep making this about you. About dates. About me being rude on the radio. And I—” She exhaled, shaky. “I can’t do this. Not tonight. Not after—”

Vickie’s eyes flashed again. “So that’s it? You’re just… what? Ending it?”

Robin stared at her, numb. “Yeah.”

Vickie opened her mouth, then closed it, like she couldn’t find a sentence that would win. Her throat bobbed as she swallowed.

Robin’s hand tightened on the door handle.

“Just leave,” Robin said softly.

Vickie’s face crumpled for half a second, something vulnerable flickering through, then hardened again like a mask snapping into place.

“Fine,” Vickie said, voice tight. “Fine, Robin. Have fun with Nancy Wheeler.”

Robin flinched at the venom in it, but she didn’t respond. Because if she did, she would either scream or sob, and both felt like giving Vickie something she didn’t deserve.

So, Robin finally forced herself out of the car. Her legs wobbled as soon as she stood. The ground felt slightly unreal, like she’d gotten used to the Upside Down’s wrong physics and her body needed time to remember normal gravity.

She shut the car door gently, because even in this state she couldn’t stand the idea of waking her parents and having to explain anything.

She walked up the steps to the porch. The wood creaked under her feet in familiar spots. The air smelled like old leaves and damp earth and distant chimney smoke, Hawkins smells that had always been background and now felt impossibly precious.

Her hand hovered over the doorknob.

Inside, everything would be the same. The living room furniture arranged like an ordinary family lived an ordinary life, the kitchen magnets on the fridge, the faint hum of the house settling.

Inside, everything would be wrong, because Robin would still be Robin, and Eleven would still be dead, and nothing could ever be normal again.

Robin let herself in and closed the door quietly behind her.

The house was dark. The hallway was a tunnel of shadows. Somewhere upstairs, a floorboard popped as the house cooled.

Robin stood with her back against the door for a long moment, breathing shallowly, listening.

Nothing.

No parents rushing down the stairs. No questions. No “Where have you been?”

Just the quiet.

Her throat tightened again, and she lifted a hand to her mouth like she could physically hold herself together.

She kicked off her shoes by the mat, not bothering to line them up. She walked toward the kitchen like a sleepwalker, moving on pure muscle memory. The refrigerator’s pale light spilled out when she opened it, illuminating her hands, still grimy, nails ragged, knuckles scraped.

She stared into the fridge without seeing anything in it.

Her mind kept landing on the same thought, over and over, like a needle dropping in the same groove.

El’s gone.

She shut the fridge harder than she meant to. The sound echoed in the quiet house, making her flinch.

Robin pressed her forehead to the cool cabinet door.

Her breath came in shaky bursts now. The tears she’d been holding back all night finally welled, hot and humiliating.

She didn’t cry loudly. She couldn’t. The house was too quiet for that.

She cried the way you did when you were trying not to exist.

When her breathing finally steadied, she lifted her head, wiped her cheeks with the heel of her hand, and stared at the darkness beyond the kitchen doorway.

She should go upstairs. She should shower. She should sleep for a week.

Instead she stood there, frozen, because doing any of that meant admitting the night was over.

And if the night was over, then the loss was real.

A sound cut through the quiet.

A knock.

Robin’s heart lurched so hard it hurt.

For one stupid second, she thought it was Vickie. Of course Vickie would come back, because people came back in movies, and apologies happened, and things got tied up neatly.

Robin’s feet moved before her brain could argue. She crossed the hallway, pulse pounding in her ears, and reached for the door.

She opened it.

And she found Nancy standing on the porch.

Her hair was still a mess, her face drawn tight with exhaustion, her eyes rimmed red like she’d cried and then stopped because she’d run out of time. She held a cardboard case of beer in both hands like it weighed nothing.

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

The porch light above them buzzed faintly, flickering once.

Nancy’s voice came out quiet.