xxiii. connect the dots

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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE:
CONNECT THE DOTS

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   JULY OF 1985 started out cool. It wasn't too hot or too cold and the citizens of Hawkins could thank the rolling thunderclouds for that. The smell of rain was in the air and it made Liz feel like she could breathe again and not be suffocated by the stuffy, hot air that had filled the entire month of June. Liz had woken up to the sound of thunder and found herself cuddling Max. Her face was soft as she was clearly still asleep. Liz had moved a piece of hair out of Max's face and watched as Max's face twitched slightly before Max moved even closer to Liz and pressed her face into Max's shoulder.

   It was getting closer to the afternoon when the girls finally left El's house and started to slowly make their way to Max's house. The clouds had only gotten darker as they made their way there and Liz could tell it was definitely going to be raining soon and not lightly. The last thing she really wanted to be doing on a rainy summer day was searching for Max's older brother but El insisted something was wrong, so Max and Liz agreed to go with her.

   "It's gonna start pouring soon," Max informs El as they turn onto Max's street. "We should be at the mall or, like, watching a movie or something."

   Liz's eyes widened at the mention of watching a movie, "Oh, The Goonies!"

   Max smiled largely at Liz, "Yes! The Goonies!"

   "You don't believe me?" El asks the two girls who seemed more excited about doing anything other than what El wanted to do.

   "I believe you saw some super weird stuff, totally, but you said Mike has sensed you in there before, right?" Max explains. El nodded. "So, maybe it was just like that. Maybe Billy just... sensed you... somehow."

   "But the screams," El reminds her.

   Max sighs, "Yeah, I know, but here's the thing. When Billy is alone with a girl, they make, like, really crazy noises."

   Liz cringed, knowing exactly what Max was talking about and she could say the same thing about her brother, although, lately, Steve hasn't been bringing many girls home. El's eyes widened at Max's words, "They scream?"

   "Yeah, but like... happy screams," Max explains hesitantly.

   El looked very confused as she asked, "Happy screams? What is happy screams?"

   "It's like..." Max trails off, locking eyes with Liz who just shakes her head. She really did not want to have the sex talk with El. "I'm just gonna lend you my mom's Cosmo."

   As the conversation ended, the three approached Max's house. It looked as though nobody was home, including Billy who's car wasn't on the street. Max noticed that his car was gone as well, "His car's not here. You really want to do this?"

   El looked determined as she nodded but Max and Liz just looked annoyed. They both thought there was nothing to worry about and Billy was just hooking up with a girl or something along those lines but El thought something was wrong, so here they were. Max lead the girls into the house and it became clear when they walked in that nobody was home. Max guessed that Billy was most likely at work. They went straight to Billy's room and Max opened the door which creaked as she slowly pushed it open.

   Right away, a smell Liz could only describe as teenage boy wafted into their faces, which was a mix of beer, sweat, hormones, and cigarettes. Liz frowned, wishing she was at Hot Dog on a Stick rather than in Billy Hargrove's bedroom. Crushed, empty beer cans littered the room along with old food and silverware. The radio was still on, blasting some sort of rock song. Max frowned, "Why do I get the feeling we're going to find all kinds of wrong in here?"

   "It's Billy's room. What do you expect?" Liz tells her as they walk into the room, starting to take a look around. The walls mainly had posters of half-naked women in bikinis, which explains why Billy works at the public pool. A couple of ashtrays laid around the room, each one holding about five or six cigarettes in them. Billy's laundry hamper was overflowing with clothes, some of which had fallen onto the floor including his dirty underwear which Liz gagged at.

   Max started on Billy's side table drawers. Liz knew she had found something gross when Max opened the first drawer and gagged, "Ugh! Gag me with a spoon."

   "Nothing seems out of the ordinary here," Liz says after she finishes doing her sweep of the room. "Well, at least, not out of the ordinary for Billy."

   "Yeah, El," Max agrees, looking at El. "We can check the bathroom if you want."

   El nodded and Max lead them out of Billy's room. She made sure to close the door on the way out so Billy wouldn't know they were ever in there. The bathroom door was already open, so El walked right in with Max and Liz right behind her. The first thing they noticed was the bath was full of water with empty ice bags floating around on the surface. El stared at it, "Max?"

   Max came over and took a look at it, seeing nothing strange. She reached in and grabbed one of the empty bags, "Ice. It's just ice. It's probably for his muscles or something. He works out like a maniac."

   El let her eyes trail over the rest of the bathroom. Max and Liz locked eyes, sharing the same look of annoyance and impatience at when El was going to finally accept everything was fine. Liz's summer would've been so much easier if that had happened but when El spotted the bloody fingerprints on the cabinets under the sink, everything normal that could've been, went out the window.

   El walked over to the cabinets and opened them. She pulled out a green trash bin as Max asked, "El, what is it?"

   El reached in and held up a red lifeguard fanny pack. Judging by the bedazzling done around the edges, it was clearly not Billy's. Liz looked at Max who looked worried and was definitely starting to believe what El had seen. El reached in again and pulled out a yellow whistle, but half of it was covered in a red substance that Liz was really hoping was paint. Liz hated Billy ever since he almost killed her brother but she didn't believe that Billy would actually kill someone.

   Max stepped forward, taking the whistle out of El's hands and examining it. Liz knew she was probably trying to figure out if the red was blood or not. Liz knew that Max and Billy despised each other but at the end of the day they were family. El was the first one to finally say something, "Blood."

   Max shook her head, "We don't know that for sure. Billy wouldn't kill anyone."

   "But —"

   Liz interrupts, "Why don't we go to the pool and see if Billy is there? I mean, if he's not here, he's probably there, right? We can ask him what's going on and why he has another girl's fanny pack. Yeah?"

   Max nods, hoping her brother didn't do anything bad, "Yeah."

   "And even if he's not there, we can always ask the other lifeguards whose fanny pack it is," Liz continues. Max looked more relieved the more Liz explained and she nodded, agreeing with Liz. "Maybe the girl it belongs to will be there, too, so we'll be able to ask her." She glances at both girls. "Everyone cool with that plan?"

   Max and El glance at each other before nodding, "Yeah."

   Liz smiles, making sure to send a reassuring one to Max, "Okay. Let's get going. It's probably going to start raining soon."

   Just as Liz spoke those words, thunder shook the home. The sound of rain came right after as it pounded against the roof and the windows, echoing throughout the house. Liz frowned, "Guess I spoke too soon."

   "I have raincoats," Max informs the two girls. She leads them out of the bathroom and towards the front door. Through the windows, Liz could see that it was pouring hard and she wished she could just stay inside watching movies and eating popcorn all day. Max opens up a closet and takes out three raincoats. One of them looked bigger, probably Billy's old one. Max handed one to El and one to Liz. "I'll take Billy's old one. You guys can have mine."

   The girls all put their raincoats on, making sure to put the hood on as well. Liz knew the raincoats would barely do anything and she would end up soaked by the time they got to public pool, but hopefully with the jacket she wouldn't get pneumonia, "Ready?"

   Liz and El nodded. Max opened the door and the girls stepped out of the house, making their way to the Hawkins public pool.


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   Liz felt like a soaked rat by the time they reached the pool. She was soaked head to toe, including her hair which the raincoat did nothing to protect that from happening. She didn't care about her hair being wet but it was still annoying to her. The pool was empty due to the rain. As the three girls walked across the grass to the entrance, kids were running out, their feet making the water splash from the puddles. Some of them were holding things over their head but Liz didn't see the point in that since they were already in their swimsuits and we're going to get their hair wet anyway until it started raining.

   The sign above the entrance read: Hawkins Community Pool. They walked by groups of kids who were most likely waiting for their parents or for the rain to get lighter. Once they got in, they took their hoods off and went up to the front desk. Behind the desk sat the manager who looked way too young to be the manager and one of the lifeguards reading magazines.

   "Excuse me?" Max started.

   "No one in the water until thirty minutes after the last strike," The manager stated in a monotone voice as he flipped the page of his magazine. He didn't even look up and Liz figured he probably had to say the same thing to several kids who were complaining about not being allowed to swim. "And don't try and argue with me. You wanna get electrocuted, go climb a tree."

   "Yeah, we don't care. We're not here to swim," Max tells him. Liz was starting to feel uncomfortable as her clothes latched themselves to her skin. "Or get electrocuted."

   El pulls out the red fanny pack from her raincoat pocket and holds it up, "We found this."

   The manager finally looked up but both he and the girl didn't seem to care, "Does that belong to anybody here?"

   "Oh, yeah," The manager nods. "That's Heather's. I'll get it back to her."

   "We could give it back to her," El suggests, wanting to talk to Heather and ask why her fanny pack was in the trash at Billy and Max's house.

   "You could, 'cept she's not here. Bailed on me today," He explains, looking very annoyed by the fact that Heather didn't show up for her shift. The three girls give each other similar looks of confusion. "What is this? You girls want a reward or somethin'?

   Max shook her head, "No. We're just... Good Samaritans."

   The two didn't say another word as they went back to their magazines. Liz rolled her eyes at them, not understanding why the manager was being so rude. With an attitude like that, it didn't surprise her that he was the manager of a public pool. El looked around the room before her eyes landed on a corkboard on the wall. She started to walk over to it as Liz and Max followed her. On the corkboard were a few flyers advertising guitar lessons and babysitting and, of course, the Fourth of July celebrations that were to come in a few days. Along with that, though, there were pictures of the lifeguards for the summer. Heather's picture was among the five others.

   "Heather," Max says, pointing it out. She looks at El. "Do you think you can find her?"

   El looks over her shoulder at the two behind the desk again. They were distracted, laughing at something in their magazines. While they were distracted, El ripped the picture of Heather from the board. Liz's eyes widened as she did that and looked back at the manager, "Can we even do that?"

   Max grabbed her hand, "It'll be fine, they won't miss it. Come on."

   They headed into the girl's locker room which was empty due to the rain. El started to look in the lockers that people used to keep their belongings in for anything she could use to cover her eyes. Max and Liz decided that the next best thing to static right now in their current situation was to just turn all the showers on. El needed something to focus on to drown all the other sounds out. Once the girls got all the showers on, El came back with a pair of goggles covered in ducktape.

   El sat on the floor between two benches with Liz and Max on either side of her. El put the picture of Heather in front of her before putting the goggles on. Liz and Max both stayed quiet as El worked her magic to try and locate Heather. Liz rested her forearms on her knees as she waited for El. It seemed like forever and the longer El took, the more worried Liz got.

   Finally, a gasp came from El as she ripped off the mask. She was breathing heavily, her chest heaving up and down. Her eyes were wide as she tried to calm herself down. Liz and Max placed a hand on her shoulders as Max asked, "What happened? El!"

   Blood dripped from El's nose before she leaned forward and covered her face with her hands. Liz and Max looked at each other, both having expressions of worry upon their faces. El had found Heather but judging by her reaction, Heather wasn't okay. Liz reached out and rubbed El's back, waiting for her to calm down and tell the girls where Heather was. Liz just hoped Heather would still be alive when they got there.


































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[ 2430 WORDS ]

i was originally going to make this the whole
episode but this chapter got longer than
i thought it would so it episode 3 will be
continued in the next chapter!!

also, the liz & max scenes i have planned
are making me so soft! i love these girls
so much & y'all are going to die of cuteness
soon i promise!


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