THE LAST WEEK OF OCTOBER BROUGHT the promise of a colder season. A brunette perused the aisles of The Roundabout, sighing at all the records customers had picked up and set back down in places they didn't belong. It was a common occurrence, of course, one that she knew happened at any store— but still, it was annoying. Especially because it was her job to organize and shelf the records that people had moved around.

"Seriously, how hard is it to put things back where you got them?" She complained as the pile of discarded records in her arms grew.

A snort had her head turning to the left to look at her coworker as an amused smirk tugged the corners of his lips. "People don't care about things that aren't their problem," he told her as he counted all of the money in his register.

Jonathan Byers had never been much of a talker. It was one of the reasons their coworkers didn't want to work with him, because while he was polite to customers, he wasn't really a guy most people could have an amicable conversation with to pass the time. He was quiet, he kept to himself; more of an observer than a partaker in things.

But Rachel Henderson never minded that. In fact, she preferred Jonathan's silence over the stupid shit other people talked about. Especially their coworker Eric, who was a thirty year-old degenerate that still lived with his parents because his dreams of being in a punk-rock band never took off. Which, you know, was none of Rachel's business... but neither were the many airheaded conquests that gave him another notch on his bedpost; something he loved to tell her about, which made her unbearably uncomfortable.

Anyway, the thing was, Eric was probably her least-favorite coworker. Jonathan, with his timid nature and ability to actually work instead of hit on any female that walked into the record shop, was probably her most-favorite.

Until last year, Jonathan and Rachel's friendship had never spanned further than The Roundabout, where they worked together, or the high school's art room, where they often ran into each other while Rachel was painting and Jonathan passed through on his way to the developing room. But when Jonathan's little brother Will, who happened to be one of her little brother's best friends, went missing, Rachel took it upon herself to help look for him.

It was still crazy to her, the amount of things that could happen in a week. It had been the most insane seven days she'd ever experienced in her life, and it had literally turned her whole perspective on the world upside-down. (No pun intended.)

No, Rachel never would have thought that precious little Will would have been abducted by a carnivorous dark creature and brought into an equally-dark dimension that was full of toxic air and hideous goo. Nor would she have thought that her friend Barbara would be pulled into the same dimension before being murdered by said creature. Or that she and her other friend, Nancy, would momentarily find themselves in it as well, before thankfully being able to find their way back out with the help of Jonathan.

The entire ordeal still frightened her from time to time. Rachel would never tell anyone, but she had nightmares about that week still. Flashes of what the boys had named a demogorgon pass through her mind, its faceless head blooming like a deadly venus fly-trap, opening to reveal thousands of teeth intent on ripping her apart.

She had survived an encounter with this creature last year, when Steve Harrington began beating it with a bat before they set it on fire... but in her dreams, Steve and her friends weren't there. In her dreams, she was alone, with no gasoline or lighter, or even a bat with multiple nails protruding out of it. She was alone and defenseless like her friend Barb had been and in her dreams, the demogorgon catches her by the ankle as she tries to run and then it —

"Rach?" Jonathan's voice, slightly tinged with concern, pulls her out of her haunting thoughts. "Are you okay?"

She looks back over at him and musters up a smile, the same one she used whenever someone asked her that question. "Yeah. Just.... a lot on my mind, I guess," Rachel told him with a shrug. Before he could ask anything further, she approached the counter and set down the pile of records she had managed not to drop. "Okay, we'll split this in half and get it done quicker."

"Sounds fine to me," he agreed with a small shrug, getting the hint that she didn't want to talk about whatever had been bothering her.

"Hey, I was wondering." She cast him a glance before focusing back on organizing her stack of records, alphabetically by the artists' name. "How is Will really doing? He always seems happy whenever I see him with the boys, but..."

"Yeah, he's pretty good at hiding how he's really been feeling." Jonathan sighed, his expression softening into sadness as he thought of his little brother. He was understandably upset that he hadn't been able to stop what had happened to Will last year. "He's doing a little better, but his... episodes... have been getting worse, I think. At first I thought they were just nightmares, but now they happen while he's awake."

Rachel's eyes widened. "What kind of episodes?"

"I don't know. Maybe, like, a sort of PTSD?" He shrugged.

She released a deep, soft breath. "Well, maybe Halloween will cheer him up a bit. It's the boys' favorite day of the year, after all." Rachel knew better than to say something trivial like I hope he's okay or I'm sure he's fine. Will may have survived the demogorgon and the Upside-Down, but that week still haunted him even worse than it did Rachel, who had only spent a mere twenty minutes in that horrible place as opposed to his seven days. However, just the fact that Will had survived in there proved that he was stronger than people gave him credit for. And that had to count for something.

"Yeah," Jonathan agreed half-heartedly, the worry for his little brother eating away at his thoughts. "Maybe."

Once the records were placed back on the shelves where they belonged and the money in the cash register had been counted and locked in their boss's safe, they closed up shop for the night. Jonathan drove her home, like he always did whenever they had a shift together now; ever since what had happened with Will, he didn't like for anyone to be walking alone at night, especially his friends.

The house was quiet when Rachel got home that night, though she doubted her brother was sleeping as she kicked off her shoes in the foyer. A yawn escaped her lips and she shimmied her jacket off her arms as she headed upstairs, not surprised to see the light spilling through the crack beneath Dustin's bedroom door. She rapped her knuckles against the wood in three quick knocks, opening it when Dustin called out a distracted, "Come in."

Her gaze fell upon her little brother as he sat on his bed with comic books sprawled around him. "Hey, Rach," he said without looking up, knowing fully well it was her. Rachel had also made it routine to check in on him every night before bed.

"Hey, punk," Rachel greeted with an affectionate smile, leaning against the door frame.

The older Henderson was possibly the only person that could call him a punk and make it seem like a compliment. She said it in such a different way than the bullies at school did, and Dustin would never admit it, but he didn't mind her calling him that.

"What are you doing?" Rachel asked curiously.

Dustin sighed. "I lost another bet with Will and I owe him another comic book."

She hummed sympathetically. "Which one is it this time?"

"My Batman Detective Comic number 66," he grumbled unhappily.

"Ouch. That's the one about Harvey Dent, isn't it?"

He sighed again. "Yeah."

Rachel shook her head. "You just gotta stop making bets with Will, punk. At this rate, you won't have any comics left."

Dustin made a face at her. She made one back.

"Goodnight, punk."

"Goodnight, brat."

It was their usual way of telling each other goodnight, and it always left Rachel with a soft smile as she retreated into her room and stripped down to her t-shirt before crawling into her bed.

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CHARCOAL SMEARED AGAINST THE DELICATE SKIN of her wrist as Rachel lounged on her window seat the next evening, shading in the outlines of the forest she had absentmindedly drawn during her free period at school. She wasn't scheduled to work, and hadn't made plans with anyone, preferring to have some peaceful time to herself.

She'd been doing that a lot lately, it seemed. Sometimes Nancy was successful into talking her out of the house to go shopping, or to the movies, or catch a bite to eat at the diner. But most of the time, Rachel just wasn't up for it. Whenever she was with Nancy, she only felt halfway-whole. Because there was always this absence present no matter what they were doing, an absence that Barbara Holland had used to fill with her pessimistic attitude and blunt nature. 

That had been Barb's role in their little friendship group, after all. She was the pessimist, always pointing out whatever could go wrong. Nancy, on the other hand, was the optimist, always finding the silver lining in things and looking on the brighter side. And Rachel; well, she was sort of a mixture between the two. She was the realist, always sticking to the truth of whatever situation the friends were contemplating and providing somewhat of a balance.

But now Barbara was gone. And the hole in her chest ached and throbbed and burned because Rachel knew where she was— where her corpse was. Barbara Holland was now nothing more than a decaying heap of bones and flesh, somewhere in the Upside-Down. She'd been murdered by a demogorgon, the very same one that Steve Harrington had beaten with a bat to keep it away from her, before Jonathan successfully set it on fire. The very same one that had somehow survived being doused in flames, but had not been able to survive a young girl named after a number, who had obliterated it with her mind before— quite literally— vanishing.

She knew the truth about her friend's fate. But she couldn't tell anyone else about it. So every time Rachel saw Barbara's face on the countless HAVE YOU SEEN ME? posters that her parents posted everywhere... it stung. Because Mr. and Mrs. Holland were still looking for their daughter, like any good parents would be doing; they were still hoping that they would find her, that she was alive— but she wasn't. Barbara was dead. And Rachel felt so overwhelmingly guilty because she knew that, she knew they were searching for something they would never find, but she could not tell them that.

The sound of the phone ringing yanked her out of her thoughts, but Rachel did not move from her spot on her window seat. Instead she stared down at her drawing, and ignored the rings until they abruptly stopped; which she knew meant that her mother had answered the phone call. After a moment, Claudia hollered, "Rachel, it's for you!"

Rachel reluctantly stood and went over to her desk, curling into her chair as she picked up the house phone her mother allowed her to keep in her room. "Hello?" She said, expecting it to be Nancy, and the moment she spoke she heard the faint clicking sound that told her Claudia had hung up the living room's receiver.

"Hi, Rachel. It's Steve."

She sighed. "Hey. Did Nancy make you call again?"

"Um... sort of." Steve could never admit that any time he called to check in on the girl, it was always of his own accord. He was dating her best friend, and he didn't want her to feel weird talking to him if she knew that he'd decided to call on his own. It wasn't like there was any ulterior motive to it, but still. "I just wanted to see how you were doing."

Steve Harrington and Rachel Henderson had never really been close. In fact, he could clearly remember a time when she'd practically jumped down his throat because of something stupid Tommy H and Carol had said about her brother one day a few years back— something that Steve had idiotically laughed at, not because it was funny but because he had just became friends with the two popular kids and wanted to remain friends with them. 

Anyway, they never really talked much save for that day. But last year, when he started dating Nancy, he obviously began to see more of Rachel. She'd been dragged to that little party he had at his house, where she spent most of it sitting with her feet dangling in his pool silently. At least, until she got annoyed with Tommy H. and Carol, got into an argument with them on behalf of Barb once the bespectacled girl went to the bathroom to clean up her cut, and walked home despite Steve himself asking her to stay. He didn't know why he'd asked her to stay, because they didn't really even know each other that much. But the thought of her walking home alone by herself right after Will Byers went missing didn't sit well with him. 

"I'm fine, Steve," Rachel's voice flooded through the phone call. "Just like I am every other time you call."

But he knew that she wasn't. She never was, just said that she was so that people would leave her alone and think everything was okay. 

Sometimes Steve could close his eyes and still see her as she was that day, on the floor of the Byers home, kicking herself away from the demogorgon as it cornered her. Her brown eyes, wide with utter fear, but also a bit of relief, in that small moment he'd taken to glance back at her as he stepped between them and swung the bat at the creature.

"Rachel." His voice was quiet. "You don't have to pretend to be okay all of the time, you know?"

There was a brief moment's pause, and then a defensive, "I am not pretending—"

"I'm not trying to make you mad, I'm just—" Steve sighed. "I just... I want you to know that if you want to talk about anything, I'm here. Okay?"

This time, the pause was longer. And for a second, Rachel actually considered opening up to Steve. She didn't have anyone else to open up to, after all. Nancy was practically losing her shit with every passing day, the whole Barb situation affecting her just as much as it did Rachel, though Nancy wasn't as good at hiding it. And Jonathan had his own issues to deal with, most importantly Will. That really only left Dustin, which was a big hell-fucking-no to Rachel because 1: he was her little brother, and 2: it was her job to be the strong one.

She had never considered Steve Harrington to ever be one of her options, even though he'd been pulled into the mess of things last year too. Because they were never really close. But mostly because Rachel figured that whatever she told him, he'd probably tell Nancy.

"Like I said," she told him, swallowing thickly. "I'm fine. But thanks, anyway."

"Rachel..."

"Son of a bitch! Son of a bitch!" Dustin's voice carried up the stairs and had her frowning as she stood up from her chair.

"I have to go," she said, cutting Steve off from whatever he'd been about to say. 

Hanging up the phone before he could even get a goodbye out, Rachel left her bedroom and went downstairs. "Another stupid penny!" Her brother was complaining as she walked into the living room, just in time to see him throw said penny over his shoulder.

"Dusty, watch it!" Claudia scolded him, cuddling her cat closer to her chest. "You almost hit Mews!"

Rachel fought the urge to roll her eyes. She swore, sometimes Claudia loved that cat more than she did her own children. Personally, Rachel wasn't a bit fan of the fur-ball. It always jumped on the counters, which she thought was totally gross, and scratched the furniture up.

"Can I please check under your cushions?" Dustin asked their mother, ignoring her exclamation.

"Dusty."

"Mom, please? It's an emergency!"

"What is the problem?" Rachel cut in, seeing their mother clearly did not want to get up as she sat in her favorite chair, cuddling Mews and watching her soap operas.

Dustin whirled around and looked at her, his eyes lighting up hopefully. "Rach! Oh, thank God you're here, I thought you were working!" He exclaimed, holding up his hands in a prayer-like gesture. "Please, please, tell me you have some quarters I can have? The party is supposed to meet at the arcade soon and I can't find any—"

"Calm your tits, punk."

The younger Henderson sputtered as he started to follow Rachel back up the stairs. "Calm my— calm my tits?! What is that even supposed to... You know what, never mind, I need to find some quarters so I can—" Dustin stopped when he realized what his sister was doing: dumping out some of the change she stored in a mason jar in her bedroom. His eyes widened when she gathered a handful of the large silver coins and held it out to him. "Really?"

Rachel laughed. "Yes, really. Take it."

He grinned at her then, the smile stretching across his face so much that his eyes squinted with it. Rachel always loved when he smiled this way; it was happy and childish and innocent and everything that her little brother was, despite all the bullies that wouldn't leave him alone. She hated knowing that those twerps Troy and James always picked on Dustin and the other boys; hated that it was socially unacceptable for her to show up at the middle school and ram their heads together every time they called her brother Toothless.

Alas, no matter how much she wanted to, she could not fight all of Dustin's battles for him. It was something he himself told her on more than one occasion, for he was aware how bothered his sister got knowing that kids weren't nice to him. He was remarkably resilient for a kid his age and repeatedly said that he didn't care what the other kids said about him. Rachel had yet to see any sign of behavior from him that might indicate otherwise. Dustin was good at saving face.

But then again, so was she. And the days that followed would prove just that.