꧁꧂

ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ᴇʟᴇᴠᴇɴ: ᴀɴᴅ ɪ ᴋɴᴏᴡ ɪ'ᴠᴇ ʙᴇᴇɴ ᴀʀᴏᴜɴᴅ

I sat down beside Will's body laid across the couch, not knowing what to do or say. His body was so pale, I mean, he wasn't even like this when Hopper and Joyce had saved him. God. Why was I here? To cry? I had no tears in me. I was too tired to even cry. Too tired to think about doing that.

He's going to be fine. We always work it out. We always work it out in the end. "I'm sorry..." I murmur quietly to him, hoping dearly that he could hear me. Please tell me he could hear me. "I should've been there. I should've just gone with Mike and stayed here..." Shaking my head in pure disgrace of myself, I caught sight of Max with the group. "I think I like her..." I told Will, not knowing what else I could tell him. "You don't mind, do you?" I asked, looking over at his still body. "No... I didn't think you would..."

"I DON'T KNOW HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE LEFT ALIVE!" Hopper, meanwhile, was shouting on the phone to God knows who. "I AM THE POLICE!"

Time passed and I moved away as Johnathan moved to talk to Will, wating to have his moment. Walking into the kitchen, I joined the rest of the party and leaned on the wall silently. "'WE'LL SEE'?" Mike questioned, shouting towards Hopper by the phone. "We can't just sit here while those things are lose!"

"We stay here, and we wait for help." None of the arguing from tonight was exactly helping. None of it. The man walked out of the kitchen, leaving us and our lovely babysitter. Mom had despaired the moment we'd entered the house, and I didn't really know why until Mike had mentioned it to me.

Bob had died in the lab. The Demogorgon got him. I already missed him, what the fuck? I missed Bob Newbie, superhero.

The whole group had never been so silent. Never. Bob's games were still on the side of the living area. What were we gonna do with them? We'd all have to be psychopathic to play them at any point. And none of us were going to have the will-power, other than Joyce, to sell them.

Mike walked towards one of them, picking up a cube before speaking to all of us. "Did you guys know that Bob was the original founder of Hawkins AV club?" He asked us and I crossed my arms, holding back any tears. I'm this close to going to bed and crying my eyes out, don't push it, Mike.

"Really?" Lucas asked Mike as he turned around to look at us.

"He petitioned the school to start it and everything." He said, walking into the kitchen. "Then he had a fund-raiser for equipment."

"I hate this..." I murmured quietly, staring at the table, not knowing where else I could look.

"Mr Clarke learned everything from him." Mike added on, causing me to look away. Nope. Nope. I'm not in the mood. Not today. "Pretty awesome, right?" When I looked back into the living room, not daring to look or listen to the party, I saw him on the couch again. Nothing, and I mean nothing, was going right.

"Hey!" I heard a soft voice suddenly beside me. Max. The girl held out her arms for me and I fell into them, not knowing what else I could do. There were no tears, none of it. A pain in my stomach sat there lowly, sitting there and taking up space. "Do you wanna talk about it?" She asked me the question as I pulled away from her embrace. What could I even say?

⊹˚˖⁺

The two of us stood in my room awkwardly after she shut it. She went to flick the lights on but when she did, it turned it to not work. "Yeah... they haven't worked since my ninth birthday." I tell her, moving around and cramming stuff on the bed as my way of tidying up.

"Well, it's... cosy in here." Max told me after looking around at what was called 'my room'. It was more like a storage closet with a window that we'd turned into my room when they realised it was twins and not just one of us. "Hey, Parker?" I turned to look over at the girl from what I was doing. "Can you stop tidying your room like I'm gonna be impressed by it?" She asked with a smile.

Come on, Parker, it's not like Maxine Mayfield is going to give a fuck about a tidy room or not. She's more stubborn than YOU. "Right... yeah." I shook my head, understanding and dropping the rest of the stuff around where they once were.

"Are you okay?" Max asked me, her voice still in that notable soft tone. I'd never seen her like this before; caring about someone else. And I don't mean like she cared about what was going on in the AV room or what was going on with Will- I mean there was a different expression upon her. She didn't want to know for her own benefit as much as she may have with the other things. She cared...

"I mean, my brother is out cold currently, sometimes part of the Upside Down, and sometimes his normal self... the house has turned into a board game with the papers everywhere... Dustin's pet has turned into a..." I thought of the words careful. "Pain in the ass... Mom's boyfriend has died... and I haven't had a goodnights sleep in two days."

The girl nodded, taking in all that I'd said. "So... you've seen better days?" She joked, making me smile.

"I guess," I didn't even know where I was going with it. "I wanna wake up from this." I told her. "It's a nightmare. All of it. My life, the Upside Down, the lab. All of it turns up in my nightmares."

"And one day, it'll go away." She told me, stepping forward and taking my hands in hers. What was going on. She might as well be under the effects of the shadow monster too because it was so unlike the stubborn girl I knew from the back of Mr Clarke's class. "Okay?" I wish I could explain the feelings in my stomach, but I didn't even know what it was. Nodding, I stayed silent for a moment.

The thoughts of what Steve had mainly been telling Dustin back on the train tracks came back to me. No. It was important to show the girl you cared. It would hurt her, otherwise...

"When this is all over, I swear to you, I'm gonna make sure it never comes back." I tell her, making Max furrow her eyebrows slightly. The tables had turned. I couldn't have her go through what I was going through now in a years' time. I couldn't. "We'll be normal teens. Doing stupid teen things. Not worrying if our friends are getting ate by Dustin's new pet."

"You're worrying about me?" Max asked, the smallest hint of disbelief in her voice. "Parker, you're the one who's been through this already, imagine what you're going to be like in-"

"Twenty years? Yeah future me already has given up trying, Maxine." I tell her, causing a small laugh. "I don't want you to go through the shit I'm going through now, okay?" There was silence as she nodded. "So you're gonna promise me to teach me to skate, right?" I asked, subject changing for the better.

Max's eyes lit up at my question before laughter. "You learning to skateboard would be a trainwreck. But yes, I promise."

⊹˚˖⁺

"We can't stop the Demo-dogs on our own." When we walked back into the room, the party were extremely busy arguing.

"Demo-dogs?" Max asked, pulling up a chair at the table.

"Demogorgons and dogs." I explained, whispering down at her. "Mix it together and you have whatever the hell he just came up with..."

"I mean, when it was just Dart, maybe we could've." Dustin said, directed at Mike.

"But there's an army now." Lucas told the boy.

"Precisely."

"His army." Mike says, staring down at the table.

"What do you mean?" Steve asks, Babysitter of the year.

"His army." Mike repeated himself, looking over at all of our not-understanding faces. "Maybe if we stop him, we can stop his army, too."

We all glanced around at each other, trying to believe it could be that easy. Holy shit?

In Will's room, Mike picked up a drawing. The Shadow Monster drawing. All of us looked at the different ones, passing them around. "The Shadow Monster..." Dustin murmured.

"It got Will that day on the field." Mike says.

"The doctors usually say that it can be like a virus." I murmured.

"It infected him." Mike nodded, agreeing with where I was going with it.

"And so this virus, it's connecting him to the tunnels?" Max asks beside me, holding the Shadow Monster drawing.

"To the tunnels, the monsters, the Upside Down- everything." Mike confirmed, nodding viciously.

"Whoa! Slow down. Slow down." Steve says, also with us.

"Okay, listen because we're only explaining this once..." I murmured, stepping closer to the tall boy with crazy hair. "The Shadow Monster is inside of everything. And the vines come under everything, right?"

Steve nodded slowly. "And if the vines feel something like pain, then so does Will." Mike explained to him.

"And so does Dart." Lucas added on. Dart...

"Yeah, like what Mr Clarke taught us." Mike carried on, still talking at twenty miles an hour. Too fast for some.

"Hive mind?" Steve asked, shaking his head confused.

"A collective consciousness." Dustin turned over to him, also speaking at the same super-fast speed. "It's a super-organism."

"This... thing," I say, pointing to the Shadow Monster drawing. "it's the thing that controls it all. It's the brain." Dustin took hold of the drawing from me, eyes going slightly wider.

"Like the Mind Flayer..." I'm no DnD nerd, and I only play it as they prefer to play with five than four in the party. But Dustin just hit the nail head on. Lucas snapped his fingers, finger guns over at Dustin.

"My God..." I muttered. Like the Mind Flayer...

"The what?" Both Steve and Max asked, looking between the four of us.