Chapter Text
“How could you be so irresponsible? Don’t look at the floor, look at me.”
Lucas forces his chin up. He locks eyes with his father and nearly falters. It’s impossible to be strong anymore. His jaw stings. Stop it, he chastises, now is not the time to cry! Erica wouldn’t let him hear the end of it. Beside him she’s standing tall, somehow still proud of herself for being a part of this massacre.
And massacre is putting it lightly.
Yesterday at the hospital, Nancy rose from the rubble and brushed the plaster off her dress. Will watched her suspiciously; she had been locked inside a room with a mini Mind Flayer for how long? She couldn’t say, and neither could Jonathan. He’d been rendered useless by a metal stool to the back that cracked several ribs. But Nancy? She was fine.
Until later that day, when Eleven saw Billy in her mind. Nancy stood up from her spot on Hopper’s couch and walked stiffly to the front door, ignoring Mike hissing her name. Since he was glued to El’s side, it was Lucas who got up and ran after her.
Will caught him on the porch. “Don’t,” he said. “She’s not herself.”
The implication was clear. Still, Lucas couldn’t reason watching Nancy disappear into the woods without hearing the words. “You think she’s Flayed?”
“I wasn’t sure at first,” Will sighed, “but now I am. The way she left, I think He just called her to the meeting place.”
Lucas thought about what Jonathan had told them an hour earlier, before he fell into a wounded sleep on Eleven’s bed. The men who attacked them at the hospital melted and converged into a monster. “And if the Mind Flayer called her…”
“He probably called everyone.”
“Shit.” Lucas shook his head. “What are we going to tell your brother?”
“Jonathan? What are we going to tell Mike?”
Thankfully they weren’t responsible for breaking the news to him-- not then. It wasn’t long after that El came wailing out of her trance.
Currently, in his own living room, their father clears his throat. “Well? What do you have to say for yourself?”
Lucas walks a quivering tightrope. If he tells too much truth, he could land his family in danger. If he tells too little, he could be grounded for life. Whichever direction he takes he runs the risk of not being believed, and that feels a lot like falling.
So he ventures carefully. “Remember two years ago, when Will went missing?”
Their father’s eyes widen. “What does that have to do with the Russians at Starcourt tonight?”
“Everything! This town is seriously messed up, and it just so happens that my friends are involved. The mons-- the Russians were coming after El tonight. We couldn’t stand by and let her get hurt!”
Their mother cocks her head. “El? Is that the new girl from school?”
“No,” his sister interjects. “That’s Max, his girlfriend.”
“Erica!”
“Lucas,” his father warns.
He takes a deep breath before answering. “El isn’t the new girl from school. She’s Chief Hopper’s daughter.”
“All the more reason for you to stay out of it!” His father shouts. “You know I don’t trust that man, and we taught you better than to get involved in someone else’s business.”
“It’s not that simple! If you’d let me explain--”
“I don’t care to hear anything else from you. No radio, no phone, no leaving the house for the rest of the summer.”
“What!?”
“That goes for you too, Erica.” Their mother puts her hands on her hips. “Are we clear?”
Lucas wants to scream that no, we aren’t clear. Why should be be punished when none of this was in his control? He was barely twelve years old when he got sucked into this drama, and he’s starting to think he’ll never escape it.
“We’re clear,” Erica says.
She might not escape this either. Maybe their father is right: Lucas has been totally irresponsible.
Now he’s defeated. “We’re clear.”
“Good. Bring me the radio, now.”
Obediently Lucas trots upstairs to fetch the radio on his nightstand. It was a Christmas gift last year. The best gift he could have asked for— it even reaches Max if the weather’s nice. He holds it in his hands like a dying pet and wonders, did his friends make it home yet? He made it out of the mall without any injuries, and was driven home immediately by Officer Powell. The others weren’t so fortunate.
“Mike, Dustin, are you guys home? It’s Lucas, over.” He waits a minute, then adds, “If anyone can hear me, I’m grounded. I’ve gotta turn in my radio. I'm…”
How could he press every feeling in his wiry body into a few words? The fear alone is larger than the Mind Flayer itself. Where’s Max, and is she safe from Neil’s reaction to his only child’s death? Did anyone pick up Jonathan from Hopper’s cabin? What is Mike going to say to his parents about Nancy? The Mind Flayer is dead, meaning so are all the hosts that congealed to make its viscerous form.
“Lucas, it’s Dustin, do you copy?”
“Yes! Yes, I copy! I’m grounded for the rest of the summer and I don’t know when I’m going to see any of you again. Tell everyone. Over!”
“You help save the world and get grounded for it? Are you kidding? Over.”
“Yeah, and so did Erica. Keep an eye on Mike, would you? And tell Max… I don’t know, tell her I’m sorry I can’t be there. Over.”
“Keep an eye on Mike and tell Max you love her? Got it. Over.”
“What? Dustin! I swear to God, if you—” His father calls him from downstairs. “Shit, I gotta go. Over and out!”
That night his subconscious percolates right below the surface of sleep. Each little noise wakes him partially, looping him into another row of crochet ringlet dreams. Yanking someone by the hair and sinking a knife into the flesh at the corner of their jaw. Closing all the blinds around a stranger’s home and hiding in a dark bedroom, holding Max. Erica wearing Robin’s sailor outfit, bleeding from the left eye. The Mind Flayer ripping El’s leg off. Chief Hopper.
Late the next morning Lucas wakes up tangled in his own bed sheets, feeling foreign. His damp body is stiff from stress. Images strobe through his mind like sunlight through the leaves of the giant oak above his bedroom. Yanking back the wrist rocket and letting her fly. Eleven holding Max, both of them sobbing. He sees Robin sitting beside Max in the parking lot, sharing a shock blanket in spite of stranger status. Explaining to Officer Powell they need to pick his sister up from a hill on the other side of town.
He stretches and hits something-- someone.
“Erica?”
She grumbles a sordid insult.
So it happened.
It really happened.