teenage tragedy (Max Mayfield)

2. twelve

"It's not like it was before. It's grown. A lot. And, I mean, that's considering we can get in there. The place is crawling with those dogs," Hopper said.

They were all in the kitchen trying to work out a plan, with Cammie trying not to fall asleep.

"Demo-dogs," Dustin corrected him. Hopper sighed.

"I'm sorry, what?" Hopper asked.

"I said, uh, Demo-dogs. Like Demogorgon and dogs. You put them together, it sounds pretty badass-" Dustin said.

Cammie groaned and slammed her head against Eleven's arm. She giggled and wrapped an arm around Cammie's waist.

Max, stood across from them by Steve, kept her eyes on the two of them. She knew they were sisters, considering they were both lab rats. She knew Eleven liked Mike, as it was pretty obvious. But Max also knew now she definitely liked Cammie, and she thought Cammie might like her back.

She hadn't pulled away when Max was going to kiss her on the roof of the bus. She was going to kiss her back and she had seemed genuinely upset before when she thought Max was apologising for almost kissing her.

Still, she couldn't ignore the fact that she was getting a bit jealous at how close Cammie and Eleven were. From what Lucas told her, they'd barely known each other for a week when Eleven had disappeared last time, so Max knew they were catching up on lost time and rebuilding their relationship, but she was still jealous of the fact that Cammie was sat on Eleven's knee.

"How is this important right now?" Hopper interrupted.

"It's not. I'm sorry," Dustin looked down.

"I can do it," Eleven said.

"You're not hearing me," Hopper said.

"I'm hearing you. I can do it," Eleven said.

"And she's got me, too. Power bank," Cammie said.

Steve rubbed his face unsurely. He didn't like this idea at all.

"Even if they can, there's still another problem. If the brain dies, the body dies," Mike said.

"I thought that was the whole point," Max frowned.

"It is, but if we're really right about this... I mean, if El closes the gate and kills the mind flayer's army..." Mike said.

"Will's a part of that army," Lucas said.

"Closing the gate will kill him," Mike said.

Joyce stood up and headed to Will's room. Everyone followed quickly.

"He likes it cold," she said.

"What?" Hopper asked.

"It's what Will kept saying to me. He likes it cold," she slammed his window shut. "We keep giving it what it wants."

"If this is a virus, and Will's the host, then," Nancy frowned.

"Then we need to make the host uninhabitable," Johnathon said.

"So if he likes it cold," Nancy said.

"We need to burn it out of him," Joyce said.

"We have to do it somewhere he doesn't know this time," Mike said.

"Yeah, somewhere far away," Dustin said.

"Am I going with you guys?" Cammie ran after Hopper as he headed towards his car.

"Can Eleven use your power from anywhere?" he said.

"I think so. I mean, she has before, yeah, but it's probably stronger if we're together," she said.