𝐖𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐍. ˢᵗᵉᵛᵉ ʰᵃʳʳⁱⁿᵍᵗᵒⁿ ¹

040

THE NIGHT BEFORE
after it was all over

     𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐒 𝐖𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐒𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐁𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 in the big black sky overhead, as Maureen Philbin stepped out of her house in the dark. She clutched her robe tight to her body to shield out the November cold, as her hair blew in the soft wind just a little bit behind her. She paused on the front porch with arms crossed to keep the robe closed, as the big door shut behind her, squinting her eyes to stare forward at Jim Hopper down the lawn. He was parked at her curb, the big police SUV, and he was leaning on the passenger side door, ankles crossed with a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.

    Maureen had just taken Lori inside. Asking a billion questions on the way in— where were you? What happened to your head? Are you alright? What's the police doing here?— and Lori's answer to all of the above was simply: he's gonna talk to you. She was too tired, too sore, and too overwhelmed to answer any of her mother's questions as they walked up the stairs just moments ago, but she knew Hopper was going to clear everything up— or something like that. So, Maureen decided that whatever her daughter got herself into that night, she needed to sleep, and she'd get her answers from Lori's ride home: the goddamn Chief of Police.

    And now Maureen was stepping down her big front lawn, slippers in the grass, towards that Chief of Police. She didn't know if she was mad, or thankful, but she knew that she was so, so confused. She stepped down the lawn in the dark, with nothing but her house porch light on, arms crossed with that usual punctual aura she always held. Except her punctual aura was sort of punctured. She looked tired, worried, and stressed. You could tell even in the dark.

     Hopper slowly stood up from leaning against the car when he noticed her approaching. He took the cigarette from his lips, puffed out a cloud of smoke and let it dangle in his fingers. "Are you the mother?" he asked, voice heavy against the silence of the street.

    "What does it look like, officer," she said, glancing back to the house— implying that obviously, yes, she was the mother.

    Hopper tilted his chin up, instantly noticing at those first words where Lori got her bluntness from. And the closed off stance, arms tightly crossed— this woman was definitely Lori's mom.

    "I have to make sure," he said, as he took a drag from the cigarette and directed the huff away from Maureen— figuring if mother and daughter were so similar, she probably didn't like the smell of smoke either. He took in a long breath, "Look, ma'am. I'll make this short for you."

    "No," Maureen cut in, speaking sternly. "I've been sitting up for hours waiting for that teenage girl to come home. Hours. I want every detail." she pointed up to Lori's window. "And nothing less. Don't cut it short."

    Hopper took a deep breath and rubbed a hand over his beard, flicking the cigarette.

    "Where the hell was she?" She tilted her chin up, voice hard.

    Hopper took a drag and huffed it out slowly. "You've heard of the story? What happened last year. With the kid."

    She crossed her arms tighter, thinking about when Claudia had called her last year, talking about some child— her son Dustin's friend?— getting lost in the forest, later "coming back to life". And of course she'd heard a little rumor or two in the past weeks, walking in town and such. "I'm familiar." she said, sort of confusedly.

    "Well, uh," He hesitated for a moment, glancing up to Lori's window. "Long story short— kid got lost again, the Byers kid, sometime around noon yesterday."