STICKS AND STONES ↝ S. HARRINGTON

[11]

One by one, the group flooded out of the Byers house in search of the cars sitting in the driveway, everyone eager to follow Chief Hopper with his plan for the sensory deprivation tank. As they hurried outside, Jonathan and Michelle ran for the shed in the backyard, to retrieve the old kiddie pool in the hopes that, by some miracle, they would now be able to use it to find Will in the other, darker Hawkins the kids had referred to as the Upside Down.

"Where are we going?" Joyce asked as Hopper led the group, pulling open the door to his truck.

"The high school," Hopper explained. "They've already stocked up on salt for de-icing this winter. It might be a long shot, but if anywhere will have enough, it'll be there. Joyce, you and the kids ride with me, the rest of you, follow close behind."

"Here," Becca said, turning to Anna and tossing her her car keys. "You drive over Dustin, and I'll hitch a ride with Jonathan. I think you two have a lot of catching up to do, and you might not get a chance for a while."

Anna glanced over at her little brother, who had parted from his friends to come join her, and then looked back at Becca, nodding. "Thanks, Becs." she said. "Come on, Dusty, you're with me."

"We'll meet you guys at the school," Nancy said as Anna and Dustin hopped into the front seats of Becca's car, the eldest of the two Henderson siblings quickly turning the key in the ignition to start the engine.

It was quiet inside the car, except for the melodies of a Blondie tape playing softly through the speakers at a low volume. As Anna followed Hopper's car out of the Byers' driveway, she finally looked over at Dustin, who was staring out the passenger side window. "So when did you guys find her?" Anna finally asked, breaking the silence as Dustin turned to look back at her.

"The night we both snuck out to look for Will," Dustin said softly. "I know, I know, I shouldn't have lied to you and said that we didn't find anything, but we didn't want to risk you telling Nancy and having Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler find out Mike was hiding her in their basement."

"You guys hid her in a basement?" Anna asked before shaking her head. "Okay, back up. Tell me everything that happened that night. The truth this time, Dustin. You and I split up so I could go meet Becca and Landon and you could go meet the boys. What happened then?"

"We rode our bikes down to Mirkwood to look, like I told you," he explained. "Only, we didn't go back to Mike's just because it started raining. When we got to Mirkwood, we found Eleven out in the rain. She escaped from the bad guys in the lab and had nowhere to go, so Mike had the idea to take her back with us. Turns out, she's got these super badass powers and knew Will. She'd seen him before, in the Upside Down, so she's been helping us try to find him.

"Anna, she's so cool." Dustin continued. "She flipped that van with her mind, and she made Troy pee himself in front of everybody at school. Broke his arm, too, when he tried to mess with us."

"And what about the bad guys?" Anna asked. "The ones from the lab?"

"They mean some serious shit." Dustin said. "They've been trying to come after us to get Eleven back. That's why we were hiding out at the junkyard when you called us on the walkie. They made her open the gate between here and the Upside Down in the first place. Whatever they want her for, it's not good. We could be saving the world by protecting her from them."

Anna's stomach turned at the thought of the men working for the lab going after the boys in order to get Eleven back in their grasp, couldn't bear to think about what might happen to her brother and his friends if anything went wrong, but she pushed the thoughts out of her mind as he continued speaking.

"So what about you?" Dustin asked. "Did you find anything that night? How did you end up monster hunting in the woods?"

"That part was true, the search parties didn't find anything." Anna explained. "The night of Becca's party, Barb went missing, and Jonathan took a picture of her with that creature in the background. We were trying to hunt it down, see if we could find where it lived and hopefully find Barb, but Nancy wound up trapped in the Upside Down and we had to get her back out."