Elijah Brooks's life is turned upside down when his best friend Will Byers goes missing one night. Teaming up with an unlikely group of friends, Eli finds himself transforming from a quiet bookworm to a courageous adventurer willing to do anything f...
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THE SKY WAS REMARKABLY CLEAR on the day of Will Byers's funeral, and everyone gathered under the shockingly warm sun to hear the preacher's words. Eli was blocking said speech out, his eyes trained on the small brown casket that had just been lowered into the ground.
It was always a strange thing to see the dead body of your best friend be put into the ground at just twelve years old.
He felt entirely not apart of the funeral, as though he were some extra spectator, watching several feet away and in the shadows of other, unknown graves. Even now, watching the casket sit lamely in the rectangular trench, Eli didn't feel as though it was all real. Nothing had truly felt real ever since Will died, save for that unusual moment in the Byers's bedroom.
At the reception, Eli sat with his two sisters, Martha, and Rene quietly at a table, entrenched in his own painful thoughts. He was wedged in a tremendous conflict, between having hope that Will was still out there and Hawkins Lab really was behind a coverup, or accepting the miserable fact that he was gone.
Nobody had really spoken to Eli, no adult or child, not even his own sisters or friends. It was a somewhat unspoken, silent bubble that wafted around him that morning, commanding that nobody speak to the fragile boy and shatter his heart. Eli wasn't sure if he was grateful or insulted by the sudden avoidance of him.
"Look at those weirdos," Rene murmured, her mint blue eyes glaring at a group of boys in the distance. Eli suppressed a chuckle, knowing he could always rely on the Campbell girl to keep things feeling normal even in the most peculiar situations. He followed her gaze, his smile faltering when he discovered it was Mike, Lucas, and Dustin she was watching.
Mr. Clarke was hunched over the table while the three boys seemed to be listening intently, all three of their rumps barely sat in their seats. The science teacher was drawing unreadable figures on a paper plate, enthusiastically gesturing to his drawn marks to his audience. They were too far away to know what it was they were discussing, but the scene, especially at a funeral reception, was entirely unusual.
"What are they doing?" Eve pondered, and Eli scoffed in disapproval.
"They can't seriously be having a science lesson right now," he spat. Shockingly, the Brooks boy was clambering out of his seat and began heading towards the group just as Mr. Clarke abandoned the boys to their own company.
"Hey guys," Eli greeted them casually, and his curiosity mingled with faint annoyance had melted away any possibility of nerves from socializing. His amber eyes bore particularly into the flat plate that laid in the center of the table. "What are you guys doing?"
All three boys jumped up in sync, their eyes huge. Dustin's hand lashed out and furiously wrapped around the plate, drawing it to his chest and away from Eli's perfect view of it. Eli squinted his eyes at the three, noting how anxious they all seemed.
