╭ ╮
━━━━ " 📂 "
𝙋 𝘼 𝙍 𝘼 𝘿 𝙄 𝙎 𝙀
╰ ╯
MIKE WHEELER HAD A KID IN HIS BASEMENT, and Sadie had just left. She had left Eleven with three boys who had no idea how to take care of anything larger than a tortoise - and Sadie still had to remind Dustin to put some green in for Yurtle.
Oh Jesus. And she was supposedly trouble as well - as in serious trouble, where these so called 'bad man' would kill all of them for being in a ten foot vicinity of her. She came from a 'bad place' with 'bad men' - from the looks of her some mental asylum, but Sadie had done her research into the nearest, and Pennhurst seemed a mostly decent place.
But she couldn't quite get over how she had left Mike, Dustin and Lucas with her, considering everything. She had left three boys with a clearly terrified, malnourished and troubled girl just so she could sit on the loungers at the edge of Steve Harrington's pool with Barb, Nancy, Tommy and Carol - not to mention the man of the house himself, who was currently smoking what was definitely not a cigarette.
"So, Sadie." Carol spoke up from where she was stood with her boyfriend, who currently has his arms around her waist and flicking the lighter he had thrown to Steve just a moment ago. "How was your little trip with Jonathan? Didn't contract anything, did you?"
Sadie was forced to bring her thoughts away from Eleven and the boys, eyes settling on the pair, silent for a moment. "Your hair is about to go up in flames." She said calming, turning towards Steve. "They're not just for you, are they?" She pointed towards the box of beers.
Steve stared. "No - no, of course not." He handed her one, watching as she opened it and took a sip. "Where did you go with him?"
"And did you take a shower after you got back?" Carol couldn't help it - Sadie could see the laughter bubbling up in her eyes and she shifted uncomfortably, meeting Barb's eyes.
"I went to help him look for Will, at his dad's." Sadie replied quietly, drawing her knees up to her chest. "Up in Indianapolis."
"You went to Indianapolis?" Nancy sat up, eyes wide.
"Yeah. Where Will wasn't, by the way." The Henderson girl added, turning back towards Barb as she heard Tommy comment about Jonathan probably trying to cover up his tracks. "Do you think we could leave soon?" She asked, voice lowered.
"I don't know, but this was even worse than I expected." Barb shuddered, and not just from the cold. "At least you're getting something out of them, nobody's said a word to me since I arrived."
"I'd swap with you any day." Sadie grumbled, sitting back in her seat. Neither Carol nor Tommy had any sense of decency - at least Steve had thought to tell them to shut up earlier on, gaze landing on said boy as he reached for another beer can and stood up, pocket knife in hand as he slit the bottom of the can and drunk from it.
"You are a cliché, you do realise that?" Nancy continued, balanced on the edge of her sun lounger with her hands folded in her lap.
"You are a cliché." Steve replied as he took a drag of the cigarette. "What with your.. with your grades and your band practise."
"I'm so not in band!" Nancy laughed. Her friends - who knew better - shook their heads at the assumption.
"Okay, party girl." Steve sat up a little bit. "Why don't you just, uh, show us how it's done then?" He held out the knife to her and Nancy got up, Sadie taking a sip from her beer normally.
Both Sadie and Barb shared a glance, both equally uncomfortable with what was happening. But if Nancy was to do all this - who were they to try and stop her?
"You gotta make a little hole right in-" Steve began instructing her, until she cut him off.
"I got it." Nancy replied, looking back at the Harrington boy.
"Yeah, she's smart, you douche!" Tommy and Carol lived closer to the group now, Carol still keeping a distance from Sadie and trying not to look disgusted s
Chanting of 'chug' grew louder and louder once Nancy had made the hole in the can, holding it upwards as she did just that, the can hitting the floor as she finished it, hands raised in victory.
Tommy began whooping, Carol wincing at the loudness in her ear.
"Barb, you wanna try?" Nancy's gaze had flickered over to the ginger-haired girl, who hadn't said a word since she had arrived.
"What?" The Holland girl's head tilted down in disbelief. "No." Sadie sat up in her chair as Nancy moved to get another can, curious to see how it would play out. "No, I don't want to, thanks."
"Come on..." Nancy looked to Sadie, trying to encourage her to help her convince Barb "It's fun! Just give it a-" She began again after another protest.
"Nance.." Barb looked up as the Wheeler girl pressed the can and knife into her hands. Barbara stood up, and they all watched with baited breath as she pressed the blade to the metal.
The knife slipped too early and sliced down her finger, unharmed beer can falling to the ground as blood sputtered from the cut.
"Gnarly." Tommy commented almost approvingly.
"Oh shit." Sadie exclaimed. "Barb - are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm-"
"Barb - you're bleeding." Nancy looked guilty, avoiding Sadie's eyes as she looked towards her best friend.
"I'm fine." Barb insisted, tone set. "Where's your bathroom?" She asked, leaning past the striped-sleeved arm to Steve, who stood up hurriedly.
"Oh, it's.. It's, uh, down past the kitchen, the the left." Steve replied.
"I'll come with." Sadie got to her feet, avoiding Nancy's gaze and the chuckles that came from Carol and Tommy. "Do you have first aid in there?" She turned towards Steve, who nodded. "Good - Nance, we'll be right back."
✧
"I knew this was a bad idea." Barb hissed, following Sadie down the hallway as they entered Steve's house through the sliding glass doors. "We should have dropped Nancy off and gone and watched a movie. The Hawk might still have been open for one of their late night viewings. Now I've sliced my hand open because Nance couldn't let me boring in front of her new friends."
Sadie yawned, stifling it with her hands as they reached the kitchen. She pulled some tissue from the roll. "Here - take this whilst we find the bathroom in this massive house." She said, Barb wrapping the tissue around her hand. "But in a way... I don't blame her for wanting to spend time with them, even if they're horrible people."
"You don't? Well.. if she wants to hang out with them then it's her problem, I just don't see why she had to involve us in it." Barb grumbled, following Sadie in absolutely no hurry at all, instead taking in the sights of the considerably large Harrington house. "She could've come by herself - I have no excuse but you went to Indianapolis to find the kid you babysit - you must be tired."
"Trust me, I am." Sadie confirmed, pushing open one of the doors and finding themselves in the garage. Her eyes landed on the flickering light bulb before pulling the door shut again, turning back towards Barb. "The bathroom isn't in there." She joked slightly, although her heart wasn't in it and instead she just looked exhausting. "He said left, didn't he?"
Barb confirmed her words with a nod of her head, helping Sadie look until they pushed open another of the doors and were faced with a neat half bathroom - it only had a toilet and sink.
"Here we go." Sadie pushed the door open further and ushered Barb in, flicking the light switch and propping the door open before continuing in, crouching down and opening the cupboard below the sink. "He said he had first aid as well.. there's no box or bag or anything."
Barb was currently replacing the tissue paper around the cut, the bleeding being reduced just a little bit by it. "You don't think I'll need stitches, do you?" The Holland girl looked worried, Sadie still half concealed by the cabinet.
"Depends how deep the cut is." Sadie's voice was muffled. "Maybe run it under water for a little bit. Then I can try and get a good look."
"Let me guess, you took a first aid course?" Barb rose an eyebrow and Sadie nodded, humming to herself as she finally found a mismatched set of first aid, scattered around the bottom shelf in the cabinet. "I'll just go to the emergency room or something."
"By yourself?" Sadie rose her eyebrows, stacking up several items in her arm. "I can't go because of.. Dustin." She didn't care to explain it was because of Eleven and the fact she was exhausted out of her mind. "And you freaked last time your mom left you alone there to get even a coffee."
"You're right." Barb groaned as she held her hand under the tap, watching water run over it. "Can't you just bandage it for now and I'll pretend to cut it in the morning? That way I can miss school as well."
"Doctors can tell how old a cut is. And especially if there's been medical treatment." Sadie finally stood up, carefully placing the products onto the spare surface area. "But from what I see, it doesn't look deep enough for stitches.. or in slightly nicer terms, if treated nicely it'll heal quickly."
"Right, thanks." Barb knew that she was smart, of course she was - but Sadie was on another level of genius; she knew so much about such a variety of things it was unbelievable. "So, is this gonna hurt?" She asked, as Sadie twisted the lid off of the saline solution she had found, she took a sniff of the liquid.
"Hm. This might have gone off." She muttered to herself, before shrugging and dowsing a small gauze pad in it. "No matter. I'll just clean the wound more, put one of these.. abnormally large bandaids over it and then bandages, just in case. Ready?"
"Sadie - is this gonna hurt?" Barb repeated her question. "It's just... I don't have a very high pain tolerance. I cried getting my ears pierced."
"Oh." Sadie breathed out, holding up the gauze pad and reaching forward to turn off of the faucet. "Then yeah, Barb, this is gonna hurt like a bitch."
✧
Sadie exited the bathroom, sending a smile back to Barb as she closed the door behind her, allowing her the promised alone time that she needed to compose herself, deciding that now would probably be a good time to try and phone the Wheeler household, under the pretence she was using the phone in the office, which had been opened up for public use during the assembly.
She didn't actually know if it had been of course, considering that she wasn't actually there, but Mrs Wheeler would trust her if she claimed the moon landing was faked. Assumed that she would have the evidence to back it up, of course.
But before she used it, she would ask Steve. He might be an asshole, but he was actually being pretty polite to her and Barb, and considering Carol's comments about Sadie helping Jonathan with Will and everything she had said in the last, that niceness was greatly appreciated.
However, before Sadie could reach the glass doors again, she was faced with the sight of the four remaining teenagers dripping from head to toe in water on the living room carpet.
"Sadie - we jumped in the pool." Nancy offered an explanation as she saw her friend, wrapping the towel Steve had given her closer around her shoulders.
"And we're going to borrow his parents room." Carol's eyebrows jerked upwards in almost mock aggression and victory towards the girl, as if Sadie would ever want Tommy H - considering the way he ushered Carol up the stairs, she was halfway convinced he would never meet someone else.
Nancy and Steve remained, the Harrington boy shrugged and looking around his living room. "You're free to go back outside, there are more beers on the side." He told her, only to see her shake her head.
"I was actually wondering if I could use your phone?" Sadie asked. "I just have to make a call."
"Is Barb's hand okay?" Nancy looked worried. "Is she going to need stitches?"
"I don't think so." Sadie replied. "I patched her up pretty well, so if the depth was what it looked like she won't do. "I really have to call Mike - Steve, where's your phone?"
"As in my brother?" Nancy's eyebrows raised. "You mean for Dustin, right?"
"Yeah, sure whatever." Sadie shrugged, turning her gaze back to Steve. "Where is it?"
"There's one in the entrance by the door." Steve told her. "We'll follow you there. Come on Nance." He urged them forward, leading through back around to the hallway they came in, making his way up the stairs before Nancy did, which was when Sadie was joined by Barb.
Barb meant the Henderson girl's eyes before looking up at Nancy, calling her name. "Nancy - where are you going?" She asked.
"Nowhere." Nancy clutched the towel tighter around her. "Just... upstairs. To change. I... fell in the pool."
Sadie paused. That was a different story to what she had heard.
"Why don't you go ahead and go home." Nancy suggested. "Both of you. I'll just get a ride or something. I'm sorry for making you come."
Barb looked over to Sadie in disbelief. "Nance!"
"Barb.. I'm fine." The Wheeler girl replied.
"This isn't you."
"I'm fine." Nancy insisted. "Just go ahead and go home, okay? I don't want you to waste your evening." And with that, Nancy made her way upstairs.
Once again, Barbara turned to Sadie, who was holding onto the phone, about to dial the numbers. "We can talk to her about it tomorrow." The Henderson girl promised. "Why don't you go wait out by the pool whilst I call Dustin about picking him up in about half an hour and we can go to Family Video and pick up some snacks and go watch a movie at mine? My mom looked desperate for a girls night and seeing as Dustin goes to bed as soon as he comes home from Mike's, he won't whine about me renting Fame again."
"Yeah." Barb took a deep breath before smiling. "Yeah, that sounds good. I'll go and wait by the pool."
"Okay, I'll be like two minutes, okay?" Sadie smiled, tapping in the numbers as Barb made her way back outside, the frown on her face catching in the mirror when she heard that odd sound in the background as she waited for someone in the Wheeler household to pick up. But eventually, someone did.
"Hi, Karen Wheeler speaking." Of course it was Mrs Wheeler - Sadie was going to have to be more artistic about this than she thought. "Hello?"
"Sorry for the late call, Mrs Wheeler. It's me, Sadie. I'm just calling to speak to Dustin?" Sadie replied, tapping her fingers on the table below.
"Oh Sadie - can you put Nancy on for a moment before I pass you on?" Mrs Wheeler asked, and Sadie hesitated.
"Actually Mrs Wheeler, Nancy and Barb are still out on the field." She lied. "But if it's any help I think we might be going to... get some food after it ends." Sadie felt bad about it, and although she didn't exactly approve of what Nancy was doing, who was she to stop her?
"I see. Can you remind her that I asked her to be home by ten, please?" Karen sighed. "I'll put you onto Dustin now."
It took a few seconds, but finally Lucas picked up the phone from down in the basement. "Sadie, it's Lucas." The boy replied.
"Hi, first can you tell Dustin I'm coming to pick him up in about half an hour and he better not start whining because I'm not going to argue with him and second, I left the bag under a bush outside the house." Sadie waited, listening to Lucas relay the message to her friend. "There's nothing weird or girly in the bag, it's just some clothes and snacks. If you're planning on taking El out, she needs to look less like a guy and more like a girl. Maybe a Halloween wig? Nancy should have something."
"Yeah, okay." Lucas once again relayed the words to his friends and Eleven. "Is that everything?"
"Yeah. Tell Dustin to be ready, and be careful, okay?" Sadie listened to Lucas promise before hanging up, placing the phone back in it's hold before making her way out to the backyard, sliding open the glass doors and stepping out, looking around.
Strange. It was completely empty.
Barb wasn't by the pool loungers, or sat on the table beneath the window, or on the edge of the pool. It was just Sadie there, almost stepping on a halfway crushed beer can as she came down onto the stone.
"Barb?" She called out, looking around. She didn't get a reply, just looking towards the trees as she heard a rustling and an odd click. "Maybe she went home." She muttered to herself.
It was completely plausible, even if she had promised Sadie with a movie night of watching Fame with her mom. But Barb had wanted to come there even less than Sadie did, and she ended up hurting herself in the process.
Maybe she was worried about her hand and wanted her mom to take her to the emergency room. That was most likely it - Barb hated hospitals, and would only ever go if she had her mom by her side.
But even as Sadie explained that to herself, she couldn't help but feel as if that wasn't quite right. Which was strange, because usually Sadie was right about things. She remembered people's likes, dislikes, phobias and favourites and remembered them with an ease that other people didn't get.
It was academically as well. She was right about almost everything in her studies; when she entered all competitions, when she had first heard about Dmitri Mendeleev's periodic table and it's missing and predicted elements, she was able to work out those missing without looking at the modern day table. She could do complex mathematics in her head, she was fluent in several languages and always said everything right.
Sadie was known for doing things right. She was bullied by Carol for being too smart about things, to an extent it actually worried people.
But it had nothing to do with her intelligence and all to do with her primal instincts as she stood still in the middle of Steve Harrington's backyard. Something wasn't right, and it wasn't because she had a good idea of what Steve and Nancy as well as Carol and Tommy were doing upstairs.
"Barb?" She said once more, looking around the dimly lit area for any sign of her friend. "Barb?" She repeated, voice wavering this time. She got no reply, her head snapping in the direction of the forest as she heard a weird growling noise before deciding to leave.
Barb had to have just gone hole. There was no other explanation for it. But when Sadie got to her car, Barb's was still there.
And although confused, Sadie had just walked three blocks in record time by cutting through people's backyards. Maybe she had just gotten there quicker.
Hoping she was right, Sadie pulled away from the side of the road and headed back into the town of Hawkins, hoping that Family Video was still open - although she knew it would be, it opened until midnight every day and they weren't quite there yet.
If Barb didn't want to watch Fame, that was okay. Sadie didn't particularly want to either. But she had to distract herself from the fact that Will had not run away to Lonnie's, and her life had become a whole lot more complicated by the girl now living in the Wheeler family's basement.