꧁꧂
ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ꜰᴏᴜʀ: ᴡᴇ'ʀᴇ ɴᴏᴛ ɢᴏɪɴɢ ʙᴀᴄᴋ
"JESUS." Joyce shouted from the living area, now in pieces. "Have you seen them?" Was it a normal day in the Byers house if we didn't lose something? No.
"Trust me, we're looking, Mom." I told her, going through the kitchen drawers.
"Yeah, we're... we're looking." Will says, looking through his school bag.
"A-HA!" We all turned our heads to Bob. "Found 'em!" He jangled the keys in his hand as he walked towards Mom, triumphant. "Hiding under some jeans, sneaky little buggers."
"Is this seriously how we just spent half of the morning?" I asked with a laugh, while Mom kissed him on the cheek and praised Bob's never-ending list of skills.
"Can you take Will and Park to school today? I cannot be late again." Joyce says to Johnathan.
Meanwhile, Johnathan's lovely priorities came into action. "He's staying over now?" He asked her quietly, making me smirk as I put my jacket on.
"Can you just take them, please?" She repeated the question to our brother more sternly this time.
"I can take them." Bob says suddenly, everyone looking over at him.
"Will you make sure they get in okay?" Mom checked with him.
"Yeah, of course." Bob smiled sweetly at us. "What do you guys say? Wanna go for a ride in the Bobmobile?" He asks.
Will nervously looked at Mom while I smiled at him sweetly, nodding. "Of course."
⊹˚˖⁺
Music played on Bob's car radio before he looked at Will next to him. "Was that one of you two I heard milling around last night, or was that a ghost?" I shook my head when he looked at me in the mirror and he then glanced back at Will.
"Yeah." He says quietly. "Me, probably."
Bob nodded, glancing at him before back at the road. "Another nightmare?" He asked my twin.
"Uh... no." Will says quickly, too quickly.
"Did I ever tell you about Mr. Baldo?" The man asks after a moment of silence in the car.
"Mr... Baldo?" I questioned, confused.
"Yeah." The man smiled. "I was a little younger than you guys, standing in line for the Ferris wheel at the Roane County fair." Will was beginning to show interest, turning his body towards Bob as he listened to the man's story. He already understood the man. "And suddenly, I feel this fat white glove tap me on the shoulder. I spin around, and there he is." Part of me wanted to tell Bob to keep his eyes on the road, but I too was invested. "Mr. Baldo. 'Hey, kiddo, would you like a balloon?'." Both me and Will smiled at his impression.
"Go ahead, laugh. It's funny. It wasn't funny back then; I can tell you that." He told us. "I couldn't get him out of my head. Every night, he would come to me in my dreams. I got so bad that I made my mom stay in the room with me until I could fall asleep every night."
"Really?" My brother asked quietly.
"Really." Bob said. "It went on like that for months... And then one day, the nightmare suddenly stopped." The two of us made eye contact, invested in Bob's story. "Wanna know how?"
"How...?" Will asked, not knowing what else to say.
"Well, I fell asleep... and just like always, Mr. Baldo came to me. Only this time, I didn't run." Bob had caught Will's attention now. Fully. "This time, I stood my ground. I just looked at Mr. Baldo in his stupid face, and I said 'Go away. Go away!' Just like that, he was gone." I know to Will, that sounded great. If that it was as easy as that for the boy, he was certain going to take it. But me? I was too unsure. "Never saw him again. Easy-peasy, right?" He asks Will.
My brother nodded. "Easy-peasy."
⊹˚˖⁺
"PARKER!" As I walked down the corridor, I was met with the face of my favourite red head. The thoughts of Will had left me for the time being all because of her. What was she even doing to me?
"Maxine." I say in the same tone as her own, beginning to walk down the corridor with the skater girl.
She punched my arm at the name, unexpectedly. "How's Will?" She asked me after a moment of awkward silence. I had been a bit odd after Will's exit last night, more worried about him than the rest of the night.
"Yeah, uh, he's... alright." I say, turning to her face to face as she stopped at her locker. "Look, I'm sorry if I was weird last night-"
The girl shook her head quickly. "No, no, no- Don't apologise." Max told me. "If I cared about my brother, I would be the exact same way-" Raising an eyebrow at the mention of a brother Max gave me a look. "Trust me, he sucks." She said, slamming the locker shut after grabbing the right books. "Is he okay, though?"
"Yeah, uh, it's not the first time that's happened." I tell her, trying to keep honesty flowing. Not easy, but I was trying. "You know, he was lost in the woods for... a while-"
"A while? How long?" Max questioned me as we turned a corner, seeing both Lucas and Dustin throw heart eyes in her directions as we passed another hallway. If they wanted her to fall in love with them, they were going to have to talk to her.
"A week or so..." I murmured.
"I don't get it." She told me. "Lucas told me they call him zombie boy. Is it because everyone thought he was dead?"
Yeah, we had a funeral for him and everything- I held back saying all of that, and instead continued to play it off. "Yeah, a lot of the kids had no hope." I shrugged. "Some other kid had drowned at the quarry and looked like his body- due to decomposition- so we assumed-"
"Seriously? After a week?" She asked, turning to me. She didn't believe me, fuck.
"It's public knowledge, Max. Seriously. Just, be careful talking about it to him, alright? He's... sensitive still." She nodded slowly, understanding as much as she could from what I had to say before the bell for class rang. "Sorry, I get serious-"
"It's fine." The smile she gave me was far weaker than what I'd seen in the past from her. "I understand, Parker."
Smirking, I followed after into the class. "Glad you do, Maxine."
⊹˚˖⁺
"The case of Phineas Gage is one of the great medical curiosities of all time." Mr Clarke stood at the front of the class, projecting a picture of a skull for all of us to see. "Phineas was a railroad worker in 1884 who had a nightmarish accident. A large iron rod was driven completely through his head." The teacher drew a line through the skull for us to see with a marker. "Phineas miraculously survived. He seemed fine. And physically, yes, he was."
I threw a paper across to Max.
Does it creep you out, too, at the thought of sir shaving his moustache
- good-looking person
"But his injury resulted in a complete change to his personality." I glanced over at Max who was holding in a laugh too loud. "So much so that friends that new him started referring to him as 'No longer Gage'." I saw in the corner of my eye Max look away from the front of the class momentarily. "At the time, this was known as the American Crowbar Case. Although it wasn't a-" The teacher was suddenly cut off but a student suddenly throwing himself into the classroom.
"I AM SO SORRY, MR CLARKE." Dustin said as he walked in. "Really, I am so sorry." He seemed out of breath, like he'd... been running? "Please continue with the class. Don't mind me... Really, continue, please. Thanks-"
"Although... it wasn't a crowbar," The teacher continued, ignoring Dustin. "it was a rod, as I said." The teacher spoke on and on while Dustin and the three other boys spoke to each other. You know, casually having a party meeting in the middle of Mr Clarke's class.
Dustin then turned back and looked at me and Max. "AV Club. Lunch." He told the two of us.
"DUSTIN." Our teacher suddenly caught the boy out.
As he turned back, almost automatically, he said, "Yes, my lord?"
"Would you care to join the class now?" He asked him impatiently.
"Please, yes." He grabbed the book out of his bag as the teacher spoke, annoyed.
"The case of Phineas Gage." The teacher told him.
"Phineas Gage." He repeated the words that the teacher said before he got back to the lesson. Turning back to us, he whispered. "AV Club!" His reply from us included an annoyed expression and thumbs up from Max and a slow, tired nod from me.
⊹˚˖⁺
Dustin opened up the ghostbusters trap for Halloween and we all stared down at it. What. What in the name of fuck is that?
"His name is d'Artagnan." Dustin told us proudly as we watched HIM scutter around inside the trap. The boy then leaned over, picking him up without an issue before looking over at us. "Cute, right?"
"He looks like he's from a horror movie, Dustin." I tell him honestly. "You know- before the characters meet their doom they adopt a pet dog which turns into a dragon."
"D'Artagnan?" Mike repeated his name in disbelief.
"Dart for short." Dustin said to us.
"And he was in your trash?" Max confirmed, not believing it.
"Foraging for food." He added on.
Leaning away from the table, I nodded rapidly. "That makes it all much better, Dustin." He was insane to think any of this would be a clever idea. What even was it?
"You wanna hold him?" He first asked Max, of who shook her head quickly.
"No. No."
"He doesn't bite-"
"I don't want to..." As she tried to get him to NOT give him the animal, he already handed the creature to her, causing a yell, her then turning to me. "OH GOD HE'S SLIMY-"
"Don't-" Before I can even argue my case, she handed him over to me and I groaned. "Real mature, Maxine." I tell her before looking down at it. What the fuck was it...
"Cool right?" Dustin asked, causing me to shake my head. No. Turning silently, I pissed off Lucas and handed him the animal.
"UGH HE'S LIKE A LIVING BOOGER-" Lucas exclaimed, handing him over to Will, of who squirmed and handed him over to Mike. Mike did the same as me, looking at Dart far more closely.
"What is he?" Mike asked the boy, of who smiled even broader than he already was.
"My question exactly."
⊹˚˖⁺
The boy slammed books onto the AV club's table, flipping through pages as he spoke. "AT FIRST, I thought it was some type of pollywog."
"Pollywog?" Max repeated, not understanding the word.
"Scientific word for tadpole." I answered before Dustin, knowing his answer was going to be far longer and more confusing for the red head.
"A tadpole is the larval stage of a toad-" Dustin told her, causing me to send him a short-lived glare. She was not that stupid.
"I know was a tadpole is." Max confirmed to the boy.
"Alright, then you will know that most tadpoles are aquatic, right?" He opened up a page about the frog and tadpole life cycle, slamming his hand against it. "Well, Dart, he isn't. He doesn't need water."
"Makes perfectly logical sense." I tell Dustin, stood up straight, hands on hips. Wherever this was going, the excited look in Dustin's eyes was not sending me any good signals. So of course, I was getting stressed out where he was going with it. "Wait- Dustin, there's literally nonaquatic pollywogs." I tell him after a moment of thought.
"Terrestrial pollywogs? Yeah. Two of them." Dustin says, glancing down at Dart before turning the pages of the book again. "Indirana semipalmata." He turned the page to show us as he spoke. "And the Adenomera andreae." I pulled a face at the unfamiliar names. Did not get that far into the textbook, then... "One's from India, one's from South America. So, how did one end up in my trash?"
"Maybe some scientist brought it here, and it escaped?" Max offered. Part of me wanted to point out how shit the scientists of Hawkins were but chose against that whole conversation.
"Do you guys see that?" Mike asked, looking back down at Dart. We all looked down at the animal. "Looks like something is moving inside of it." I glanced at it, moving the AV room's desk lamp closer to Dart, but that did not go particularly well.
The animal crawled away quickly, rushing to the end of the table where Dustin caught him. He petted Dart as his own before looking back up at us. "And there's another thing. Reptiles, they're cold-blooded. Ectothermic, right?" I nodded as he looked around the room for clarification. "They love heat, the sun. Dart hates it. It hurts him."
"So, if he's not a pollywog, or a reptile..." Lucas murmured, not even finishing his sentence.
"Then I've discovered a new species." Dustin smiled, looking up at us all from Dart. Does anyone else get a little bit of a weird vibe? No? Just me? Okay...