Bob Newby wasn't a risk taker. He actually spent most of his life avoiding risks. He knew what he was good at, he pursued his interests which led to a stable career, and he tried his very best to stay out of the way of people that saw him as an easy target for the sake of their own amusement. That's why for the past few months now, when he woke up every day, he was stunned that things had seemingly worked out in his favour.
When they were in high school, Joyce Monroe was the prettiest girl in town. As far as Bob knew, she wasn't aware that he even existed. He had a massive crush on her back then but he never had the courage to do anything about it. They graduated. He left Hawkins to go to college for engineering. She stayed, married Lonnie Byers, and started a family. After several years away, a Radio Shack opened in town and he applied for the Manager position so that he could be closer to his parents, now retired. In his eyes, Joyce was still the prettiest around. And that crush he'd harboured back in high school? Turns out it never went away.
He spent all of last summer trying to build up the courage to go and talk to her, to ask her out to dinner. And then summer turned into autumn and tragedy befell her: her youngest son went missing. A different boy turned up drowned at the old quarry and the coroner mistook the body for Will's leading to a funeral and everything. Joyce might have gotten her son back alive after a week, but Bob could only imagine the Hell she went through during that time. Before the year was out, it seemed like another tragedy befell the family when she took in the daughter of some distant relatives, the only survivor of a violent car accident. He thought it would be inappropriate given the circumstances to suddenly go up to her and ask her out, so he refrained.
In February, right around Valentine's Day of all times, the tables seemingly turned.
Joyce walked into the Radio Shack accompanied by her niece on a Tuesday afternoon.
"Hi Bob," Joyce greeted with a radiant smile.
"Hi there," Bob managed to stammer out. "What can I do for you, ladies?" He asked, trying to be smooth.
"Bob, this is my niece Quincey," Joyce introduced.
"Nice to meet you," the girl in question said politely, a neutral expression on her face and the piercing eyes he'd heard so much about focused on him.
"The pleasure is all mine," Bob replied, trying to hide his discomfort under her scrutinising gaze. Unlike Joyce, who looked cold albeit being bundled up in a long puffer coat with a knit hat and chunky mittens, the teen looked unfazed by the cold, wearing a short coat with the zip pulled open revealing a knit turtleneck. He heard through the grapevine that she came from the Northeast, clearly accustomed to more severe winters than the ones they got in Hawkins. His eyes fell to the Atari controller in her hands.
"Something wrong with the controller?" Bob asked.
"Yes, it's why we're here actually," Joyce said, pulling the controller out of Quinn's hands and placing it on the counter. "Will, my younger son, and his friends were playing the other day and it just stopped working."
"When did you get the console?" Bob asked, picking up the controller and looking it over.
"Christmas," Joyce replied.
"Oh dear," Bob said, "you see, these things have manufacturing warranties. It's barely been two months since you purchased it so any issues would have been covered, except the seal has been tampered with," he explained, pointing out on the side how the top and bottom halves of the controller had a thin gap between the two.
"Oh no, what does that mean?" Joyce asked.
"Well, if you had brought it to me as it was, I could have sent it back to Atari with a notice and given you a brand new one today. But since the warranty is null and void now, I can try to see what the issue is but I can't guarantee that I'll be able to fix it," Bob replied, picking up the appropriate screwdriver and getting started on pulling the controller apart.
"The boys are in AV Club at the middle school and they thought they would have a crack at it, but that just resulted in wires and...things everywhere. Quinn put it back together as best as she could but it still doesn't work," Joyce explained.
"You did this?" Bob asked in surprise. He caught the way her brow creased as she silently turned to look at her aunt.
"This is very clean work, young lady. Is there a new AV Club at the high school that I haven't heard about?" He asked quickly, not having meant to cause offence.
"It looked like a puzzle that needed solving. I figured it couldn't get any worse than what the boys did to it," Quinn shrugged, her features falling back into a neutral expression.
"I see what the problem is. This circuit chip right here is completely fried. That's definitely faulty manufacturing," Bob said, working on disconnecting it from the bottom half of the controller. He missed the apologetic look the teen threw at her guardian at the sound of fried circuitry.
"See, this is what it should look like," he said, pulling a larger chip out of one of the many storage bins that were tucked away under the counter. He placed the fried one next to it, noticing the way Quinn leaned forward ever so slightly to get a better look.
"Everything else looks like it's in good order. Unfortunately I don't have any chips of this size in stock right now, but we've needed to order more anyway. Unless something comes up, your son will be back to playing the Atari with his friends next week," Bob said, filling up a work slip and placing the controller and all its parts in a plastic bin.
"That's great. How much do I owe you, Bob?" Joyce asked, reaching for her purse.
"On the house," Bob said, waving her purse away.
"Don't be silly, let me repay you for the trouble," Joyce insisted.
"How about dinner?" Quinn suggested nonchalantly.
"That's a great idea! We could catch up!" Joyce beamed. Bob was pretty much in a daze from that moment forward, but somewhere during that time, it was agreed that he was coming to dinner at the Byers' on Friday at 5pm.
On their way out, they passed one of Bob's regulars coming in. As it was snowing outside, the older teen had his hood pulled up, long messy hair sticking out of both sides. At the sight of the women making their way out, he dramatically pulled his hood back and held the door open for them. Even in his own daze, Bob couldn't help but notice the way the two teens locked eyes in crossing. Stepping outside though, Quinn turned her head and followed Joyce down the sidewalk. The teen left inside watched them go until they were out of sight.
"You, uh, you okay there, Eddie?" Bob asked, half amused, half sympathetic. The boy snapped out of his reverie and made his way over to Bob with a giant grin on his face.
"Never better, Mr. Newby," he replied, drumming his fingers on the counter, silver rings glistening in the light.
"With how regularly you need this amp fixed up, I think we can be on a first name basis," Bob said, pulling the amp in question off the shelf and placing it on the counter, just in time for another show at the local dive bar.
That dinner turned into many dinners, movie nights, packed lunch picnics, and much more. He'd just spent the night and then in the morning he'd driven Quinn and Will to school, and all of it felt like a dream. But Cloud 9 didn't last very long when he started to think back on the evening. Nervous that he had maybe overstepped when suggesting to move the whole family out of Hawkins and start over somewhere new, Bob swung by the General Store at noontime with packed lunches to surprise Joyce. They sat on the bench outside of Melvald's to keep an eye on the store and enjoy the autumn sun.
"Last night was fun," Bob said between bites of his baloney sandwich. Joyce turned to him with a smile and agreed.
"I'm sorry if I overstepped anything," he said, preferring to get straight to the point instead of just beating around the bush.
"No! No, you didn't," Joyce reassured.
"Okay. I mean...I-I like you so much. Not just you, everything that comes with you, your family. And I hope it's not wishful thinking, but...I kinda feel like I'm breaking through with them," he confessed.
"Not so much Jonathon. He's a tough cookie to crack," Bob said. Joyce could only grimace in agreement, knowing that her oldest was the most perturbed by her new relationship.
"With Will, I don't know, I feel like we're connecting," Bob continued.
"Well Quinn likes you, so it was only a matter of time before Will warmed up to you too," Joyce said, knowing how much her youngest son adored her.
"She's a good kid, very bright," Bob remarked, recalling the debate they'd had in the car that morning.
The drive with Quinn and Will in the morning started off pretty quiet. Quinn would be the first dropped off so she took the passenger seat while Will sat in the back. Bob couldn't help but glance at him every few minutes through the rear-view mirror. The boy had his eyes fixed on the window, watching the passing scenery with a tired, almost haunted expression on his face. Bob decided to share the source of his childhood torment in hopes that it would make Will feel less alone.
"Go ahead, laugh, it's funny," Bob encouraged after imitating the clown that haunted his dreams for months, as Will chuckled softly.
"It wasn't funny back then, I can tell you that. I couldn't get him out of my head. Every night, he would come to me in my dreams. And every night when he came to me... I ran," Bob sighed. "It got so bad that I made my Mom stay in the room with me until I could fall asleep every night."
"Really?" Will asked attentively, leaning forward in his seat until he was leaned against the back of Quinn's seat.
"Really. It went on like that for months. And then one day, the nightmares suddenly stopped. Wanna know how?" Bob asked.
"How?" Will repeated, looking genuinely curious.
"Well, I fell asleep, and just like always, Mr. Baldo came to me. Only this time, I didn't run. 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. Never saw him again. Easy-peasy, right?" Bob explained.
"Easy-peasy," Will repeated softly, leaning back into his seat.
"But what if it's not just a nightmare?" Quinn asked after some thought. "For Will, I mean," she elaborated, noticing Bob's complexion go paler at the possibility of Mr. Baldo reappearing after all these years.
"What do you mean?" Bob prompted.
"You know how in The Fellowship of the Ring when Frodo puts the ring on for the first time, he's transported to the Shadowlands?" Quinn asked him. He had bonded with her early on through her interest in electronics and her enjoyment of puzzles. He knew that she was an avid reader but she didn't seem to dabble much in fantasy and science fiction even though she was an active participant in Will's Dungeon & Dragons campaigns. He lent her his copies of The Lord of the Rings books, which she had all but devoured in a matter of days.
"Yes...?" Bob affirmed uncertainly, wondering where this was going.
"Well, while he's in that dimension, he sees the eye of Sauron, and Sauron sees him," Quinn continued.
"Sure, but what does that have to do with Will?" Bob asked.
"What is these aren't nightmares like the doctor says? What if he can see into the Shadowlands?" She pressed.
"You know that's just a fantasy book, Quinn," Bob tried to assuage.
"Of course, but isn't fiction partly inspired by reality? What if Tolkien wasn't just inventing things but was inspired by real phenomena?" She asked back.
"Like a parallel dimension?" Bob said, knowing that there were theories across several scientific disciplines suggesting the existence of multiple dimensions, but this was out of his own expertise by a long shot.
"Maybe so, but Sauron couldn't actually reach Frodo that way," Bob said recalling the books.
"No, but he sends the Nazgûl after him, and they could reach him both in the Shadowlands and in the real dimension," Quinn argued.
"Oh, would you look at that, we've already arrived. We're going to have to shelve this conversation for now," Bob said as they pulled into the drop-off lane at the high school.
"Careful Bob, I will hold you to that," Quinn said with a mischievous smirk.
"And I mean it, I need some time to think about this, but we will continue this conversation at a later time, okay?" He said honestly. She nodded, looking satisfied. She bid him and Will a good day each before closing the car door and making her way towards the school entrance.
"I know that Jonathon wants to go to NYU but has Quinn expressed a wish for any college in particular?" Bob asked. She had a wide variety of interests and she showed talent in diverse subjects. He knew she would do well pursuing any one of them.
"If she has one in mind, she hasn't expressed it. Although I don't think she's thought that far ahead, she's very much in the present, you know?" Joyce explained. A comfortable silence settled between them as they finished their lunches.
"Oh there was...something else I wanted to mention... It's not a big deal at all, but I just noticed this morning that my JVC was a little dinged up," Bob said.
"Your what?" Joyce asked confused.
"The video camera," he clarified. "It still works fine and everything, I just... I went back and watched the tape and there's footage of those older kids picking on Will and, well, Quinn's intervention," he revealed, reigniting Joyce's worry about that situation.
"This is good," Bob tried to reassure her. "If those boys' parents are still bothering you about last night, you have video proof that they scared Will and she was just defending him," he told her, watching her relax again.
"You know, I struggled a lot like Will when I was a kid. With bullies. It's the ones like us, that don't punch back that people really take advantage of. I don't know why they do that. Maybe it makes them feel powerful. I don't know. But hey, Will has the best cousin in the world, and look at me now! I get to date Joyce Byers. Ha!" Bob said gleefully, making Joyce's heart melt a little.
"It all works out in the end, doesn't it?" He wondered out loud.
"Yes, it does," Joyce agreed.
— • —
Some things work out, sometimes.
Between Hopper's reassurances about Quinn and what Bob said over lunch, Joyce felt like everything was going to be okay, but then Will had his worst episode so far after school. She brought him home immediately and spent the rest of the day trying to coax him into telling her the truth about what he was going through. This was different from the other times, Joyce knew, because when he'd finally snapped out of it, he was immediately cold towards Quinn who had been on the football field trying to snap him out of whatever was going on when Joyce joined the scene.
Naturally, Quinn noticed this shift as well and opted to keep her distance while Joyce did her best to get him to open up. She made her presence in the house sparse for the rest of the evening and called up Steve Harrington for a ride to school the next morning. Joyce called Hopper and asked him to come over. He arrived after the bath incident, when Will told her that the water was too hot, that "He likes it cold".
"What's going on? It's freezing outside," Hopper said, stepping into the Byers House and moving to close the door.
"Leave it open," Joyce whispered at him, ash tray in one hand while she kept her sweater closed around her middle with the other. She motioned for him to follow as she led the way down the hallway to the bedrooms. Hopper watched as she gently opened the door and announced to Will that they had a visitor. The boy was sitting on the bed facing away from them, shirtless, with both windows wide open but seemingly unfazed by the cold.
"So this thing, this shadow thing. You told your mom it likes it like this. It likes it cold?" Hopper recapped, holding Will's drawing in one hand and Joyce's quick sketch from the television in the other.
"Yeah," Will replied softly.
"How do you know that?" Hopper asked.
"I just know," Will replied.
"Does he talk to you?" Hopper prompted.
"No, it's like...I don't have to think. I just know things now. Things I never did before," Will struggled to explain.
"And what else do you know?" Hopper asked, moving off to the bed to sit across from him.
"It's hard to explain. It's like old memories in the back of my head, only...they're not my memories. I mean, I don't think they're old memories at all. They're now-memories, happening all at once, now," Will explained, a haunted look on his face as tears threatened to spill down his cheeks.
"Can you describe these now-memories?" Hopper insisted gently.
"It's hard to explain. It's like...they're growing and spreading and killing," Will stammered, starting to cry. Joyce took him in her arms whispering reassurances in his ear.
"What does Quinn think about all of this?" Hopper asked him. He realised immediately that it was the wrong question to ask when the boy pulled himself from his mother's arms, the fear in his eyes replaced by a coldness that made Hopper uncomfortable. When the time came to move Quinn into the Byers House last December, they had barely gotten through the front door before Will rushed over to her and wrapped his arms around her stomach. She had stood there awkwardly, clearly unaccustomed to hugging, but she hadn't recoiled, she hadn't pushed him back, she just let him hold her. Hopper caught the slightest uptick of her lip — not unlike the one after she revived the boy in the Upside Down — and he knew that things would work out. Now, for Will to react in such a way at the mere mention of her name, Hopper understood that something was very, very wrong.
Joyce managed to get Will's attention and direct it on drawing out the now-memories instead of struggling to describe what he was seeing with words. As the pile of papers continued to grow at the side of his chair, the adults set up in the living room, trying to find some sense to the scribbles he was repeating on every piece of paper at his disposal. Joyce realised that some of the lines connected, which resulted in the twist and turns of taped up papers stretching across the different rooms in the house and starting to creep up the walls.
"Does this mean anything to you?" Hopper asked, looking around the living room floor.
"No," Joyce huffed, "I mean, is it some sort of maze or a road? I mean, it's sort of forking and branching like...like lightning."
"You think it's that storm?" Hopper asked.
"No, the storm he drew was completely different. He used red. This is all blue and it has some weird dirt colour," Joyce replied.
"What about her?" Hopper asked, not daring to speak her name incase Will could hear from the other room.
"No, he always uses yellow when he draws her," she replied knowingly.
"I mean, maybe it's roots," Joyce continued thinking aloud. "Remember he was saying it was spreading and..."
"Killing. He said they were killing," Hopper interrupted.
"Vines. He's drawing vines," he concluded, making his way to the door.
"Did she go to school today?" he asked, pulling his coat on.
"Yes, she got a ride from a friend this morning," Joyce confirmed, trying not to dwell on the fact that she knew more about Quinn's whereabouts than she did Jonathon's.
"Try to intercept her when she gets home. Tell her that this is related to the pumpkin patches," he said pointing to the drawings around the living room. "Tell her that this could be related to what she found in the woods," he continued, swinging the door open and grabbing his hat off the hook.