THE BODY
“we're both pretty attractive”
CHARLIE GOT TOLD ABOUT WILL'S BODY being found the next morning while she was eating breakfast, Hopper having sat her down after coming back from the Byers’. She honestly didn’t know how to react when she heard the news. The fact that Will Byers was dead didn’t sit right with her, not that it would sit right with anyone, but it just didn’t seem correct in Charlie’s mind. How did Will get from the woods on the west side of Hawkins to Sattler Quarry on the north-east side without his bike? There was just something not at all right about it.
“Hey, kid,” Hopper said after the girl had stayed silent, looking down at her cereal, not feeling hungry anymore. The man moved his hand over, placing it on his niece’s with a caring expression. “I’m sorry, all right? I tried my best.”
“Yeah… I know you did,” Charlie nodded, swallowing back the horrible unfairness of the situation. “Have you seen… Have you seen Jonathan?”
“Not in person, no,” Hopper said, bringing his hand back and clearing his throat. “He’s been in his room since he found out. Won’t even talk to Joyce.” He watched his niece’s face fall into a conflict and pieced together something he had been questioning. “Charlie?”
“Yeah, Hops?” Charlie asked, looking up to meet his gaze.
“I don’t know what happened between you and that boy, and I’m not gonna ask if you don’t want me to,” the man started, getting up from his seat at the dining table, grabbing his coat from the hooks by the door. “But he’s going through hell right now… It’s your choice, but I’m taking him and Joyce down to the morgue to identify the body… They’re gonna need some support.”
Charlie sighed, leaning her head down onto the table and it muffled her groan of irritation. She was going to go and comfort Jonathan because that was the right thing to do, but it didn’t mean she forgave him for what he had done to Nancy. She guessed that would be Nancy’s choice.
“Yeah, I’ll– I’ll come with,” Charlie nodded, getting up from the dining table and picking up her bowl and spoon, dumping them in the sink. “Just let me get dressed and I’ll be right with you.”
“All right, kid,” Hopper said with a small smile, sitting down on the couch and grabbing the remote. “We need to get going by ten, yeah?”
“Got it.”
The waiting room for the morgue was dimly lit and just as glum as the atmosphere, Charlie supposed that was the point. There were no primary colors, everything was faded and even the plants were drooping in their pots, slowly dying. Charlie was leaning forward in her chair next to Hopper, wringing her hands as they waited for any conclusion from Joyce and Jonathan. The first one to come out was Jonathan, he was wiping his mouth on his sleeve with one hand and the other was holding his jacket by his side.
He lifted up his head and swallowed, not realizing that Charlie had come. His expression was hopeful and Charlie met his gaze, sighing and patting the seat beside her. He walked over, sitting down in the same position as the other two as they all waited in silence for Joyce.
“I’m sorry, Jonathan,” Charlie said finally, looking over at the boy to see he was already looking at her. “About your brother. Really.”
“I know… Thank you,” Jonathan smiled sadly, but it left his face as soon as it had appeared, almost like he had never smiled in the first place.
The three of them went back into a silence, the ticking of the clock on the opposite wall passing the time and the faint ringing of a phone echoing from behind the reception desk disturbing them for a while. Then Hopper cleared his throat, looking down at his watch, seeing that it had been a couple minutes now.
“How’s your mom doing?” Hopper asked, making Jonathan spring back into reality.
The boy raised his head slowly before shaking it. “I don’t know.”
“How long’s this stuff been going on?” Hopper questioned, turning his hat over and over in his hands. “With the lights and, uh… Will and the thing in the wall?”
Charlie was slightly confused with half of that sentence, but listened in. Jonathan shrugged, not really knowing how to answer. “Since the first phone call, I guess. You know, she’s had anxiety problems… in the past. But this… I don’t know.” He took a deep breath and leaned his arms on his knees. “I’m worried it could be… Ugh, I don’t know. Um… She’ll be okay. We’ll be okay.”
Charlie looked over to see tears glistening in his eyes, and she looped her arm around his, the boy leaning into her shoulder before carrying on speaking. “My mom… she’s tough.”
The brunette girl nodded, nudging him slightly. “Toughest woman I know.”
Jonathan smiled thankfully up at her, about to open his mouth to say something when a dorm slammed and Joyce came rushing into the waiting room. The three of them immediately stood up, eyes wary.
“Ma’am, I need you to sign!” the pathologist called, hurrying out into the waiting room after her.
“I don’t…” Joyce stopped, knocking some magazines off a side table to turn around and face the man. “I don’t know what you think that thing is in there, but that is not my son!”
“Joyce, wait a second,” Hopper tried to calm her down, but she rounded on him.
“No!” she said, putting her hand out and then walked right out the entrance swing door.
“Mom!” Jonathan shouted.
“Ma’am, I– Ma’am!” the pathologist continued to call, but Joyce only slammed the door behind her. Jonathan was quick to follow after her with his jacket and Charlie was going to leave to, but Hopper stopped her with one hand.
“Come on, kid. Grab a coffee with me,” he said, not letting her follow.
“What? But–”
“We’ll go get a coffee. Come on.”
Charlie held her hands around her coffee cup, her leg bouncing up and down under the small, round table, people walking around her to get to the counter or exit through the door of the cozy coffee shop on the corner of main street. Hopper drank from his own coffee, studying his niece with a concerned expression before placing his cup back down onto the table.
“What’s wrong?” Hopper asked in his gruff voice, but Charlie could tell her genuinely wanted to know what was going on with her. Honestly, she didn’t blame him, she had been a panicking mess ever since she had come home last night. That creature from behind Steve’s house was still in her mind and she couldn’t shake it loose, no matter how hard she tried, and now Will Byers’ body had been found in the quarry.
“I just… well… um…” Charlie stammered out, tapping her fingertips on her coffee cup. Every ping made her flinch and she didn’t even realize it was happening until Hopper placed his hand over her’s, stopping her.
“It’s alright. Take your time,” he told her calmly, taking back his hand when he was sure she would stop tapping her fingers. However, her leg still bounced up and down on the floor.
“Well, it’s not… sitting right with me,” Charlie confessed, looking around at the other customers bustling around them, trying to distract herself from Hopper’s face. She wasn’t so sure what his reaction to her idea would be. “I mean, the last sign of Will from that night was his bike in the woods, right?”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Hopper nodded, taking another sip from his coffee.
“See, but that’s where it doesn’t make sense,” Charlie said, finally looking back at Hopper as he stared back with a raised eyebrow. “Those woods are in west Hawkins… but the quarry? That’s on the north-east side. How did Will get there in a matter of hours without a bike, without anybody seeing him, without calling for help? It just… doesn’t make sense.”
Hopper swallowed down the coffee in his mouth, thinking about what his niece had said over and over again. He couldn’t say that she was wrong, because she wasn’t, it really didn’t make sense in such a literal sense, but they had no other explanation. “Look, kid, you’re right…” He took another sip from his coffee and nodded before putting it down. “You are… right. But if so, how else are you gonna explain it?”
“I don’t… I don’t know,” Charlie sighed, finally taking a gulp from her coffee just for something to do, only to find that the coffee was burning hot. She gasped, slamming the cup back down and putting a hand to her mouth. “Oh, Jesus Christ!”
Hopper chuckled slightly, trying to keep it down for the sake of the girl’s embarrassment. “That’s why you’ve got to wait a few seconds.”
“You didn’t!” Charlie exclaimed, biting her teeth together to try and keep back the stinging on her tongue. “That really… it really burns.”
“You get used to it after a while, kid,” Hopper smirked, leaning back in his seat and taking another smug sip of his drink. “Learn from the pro, yeah?”
“You’re such a–” Charlie was about to say when the bell rang on the entrance door and it swung open, slamming into the wall. Her head snapped to the sound along with everyone else in the coffee shop only to find Jonathan standing in the doorway, eyes searching until he found Charlie. He rushed over and apologized to people on the way, taking a deep breath once he reached their table.
“Uh, s-sorry for barging in,” Jonathan said, Hopper shaking his head to say it was okay and the boy turned his head to Charlie, the person he needed to speak to. “Do you have your car with you?”
“Uh, yeah,” Charlie nodded, sitting up a little straighter in her chair. “What do you need?”
“I need to go buy a coffin,” Jonathan explained quickly, making the girl raise her eyebrows in surprise, getting up to put a hand on his shoulder.
“Jonathan… Are you sure?” the girl questioned, slightly concerned. “I mean, his body’s only just been found… Maybe we should wait for your mom, or–”
“No!” the boy nearly shouted, lowering his volume after gaining more attention from people around the coffee shop. “Sorry, I, uh, mean, no. I was just wondering if you’d drive me there.”
Charlie looked back at Hopper and he shrugged, waving his hand. The girl turned to Jonathan again, nodding quickly. “Yeah, sure. Let’s go.”
He sent her a thankful look and started out the door, Charlie turning around to grab her coffee and following him out, Hopper shouting after her. “Remember to wait this time!”
“Yeah, yeah. All right,” Charlie called back, shutting the coffee shop door behind her and rushing down main street to catch up with Jonathan.
“It’s made of a soft wood with a crepe interior,” the funeral celebrant explained briefly as he directed Jonathan and Charlie around the many coffins they had on display. The one in front of them was a honey-colored wood, embossed with flowers and it only made Jonathan sigh heavily from beside her. Charlie frowned, putting her hand on his shoulder as the man continued to speak. “Uh, now, I… I don’t know what your budget is, but over here, we… we have copper and bronze.”
The man led them over to the other side of the room, Jonathan swallowing at the sight of them. Charlie squeezed his arm, making him turn to her. “Hey, you don’t need one of those ones, okay? Will wouldn’t care about what it looked like, or how much it costs.”
“I know, I just… I should look at all of them,” Jonathan shrugged, his voice hoarse.
Charlie was about to say something when her eyes caught sight of Nancy Wheeler standing in the entrance way of the room. The smaller brunette met her gaze almost nervously, holding the strap of her bag and gesturing gently with her head to come outside.
“Hey, Jonathan,” Charlie said, looking back at the boy and directing him towards Nancy and he looked slightly shocked before nodding.
The funeral celebrant looked over, staring between the two teenagers and Nancy. Jonathan stammered, “Can you just give us a second?”
“Of course,” the man nodded, walking away.
Charlie led Jonathan over to the conflicted Nancy by the arm, stopping just in front of her. “What’s up, Drew?”
“You remember that thing we saw…” Nancy looked up at her and Charlie nodded, barely holding down a shudder from running up her spine.
“What did you two see?” Jonathan asked quietly, feeling totally out of the loop.
Charlie breathed in deeply and met Nancy’s eyes again, the two of them giving each other the same look of fear.
The two girls started out at the beginning with Barb, all three of them now sitting on a bench in the hallway of the funeral home. Nancy dug out something from her bag, it being the picture that Jonathan had taken of Barb that night in the woods, but since Carol, or Tommy, or Steve had torn it up, Nancy had used tape to stick it back together. She pointed out something that was in the corner of the picture, both Charlie and Jonathan having to lean in and squint their eyes to see it.
“Do you know what that is?” Nancy asked, foot tapping on the rug covering the hardwood floor. “I mean, did you see anything that that could have been?”
“Sorry, I really can’t see much,” Charlie said, straining her voice as she strained her whole face to actually see the thing Nancy was pointing out.
“It’s right there, Lottie.”
“Oh, wait…” Charlie said, nudging the girl’s finger off the photo. “Yeah, I see it.” She furrowed her eyebrows. “Yeah, I don’t know what that is.”
Nancy sighed at the girl’s behavior, looking over to the boy who was still staring at it. “Jonathan?”
“It looks like it could be some kind of perspective distortion, but I wasn’t using the wide angle,” Jonathan finally said, flapping the photo in his fingers for a few seconds before passing it back over to Nancy. “I don’t know. It’s weird.”
“I don’t understand what happened to her,” Nancy uttered, taking the photo into her hands, looking out in front of her. “The cops think that she ran away. But they don’t know Barb.”
“Y-You said you and Charlie saw something?” Jonathan proposed, looking between the two girls who shared the same glance as earlier. “What happened?”
“We went back to Steve’s…” Nancy was the first to reply, turning the taped-up photo around and around in her fingers.
“There was something in the woods,” Charlie carried on, the mental image of the creature that had blurred past them vivid in her mind. “Something back where we were the other night… It was… I don’t know… some weird… thing.”
“Like maybe a man,” Nancy added, the two of them trying to describe the thing they saw. “Or… maybe it wasn’t… I can’t be sure.”
“Yeah, neither… I mean, shit,” Charlie sighed, leaning herself forward on her knees.
Jonathan stared between the two of them, eyebrows knitted together in confusion and Nancy caught sight of it, it only just broke through her mind that the boy was literally browsing for a coffin for his brother. “I’m sorry. I…” She grabbed her bag, stuffing the photo back into it and getting up from the bench. “I shouldn’t have come here today. I’m… I’m so sorry.”
“Wait, Nancy,” Charlie stopped her, hand hovering to touch her arm, but she thought against it, letting her arm fall back as Nancy turned to look at her. “The thing’s face…”
“It didn’t have a face,” Jonathan almost whispered, looking between Charlie and Nancy.
“How did you know that?” Nancy questioned, and Jonathan swallowed down his fear and he stared from one confused face to another.
Charlie leaned over Jonathan’s work in the Hawkins high darkroom while Nancy checked out in the corridor to make sure nobody was going to bother them. The brunette stared down at the film Jonathan was rolling out, swallowing slightly as she remembered what else was probably on that reel.
“Why did you take that picture, Jonathan?” Charlie asked him quietly in the silence of the darkroom, the boy’s hand pausing for a second in surprise at the question. He knew what she was talking about immediately.
He swallowed down a lump on his throat and carried on checking through each picture for the one he needed. “I don’t know… I just thought… I don’t… I don’t know.”
His stammering answer was enough for Charlie to know that he was telling the truth, but it didn’t change the fact that he had done it. She leaned further forward on the desk, making him look up at her and stare into her eyes. “You need to apologize.”
“I-I will,” he told her quickly, as if it wasn’t even a question. “I really will.”
“Good,” she nodded, leaning back and wandering around the room to look at some of the other pictures hanging up to finish developing. “She deserves that, okay? What you did was pretty shitty.”
“I know… I know,” the boy said, staring back down at his work. “I’ll tell her I’m sorry.”
The door behind them opened quickly, Nancy slipping inside and shutting it behind her just as fast. She was slightly confused as she turned to stare at them, Jonathan not paying attention as he moved the piece of film onto a different machine in the room.
“I think there’s a fire alarm going off at the middle school,” Nancy said.
Charlie pushed herself from the counter and shrugged. “Oh, well. Less attention on us, right?”
“Yeah, I guess,” the girl agreed, moving over to the other side of Jonathan to look down at what he was doing. He had placed the piece of film he needed into a catch, flicked a switch and was now adjusting some dials on it. “And you’re…”
“Brightening. Enlarging,” Jonathan replied simply, turning the dial backwards.
Nancy hummed a response, looking over at Charlie with one eyebrow raised, the brunette only pursed her lips in response. “He gets like this when he’s focused.”
The smaller girl sighed, falling back from the counter, looking around the darkroom before turning back to the boy hard at work. “Did your mom say anything else? Like, um, where it might have gone to, or…”
“No, just that it came out of the wall,” Jonathan mumbled nonchalantly, leaning down to stare through the scope on the machine, still turning the dial.
“Well, that’s normal,” Charlie muttered sarcastically, sharing a small glance with Nancy.
In the silence, the machine dinged, making Charlie flinch backwards, but Jonathan just stood up straight again, moving the scope and taking the film from the catch. Nancy and Charlie followed him as he took the film and put it in the developing mixture slowly, letting it drop to the bottom of the tank before taking his hands off it.
“How long does this take?” Nancy asked, already sounding impatient.
Jonathan started to tip the tank to either side, shrugging slightly. “Not long.”
“That means a couple hours,” Charlie clarified, earning a glare from Jonathan. “I’m not wrong.”
“You two seem like… good friends,” Nancy said when they all went silent again, looking between the two slightly suspiciously.
“Whatever you’re thinking, no,” Charlie sighed, leaning her head on her palm.
Jonathan chuckled softly, lifting up one side of the tank to make the chemicals wave over the page. “Uh, yeah… We’re not… together, or anything.”
“Oh, right,” Nancy nodded quickly, feeling slightly stupid for assuming. “I didn’t mean–”
“Yeah, you did,” Charlie responded before she could say anything, looking up at her with a small smile. “I don’t blame you, though. We’re both pretty attractive, it would make sense we would get together.”
Jonathan smiled bashfully, not really believing that. “We’re just friends… She’s the only person I can really talk to without… being weird.”
“Being weird?” Nancy questioned, raising an eyebrow.
Charlie looked over at Jonathan, giving him a pointed look and he swallowed before turning back to Nancy. “Uh, yeah… When I took that picture of you… It was stupid, and– and wrong. I shouldn’t have done it. So… I’m sorry.”
Nancy was slightly taken aback by the apology, but cleared her throat. “I, uh… No, it’s okay.” Jonathan sent her a ghost of a smile before looking back down at his work, Nancy raising her head and meeting Charlie’s eyes across the counter. She sent her a thankful look. Nancy wasn’t stupid, she knew Jonathan hadn’t said that on his own, Charlie had helped him understand what he did wrong. Charlie stared back, giving her a smile before staring down, her hair falling in front of her face, heat rising to her cheeks.
“That’s it,” Nancy suddenly said, making Charlie look back up, moving herself around the counter to stand next to the other girl and look down into the developing mixture. The picture could be seen through the ripples, the creature that Charlie had had stuck in her mind since yesterday afternoon now right before her eyes on paper. “That’s what we saw.”
“Holy shit,” Charlie let out in a breath, seeing its not-face staring right back at her. It was like a flower, but sharp points, maybe teeth, covered every petal, every tear that stood out.
Jonathan gasped quietly, leaning closer to it. “My mom… I thought she was crazy ‘cause she said… that’s not Will’s body. That he’s alive.”
“And if he’s alive–” Nancy started.
Charlie met her gaze. “Then so is Barb.”