Chapter Text
I will keep watch. I will water the yard.
Knot the tie and go to work. Unknot the tie and go to sleep.
I sleep. I dream. I make up things
that I would never say. I say them very quietly.
-Richard Siken, “Meanwhile”
―
The spring Will turned three―which would’ve made Jonathan seven―the most beautiful cat Jonathan has ever seen visited their yard every day.
The cat had long orange fur in a shade his child brain could only liken to Cheez-Its and traffic cones, with a perfect white starburst on its chest and a neat sock on each paw. It was so fluffy that it looked almost fat until you picked it up and got a feel for the sleek, rigid body underneath it all; and the cat was always letting Jonathan pick it up, after a few days of kneeling and psst noises and letting it sniff his outstretched hand. It was really sweet, that way.
Secretly, Jonathan named the cat Frog―another working of his seven year old brain, thanks to his teacher reading them Frog and Toad are Friends sometime that week. Jonathan considered himself Toad, of course: The serious one, the quiet one.
What really mattered was that everyone knew Frog and Toad were best friends.
They’d gotten Chester for Christmas a few months before; but even though Jonathan made sure to feed Chester, and take him on long walks, and even sneak him the crusts from all his sandwiches, Chester loved Will the most. It was Will who he jumped all over when they got home from somewhere, Will whose bed he slept in.
Dad was always saying that Chester would have to go live outside soon, to keep the boys and Joyce from turning him soft―he’d gotten Chester from some friend of his, who Jonathan realizes now was probably full of shit, that said he’d make a damn good hunting dog. They’d joke later (though you could never predict how Dad would react to it) that the only place Chester ever went hunting was under the kitchen table.
So Jonathan had been working on lowering his expectations for Chester. He was a sweet dog, even if they weren’t Dog and Boy like he’d hoped; and then came Frog, purring and head-butting and flopping over to show Jonathan the curly hair on his―at some point, Jonathan decided he must be a he― stomach, and Jonathan found he could pivot to Cat and Boy pretty easily.
Even more secretly than he named the cat Frog, Jonathan wanted to keep him.
He had his pitch all planned out: It would be his birthday and Christmas for the next two years combined. He would call Granny and tell her so, let her know to send only cash or cat food from here on out.
He would even scoop the litter box, or maybe train Frog to go outside like Chester. Frog would sleep in his bed, curled up by his head or on top of his feet.
He would take him when he moved to New York and make him a proper city cat, snap a photo of him with the Statue of Liberty and submit it to National Geographic.
Frog would take up a lot less room than Chester, who was still in the process of growing into his big paws and then some, and his meows were so much quieter than Chester’s barks that they couldn’t possibly wake Dad up.
Mom would be easy, Jonathan knew: She’d always liked cats, and when she came home from work to Jonathan and Frog sitting on the stoop, all she’d done was lean down to scruff his neck and coo, “Oh, what a pretty boy you are.”
Jonathan didn’t know if his dad liked cats. Increasingly, it seemed that his dad didn’t care much for dogs either―at least not dogs like Chester, who chased squirrels but didn’t kill them and hid behind the couch when Dad and his buddies shot cans in the backyard. Dad even kicked at him sometimes, annoyed at his begging for scraps or his habit of being underfoot. Stupid dog, he’d hiss. Useless dog.
So for Dad, Jonathan considered how to make Frog seem useful. Necessary, like hired help.
Cats could catch mice, if there was any truth to what Jonathan saw in books or on Tom and Jerry. And he knew there were mice in the pantry again from the way his mom pulled out a cereal box one morning and groaned before tossing it in the garbage. Jonathan inspected it later―little teeth-marks, and a tear in the bag where a critter or two had climbed in to enjoy some off-brand Chex.
He decided that would be his angle with Dad: Rat poison cost money and Mom was afraid Will might eat it; Frog could kill the mice for free and leave the rest of the family unscathed.
After two weeks of spending every spare moment with Frog, Jonathan launched into his proposal over dinner: The cat is already here; the cat will kill mice; the cat is my friend. He tacked that last part on there on a whim, since his parents were always harping on him about making friends.
Mom said nothing. Dad said fuck no.
Jonathan bit his lip until he tasted blood. Jonathan let a few tears drop onto his meatloaf. And because he was stupid, and heartbroken, and seven, he whimpered, “Why not? ”
Dad had a lot of reasons why not. Most of them were some variation of because I fucking said so, which Jonathan was used to getting as justification for everything from being sent to bed without supper to being dragged into the woods and made to shoot a gun.
But one stuck with him. Sticks with him.
“You think the cat’s your fucking friend, Jonathan? Don’t you wonder what it’s eating now?” Jonathan had wondered, actually, and concluded that Frog probably ate moles and squirrels. He nodded along anyhow. “Guarantee you it lives somewhere around here. It’s probably back home right now, sitting in someone else’s damn lap. And if I see it in my goddamn yard again, I’m gonna make sure it doesn’t come back.”
That could mean any number of things. Horrible possibilities flashed through Jonathan’s brain: Dad kicking Frog like he did Chester; worse, throwing rocks at him; worst of all, shooting at him.
So for the next two weeks, he walked straight in the door after school and didn’t spare Frog a backward glance. The first few days, he yowled loud enough Jonathan could hear him from the kitchen; but eventually, he seemed to get it, until one day, Frog disappeared altogether―back to whoever else’s lap.
Jonathan didn’t see him again.
―
It wasn’t the last time some scraggly animal turned up at their door. Someone’s cat was always having kittens, or a dog would get loose and end up miles from home. A few times, they came home from school to find chickens pecking around the yard.
Jonathan did not pet them. Did not name them. Did not see them, if he could help it, except in his periphery.
But Steve Harrington has turned out to be a lot like a stray cat―the particular genre of stray cat Lonnie insisted Frog was: The kind that’s not really a stray at all, but looks so cute and sweet and pitiful that you can’t help yourself.
Once Jonathan paid him a little attention, he wouldn’t go the hell away. It was impossible to just ignore him, since he seemed to like being ignored―it must’ve been the thrill of the chase . There was a solid six months where he was almost always on the phone or in Jonathan’s bedroom, flipping his fucking hair around and drawling translate this for me, Byers. What’s our friend Robert Smith saying?
Jonathan has tried throwing rocks at him, metaphorically speaking; he’s been mean and he’s been honest; he’s left the most pessimistic parts of himself in charge.
And somehow, despite it all, Steve is still here.
At this precise moment, he’s slumped over in the passenger seat, slack-jawed and snoring with his forehead resting against the window. They’re somewhere in Missouri: Billboards imploring them to visit the Arch and the St. Louis Zoo whiz past on either side. Introducing: The Jungle of the Apes!
Stupidly, for a split second, Jonathan thinks about asking the kids if they’d like to stop.
The last time they’d gone to the zoo, it was just the Children’s Zoo in Fort Wayne. Will had been so little he was still in a stroller, whining and fussing all day because of the heat. All Jonathan remembers from that day is puking up the popcorn he’d pestered Mom for in front of the giraffe exhibit. El wasn’t with them, of course―she would’ve been…well. El would’ve been more like the things in the exhibits, at the time.
Like that, reality dawns on Jonathan again.
For one, they’re closer to Kansas City; St. Louis is farther south than they ought to go if they want to make it back to Hawkins before tomorrow.
Officially, if the road signs are anything to go by, they’re in some place called Lone Jack. All the billboards are on the edges of flat green fields, with nothing growing that Jonathan can see and no houses either; whoever put them there must’ve figured that nobody drives through here unless they’re trying to get someplace else.
And they do need to get back to whatever’s left of Hawkins. Desperately. At every stop with a payphone, Steve and the kids call every number they can remember and get dial tones across the board.
After the third fruitless call to Dustin, Will dumped the contents of his backpack onto the floor of the van and started frantically rifling through it. There hadn’t been enough time to empty it of his school stuff; most of it was just composition books and broken pencils.
“My walkie, ” he hissed, picking up one of the offending composition books just to slam it back down again. “I left my motherfucking-”
“Hey,” Jonathan interjected.
He didn’t mean for it to come off scolding―just, hey. Come back to earth. Breathe for me. Will whipped around to glare at him regardless.
Beside him, Steve stirs and groans in the passenger seat. Jonathan could set his watch by what comes next: Every time they trade off, Steve sleeps for a grand total of thirty minutes before prying his eyes open and mumbling, “Need me to drive?”
As always, Jonathan shakes his head. “I need you to sleep. Then you can drive.”
This only serves to wake Steve up a little more. He stretches his legs, cracks his knuckles. Turns away to hide a yawn in his elbow, like Jonathan is deaf instead of just exhausted.
His voice comes out constricted, like he’s gulping down another yawn, when he says, “C’mon, Byowitz. I’ll buy a Jolt at a gas station somewhere. Even this place has gotta have gas stations.”
“Jolt Cola is not a substitute for-”
“ REM sleep, ” Steve finishes. He looks almost totally awake now, save for the dark circles he’s been sporting for days. He grins maniacally and reaches over like he has half a mind to grab the wheel before going to squeeze Jonathan’s thigh instead. “And next you’re going to tell me I shouldn’t play around in the car, because it’s a two-ton metal death machine.”
―
They’ve been having this argument―or a variation of it―since Jonathan moved to California.
It was his third weekend there, and he was spending it the same way he’d spent most of his free weekends in Hawkins: Shut up in his room, doing homework and listening to tapes.
But he also had the phone―the new house came equipped with a cordless, because the government is really courteous once you agree at gunpoint to being relocated―wedged between his ear and his left shoulder. It slipped, sometimes, and he kept losing his place in The Iliad to grab it. He’d reread the opening half a dozen times, where woes numberless were being brought upon the Greeks―then Steve would interrupt him by dropping something and hissing goddammit , or by humming to himself, or by saying, “Gavin Miller rented Cruising today. So you’ve probably got a shot, if you’re still hot for him.”
“Shut up,” Jonathan said, snorting. The Iliad fluttered shut again. “I was never hot for Gavin Miller; I was fourteen. I never should’ve told you about that.”
Steve huffed. “Well, just letting you know he’s got shit taste; and his hairline’s receding.”
“I didn’t take you for the jealous type,” Jonathan quipped. It was a stupid line; it was something Steve would say. But Jonathan found it a lot easier to drop lines over the phone, when Steve couldn’t see that his face was flushed and his hands were shaking. And he knew Steve liked it, even if he just got another huff in response; lately, Jonathan had found that it was even easier―troublingly so―to justify doing something when he knew Steve liked it. “Shouldn’t you be asleep?”
“Huh?”
Jonathan glanced at his alarm clock just as the bright red letters flashed over to 12:02 . “It’s after midnight here-” he paused, because he still had to calculate the time difference back then, “which means it’s three there.”
Immediately, Steve started on the defensive. “I’ve got a closing shift tomorrow-”
“ Steve. ”
“And I drank a Jolt!” he continued. “ All the sugar and twice the caffeine , ever heard of it? I’m very energized, By- Horowitz.”
Decisively, Jonathan said, “I’m going to hang up now.”
Rather than respond with words, Steve whined incoherently, like a spoiled dog not used to being told no. That was nothing new―he pulled the whining out for everything from Jonathan hanging up the phone to feeling like he was losing a debate over which Star Wars movie was the best.
Of course, Jonathan knew that there was a reason Steve kept doing it: It had a one hundred percent success rate.
“It really isn’t good for your brain,” he insisted. Steve made another noise of protest. “Dr. Wyatt would tell you the same thing.”
With a dismissive pfft , Steve shot back, “Dr. Wyatt’s a quack.” Jonathan knew he was probably waving his hand in the air, rolling his eyes; performing for an audience that couldn’t see him. “He also says I need a spinal tap. Like that movie.”
Jonathan clicked his tongue. “Weren’t you just making fun of Gavin Miller for having bad taste?”
“Come on. Even Robin likes Spinal Tap. ”
“ Put it up to eleven― hysterical. I’m clutching my sides.” Admitting defeat, Jonathan chucked The Iliad onto his nightstand. Maybe tomorrow, Achilles. “I’m going to sleep.”
“Go ahead.”
“Which means…”
This brought the infamous whining back in full force. “You fall asleep on the phone all the time!”
“I shouldn’t.”
“You’re killin’ me, Horowitz.”
“ You’re killing you," Jonathan said, doing his best to sound stern. "With the assistance of Jolt Cola and Marlboro Reds.”
“I barely smoke this time of year. I know you’re in sunny California, but it’s goddamn cold out here.” Steve had lowered his voice, which always meant he was about to say something ridiculous; Jonathan braced himself. “Especially now that I can’t huddle up with you. I’ll have to smoke a hundred cigarettes at Christmas to make up for it.”
Luckily, Jonathan had used the full extent of his flirtatious prowess for the night on that throwaway comment about being the jealous type. He rolled his eyes―Steve would say he could tell whenever he did, swearing that it translated over the phone.
“It’s cold here too, jackass; the desert gets cold at night. And don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing.”
“Is it working?”
“Sort of,” Jonathan allowed.
An hour later, he fell asleep with his hand still curled lightly around the phone.
―
The desert really did get cold at night. It was a dry cold, which was completely alien to him after the wet, slushy winters in Hawkins.
Sometimes, Jonathan woke up in the morning expecting to see his breath clouding in front of him before he remembered that he was in the new house, and that the new house had central heat. A lot of the time, he actually woke up sweating.
The new house had a lot of things he wasn’t used to: There were the stairs just to the right of his bedroom, which he nearly tumbled down an embarrassing number of times; a refrigerator that didn’t leave ice crystals in the milk; two bathrooms and two toilets that flushed on the first try. It was situated in a proper suburb, with neighbors so close he could’ve leaned out his window and spat on the side of someone’s house.
There were no woods to speak of―just palm trees planted evenly-spaced up the length of the street, one for every house. Jonathan didn’t know if palm trees actually grew out there naturally or if it was just someone’s idea of landscaping; but he did see honest-to-God, non-ornamental cacti growing by the side of the road on the way to school every day.
The first few times he saw the cacti, he pointed them out to Will and El. He gave up after a while, knowing he’d just be met with two blank stares, one from the passenger seat and the other in the rearview mirror. (Who was where depended on who’d called shotgun that day, and if the loser played dirty by throwing elbows or sprinting out to the car.)
Even though Jonathan was just as new to California as Will and El, he spent a lot of those first few weeks playing tour guide.
None of them had ever eaten a burrito, so Jonathan took them to El Rodeo . There was a museum the next town over with Aztec pottery shards and a section on Lewis and Clark, a park with towering trees he thought might be redwoods, and half a dozen other places Jonathan took them just to get them away from their rooms or the TV.
Before his futiles attempt at California tourism, Jonathan watched Will and El pout their way along Route 66; there were photos of them standing, unsmiling, in front of every roadside attraction from The Blue Whale of Catoosa to the world’s oldest trading post.
Jonathan’s last-ditch effort was the farmer’s market. He’d seen a flier for it tacked up in the grocery store and been pleasantly surprised to learn that it was more than just a guy in a gas station parking lot selling vegetables out of the bed of a truck. The flier boasted that there would be over twenty local vendors and artisans .
The first Sunday it was open, he dragged the kids out of bed to check it out. Once they got there, he bought them croissants and iced coffees for their trouble―in hindsight, that was where things started to go downhill. Will said the coffee made him jittery, and El wrinkled her nose at the taste of it.
Still, Jonathan did his best to keep morale up. It was almost impossible to wallow at the farmer’s market: There was a rack of postcards with watercolor paintings of local wildflowers on the front. A woman near the entrance was selling balls of alpaca yarn. El got lip balm made from real beeswax and Will bought a sample-size of paints made with vegetable juice for pigment. Jonathan even grabbed a box of cider donuts for Mom, who’d stayed home with a migraine.
In short, it was like fucking Disney World―not that Jonathan had been there, either.
It was the closest he’d ever been to Disney World, with fruit and pastries and hand-knitted socks being sold at reasonable prices; Will and El managed to look suicidal the whole way through.
By the time they started retracing their steps to the exit, Jonathan almost wanted to scream at them. To say, I left my home too. I am actively trying to make the best out of a bad- out of the worst possible situation for your sake. I left all my friends too. I left-
He might’ve even done it, if these thoughts weren’t ground to a halt by the fact that his car―parallel-parked across the street from the market, right in front of the meter―wouldn’t start.
Jonathan had always prided himself on the fact that he could do a lot of things guys his age couldn’t. He could cook eggs exactly the way everyone in his family and Steve and all Will’s friends besides took them; he knew down to the drop how much of the cheap laundry detergent he could use without Will breaking out in hives; how to make an entire week of meals out of clipped coupons and canned vegetables; and a whole hell of a lot of useless shit about The Cure and Rolling Stone magazine besides.
But Lonnie was always the one to keep the cars running. After him, Hopper could do a pretty decent job.
Jonathan remembered a thing or two (or thought he did, enough that he could change his own oil and had even tried desperately to fix Nancy’s car in a pinch on that awful night at the mall); but staring into the bowels of his car that day, every passerby slowing down to gawk at them and absolutely no one offering to help―he might as well have tried reading a book in a language he’d only overheard other people speaking.
To himself more than anyone, he mumbled, “Guess I’ll have to get it towed.”
He looked up from beneath the hood, taking stock of his situation. He was out of quarters; the meter was going to run out in thirteen minutes.
It was hot as hell out for November and he was starting to sweat through his t-shirt. He’d already peeled his jacket off.
Almost everything was closed on Sunday in Hawkins; it probably wasn’t much different here, besides the quaint little farmer’s market. He couldn’t remember if formal tow companies had even existed back home―there was always just some guy down the street who had a hitch on his truck and could be paid in beer or cigarettes.
Maybe he could find a payphone, use it to call Mom and ask her to look through the phone book- except- except he was out of fucking quarters.
He turned to Will and El―who had hunkered down on the curb to continue glowering at Jonathan, and each other, and out into the street―and declared, “We’re walking.”
He couldn’t tell if the answering shriek of “ What? ” was one or both of them.
“The car’s dead,” he explained, realizing for the first time that they might have been too engaged in self pity to realize what he was doing. For emphasis, he slammed the hood shut and thumped it. “And I don’t know what to do. So we’re walking home. Come on.”
He spun on his heel and marched forward without looking back.
There was a sudden, strange serenity that came with accepting his fate; he let it wash over him.
Sure, he’d be spending the better part of the afternoon slogging home with a box of cider donuts and two maudlin teenagers weighing him down; and Mom would probably still be in bed when they got home, or at least on the couch in her pajamas; towing the car all the way back to the suburbs would use up the last of his savings, so he’d have to work for a few months before he could even dream of getting it fixed.
My savings, he thought mournfully. He’d frittered them away on these ridiculous little morale-boosting excursions, for all the good it’d done him.
Of course, this line of thinking was not conducive to his singular, laser focus on making it home―he shut it off. What a nice feeling, to have nothing in his head but left foot, right foot, forward . In that moment, he could almost understand why guys his age joined the military: There’s a certain calmness that comes with following routines. Even miserable ones.
The calm and serenity of the moment was punctuated, occasionally, by whining from Will and El. Mostly Will, saying some iteration of, “This is insane. Why don’t we just go back to the car and see if there are quarters under the seats?”
“The car’s dead,” Jonathan replied, more than once.
“I know that,” Will gritted out. He must have jogged to catch up―his forehead was red and damp, his bangs plastered to it. “But maybe we dropped some change in there, yeah? We could move the seats around.”
Jonathan sighed. “I didn’t drop any change.”
“What about on accident?” Will pushed.
Jonathan shook his head. “Nope.”
With an exasperated groan, Will fell back. Jonathan could hear him chattering with El, the word crazy being thrown around by both of them.
He tuned it out. If he looked back, he knew he would still be able to see the car and the bustling market, because they hadn’t made it very far at all.
If I look back, Jonathan thought, I’ll turn into a pillar of salt. He was pretty sure that happened in the Bible, to someone’s poor wife; he only knew about it from reading Slaughterhouse 5.
―
Miraculously, they made it home before sunset, with blistered feet and sunburnt faces.
As expected, Mom was on the couch, riveted to the TV even though it was just playing the same commercials that were on a dozen times a day. Squinting, Jonathan saw that this one was a detergent ad, the one with the little girl who giggles and says no more spaghetti with that same little-kid speech impediment Will had until one day he didn’t.
Mom used to smile at the TV when it came on, repeating that factoid and making Will duck his head in embarrassment; that day, it didn’t seem to faze her. Jonathan announced himself when they got in the door.
Then, because she hadn’t seemed to hear him the first time, he said it again while standing in front of the TV: “My car broke down.”
Will rushed into the living room after him in all his righteous, sweaty rage, probably to say the same thing he’d been saying all the way home about how Jonathan was clearly not well ; but Mom blinking up at them―slow and deliberate, like she was trying to remember how―stopped him short. Even El, who couldn’t possibly have seen, froze in place in the foyer.
Jonathan waited. He glanced to the side and saw that Will and El were waiting, too. Even the house seemed to hold its breath, the TV fading to a drone in the background.
But when he turned back to his mom, Jonathan just saw blinking.
Maybe he really was unwell; or maybe Mom was.
That was the more likely answer. There was a historical context for it.
Beside him, Will cleared his throat. El had started to fidget in place, rocking from foot-to-foot with her arms crossed over her chest.
Mom blinked.
Slowly, the TV faded back in―that was when Jonathan heard it. Tires squealing; the swell of the tell-tale hokey theme song; he glanced back over his shoulder, confirming, just in time to see Starsky barrel roll out of a flaming car.
“Oh, maybe you shouldn’t-” he started, trailing off when he realized Mom was just looking past him, eyes on the screen. He jerked his head towards the coffee table, hoping the remote was there; Will picked up on it immediately, thank God, scrambling to switch the whole thing off with a click.
Fucking cop shows. Of all the things for her to be watching- and of course she shouldn’t have been, not after- well. After the very event that’d left her catatonic since their second week in California, when the last box of dishes was unpacked and the adrenaline wore off for all of them.
Jonathan looked up to see that El was gaping at the black screen, too, and fought the urge to send her to her room―it wasn’t like he had any authority to do that. He didn’t have authority over either of them, technically; but Will had been following Jonathan’s orders since before he could talk, even if there was a lot more grumbling and eye-rolling involved now.
It was different with El. Jonathan spent a lot of those first few months battling guilt over how responsible he didn’t feel for her wellbeing.
Jonathan wasn’t a monster: He did all the good-brother things. He helped her with homework. He put the few foods he knew she liked―he learned by what she snuck out of the pantry at night and squirreled away in her bedroom, jars of peanut butter and toaster waffles he was pretty certain she was eating frozen―on every grocery list. He took her to museums and parks and farmer’s markets, same as Will.
He wanted to see her happy, bathed, fed.
He tried not to think too hard about how that was the bare minimum, how even prisoners get three hots and a cot.
But Jonathan couldn’t bring himself to send her out. To say, you don’t need to see that. No cop shows for anybody. No TV at all except the five o’clock news and the Brady Bunch.
And because he couldn’t bring himself to do it, he looked away from her. Looked back to his mom―to a problem he had solved before―still sitting there, her mouth hanging ever-so-slightly open.
“Mom,” Jonathan started. Slowly, he lowered himself to a crouch in front of her. “My car’s not starting.”
Behind him, Will snapped, “Mom.”
When that was what brought her back into herself, Jonathan tried to be grateful and nothing else.
Still a little dazed, she asked, “Do I need to jump you off?”
Jonathan ground his teeth. “The car’s not here.”
Mom cocked her head, bewildered. “But you said it’s not starting-”
“It’s at the farmer’s market,” Will interrupted. “We walked home.”
That set Mom fully into motion. She stood up, wringing her hands. “Oh, sweetie. You could’ve called!”
Jonathan was still crouching, at eye-level with no one now. To the armrest, he said, “I didn’t think- I didn’t-”
Will cut him off, again. “We couldn’t find a payphone.”
Jonathan told himself he was grateful for the white lie―Mom didn’t need a lecture on how Jonathan was unwell when she was in a state to be immobilized by daytime television.
―
Jonathan realized why Will was actually so frantic about getting home a half hour later when, through a burst of static, Dustin Henderson screeched, “I was starting to think you forgot!”
Will’s narrowed eyes slid over to Jonathan, accusing. “ I didn’t forget.”
“I didn’t forget either,” Jonathan protested. Craning his neck to speak into Will’s walkie, he added, “My car broke down. We got stuck at the farmer’s market.”
Somewhere in the background on Dustin’s end, another voice cut in: “What happened to your car?”
Matter-of-factly, Dustin said, “Steve’s here. Say hi, Steve.”
“Hi, Steve,” Steve mimicked.
There was a lull in the conversation in which Jonathan was fairly certain they were tussling over the walkie―Steve must have been victorious. “Byers,” he continued, “your car?”
Jonathan threw his hands up, though Steve couldn’t see it. “Hell if I know. It won’t start.”
“Can you two talk shop another time?” Dustin groaned.
There was another lull, though the walkie picked up the tussling this time: Steve calling Dustin a shithead and Dustin’s responding lecturing about the purpose of Cerebro Sundays .
From across the table, El cleared her throat and piped up into her own walkie to ask, “Is anyone else there?”
Jonathan could tell from El’s slumped shoulders that Robin’s answering, “Hello, children” wasn’t what she’d wanted to hear.
After an elbow to the ribs from Steve, if Jonathan had to guess, she tacked on, “And Jonathan. Though legally, you’re a child―aren’t you?”
“He turned eighteen in June,” Steve corrected.
“That’s hardly-”
Dustin, who must have finally won the power struggle over Cerebro, hissed “ Enough! Will: Status report.”
“It’s the same as last week.” Last week’s status report had been something along the lines of school sucks; everyone here sucks; this sucks, stopping just short of I hate my life and wish I was dead. It had been heavily implied regardless. “What about you guys?”
Excitedly, Dustin said, “We joined Hellfire.”
Will looked back at Jonathan, conspiratorial this time―he pulled a face, wrinkling his nose. “Is that a cult?”
Dustin took the comment in stride: “It’s the DND club. Jonathan, I’m sure you’ve heard of it.”
“It’s run by that guy who sells drugs to children,” Robin interjected, just as Steve said, “it’s basically a cult.”
Jonathan had heard of Hellfire. By the time he was in high school, it’d gained a reputation as a sort of catchall for the lowest of social lepers. In that way, he would’ve been a good fit; he’d even dabbled in DND the previous summer, serving as dungeon master in a few of the kid’s early campaigns. It’d been a perfectly good time, eating pizza in the Wheeler’s basement and throwing his voice for different characters, staying up late to help Will draw maps of made-up places.
But, like most things, DND was something Jonathan did for his brother’s sake. If Will hadn’t begged him to do it, he would’ve been just as happy to spend those nights in his room committing the new Cure album to memory. He certainly wasn’t going to go out of his way to play DND without Will, and with a bunch of kids who stylized themselves as some counter-culture biker gang for the socially challenged.
And there was the fact that, by the time ninth grade started, Jonathan had already taken a job at the gas station―for his brother’s sake. He’d done well enough to fit photography into his schedule, back then.
“His name is Eddie Munson,” Dustin snapped. “He took us into the fold.”
“Us?” Will asked.
“Me and Mike and Lucas. All three of us. He called us little lost sheep.”
Robin, her voice pitched up, added, “And then he said, you sheep look like you could use some cocaine.”
Ignoring her, Dustin barreled on, “And we get t-shirts. They’re awesome. They’ve got- well, I won’t ruin it. Let’s just say I might be able to get you one before Christmas break.”
“Don’t go to too much trouble,” Will said, grimacing.
The call went on like that for the next half hour, with Dustin and Robin and Steve arguing and interrupting one another in turn.
Dustin described the Hellfire Club’s campaign again Vecna in painstaking detail; Steve and Robin rattled off a list of people Jonathan loosely knew from high school and what movies they’d rented that weekend; El visibly perked up when Dustin mentioned that Mike had just finished writing her like, a thirty page long manifesto.
Mom shuffled into the kitchen with wet hair just after six. “Meatloaf sandwiches,” she announced, to a mock-gag from Will and a tight-lipped smile from El.
“Need any help?” Jonathan asked.
Typically, he didn’t consider slicing meatloaf into squares and slapping it on WonderBread a two person job―the exception being that the person making them had been half-comatose on the couch to Starsky and Hutch less than two hours ago. Mom shook her head no; still, Jonathan pushed away from the table and took the bag of bread out of the pantry, sliding it to her across the counter.
Over the walkie, Steve was saying, “I think it’s about your bedtime, Henderson” and being met with shrieks of protest.
“And dinner time for you two,” Jonathan chimed in, indicating Will and El in turn; like that, Will was back to glaring at him.
They’d been having this fight every Sunday since moving to California; Jonathan assumed they’d keep having it until the government abolished time zones or decided to relocate them to a different one.
“Dinner,” Jonathan repeated.
With a flourish, Will let his head loll into one hand, still holding the walkie in the other. Mournfully, he said, “I’ve gotta go before I’m force-fed a meatloaf sandwich.”
Dustin let out a long-suffering sigh. “Yeah, Steve’s bitching me out- what, Steve? You are! I’ll call you after school this week, yeah? And I mailed you something. It’ll be the puny envelope under that goddamn novel Mike’s sending.”
Will grinned into the walkie; though as soon as he realized Jonathan was looking, he turned to hide it behind his hand. Clearing his throat, he said, “Cool.”
There was another struggle on the Hawkins end, more hand it over, you little shit from Steve . He must’ve been victorious again; just before Cerebro crackled and shut off, Jonathan heard it: “And I’ll call you later.”
―
The next morning, not knowing where the actual bus stop was, Jonathan decided their best bet was to stand at the end of the driveway with their backpacks on, doing their best impression of a pack of helpless kids who desperately need to get to school.
Still, when the bus nearly blew past them twenty minutes later, he couldn’t help the wave of relief that washed over him; he could swear he felt it rippling through to Will and El, too.
He contemplated taking Mom’s car―it wasn’t like she’d need it. The lack of commute was one of the supposed benefits of selling encyclopedias over the phone.
The devil on his shoulder whispered, very convincingly, that they should play hooky.
But that was the other thing about Mom working from home: She was home. Always. Of course, she was so out of it half the time that they could probably convince her it was Sunday again.
Just then, the bus screeched to a halt a bit past the house, putting a stop to that particularly evil urge. They managed to find a seat at the back, which Will and El immediately dropped onto and pulled their backpacks into their laps. It was so quick that it nearly seemed like a coordinated effort; but Jonathan would be damned if he’d be the one to sit with the kid across the aisle, who was the only one without a seatmate.
If Jonathan had to guess, that was because of the pocket knife he was stabbing, repeatedly, into the cushion beside him.
He would rather be cramped. He would rather look like a pack of scared baby animals who didn’t want to be separated from one another. (Wasn’t that what they were, anyways, or something close to it?) Grudgingly, Jonathan had a newfound appreciation for huddling, since that was what Steve called standing close together while he smoked a cigarette― huddling up.
Most importantly, he wasn’t keen on being stabbed in the leg. It would’ve put a real damper on things.
Jonathan motioned for Will to scoot over, tugged his backpack off, and sat with his legs halfway in the aisle the whole way to school.
―
In the month since they’d moved to California, Steve had called every night. On the weekend, he might even call twice, from the phone at Family Video and again once he got home.
Jonathan knew it was going to come up sooner or later, whenever Mom rejoined the human population. He could guess what the jist of it would be: He was racking up a small fortune in long distance calls, not to mention staying up til God-knows-when and rolling out of bed with dark circles the next day. It was going to tank his grades just in time for him to start applying for colleges, and what would he do about NYU then?
Of course, privately, Jonathan knew what he was going to do about NYU, because it was what he did about a lot of things: Nothing.
But on that particular day, Jonathan had watched Mom take twenty minutes to eat a turkey sandwich because she kept stopping to stare slack-jawed out the kitchen window; so when Steve called at eight, he picked up on the first ring and scurried up the stairs with the cordless.
As usual, the call began with a riveting recap of the last twenty four hours of Family Video transactions. Half the stuff Steve told him felt like a serious privacy violation, like how Mrs. Wheeler was into stuff with guys in sexy historical costumes while the old bus driver Mr. Jacobson only rented chick flicks.
Jonathan said as much. “What ever happened to cashier-customer confidentiality?”
“They don’t pay me enough to be confidential ,” Steve said, scoffing. “It gets worse: I could look your name up and see everything you ever rented, if I wanted to.”
“And I’m sure you have.”
“Oh, come on. Gimme a little credit,” Steve whined, entirely unconvincing. When Jonathan didn’t respond, he relented: “Rob was the one who looked you up. I’d think The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia was beneath your refined tastes if she hadn’t shown me who’s in it. But still―six times? You coulda just bought it.”
Jonathan groaned. “ Steve. Cut it out.”
“I’m just saying, Byowitz. Rental prices are a fucking ripoff. Ask me how I know! And it’s nothing to be embarrassed about; Mr. Jacobson’s not renting 9 to 5 for the plot, I’m sure.” Jonathan couldn’t bring himself to say anything. He was too busy feeling like there were flames crawling up the side of his face. Mercifully, Steve changed the subject. “Speaking of Mr. Jacobson―how was the bus?”
There wasn’t much to say about the bus, other than it’d been an uncomfortable half hour each way; still, it was preferable to delving further into his ninth grade self’s unsubtle movie renting habits.
“Let’s see,” Jonathan started. “The kid next to us was mutilating the seat with a pocket knife; it’s the only vehicle that’s ever made El carsick; and Will’s threatening to kill himself if we have to do it again. Which we do, tomorrow morning.” He paused for effect. He’d ticked everything off on his fingers, knowing it was the kind of thing Steve would’ve appreciated, if he was there. “So, you know. Could be better.”
Steve made a gagging noise; Jonathan imagined that it was complete with a shudder of disgust. “I don’t blame him. The bus .”
“Lucky for you you’re out of school, I guess. Not that you ever had to take it, considering you’ve got a BMW.”
Most of the time, Jonathan didn’t like going into their rich boy, poor boy thing; and they’d been on more even footing lately, with Steve all but formally cut off.
But he had a leg-up just by having a functioning car.
Steve let out a pfft in response . “Yeah, lucky me. The guy at the mechanic told me they call ‘em Big Money Wasters. I’m about to learn to fix it my fucking self. You know what it was this last time? A squirrel. A squirrel chewed through some wire and fucked the whole thing up. Cost me a hundred bucks. Maybe you’ve got squirrel issues.”
Squirrels. Jonathan doubted it―it was a touch too fantastical. The kind of bad thing that was so simultaneously ridiculous that it could only happen to Steve. The Galaxie, meanwhile, had been in its death throes since Jonathan drove it off the lot.
“Well, if you learn to fix cars between now and Christmas you can take a look at it. Tie some wires back together.”
Glancing out the window, Jonathan could see the Galaxie: It was still parked by the curb where the tow truck had dropped it off, collecting dust and leaves. At least there wasn’t going to be any snow to dig it out of that winter.
“Between your car and mine, I’ll be a certified mechanic. It’d probably pay a hell of a lot better than Family Video,” Steve said. “Keith’s on this whole power trip right now about how eating from the candy counter is stealing. Stealing! It’s Twizzlers and Raisinets, for Christ’s sake. If that’s the case, you don’t even wanna know how much ice cream I stole at Scoops. I should be in prison.”
“They’re gonna lock you up once they’re done rounding up and prosecuting all the Russian spies.”
“I’ll take one from your book then, Horowitz ―move to California and change my name.”
“Yeah, ‘cause it’s worked out so great for me. There’s probably a government agent whose whole job is listening in on these phone calls.”
Jonathan had wondered, off and on for the last few years, if there was a file with his name on it somewhere. Perpetually open on someone’s desk, complete with a grainy black-and-white copy of his yearbook photo and a fat stack of transcripts, notes in the margin reading subject appears to have ambiguous relationship with frequent male caller .
Conspiratorially, Steve said, “If they’re listening, tell ‘em they oughta send you back. I think Hawkins is in the kind of danger only Jonathan Byers can save us from.”
Just because Jonathan figured they were listening didn’t mean they didn’t scare the hell out of him. After all, they’d been the ones to install the fucking cordless he was jabbering into night after night.
Scratch out ambiguous relationship, then . Replace with something like homosexual. Possibly politically radical as a result. Further monitoring required.
“Don’t screw around,” he hissed.
“Yeah, yeah. No need to send the men in black after me, anybody.” Dropping his voice, Steve added, “But you can still send him back, if you’re feeling generous.”
It was the kind of thing Jonathan never knew how to respond to. He thought he knew how someone else might. Any other guy would say something like, I want to come back. I want to be in Hawkins.
With you.
I want, I want, I want.
It felt selfish, wanting so much from another person. From Steve, two thousand miles away and already staying up too late just to listen to Jonathan bitch about riding the bus. To say it out loud, to ask for it―that was out of the question.
So instead, Jonathan pivoted to the first thing that came to mind.
“When we were walking home yesterday,” he started, not really knowing where he was going, “we were on this busy street for a while with no sidewalks. People kept honking at us; one guy leaned out his window and called us assholes; but for some reason, it didn’t matter. I just knew I had to keep walking.”
He didn’t say, I felt like I could’ve walked straight back to Hawkins because, again―want. He wanted to do that, and he couldn’t, just like he wanted his car to work and couldn’t make it happen.
He was trying to get away from wanting, just then.
Steve whistled through his teeth. “Jesus, Jonathan. You’re lucky you didn’t get hit by a car, you know.” Solemnly, he added, “Or snatched by the Night Stalker.”
With a dismissive wave of his hand, Jonathan said, “They caught the Night Stalker months ago.”
There was a lull in which he regretted bringing this up at all. He wasn’t sure what his goal was, other than finding something Steve couldn’t flirt about; and he’d recounted some version of this for him twice already, first during the group Cerebro session and again that same night on the phone.
But something had been bothering him about it; ever since it happened, there’d been a voice in his head that sounded an awful lot like Will, saying you’re acting crazy, Jonathan.
“Have you ever had a freakout?” he blurted. “Publically?”
On the other end of the line, Steve hummed to himself, considering. It was just like him, picking now to take things seriously when Jonathan was half-hoping he’d laugh it off.
“This April, actually. At Gino’s. Did I not tell you about that?” After Jonathan grunted to indicate he hadn’t, Steve continued, “It was when I found out I got rejected from all those schools. My dad was giving me hell about it, really chewing me out; disowned me without saying disowned, you know that part; then, without even realizing it, I just started crying―bawling. Like a little kid.”
Jonathan didn’t know how to respond to that, his own freakout suddenly less of one by comparison; and they’d already had a hundred variations of the Our Evil Dads talk.
In the weirdest way, he was jealous. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been able to cry, to bawl . He’d sniffled over Chester; over Steve, a few times; on that first sleepless night in a string of roadside motels while they drove west.
The last time he really cried must have been after Will’s not-death, though by the day of his not-funeral Jonathan hadn’t had anything left in him.
In that moment, the whole thing just felt fucking embarrassing: Having a freakout over a goddamn beater car he’d hated; how his moody fourteen year old brother calling him crazy was somehow the worst part of it all; bringing it up to Steve, a guy who’d had his tongue shoved down Jonathan’s throat less than a month ago and for whatever reason still wanted anything to do with him.
Someone halfway normal would’ve done unspeakable things during a midnight phone call with Steve Harrington; Jonathan couldn’t even bring himself to say I miss you. I’d like to see you.
If Steve noticed the lull in conversation, he had the decency not to say anything. He must have realized Jonathan required prompting―he was always doing shit like that, which Jonathan wanted to find demoralizing and mostly, disgustingly, found charming―and asked, “Did you have a freakout recently? Was it about your car?”
“I don’t know,” Jonathan said sheepishly. He racked his brain for a diversion, something that would let him drop it completely, and came up short. “I mean, I made us walk home on the side of the highway; and the whole time, I felt sort of…calm. It was like nothing could get through to me. Will and El kept saying I was being insane and people were screaming at us and it just didn’t faze me because I had this singular purpose: Walk and keep walking.” He cleared his throat and fought the urge to hang up the phone, or sink into the floor. “I might’ve been on the verge of a freakout. Maybe. I didn’t cry.”
This time, it was Steve who paused. Eventually, he said, “You know what I think? I think you’re overdue for a freakout. Crying and all.”
“I hate crying,” Jonathan protested.
His own voice sounded weak and pathetic in his ears. Tiny. Like a little kid.
And wouldn’t that just be the humiliation to end all humiliations: Having Freakout 2.0 because he got all worked up trying to discuss the first one with Steve.
Steve interrupted this speeding-rapidly-towards-disaster train of thought with, “No one likes crying. But I always feel good after I do it.” Wistfully, he said, “One day, I wanna be one of those people who cries over Campbell’s soup commercials. Maybe whoever knocks my brain around next can activate that for me.”
There it was: A diversion, unveiling itself. No more talking about crying or freakouts. Back to your regularly scheduled bullshiting until two AM.
It was the coward’s way out; but Jonathan had never claimed to be anything else.
“Maybe it’ll happen if you let Dr. Wyatt give you that spinal tap.”
Predictably, Steve was horrified: “Hell no. Absolutely not. The needle’s as long as my goddamn arm.”
―
Despite Jonathan’s best efforts, Steve fell asleep on the phone almost every night. That night was no exception: He was snoring right into the receiver.
Jonathan was just about to creep downstairs to put the cordless back in the cradle―he’d let it die overnight once, and it had been enough to temporarily agitate Mom out of her unresponsive state―when Steve mumbled, “Too bad you’re not here. There’s a hot older guy with a cool car who’d wanna drive you to school tomorrow.”
It took Jonathan a minute to realize it wasn’t just mindless sleep-babble. Steve did that, some nights, mumbling at Dustin to shut up or Robin to help him put tapes back on the shelf.
There were worse things, sometimes. Nightmares. Jonathan had always heard you weren’t supposed to wake someone who was sleep-walking, no matter how terrified they seemed; but on those nights, he’d repeat Steve as loud and as many times as he could, like a mantra, until Steve at least stopped outright screaming.
Jonathan smothered a yawn in the crook of his arm. “A hot older guy with a big money waster , you mean.”
Hot. Older. It made Jonathan’s face burn.
But it was late, and he was sure Steve knew those things to be objectively true; and he must’ve known, by then, that Jonathan thought them too.
Jonathan could give him this one.
“At least my car runs.” Around his own jaw-cracking yawn, Steve tacked on, “For now.”
―
Steve jostles his leg. “Lemme drive the two-ton death machine, Byowitz.”
“We’ll switch at the next gas station.” The road runs flat and straight in both directions, as far as Jonathan can see; the next gas station has to be twenty miles away. Hopefully, Steve will have fallen back asleep by the time they get there; he’ll rouse the kids just long enough to get them to go pee and grab a candy bar for breakfast. “But no Jolt.”