Chapter Text
Mia caps the pen in her hand, staring at the black X she’s just marked down on the calendar.
The 29th of October.
Only one day until Halloween.
“Mia, can you help me set the table?”
“Sure.” Mia answers Jonathan, lips numb.
It’s been almost a year since -
Mia shakes her head. Steps away from the wall. And goes to set the table.
She had, of course, known that Halloween was just around the corner.
She and Jenny were going out tomorrow to see if they could find the finishing touches for their costumes, which they’ve been planning for months already. Mom has spent the last few days sewing the finishing touches to Will's Egon Spengler outfit, made from an old jumpsuit that Mia, Will and Jenny had found at the thrift store. Even Jonathan has been busier than usual with a thematic assignment from his Photography Club, that had him going to that Murder House on Morehead with two other kids from the club to take some horror-inspired pictures.
And Mia has been marking down the days on the calendar every morning since January 1st. Once all the little boxes for the month were marked with black ink, she was the one to rip the pages out to reveal the following month. She knew the date was coming. Ever since September started, she had seen the little October 31st box, watching as it got closer and closer with a feeling like dread settling deep in her stomach.
Her problem wasn’t with Halloween, no. She loves Halloween.
But the thought that on the morning after they go out trick or treating she’d have to rip out the October page and reveal the November one had her entire body breaking out in a cold sweat.
“Hey.”
Mia startles, dropping the cutlery in her hands to the floor with a loud sound.
Jonathan stares at her from the stove. There’s a concerned frown on his face which he quickly smooths out once she raises her eyes to him.
“You okay?” He asks, mouth quirking up at the sides as if he thought she was being funny.
Mia stares at him for a second.
She had forgotten he was there. She doesn’t even remember getting cutlery from the drawer.
“Sorry.” She says, looking away. “I was thinking about something else.”
A flash passes behind Jonathan’s eyes, a small frown twisting his brows, but before Mia can identify the emotion, her brother turns around to face the pan on the stove, stirring the mac ‘n cheese in it.
He stirs it too fast, the movement too wide, and some of the cheese sauce spills out one side of the pot. Chester, who had been lying down behind Jonathan’s heels, licks the drops that fall on the floor.
Jonathan doesn’t notice it, eyes fixed on the pot.
It’s almost ten o’clock and Jonathan’s been wearing pajamas since he came back from school. If mom was here and not picking up Will from the arcade, she’d already have complained that not only was he getting his pajamas dirty, but he was also walking around on the cold floor of their house in socks, without slippers or shoes.
Dad used to make Jonathan scrub his dirty socks in the mudroom’s sink until his knuckles bled, saying Jonathan shouldn’t make their mom wash his dirty clothes when it was Jonathan’s fault they got dirty.
Jonathan still washes them in the mudroom sink until his hands turn red.
And despite never having to wash his dirty socks, Mom still complains about it.
“What were you thinking about?” Jonathan prompts Mia, feigning nonchalance.
She wishes he’d just stop pretending. Wishes he’d just ask what he wants to ask.
She wishes he’d just shut up and never try to talk to her about it again.
“About tomorrow.” Mia lies. “Jenny and I are going to town to get the stuff for our costumes. You shouldn’t be walking around in your socks.”
Jonathan huffs out a breath, but doesn’t continue the conversation, which is just what she wanted.
Still, Mia wishes he’d ask her again.
Maybe this time she would tell him the truth.
But Jonathan doesn’t ask. And Mia feels a terrible mix of relief and resentment that she doesn’t get another opportunity to answer.
Mia puts down four plates on the table. Jonathan puts the pan in the middle of the table. Jonathan sits down on his chair. Mia sits in hers and they wait. Chester walks over to the table, curling up underneath it. Mia pets his flank with her heels, drumming her fingers on the table.
The clock ticks on the wall.
Jonathan sighs and opens his mouth.
Mia’s heart races, throat aching with the urge to talk, to tell him that she was thinking about -
But then Jonathan closes his mouth again, and the moment passes.
Mia leans back in her chair, not knowing when she had leaned forward in the first place, and looks at the clock.
Then she looks at the calendar on the wall.
Then tears her eyes away, back to her empty plate.
She fiddles with her fork, remembering that cool balancing trick that Dustin had shown her the other day when they had dinner at his house. She eyeballs Will’s fork, but sighs when she realizes they don’t have any corks in the house. Though Mom has started drinking wine at home with her new boyfriend Bob, they throw away the bottle as soon as they’re done with it, and Bob takes all the corks home for his “cork collection”.
Why anyone would have a cork collection, Mia really doesn’t know.
The silence between her and Jonathan could be cut with the dullest butter knife in their kitchen drawer.
However, what breaks it, finally, is the sound of Mom’s car rolling to a stop on their driveway, followed by the twin sounds of car doors slamming closed.
Mia cranes her head to look at the living room, straining her ears to hear her brother's voice. She hears nothing but Mom’s and Will’s footsteps coming up to the porch, which immediately sets her on edge.
Ever since the Arcade re-opened back in February with dozens of new games, Will and the others have been going there every time they get the chance (and the money) to do so. It changed Will, in a good way - ever since, well - her brother has been walking around like a ghost of himself, always lost inside his head, eyes always turned to the ground, voice so small they all have to make an effort not to ask him to repeat himself. But in those few hours after he hangs out with the party, it’s like an old light comes back behind his eyes. He talks, as loudly as he did before. He smiles and jokes and touches Mike and Dustin and Lucas and it’s almost like last year never happened.
Mia would be happy to see that light back in Will’s eyes, if it didn’t always blink out as soon as Will’s eyes fell back on her.
Sure, Mia could understand it. She had tried to give him space that first week after the hospital. Will should be mad at her, should hate her. But it had kind of consoled her a bit, the knowledge that, at the end of the day, he was still her brother, her twin, and that he’d seemed happy to see her, back at the hospital. She knew that at one point they would settle things - maybe they’d pretend that nothing had happened, or they’d sit down and talk, but they would do something, and they'd go back to being like they were before.
But the silence seemed to have grown to swallow everything.
They never did settle things.
They didn’t really talk much these days, actually.
Mia really doesn’t blame Will, or at least it’s what she tells herself over and over and over again. Mia had escaped the demogorgon last year and had been found safe and sound in the woods while Will had been stuck in the Upside Down for a whole week, running from the Demogorgon only to end up caught by it and almost killed.
She had only found that out because Chief Hopper had told her about it one time that he came by for dinner. Mia had spent the entire week working up the courage to just ask him, and once she did, she wished she didn’t. He’d told her about the flakes floating in the air like ash, the vines covering everything, and finding Will, unconscious and surrounded by vines.
Chief Hopper had hesitated as he told her that last part. At night, before Mia falls asleep, her brain tries to figure out what it is that Chief Hopper didn’t tell her: those vines Chief Hopper mentioned choking Will, pinning him against a wall. A mountain of bones picked clean, and Will lying there, limp and almost dead, left amidst the bones so the demogorgon could feast on him later.
The bottom line was: Mia could understand why her brother hated her now.
She was a constant reminder that Will hadn’t escaped the demogorgon last year, while she had.
She was a constant reminder that he’d been alone in the Upside Down and had almost died.
And Mia had been right here, safe and sound.
The front door opens, jarring her out of her thoughts.
Will comes in, head low, Mom hovering anxiously behind him. She locks the door with shaky fingers, catches Mia’s eyes, and smiles, a thin and shaky thing. Worried.
Something happened.
“Hey, Will.” Jonathan says, bracing his arms on the table. His smile is a thin thing, feigning normalcy. “How was the arcade?”
Will blinks, eyes snapping up to Jonathan. He blinks again - and smiles, wide and fake. “It was good! Lucas and I competed to see who would get more points in Pac-Man. I lost but he still shared his milkshake with me. Oh and, uh, someone beat Dustin’s high score on Dig Dug. He spent the whole night trying to bribe Keith into telling him who it was.”
Will’s cheery voice is offset by mom’s dark eyes, sharp and worried, at his back.
Something happened to Will.
“That’s cool.” Jonathan says, the words like plastic, and raps his knuckles on the table. “I made some mac ‘n cheese if you still got room for it.”
Will looks at the pot and the steaming macaroni as if seeing it for the first time. An emotion scrunches up his face - there and gone so fast Mia can’t catch it.
“Yeah. I’ll just - uh, wash my hands.”
Mom, Mia and Jonathan watch him disappear into the hallway. As soon as he’s gone, mom walks to the table and drops down on a chair, head in her hands.
“I don’t know what’s wrong.” Mom whispers just loud enough for them to hear as soon as the sink starts running in the bathroom. “I tried to ask if something happened, but he didn’t - He did exactly what he did now. Something happened. I know it did. But he won’t tell me what.”
The sound of water running stops and Mom falls silent.
By the time Will comes back to the kitchen, she’s lifted her head and picked up her plate, serving herself some of Jonathan’s mac'n'cheese.
Mia helps herself to a little bit of the food, not feeling all that hungry. It tastes the same as it always has, delicious, though she thinks that Jonathan might have left the pasta a bit too long in the water. The food turns mushy in her mouth, too soft. It weighs on the back of her tongue, and she has to force herself to swallow.
Mom eats everything on her plate. Jonathan and Mia too, though Mia sneaks a few pieces of pasta to Chester under the table. Will leaves some on his plate, which Jonathan ends up finishing, along with the single spoonful of macaroni left on the pot.
It’s not an eventful dinner. Afterwards, Mia and Will leave to brush their teeth and go to sleep. Jonathan and Mom stay at the kitchen to tidy up the dishes - and to talk about Mia and Will, probably, now that they’re not there, like Mia, Mom and Jonathan talked about Will when he wasn’t there.
Did mom, Jonathan and Will talk about Mia, when she wasn’t there?
Mia kind of wants to hang around the hallway and see if she can listen in on their conversation. But one look at Will’s faraway eyes has her following him to their room.
If there’s the slightest chance that she can make him talk about it…
Will pulls off his clothes as if they’re burning him, stepping to their dresser in his underwear and quickly pulling on pants and a sweatshirt. Mia bites the inside of her mouth and twists her fingers on the bottom of her sweater, trying to think of how she’s going to bring up the subject.
Will leaves their room without looking at her.
Mia contemplates just…sitting on her bed and ignoring everything. Suddenly, she wants nothing more than to lie down, pull the covers over her head and sleep. But if there’s the slightest chance that she can make him talk about it…
She sighs and goes to the bathroom, heart starting to race in her chest.
Will is holding his toothbrush and staring at the mirror, not blinking. There’s a glob of toothpaste in the sink.
Mia glances between it and her brother’s face in the mirror. He doesn’t move, doesn’t even notice she’s there.
She clears her throat and Will startles, blinking at her through the mirror before wordlessly putting more toothpaste on his brush.
“So…” Mia starts, voice choked with nerves. She clears her throat, but the feeling of a knot growing in her windpipe doesn’t ease up. “What happened?”
“Nothing.”
She barely refrains from rolling her eyes. “You’re lying.”
“I’m not.”
He is. And not just tonight. He’s been lying and hiding things from her this entire year.
She knows something is going on with him. He’s been crying in their room when he thinks no one’s looking for him, and his skin is always bright red when he comes out of the shower. Two weeks ago he got all pale and shaky at the grocery store and it had taken mom leaving their groceries right there on the floor and dragging him halfway to the car for him to snap out of it.
Back in March, someone had taped a picture of him on his locker with a drawing of bolts at the side of his head and a row of stitches on his neck, like Frankenstein's monster’s. She had asked him if anyone’s been messing with him, and he just told her no - as if she didn’t have eyes. As if she couldn’t see what was right in front of her. Two months later she’d seen a crumpled piece of paper in his bag, and when she pulled it out to read it - just to snoop really - he’d torn the paper from her hand and snapped at her to not touch his things.
Something is wrong with Will. Several somethings.
And honestly, she was getting sick of not knowing.
She was sick of him not talking to her. She was sick of him hating her in complete, and utter silence.
If the boys at school are picking on him, maybe they can talk about it. If something happened at the arcade, if someone made fun of him, or stole some of his money, or if any of their friends did something - they could talk about that right? That was normal stuff. They should be able to talk about it! He could still hate her! But they could talk.
Even if this - even if all of this was about - that. She could. She could try. She could talk to him about it. She should talk to him about it.
No more letting this silence take over everything between them.
“You are so lying.” She tells him, ignoring the way her voice shakes and her heart races.
This is it. She’s not letting him remain silent anymore.
For the sake of having something to do, she steps next to him by the sink and puts toothpaste on her own brush. She runs it under the water, taking her time so she can think on what she’ll say next - only for her entire body to freeze.
Will has brought up his arm to brush vigorously at his front teeth and his sleeve has ridden up a bit past the wrist. On the inside of it, there are two long scratches.
Mia’s heart stops, then slams against her chest so strongly she fears it’ll break through her ribs.
“What. Is that.” She says, not feeling her own mouth.
She’s gone numb all over, her face hot and tingly, her hands cold.
Will frowns at her in the mirror, eyes following her gaze and finding the scratches.
He freezes.
“It’s nothing.” He tells her, eyes wide, lying.
There’s toothpaste foam at the side of his mouth and he must have spit it out at some point but she doesn’t remember it. His eyes are wide and his breathing is starting to get fast and he’s lying to her now, has been lying to her this entire year. It’s not nothing. He hasn’t really talked to her in nearly a year. None of this has been nothing.
Mia blinks, and sees Jonathan, pale and still with his back on the bathroom floor, limp legs propped up on the closed toilet seat. All that red spreading over the tiles.
Mia blinks and her vision tints red at the edges.
She grabs Will’s arm and pulls up his sleeve.
There are just the two lines, all raw at the edges, bits of skin around them raised and scraped over as if - as if -
“Mia, it’s nothing. It’s just a scratch.” Will insists, not even tugging his arm away. “I promise -”
“Stop lying to me!” Mia shouts, voice echoing in the bathroom, so shrill it makes her heart race, the fear in her voice feeding the fear in her chest like a sick feedback loop. She had expected an external threat, maybe someone has been beating him up at school or - but not this. Not this. “You’ve been lying to me this whole time! Stop it!”
“I’m not lying -”
“Yes you are!” She drops his arm, gritting her teeth. “Stop fucking lying!”
Will’s eyes go round with shock, before his brows scrunch up, expression thunderous. Yeah. He hates her. She knew it.
“I told you -”
“You’re lying!”
Will scoffs, incredulously. “I’m not!”
“Then why are you saying that there’s nothing going on?!”
“Because there is nothing going on!” He shouts, throwing his toothbrush in the sink. “What is wrong with you?!”
He throws her a wide-eyed look, brows furrowed and nose wrinkled, as if he couldn’t recognize her, as if she was crazy, as if she was the one losing her mind, and oh, how that makes her blood boil.
“What is wrong with me?” Mia hisses, pointing a finger at him. “What is wrong with you!”
“There’s nothing wrong with me!” He shrieks, teeth bared.
Something shatters in the kitchen, making both of them jump. Mia hears the ringing of Will’s voice in her ears, suddenly too aware that they’ve been screaming at each other and that their voices are traveling all the way to the kitchen.
She seethes, huffing like a bull, hands shaking. She tries breathing in and out, but one look at Will and the red tinge to her vision returns.
“You want to lie to me, fine.” She whispers, leaning close to his face, voice so full of venom she barely recognizes it. Will leans away, eyes wide. Mia’s whole body burns. “But if I find you in this bathroom like we found Jonathan, I will not stitch you up. You hear me? I will let you bleed out.”
Take that back. Her own voice says in her head. You don’t mean it.
Will’s entire face shutters, eyes glazing over, all lights gone.
It’s that same expression he’s been carrying around all year - as if he was dead already, and only his body remained.
Mia thinks of the quarry and the lake. The sound Will’s body had made as it was dragged out of the water.
And she burns.
“Eleven died to kill the monster that took us, you know.” She hisses, all teeth and hatred. She doesn’t think - her mouth moves, and the words tumble out. She wants to make him burn, the way she is burning. He doesn’t want to talk about it? She will talk about it. “She died and you’re here. Alive. Why the hell did you bother coming back if all you were going to do was kill yourself all over again?”
Will recoils, stumbling back until the back of his knees hit the toilet. The look in his eyes immediately makes her sick to her stomach, saliva pooling in her mouth and throat tightening as if she was about to throw up.
She’s shaking, sweat sliding down the sides of her ribs.
Oh, God. She didn’t mean it.
She doesn’t mean it.
Regret and shame wash over her like a tidal wave, leaving her cold and sick. She’s going to throw up.
“Will, I’m -”
“I saw the Upside Down. That’s what happened.” The words burst out of Will’s mouth like vomit, “I saw it. I was there - again - and, and I called for Mike and Dustin and Lucas and they didn’t hear me, and when I walked outside I -” He gasps in a breath, a ragged, wounded sound that cuts straight through Mia’s chest. “There was something in the sky and I could feel it. I could feel him. It was just there, looking at me and it wanted to kill and destroy everyone, and I was there again, in that place, and I thought that maybe I’d never left and -” Will drops down on the toilet lid, pressing his palms to his eyes. He sobs, open mouthed, whole chest shaking, and Mia did this. “I didn’t want to tell anyone because I think I’m going crazy, and mom’s already so worried about me. You, mom and Jonathan - you’re all so worried and nothing I do or don’t do ever changes anything and I hate it. You don’t know what it’s like there. I hate it so much -”
Mia can’t take it anymore. She puts a hand on his shoulder and Will tips forward, his forehead digging into her stomach.
“I’m so sorry.” Will gasps, “I know she’s dead and that - that I’m - she’s all that Mike speaks about. I’m so - I’m sorry.”
Mia hugs his head, heart leaden in her chest. She did this.
She did this.
“Will, stop. Stop.” She whispers, choked up. Her throat hurts like a physical wound. “I shouldn’t have said it.”
You still said it. A voice whispers in her ear.
I didn’t mean it.
Didn’t you?
Someone knocks on the door of the bathroom. Will freezes, swallowing down his sobs so abruptly his whole body curls in on itself.
“Everything alright there?” Comes mom’s voice from the other side, half-concern and half-reprimand. “You two better not be fighting.”
“We’re not.” They say, at the same time, Will’s voice too wet and Mia’s too choked up to be true.
There’s a long silence on the other side before mom leaves.
I shouldn’t have said that, she wants to say again. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it.
“We have to tell mom.” Is what comes out instead.
Will’s head snaps up, eyes wide and dark in the dim bathroom light. “No.”
“Will, we have to - what if it’s -”
“No.” Will gets up, forcing Mia to step back so his head doesn’t smack into her nose. Will roughly wipes his nose on his sleeve and steps around Mia, shoulder bumping painfully against her chest. “We’re not telling her anything.”
“Will -”
“No!” He shouts, angrily taking his toothbrush from the sink basin and putting it properly back in its holder, toothpaste still all over it. “We’re not telling mom.”
Mia grits her jaw. “Will -”
“Just leave it!”
The door of the bathroom swings open, their mom on the other side, a hand on her hip.
“William and Amanda.” Mom interrupts, voice hard as iron. “Do I have to repeat myself?”
“No, mom.” Will answers, followed a beat later by Mia.
“Good.” Mom says, and though her voice is just as unyielding as before, she’s frowning, dark eyes betraying her worry. “It’s late. You both should go to sleep.”
Will shuffles out of the door, head low.
Mia hesitates to follow him.
Mom crosses her arms. “What happened?”
Mia opens her mouth, tempted to tell her, but snaps it shut, shame and regret flooding her body and making her cheeks burn. Could she really just betray Will’s trust like that after every vile thing she’d said to him?
“Nothing…Just - nothing.”
“You know I don’t believe that, honey.”
Mia doesn’t say anything else, just clenches her jaw and stares at the floor.
Mom sighs, reaches out a hand to pull her in by the shoulder. She drops a kiss on Mia’s head and shame zaps through Mia’s entire body. Mia doesn’t deserve this. Mom doesn’t know what she had said to Will. If she knew…
Mia is half-tempted to tell her everything then, just for her to tell Mia that what she’d done was unforgivable, to ground her for it, to punish her for it.
She shouldn’t have said it. She didn’t mean it.
“Goodnight, honey.” Mom whispers against the top of her head when Mia remains silent. “I don’t want to hear you two arguing anymore tonight, alright? You two need to rest.”
Mia nods and mom gently lets her go. Mia doesn’t look at her eyes once as she leaves the bathroom.
Will is already lying on his bed, covers over his shoulder, back turned to Mia.
The weight of his silence presses down on her as she closes and locks their door. It pushes her down into the mattress as she lies on her trundle bed.
She stares at the dark space beneath Will’s bed until her eyes burn. She’s tense all over, sick to her stomach.
“Did you tell her?” Will whispers after a small eternity.
Mia finally blinks. “No.”
Will doesn’t say anything else.
After a while she hears his breaths even out, asleep.
Mia doesn’t sleep. Doesn’t relax. Her fingers ache where she clutches her covers, white-knuckled. Her head hurts, and suddenly she realizes she’s been clenching her jaw this entire time.
She opens her mouth, wincing at the pain. Even her tongue hurts. She moves it, trying to ease the ache, but all it does is spread the pain down to her neck.
Mia turns around in her bed, faces the door. Will breaths are loud above her.
Their door is locked. She still can’t sleep.
What if Will really had gone back to the Upside Down, as he’d said? And maybe those scratches really were just that…scratches.
But what if it really was all in his head? Didn’t the doctors at the lab tell mom to look out for these sorts of things? Episodes, they were called. What if those scratches had been intentional?
Red flashes through her eyes, Jonathan’s pale face, and she squeezes her eyes shut. She sees yellow and red then, Will’s vest dark and waterlogged as they pulled his body out of the lake.
It hadn’t been real. Will was here, alive and breathing behind her. Jonathan was alive and breathing, probably asleep in his room.
El was dead. She had just told Will that he should be dead too.
She didn’t mean it.
Her heart slams in her chest. She can feel it beating against the thin skin of her throat. Mia counts each heartbeat, hoping to slow them down, but they don’t. It just gets harder and harder to breathe.
Suddenly feeling too hot under the covers, Mia kicks them away. She rolls to her back to stare at the dark shadows of the ceiling, shivering at the cold air of her room.
Cold air?
She sits up, and looks over at the window.
It’s open, just a tiny bit.
Mia rolls out of bed, heart in her throat, and hurries over to it. Slowly, so as to not make any noise and wake up Will, she closes it, twisting the lock on top of it.
The cold breeze stops. Mia stands next to the window, swaying on her feet.
Her mouth is dry, the spot above her eye has started throbbing along with the beating of her heart. Why that damned spot.
It feels like she hasn’t drank water in a thousand years.
She leaves their room and walks barefoot to the kitchen, turning on every light in the house on the way there. She fills a cup and drinks it by the sink with her back to the counter, staring at the wide expanse of the living room.
Jonathan had told her that the demogorgon had fallen from the ceiling. The hole in it had been covered up when the government fixed the entire house at the end of last year, but the paint on that part of the ceiling is just a little bit off, just a bit too white.
Mia shudders, all hairs on her arms and neck rising up.
She feels watched, all of a sudden.
She leaves the half-empty glass on the table and walks fast back to her room.
But what if those scratches had been intentional?
She hesitates at door to her and Will’s room.
Perhaps, this time, those scratches might have been just that, scratches. What if the next time they weren’t?
What if it was all in Will’s head and he was…going crazy, somehow?
Mia shouldn’t keep this a secret. She can’t.
Jonathan had been keeping secrets too, once, secrets that now Mia and Will kept with him. They’d almost found out about it too late.
But on the other hand, Mia had her own handful of secrets that she had never shared with anyone, not even Jenny. Could she really spill Will’s secrets when she, herself, had never told hers to anyone else?
But her secrets were in the past. They didn’t matter anymore. This was now.
She couldn’t keep Will’s secrets. She had to tell someone. She couldn’t tell their mom, but maybe….she could tell Jonathan.
Will already hated her, anyway.
Decided, Mia walks back around to Jonathan’s door and twists the doorknob. It’s unlocked.
Jonathan’s lying sprawled on his bed on his stomach, head turned to the door, asleep, and she hates him for it. Hates that he can leave his door unlocked and just go to sleep.
Mia pushes the door open and the hinges creak. Chester raises his head from where he’s curled up at the foot of Jonathan’s bed, ears up. Jonathan’s eyes remain closed, deep asleep.
She could turn around now and go back to her room.
Mia sits at the edge of Jonathan’s bed and shakes his shoulder.
“Jonathan.” She whispers. Her voice is hoarse, as if someone had wrapped their hands around her throat and squeezed. “Jonathan.”
“Wha’ -” Jonathan’s head snaps up first, then he sits up in one movement, kneeling on the bed. His eyes look wildly around the room, so wide she can see the whites of them, even in the dark. “What happened? What’s wrong?”
Mia opens her mouth, closes it again.
She should go back to her room.
She should invent a story about some nightmare and just ask to sleep in his bed. It wouldn’t be the first time this year she’d asked to sleep with him because she had a nightmare.
She opens her mouth -
“It’s Will.”