Stranger Things: Little Miss Perfect (A Prequel Novel)

Chapter 7: "The Conspiracies of Hawkins."

The hallways are silent, my hallway monitoring has come to a close. I'm doing it for the extra credit, Barb suggested that I should. After the party on Friday night, Barb and I spent the entire weekend around her house. We went into town the day after on Saturday to browse the store fronts. We found a photography studio downtown where we had a mini photo-shoot with an extremely pretentious artist who looked utterly dead inside taking photos of random teenagers who would wander in. There are no photo booths or malls around Hawkins, only vast-less forests and trails. 

The only times I was ever in those forests was when Joanna (my cousin) would take me down there with my aunt to practice shooting. Joanna was weirdly obsessed with guns and I got given a whole in and out tutorial teaching how to load and shoot a revolver. This used to happen every month or so and I'd keep upgrading from different types of weapons. My mother wasn't exactly on board with her sister teaching me marksmanship but decided it would at least get me out the house. I faintly remember when I was younger being driven miles on my birthday to a gun range where I got a certificate commemorating my skill. Looking back at it now, that felt extremely useless as I'd probably never need a gun; Actually maybe that one night when I was walking home I could've needed one.

It was now my free period, school would expect you to either leave the campus or study and I didn't really want to do either. Barb was stuck in an honours class she got offered so I was stuck alone for an hour. I walked past the English classroom and glanced through the windows to see that Mr Hauser's classroom was completely empty, he wasn't teaching this hour. I quietly entered the room, so quietly I don't think Mr Hauser could hear me. I closed the door was slight velocity and he span around on his chair. "Nancy!" He dropped his pen and turned to look at me.

"Did you need support with the recent assignment or?"

"Oh... No. I had a free period so I thought I would sit in here if that's okay with you?" I always get suspiciously nervous around teachers even if Mr Hauser is younger.

"Sure thing Nancy, sit anywhere you like. I'll just be here marking your classmates reports." He waves his hand around the empty classroom.

"They're horrific. But I don't expect much from first years." He states.

I pick a seat at the back and sit down, I pull out my notebook and History textbooks to do an assignment from Mrs Click. 

Mr Hauser, while simultaneously marking tells me, "Your book report was quite impressive actually, you pulled out some impressive thought provoking connotations."

I give him a short lasted laugh, "Thanks."

There is a slight ambience of the sunny breeze against the windowsill breaking the silence, I never thought I'd find a school classroom relaxing.

"You're part of the news agency club right?" He asks breaking the ambience.

"Yeah, We're working on our first issue but I'm struggling on a topic to write about"

"I used to monitor the club until I proposed the drama club, but I could help."

He extends, "Do you have any form of an idea yet?"

"I was thinking of um... Writing about Hawkins Laboratory?"

"Why in a school newspaper?" His doubt is unsettling me that it sends me into a sporadic explanation. 

"Well you know how the lab is the talk of the town? Everyone talks about 'The Conspiracies of Hawkins'."

"It would be more entertaining to read about than missing gnomes is what I'm saying..."

He responds, "That isn't bad of an idea per se... Where are you going to get your sources from?

"I hadn't though of that yet..." I hide my head in embarrassment, that had totally slipped my mind.

He recognises my embarrassment and suggests, "You could go to the towns library? I know they have old newspaper clippings from when the lab opened up, it may give you some info to write about?"

That's great, a lead; I can follow that up later right now I need to ride out this week so me and Barb can play detective in the weekend. 

I write down a to-do list of all the things I need to do this week as I hear flutters of paper from Hauser's desk.

We will also need to fill in our photographer, Jonathan, as he'll need original pictures for us to use in the article. We can make him aware at lunch and get him to assist us on Saturday when we do our research. If we can do this all in one day and have everything done by Sunday then we can begin the printing process. 

As I'm writing down my tasks, I hear a mass amounts of footsteps coming towards the room. The door swings open and there stands a girl same age as me with brown hair panting from the running . Mr Hauser rises "Robin. You're here!".

The girl recovering from the panting apparently named 'Robin' replies, "You needed me?"

Mr Hauser nods as Robin walks over to his desk, "We need to talk about your midterm paper."

The bell rings at an ear deafening volume, I suppose this 'Robin' character was trying to avoid the stampede of the Hawkins hallways.

I pull in my chair with all my stuff packed and silently move towards the classroom door, Mr Hauser notices, "I'll see you soon Nancy!" I wave back and softly let the door close.

I see Barb leant up against a locker, waiting for me. "Where were you?" She asked.

"I was in Mr Hauser's after I finished monitoring the halls."

I let Barb know, "I forgot that we needed pictures for our newspaper report, we need Jonathan on Saturday."

"C'mon Nance, do we really need him all day?"

"Yeah, we need to go with him just in case."

"You don't believe in those missing kid stories, do you?"

"We can't let him wander in the woods alone, anyways we should go to see if we can collect any clues."

"You're really going all in on this detective thing, aren't you?"