HIDDEN !¡ MIKE WHEELER

13. ✰

THE GROUP HAD relocated at Mike's house after Will's funeral and Mike was currently in the process of explaining what Mr. Clarke had told them to Eleven. He had stabbed a pen through a paper plate like Mr. Clarke demonstrated earlier in the day. "It would take a lot of energy to build a gate like this. But that's got to be what happened. Otherwise, how'd Will get there, right?" he quizzed the confused girl. "Right," she mumbled.

"What we want to know is, do you know where the gate is?" Lucas asks her. She looks at him before shaking her head. "Then how do you know about the Upside Down?" he scoffs. Mabel would've been paying attention to the two boys and confused little girl's bickering but Dustin was in the corner of the room, pacing — and it had really started to bother her. "Guys..." she choked out, catching the trio's attention. They all turned towards Dustin who looked like a damsel in distress.

"Dustin, what are you doing? Dustin? Dustin!" Mike calls. He turns around and stiffens at Mike's mention of his name. "I- I need to see your compasses," he tells Mike and Lucas. "What?" Mike asked, dumbfounded. "Your compasses. All of your compasses, right now!" he yells. The boys waste no time pulling out their compasses and tossing them onto the small table one by one.

"What's exciting about this?" Mike questions his curly-head friend since he was smirking. "Well, they're all facing north, right?" he asks. "Yeah, so?" Lucas butts in. "Well, that's not true north," Dustin shrugs. "Huh?" Mabel furrows her eyebrows, completely lost in the situation. The girl had been pretty smart — at least for spending most of her childhood as a lab experiment — but she had no idea what Dustin was talking about.

"That's not true north," Dustin repeats, looking at Mabel. "Are you all seriously this dense?" he speaks to his friends, Lucas shrugging first. "The sun rises in the east, and it sets in the west. Right? Which means that's true north," he points in the direction behind Mike. "So what you're saying is the compasses are broken," Mike nods. Dustin rolls his eyes and sighs. "Do you even understand how a compass works? Do you see a battery pack on this?" Dustin picks up a compass, shoving it into Mike's face.

Mabel takes the compass and examines it as Mike says "no". Dustin snatches it back from her — earning a stink eye — and sets it back down on the table. "The needle's naturally drawn to the Earth's magnetic North Pole," Dustin advises. "So, what's wrong with them?" Lucas asks. "Well, that's what I couldn't figure out, but then I remembered. You can change the direction of a compass with a magnet. If there's the presence of a more powerful magnetic field, the needle deflects to that power. And then I remembered what Mr. Clarke said. The gate would have so much power—"

"It could disrupt the electromagnetic field," Mike nods, finishing Dustin's speech. "Exactly," Dustin agrees. It only started to make sense to Mabel as she smiled finally being able to know what the hell was going on. "Meaning, if we follow the compasses' north..." Lucas begins. "They should lead us to the gate!" Mabel beams, bouncing up and down with excitement. Mike looked at the happy girl with her loose curls falling down her face and blushed.

Mabel ran up to her sister on the couch. "El, did you understand that? We can find the gate! We can find Will!" Mabel giggled as she tightly hugged her sister. The sparky redhead gets all bubbly when she's happy and was relieved to let happiness finally take over her body in months. El looked at her sister and gave a small smile. Little did Mabel know, El did not want to go to that gate at all.

THE KIDS WERE walking for what felt like hours along train tracks in the woods. Lucas and Dustin were leading the group while Mabel, Mike and El were huddled in the back together. Mabel looked over and saw her sister swiftly swipe blood off her nose and she got suspicious quickly. "You okay, El?" Mabel asked. "Tired," she stopped walking and started breathing heavily. "Turn back," she looked behind her. "What? Why?" Mike questioned. "Tired," El repeated. "El, we're probably almost there, hang on for a little longer, okay?" Mabel smiled at her sister and kept walking, ignoring El's heavy pants.