Zero: A Stranger Things Fanfiction

Chapter 002

Jenna couldn't keep her eyes off the girl.

Drowning in the coat Mike had given her on the couch of his basement, chest heaving with shallow, panicked breaths, she was a pitiful sight. Her frightened eyes danced from Jenna to Lucas to Mike to Dustin and Jenna again, afraid of staying still.

"Is there a number we can call? For your parents?"

Mike's tentative, halting question hung in the air. Silence filled the room, punctuated only by the thunderstorm raging outside.

"Where's your hair? Do you have cancer?" Dustin, soaking wet curls dripping leftover rain onto the carpet, stared at the girl with utter astonishment..

"Did you run away?" Lucas's turn.

"Are you in trouble?" Jenna knelt down so she was at eye level with the girl, cringing slightly at the excess of rainwater dripping from her clothes as they bent and wrinkled. Those frightened dark eyes of the girl followed her on the way down. Unfortunately, if there was going to be an answer, Lucas cut it off.

"Is the blood!?" He extended his hand out towards her stained shirt and was immediately slapped away by Mike. The girl flinched, receding back further into Mike's oversized jacket.

"Stop it! You're freaking her out," Mike exclaimed.

"She's freaking me out!"

"I bet she's deaf!" Dustin's proclamation was followed by a loud clap of his eager hands, causing the girl to recoil even further, face tensing in fear.

"Stop!" Jenna batted Dustin's arm away gently to enforce her order, shifting down full onto her knees.

"Not deaf," he murmured defiantly.

"That's enough. Jenna gets it," Mike said. His sympathetic gaze flickered with emotion as it focused on the girl. "She's just scared and cold." He turned around and crossed the room towards a laundry basket. A booming crash of thunder clapped threateningly outside, vibrating the wooden floors of the basement. The girl gasped and flinched, her hands curling helplessly on Mike's coat. Jenna instinctively reached out her hand and rested it on the girl's knee.

"It's okay," she breathed, looking deep into those terrified eyes and ignoring what were sure to be judgemental expressions from Dustin and Lucas. Mike returned with a bundle of clothes, offering them hesitantly to the girl.

"Here, these are clean. Okay?"

She reached out nervously, unwilling to move very far from her warm refuge on the couch. As she took them, she pressed the soft, comfortably heated fabric to her cheek. A momentary fluttering closed of her eyes broke Jenna's heart.

Standing up and letting Mike's coat fall limply back to the couch, the girl began to remove her shirt.

Jenna lunged forward in alarm and pulled the girl's hands back down.

A cacophony of "no's" and various shocked exclamations rose from the boys, Dustin and Lucas flinging themselves in the opposite direction.

"Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my-"

"See over there?" Mike stammered, glancing at Jenna helplessly. "That's the bathroom. Privacy. Get it?" When the girl remained frozen in place, motionless, Jenna did her best to smile reassuringly.

"I'll come sit nearby, okay?" Her slow suggestion was met with a nervous pause and, for a brief few seconds, Jenna wondered if she'd be staying in that sodden yellow tee for the rest of her life. But the girl reached back down and took the clothes back into her hands, slowly wandering to the bathroom. Dustin and Lucas finally allowed themselves to turn around, gawking as they stared at her slow moving procession.