Two of a Kind

Hopeless

It's been a week since Will has gone missing. A week of whispers and pitied looks from customers and her boss when Joyce managed to drag herself into work. A week of a rollercoaster of emotions— from panic and fear, to anger, and now to the beginnings of hopelessness.

The town had been relentlessly searching for the missing twelve-year-old boy. Everyone in Hawkins was unsettled at the thought of what insidious reason could lie behind Will's disappearance. This didn't happen in small towns in the middle of nowhere Indiana. This happened in New York and LA and anywhere but this quiet little nothing town. Parents were simultaneously sad for the Byers and terrified for their own family. They couldn't help but wonder if Will would just be the first of a tragic string of missing children, like you'd expect to see in a horror movie or something.

Joyce was in her own world of heartache and misery. She was starting to lose hope. Starting to go numb. Last night, the chief of police, Jim Hopper, aka her old friend from high school, had come by the Byers' home to have a serious, sit-down talk with her about the progress of the investigation.

"I'm sorry, Joyce. After a week there is a very slim chance of finding your boy alive. I don't want to get your hopes up... I know all too well how badly that hurts." Hopper had said to her in his low, grisly voice while they shared a cigarette at her kitchen table the night prior, looking down at her with a mixture of pain and understanding in his eyes. Jim had lost his own daughter only five years ago. Not in the same way, but Joyce knew that he was only trying to be honest with her. Still, she was angry. She had went through blaming everyone, from Jonathan for not making sure he found Will before school, to Lonnie for forcing her to parent all by herself and work full time to support their boys while he was off sleeping with girls not much older than Jonathan, and even to God, for not leading her to wherever the Hell her son was right now. She couldn't help but feel that he was so close, but she just couldn't find her boy. And finally herself. She blamed herself most of all for not calling in to work that day. For not waking up to her alarm clock in time— maybe she would've been able to catch Will before he left, to know where he was going, or at least to say goodbye and kiss his soft forehead one last time...

Now, at the store, Joyce had work to do. Shelves to stock and middle-aged women to answer which aisle the tampons were in. But she couldn't give less of a shit about that if she tried. Her eyes were nearly swollen shut from crying, and she was beyond exhausted. Her boss didn't dare reprimand her, however. Don was an asshole, but not a big enough one to tell a grieving mother who had worked tirelessly for him for the past 20 years to get back to sorting through toilet paper rolls and organizing candy bars.

Instead, Joyce was crouched behind the counter, lost in thought. She was back at the kitchen table with Hopper the night before, pretending he had said anything other than what he actually did. Pretending he walked through her door after years since the two of them had talked, with Will in his big, burly arms, laying him in his bed, and Joyce jumping up to hug him, crying and thanking him for bringing her boy back home.

Jim was off in that same moment as he stared at the yellowing pile of papers on his big wooden desk at the Hawkins Police Station. He had been working overtime for the past week, searching until it was pitch black outside for Will Byers. Hopper wasn't a very sentimental man. He was the police chief, and it would make him look really bad if a child went missing and was never found in the town he was in charge of protecting. He wouldn't admit it, but that fact wasn't the only thing driving him to work himself to the bone to find the missing middle schooler. He had lost his own daughter what feels like only months ago, and he would be damned if he let another innocent young kid slip away from him again. Ever since Sarah died, Hopper had been an empty shell of a man, just going through the motions of life, surviving for what, he didn't know. But he wasn't so empty that he wouldn't give his entire life to save another kid from the hands of death. If anything, his only reason for staying alive was to keep another tragedy like he had experienced from ever happening on his watch again.

By the time the darkness of night had crept into the office from the dirty windows, Jim hadn't even noticed it was evening. He managed to peel himself from his balding, cheap leather chair and turn off the lights in the decrepit little station where he worked, the last one to leave for the night. He mindlessly locked up behind him and drove back to his trailer home in his rusty old Chevy Blazer. When he got in, he slammed the screen door behind him, tossing his belt on the floor and unbuttoning his uniform, exposing his hairy chest. He didn't bother to shower, and rather cracked open a can of Schlitz beer, downing the entire thing in less than a minute. He grabbed a second and plopped his large, 6'3" body onto the squeaky old recliner in the middle of his living room, staring at the wood-paneled wall, numb, as he almost always was since Sara.

As he finished off a six pack by the time the nightly news was over, Hopper was buzzed and his mind drifted to last night in Joyce Byers' home when he sat her down to tell her that her son probably wasn't coming home. He relived the moment, gazing into her big, beautiful brown eyes as those words fell from his lips, shattering the last drop of hope she had in them. He couldn't help but feel like he was a cancer to everyone around him, his misery spreading through their veins until it completely took them over. His lack of ability to do anything but numb his own pain was just one part of why he didn't let anyone close to him anymore. He also had a deeply rooted fear of dragging down those he cared about, especially Joyce.

In high school, Joyce had been his biggest crush. It was just infatuation, teenaged lust, but it had consumed him in those early years filled with hormones and fueled by cheap booze, nicotine and pot. They were classmates, maybe even friends when they would occasionally smoke together under the bleachers and skip boring 6th period, but never anything more, despite Hopper's secret desire to become closer to the gorgeous, petite brunette. Not much else had mattered more to him back then than trying to look cool whenever she passed him in the halls and fantasizing about asking her out on a date. But he was too shy and anything-but-cool, and she was too beautiful and brilliant for him. After all, it was just a dumb, young crush. After graduation, he moved to New York and didn't think much about her for those first few years. They each married other people and had their own kids and lived their own separate lives. But since moving back to Hawkins after his five year old daughter died, the only light in his life had been when he visited Melvald's General Store to buy a pack of cigarettes and to catch a glimpse of the somehow-more-beautiful Joyce Byers, sometimes even making small talk with her. Joyce had aged like fine wine, and that magnetic power she blindly had over him had the same effect at 42 that it had on him at 17.

None of that mattered now, though. Hopper was nothing but a fat, drunken loser, failed husband and father, and fraud, pretending he had earned the right to be Hawkins' Chief of Police. At least that's how he felt. Joyce was a beautiful, smart, funny, and hard-working single mom who was way too busy and way too good for him. And now after crushing her fragile hopes to find her boy, he would never be anything more than the guy who was too incompetent to do the one thing he was supposed to be good at— protecting his town and keeping it safe. He wallowed in his self pity a little while longer before drifting off to sleep on the recliner with the remote in one hand and a beer in the other.