WILDFIRE ↝ E. MUNSON

[22]

The group of teenagers raced through the clearing, hearts beating faster and faster as they grew closer to what was hopefully their first, albeit only line of defense in their attempts to get home. The vines were much thinner out this way, not nearly as tangled as they had been back in the forest, but they still ran with caution, careful not to trip over a vine and alert Vecna of their presence.

Steve held the flashlight up as Nancy pushed the door open with a soft creak, carefully not to touch any of the vines that wrapped around the door. While Lily had always described the Wheelers' house as warm and comforting in the few times she'd been inside, it was nearly unrecognizable in the dark, cold dimension. Gone was the constant sound of the television in the family room from where Mr. Wheeler watched Jeopardy, but instead the device lay asleep on top of the cabinet, every grimy surface in the room covered in vines.

"Might be time to get a maid, Wheeler," Robin mused, her eyes scoping out the main level of the house.

Nancy looked around with a sad, longing expression, and Lily could only imagine what was going on inside the girl's head. This was Nancy's home, the place she had grown up in, despite the fact that, here, it was cold and lifeless. Sure, Lily was in no hurry to see the way her place back in Forest Hills looked in this dimension, but she'd only lived there seven months, rather than an entire lifetime as Nancy had.

"Come on," Nancy said finally. "I don't want to stay there longer than we have to."

Nancy went up the stairs without another word, followed by the others with Steve at the end of the group. As the girls went into Nancy's room to look for the guns, Lily pulled Eddie aside, the two of them now facing each other in the dark hallway.

"Hey," he said, eyebrows furrowing slightly in confusion as he looked down at her. "What's up?"

"Nothing, I just..." Lily trailed off nervously. "I just wanted to make sure you were doing okay. I mean, there was the earthquake, and that was, uh, quite the confession you had back there."

Eddie chuckled slightly. "Yeah, you could say that again." he mumbled, nodding. "I'm alright, sweetheart. I mean yeah, the circumstances aren't ideal, and I can't say I'd ever want to find myself back here again, but if I had to be stuck in some creepy alternate dimension, I can't say the company's too bad." he said with a small grin, reaching down to link their hands together.

Lily smiled softly, nodding as he gestured his head back in the direction of Nancy's doorway. "What do you think?" he asked. "Should we grab those guns and get the hell out of here?"

"Yeah," she agreed, letting him pull her after him into the room where Nancy was pulling a shoebox from the top shelf of her closet.

They followed the others to surround Nancy as she set down the shoebox on top of her desk, though when she lifted the lid, what awaited them was not two small firearms, but instead bright yellow tissue paper covering a pair of high heels.

"Those aren't guns," Eddie stated, his eyebrows furrowing as he took in the footwear sitting in the box.

"These heels are a bit pointy but I was hoping for something along the lines of a deadly projectile." Robin added as Nancy moved aside the shoes, staring perplexed at the box in front of her.

"Nancy, what is it?" Debbie asked, studying her friend's expression.

"I don't understand," Nancy said.

"Maybe you left them somewhere else." Eddie suggested.

"There's a six year old in the house, I know where I keep my guns." Nancy said matter-of-factly. "And also, I threw these away years ago." she said, her eyes moving back to the shoes, but her eyes slowly wandered over the desk, the expression on her face morphing into something Lily couldn't decipher as she lifted a stack of notecards from where they lay on top of a chemistry textbook and began flipping through them.