STICKS AND STONES ↝ S. HARRINGTON

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Anna Henderson could remember her first day at Hawkins Middle School like it was yesterday.

She'd never had the privilege of being the new kid in school, but if she had to choose, starting a new school at the beginning of the year seemed like the way to go. Everywhere she looked, the seventh grade class had been too focused on making their next year of middle school the best they could to worry about the small brunette girl who'd gotten lost on her way to P.E.

"Late on the first day, are we, Henderson?" The gym coach nearly barked as she ran inside in a gray and green gym uniform, her shoes still yet to be fully tied as she took the nearest open seat to the door.

"S-sorry, ma'am," she stammered, too shy to explain that she'd taken a wrong turn near the science lab that had resulted in her finding the library rather than the locker room.

"As I was saying..." The coach continued, already having forgotten Anna as she began to explain the rules of the one-on-one basketball games they'd be playing against one another that morning, and the young girl quickly reached for her untied laces as the blonde next to her leaned in her direction.

"Coach may look scary, but she's all bark and no bite, trust me." the girl whispered. "You must be new here. I'm Becca."

"Anna," she said with a grateful smile as the coach blew the whistle, starting the games.

However, it wasn't until that night at dinner, with Anna still buzzing over somehow learning her way around the school before the end of the day, as well as the three-point shot she'd managed to score in her game against Becca, that her younger brother Dustin broke the news to Anna and their mother Claudia of the friends he'd made on his first day of fourth grade, and how he'd been invited to play Dungeons and Dragons over at Mike Wheeler's house that Saturday.

"They aren't sure how to play yet, but Mike got the game as a birthday present and they want to try it out." Dustin explained.

"I think that sounds fun," Claudia said, turning to her daughter. "Annie, maybe you could go with Dustin and show the boys how to play? You used to play with your friends back home."

"Yeah, you could come with." Dustin agreed. "Mike has a sister your age, and Will has older siblings too. Maybe you guys could hang out or something while we play."

As Anna and Dustin set foot in the Wheelers' house that Saturday, with Anna's dungeon master screen tucked under her arm along with one of her old guidebooks for the boys to use, she soon recognized Mike's sister as the Nancy from her math class as the young girl opened the door for them.

"You must be Dustin," Nancy said to the younger boy, who gave her a proud smile in return as he nodded before she looked back up at Anna. "Come on in, the pizza just got here."

Gathered around the extra large pepperoni pizza were Mike Wheeler, Lucas Sinclair, and Will Byers, along with his two older siblings, Jonathan and Michelle. Anna recognized Jonathan from the P.E. class she shared with Becca, though as Michelle was a year younger, she only vaguely recognized her from where she sat on the other side of the cafeteria.

When it was finally time to play the game, Anna set up her screen with an old beginner's campaign she once played with her friends back in Kansas. The young boys had been naturals, Dustin going off the little experience he'd had from when he'd been allowed to watch Anna and her friends play, though his new friends were all playing for the first time, relying on beginner's luck to get them safely to the end of the story, with Nancy, Jonathan, and Michelle only needing to step in once or twice to help their brothers out.

Suddenly, where she had feared weekends alone in the Henderson house as they settled into their new home, they were now filled with games in the Wheelers' basement, with Anna serving as dungeon master, and the other older siblings joining in on the fun, if only to entertain their younger brothers for a few hours that night through dressing up in costumes, or acting out the intense battle scenes.

Anna wasn't quite sure when the nights leading the D&D campaigns for the boys had eventually shifted into pizza parties in the living room of the Wheeler family home while they waited for the boys to finish that evening's game, turning the nightly episode of Family Feud that Ted Wheeler always insisted on watching into a competition between herself, Jonathan, Michelle, and Nancy to see who could score the most points, usually coming to a close call between Anna and the eldest Byers son. All she knew was, as time passed further and further, the group seemed to come together more for their younger brothers playing fantasy games in the basement than for one another's company as the young teenagers began to grow up, carving out their own paths with their own respective interests, even if it brought them away from one another.

None of them could have ever predicted the last time the four would sit down for a normal evening together, but as their brothers became old enough to all meet up at the Wheelers' house without the supervision of their elder siblings, and high school paved the way for differing schedules and social groups, Anna found herself drifting further and further from the ones she once called her best friends. While Michelle still attended Hawkins Middle School for one more year, Jonathan earned a position taking pictures for the yearbook, and Nancy writing for the school paper, leading both to settle into their new respective high school cliques.

As for Anna, she managed to secure a spot taking statistics for the Hawkins High School volleyball team, turning the nights that she'd spend with her old friends into evenings spent on a bus traveling from school to school for away games, the idea of pizza and Family Feud long exchanged for concession stand hot dogs and a front row view of volleyball tournaments from the sidelines. Lunch periods spent with Nancy and Jonathan debating the answers to the latest math problems had shifted to a table with Becca and Landon Roberts, new topics of conversation relating to annoying customers the boy encountered at his job at the local hardware store, or the latest movie coming out at The Hawk, conversations with her old friends now simply a smile and a passing glance on their way through the halls.

Although Anna could remember the times when her life felt normal, as if she'd fallen into a routine inside the sleepy old town of Hawkins in the few years since she'd moved in, she couldn't exactly pinpoint the moment when everything shifted, leaving her perception of the place she called home changed forever. Perhaps it was the day Will Byers disappeared, when her younger brother and his friends were forced to give up their childhood innocence far too young. Maybe it was when Barbara Holland vanished at a party none of them should have been present at, or another one of the endless chain of events that fueled the rumors of a curse spreading over the town of Hawkins.

While she couldn't pinpoint exactly when everything changed, she could say with great certainty that any concept of normal had vanished completely, never to be seen again.