"I swear, if I'm dying tonight because of you, I'm gonna haunt your ass so hard, Harrington!"
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah! I'm gonna go full Poltergeist and shit!"
"Then bring it, Graveswood."
"Challenge accepted."
***
In which after years of suppressing their...
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Chapter Twelve: No Ghost
(The Body)
***
Alistair refused to go to school the next day.
Aunt Aco didn't force him, knowing he probably needed space and time to grief. So she let him stay at home, making more pancakes and giving him a gentle kiss, keeping her Elton John, Fleetwood Mac, Beatles and Queen records by the record player and alternating between them.
Eddie had come over earlier with his uncle, after hearing the news, and offered his sympathies via hugs and murmured condolences. He'd hugged Alistair, and then Rowan, muttering how sorry he was; to Rowan, he whispered, "I should have looked harder for him, when I was dealing at the quarry. If I had, maybe I could have saved him and brought him home before it was too late."
Rowan had only shook her head and murmured, "Don't blame yourself, Eds. It wasn't your fault. It was just... the world being shitty, okay? None of us... we couldn't have..."
She hadn't finished, but she hadn't needed to. Eddie had nodded, but she could still see her friend blamed himself. Because while he hadn't known Will personally, he did know Alistair, and knew just how hard losing Will was hitting her brother (especially with Rowan's suspicions that Alistair felt more than strictly platonic feelings toward him), and given where his body was found, it wasn't hard to put how Eddie could blame himself for not being able to avert this, even if logically no one could really prevent such a tragedy.
Didn't mean she hadn't wanted to shake her friend free of his guilt.
Now, she walked through Hawkins High's halls, the students giving her a wider berth than usual. Rowan knew it was because of Will, because she had defended his brother, who was not at school—not like she blamed him. She wouldn't want to be at school either if it had been Alistair's body found.
Especially when Jonathan and his mom had to be the ones to identify the body.
A sick feeling squirmed in Rowan, and she turned the volume up on her Walkman to drown it out.
Robin and Chrissy had offered their own sympathies, giving her tight hugs. That increased when Robin inevitably asked how Alistair was doing and Rowan said the truth. Chrissy especially was sympathetic, as she also had a little brother, who was at their grandparents but that didn't erase the anxiety.
But they had to part when the bell rang, as they all had to go to their lockers to grab their stuff for History, Robin and Chrissy reaffirming their support again before they left.
