"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 Seventeen: Upside Down
(The Flea And The Acrobat)
***
Alistair's leg bounced up and down from where he was sitting beside El, picking at the skin around his thumbnails. He looked at El periodically, the girl curled up on the couch and wearing a blue jacket, still drained, then back out to space, wrapping his mind about what they had heard, but always coming back to one important thing:
Will's alive.
Around him, his friends also shared similar looks, as they processed what they had heard, what Will had said, over the radio—Dustin, sitting on the stairs, Lucas on a chair, Mike sitting in another chair.
Finally, after hours of silence, Mike spoke, saying what was all on their minds.
"What was Will saying?" he muttered as he got up and started pacing around, like he always did when he was thinking. "Like home. Like home... but dark?"
"And empty," Lucas murmured, pitching in as he remembered what Will had said over the radio.
"Empty and cold," Dustin added. He frowned and asked, "Wait, did he say cold?"
"I don't know. The stupid radio kept going in and out," Lucas snapped, frustration edging his words.
"No, he definitely said cold," Alistair pitched in—he knew Will did. Will's words were imprinted in Alistair's mind with startlingly clarity despite the radio static, refusing to be forgotten or muddled. They were the first words Alistair had heard from his best friend since he'd vanished, and he wasn't willing to let them go, even if their meaning stumped him.
Dustin sighed, muttering, "It's like riddles in the dark."
Alistair nodded; it felt both like that, and like they were playing a game of Telephone, trying to piece together the original meaning from the bits and pieces drifting down the line, piecing together what Will had said over the distortions from the radio.
"Like home. Like his house?" Mike theorised out loud.
"Or maybe like Hawkins," Lucas said, offering up his own piece to the puzzle. It definitely felt like a puzzle—like all they needed was one more piece for it to make sense, to know where Will definitely was.
"Upside Down."
Everyone turned to look at El.
"What'd she say?" Lucas asked.
"Upside Down," Mike muttered, Alistair seeing his best friend making a connection with El's words.
"What?" Lucas questioned, still not getting what Mike and the weirdo were saying.
"Upside down," Mike repeated, moving to the table as thoughts raced behind his eyes.
Sitting down, he said, "When El showed us where Will was, she flipped the board over, remember? Upside down. Dark. Empty."
