"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 Sixty: A Ride Home
(Will The Wise, Pt. 2)
***
Alistair watched as Mrs. Byers led Will to the car, a hand on his back, guiding him to the car while also keeping a firm grip, as if to assure herself Will was still here, still awake. His friends and family stood beside him, watching as Will got into the car, worry palpable in the air, Alistair almost tasting it.
Beside him, he heard Max say, "Okay, that totally freaked me out. Did that freak you guys out?"
Cami nodded, the only one. Alistair guessed that even in New York, nothing like what's happening to Will had happened before.
Not that it would. Aside from Will, Rowan and Nancy, Mrs. Byers, his aunt and Hopper, no one else who entered the Upside Down survived. And Will had been in there the longest. Who knew what marks the Upside Down had left on him aside from the episodes and trauma, like the doctors said? What kind of sinister scars that place had left on his best friend no one else but Will could see?
It made Alistair angry, to think Will could never leave the Upside Down, not entirely—that even in the real world, Will would never be free from the Upside Down.
But he swallowed the anger, and instead muttered, "Yeah, it... it was more intense than the ones he had before."
"Two episodes, in two days," Lucas murmured, looking at his best friend with worry.
"It's getting worse," Mike said, right as Lucas questioned, "You think it's True Sight?"
"What's True Sight?" Cami and Max asked in unison, as Alistair felt the confusion from his sister. More than anything, he wanted to tell Max and Cami the truth, but the risk of them finding out, of the tentative safety he and Rowan had, of being used just like El had been, silenced him.
Mike shook his head, a clear sign as any not to tell the truth, and Lucas ended up saying, "It's nothing."
Max frowned and Cami looked at Alistair, seeking an answer, both girls hurt by the exclusion but Max was hiding hers better. Alistair looked away, feeling even more of an asshole.
As Mrs. Byers drove away, Alistair watched the car go, eyes focused only on Will, his best friend looking at the window, face strangely distant. Alistair frowned; that was another thing. Ever since Will snapped out of the episode, something about his best friend seemed... off to Alistair. Like the episode had changed Will.
Alistair shivered with both dread and anger at that being true, at something from the Upside Down getting into Will, hurting Will, and—
"CAMILA!"
Alistair nearly jumped out of his skin at the shout as a girl the same age as Rowan ran toward them, her brown eyes wide and panicked, curls flying behind the patterned scarf that kept them back. Alistair didn't need to ask to know this must be Cami's older sister, Valerie.
