VEILED MYSTERIES ↝ S. HARRINGTON [1]

[4]

"Alright, kid, ready to go?" Hopper asked as Riley zipped up her jacket before reaching down to pick her backpack up off the floor.

"Yeah," she agreed, following him out the front door towards his truck. "Oh, by the way," she added, hopping into the passenger seat. "I don't need a ride home from school today. I'm going over to Jonathan Byers's house to study, and he offered to drive me home after."

"Study, huh?" Hopper asked, studying Riley quizzically for a moment before turning back to the steering wheel. "I didn't realize he was back at school yet."

"Today's his first day back." she explained. "He stopped by school yesterday to hang up some posters for Will, and was talking to Hadlee Henderson. With the school he's missed, and me still being new, Hadlee and Kelly offered to catch us up."

While it hadn't been a lie that Jonathan had shown up briefly at the school the day before, Riley conveniently left out the impromptu road trip the two of them had taken to speak to Lonnie Byers, or the phone call after Hopper had fallen asleep to catch Riley up on everything Jonathan had learned from his mother that day, as well as let her know his plan to go out searching the site where Will had disappeared after his mother went to bed. Though they both were quite behind on schoolwork for Hawkins High, rather than Hadlee and Kelly catching Jonathan and Riley up, they would instead be catching the girls up on everything they'd learned, as well as devise their next plan to search for Will.

"Well, just be careful." he reminded her. "I think it's nice that you girls are there for him. With everything going on with their family, that boy could use some good friends right about now."

Riley nodded in agreement as they reached the high school, and she pulled the strap of her backpack over her shoulder. She bid her uncle goodbye, hurriedly walking into the school to avoid the chilly November air and heading straight for her locker. She had to duck to avoid a few boys playing catch with a football across the hallway, a boy clad in a green letter jacket with the name Jason embroidered across the front shouting out a halfhearted apology as it narrowly missed hitting her.

She found it difficult to focus during her classes that morning, waiting in anticipation for lunch when she could hear about anything Jonathan might've found during his search the night before. She tapped the eraser of her pencil impatiently against her notebook during her first few periods, watching out the window and only half-listening to her teachers between taking notes. When the bell finally rang at the end of PE, signaling the start of her lunch period, she nearly ran out of the locker room in search of the yearbook's darkroom, where Jonathan, Kelly, and Hadlee already waited with their lunches.

"Hey," Riley said, plopping down in the open chair next to Kelly and reaching into her backpack for her lunchbox. "Alright, Byers, catch us up. What happened last night?"

"Not much," Jonathan admitted. "I went out to Kerley and Cornwallis last night, where they found Will's bike, but I didn't find anything. I took some pictures, just in case there's anything I missed looking around that I can look back at later. I'll get those developed after lunch so we can take a look after school, see if there's anything we can find that would help us.

"Actually, could we maybe go somewhere else besides my house?" Jonathan continued. "My mom's been acting really weird lately, saying something about how Will's trying to communicate with her through the lights or something like that. I just don't want her to freak you guys out or anything, but she's really losing it."

"It's okay," Hadlee assured him. "We're going to find Will, and then everything's going to be okay with Mrs. Byers."

"She's right," Kelly agreed.

"We could always do my place." Riley offered. "If my uncle comes home while we're there, I told him we were studying, so if we're in my room he won't bother us."