Don't Panic - B. Hargrove

FIFTEEN

When David came home, the whole living room was covered in paper, and his mom and Hopper were robbing around, trying to connect the drawn pictures on it.
"Doodle! Come over here!" Joyce called out to him.
"He's good with patterns. He'll know what this is." she added towards Hopper, who eyed the boy as he awkwardly hopped over the paper to stand by his mother's side.

From this perspective, he immediately recognized who had drawn the blue and messy scribbles. It was Will's style all over it. The papers were sorted in long strips that were connected to each other like branches of a tree or a river. It ran all over the floor, up the walls, and the ceiling, covering almost every inch of the room.
"It's a map." David associated.
"A map of what?" Hopper huffed, clearly exhausted.
"Water." David told him that it was the most natural thing in the world, as to him, it was.
He was good with geography; he'd always been. At least theoretically. In Praxis, he often got lost. But he knew Hawkins's maps like the back of his hand.
"There's the quarry... and if you follow that stream..." David walked around, following the ink into the hallway. "Here's lover's lake. It is all connected. Water always takes the closest route to flow freely. This is every stream, every lake, and every river that runs in and around Hawkins. Actually..."

David followed another line and stopped abruptly, finger tapping at a specific spot.
" That's us.I think." Hopper had risen to his full height and was now standing close to the boy watching his guidance closely.
" So you can read it? "he concluded." The map? Yes. But it's rough; the proportions are a bit off, although it's pretty accurate for a mess like that.
" David mumbled." What did Will say to it?
"Will has passed out from drawing all day," his mother answered, putting an arm around her son protectively. David leaned against her, the worry bubbling up in his chest again, tightening it.
He should have stayed at home with them. His gaze wandered over the map, and suddenly, something caught his attention.
"Wait." he muttered, stripping Joyce's arm off.
"This is not a stream. There's no water there. And it curls so strangely... it looks more like a root or something..." he gestured towards a spot by one of the door frames.
"Vines!" Hopper called out as of he had a realization of his own.
"He said they were killing!Vines!" "What is he talking about?" David asked his mother in confusion. "Something Will said." Joyce waved him off, staring at the sheriff, who was hectically putting on his jacket and hat.
"He's drawing vines." were his final words as he left.
"Where is he going?" David asked into the weird silence.
"I have no idea." Joyce responded.

They both remained in their spot, expecting Hopper to return, but after a few minutes, it was clear he wasn't going to. So Joyce resumed the task of puzzling the map together with the assistance of David. They added more and more streams and vines pieced together the rest of lover's lake, and as the sun rose again, David fell asleep in his mother's lap while Joyce stared at what they had created. The boy was woken by his little brother's calls for their mother, and as he opened his eyes, he was presented with a pale Will and his best friend Mike looking down at them.
He hadn't even noticed that Will had come to stay the night; he had been too focused on the task.
"Mom! I saw him!" Will exclaimed while David was sitting up, rubbing his eyes tiredly.
"You saw who, baby?" Joyce asked, also a bit groggy from their nightly actions.
"Hopper." Will responded, big brown eyes filled with fear.
"I think he's in trouble. I think he's going to die."
A shiver ran down David's spine. His brother's tone was so serious he had no other choice than to believe him. "So what are we going to do?" David turned to Joyce.
"I don't know where he is. He said something about vines... That's it."

She jumped to her feet and started checking the map. David had a different idea in mind.
"Can you draw it?Where so saw Hopper?" he asked his little brother, and Will nodded, immediately withdrawing himself to his room. The others followed and watched as he aggressively ran his pencils over another piece of paper until another round shape in brown with blue attached to it became visible.
"That's it?" Joyce asked softly, and Will nodded.
"That's where Hopper is."
"I think I've seen it before." David squinted at the drawing, the shape oddly familiar.
But his brain was foggy, and it just didn't remember where.
"Maybe look around, and you'll find it." Mike suggested, familiar with the boy's problems due to ongoing Dnd campaigns.
David nodded and sprinted into the hallway. With the new drawing in hand, he traced the map for a match. "Here!" he called out in the living room, having found the spot on one of the walls.
"It's here. But I don't know where here is." he mumbled as the others surrounded him.
"Think, baby, think. You said it was a map of water. Which stream is it?" Joyce encouraged him.
"That's the problem. I lost track. It's just too much." Tears filled his eyes, accompanied by the feeling of having disappointed them all.
"Shhh, Baby, it's alright. You did your best. It's an alright doodle." Joyce quickly pulled him into a tight hug that squeezed him enough to make him feel less lost.
A few minutes later, someone rang at the door, and Joyce softly pressed David into the couch, then left, the boy completely melting down. He just heard muffled voices and steps, and then Bob looked down at him in sympathy.
"It's too much for him. His brain is striking. But he said something about a map of water and how this is every stream in Hawkins. You're good with maps, aren't you?" he heard Joyce talking to the man.
"It's hard to be that smart." Bob said. "Of course, I'll help you if I can," he addressed David .
That was everything the boy needed to pull himself together. He could trust Bob's knowledge. They would work fine together. Joyce disappeared and returned with a red crayon. With it, she marked the spot.
"That's the objective. Find the X." Mike told Bob.
"Yeah, what's at the x? Pirate treasure?" the man chuckled softly but quickly stopped as he met David's gaze. There was no time for jokes. "Bob, no questions!" Joyce reminded her boyfriend, a hand on David's shoulder.
Bob looked around, clicking his tongue.
"Well, okay, Doodle. Lead the way." David brought him to lover's lake, then Lake Jordan.
Bob completely understood what he was going for.
"Yes! It's not roads, but they act like roads, and they don't go over water but trace it!" he finally said what David couldn't.
The boy nodded in excitement.
"It's a map of the water. A map of Hawkins."
"You're a genius, boy. A true genius." Bob pointed out in absolute glee.
"So you can read it? Trace the x?" Joyce asked impatiently.
"Of course. I need a pen and some measurements."

Together, David and Bob calculated the spot where Will had seen Hopper. It was a field, one of the pumpkin patches that had been all over the tabloids.
Someone had destroyed all the pumpkins and made them rot. They knew which dots Hopper had connected in his head, and David was once again impressed by the man and his abilities.
Joyce, Bob, and the boys decided to drive there to rescue the man, but Joyce didn't let David participate in the trip.
"If we don't come back, you'll have to get help," she explained while putting on her coat. She didn't say it, but David knew he was leaving in behind becau2she had only enough energy to look after one troubled child at the time. In his current state, the boy was just too much work.
"Maybe Jonathan gets home, or something else happens," she added. "You got this, champ." Bob padded the boy's back.
"You're smarter than all of us."
Then David Byers was left alone in his house, watching through the window as Joyce's car drove off, standing between the branches of a map he had discovered. It was a bad joke, and he really did not want to participate in it any longer.
He had thought that monster bashing their home last winter had been a nightmare, but he had the nagging feeling that everything that was about to happen would turn out much worse.
And this time, someone of his own was about to die. His thoughts were racing as he watched another car pull up. And he had never been too thankful for seeing Steve Harrington's face.