Me, Myself, and Her

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-One: I Know Places

The next morning, Max met Annie at her place, then they went over to Dustin's. He was coming back from his camp today and the Party wanted to surprise him with El and everyone involved. Annie definitely wanted to be a part of it, considering she liked Dustin second out of the group of boys (Will would probably always be first).

Annie was somewhat shocked at first with Hopper letting El out for this. She's not a prisoner by any means, but he's overly protective. It's nice she's out today, even if it's just at Dustin's house.

Speaking of... "Do we know when he's gonna get here?" Annie asked over Dustin's calls on the radio. She felt bad ignoring the poor guy, but then the 'surprise' wouldn't be much of one.

Mike shrugged. "Any minute now. We've gotta be ready to see his mom's car pull up and then immediately hide."

A few moment later, Will, who was on lookout, turned to the group. "They're here!" They all hid and soon after, an angry Dustin stormed through the door straight to his room. So far, they were in the clear.

"All right El, let's do this," Mike whispered. She nodded and closed her eyes. As blood started to carefully trickle from her nose, the Party could hear the toys and robots starting to mosey down the hallway and make noise.

Annie did her best to hold in her chuckles as she saw Dustin talking to himself, following the line of figures moving down the hall. She turned and smiled at Max, then leaned forward just a tad to look at the rest of the group. He was almost in position.

"Now." Mike's whispered word ended the noises and the group grabbed the poster to get in their own position.

They all quietly walked behind him, Lucas holding the poster in the front, and Max counted them all down to blow their party noise makers.

The second they did, Dustin turned around, screaming, and sprayed hairspray in the unsuspecting boy's eyes.

El jumped to Mike, Will froze, leaving Max and Annie to look at each for a second before stopping Dustin's assault.

"Dustin stop! Stop it's just us!" Annie yelled after pulling the thing out of her mouth. "Dustin!"

She finally pushed his hand down and out of Lucas' eyes. Dustin took a few deep breaths and looked at a smiling Annie. "Surprised?"

Max laughed but then quickly ushered Lucas to the kitchen to wash the spray from his eyes. The rest followed Dustin to his room so he could show off all the new things he built while he was at Camp Know-where. Or whatever.

"Oh, here's another cool one," he turned around and grabbed something huge. He turned back and was spinning it. "I call it, the Forever Clock. Powered by wind, very useful in the apocalypse."

He handed it to Will, who looked over it semi-interested, then Dustin turned back to his bag for more. "Then, I give you..." He turned back around with some weird hammer contraption. "The Slammer."

Dustin turned it on and it start moving. When he held it towards El and Mike, El moved away from it while still holding Mike's arm. "Pretty neat, huh?" Dustin asked through a laugh. He then moved to put 'The Slammer' down and grabbed something else. "But this... this is my masterpiece."

As Dustin grabbed his duffle bag and dropped it to the ground, the others all kneeled down to look inside. "I would like you to meet... Cerebro." He had unzipped the bag and all Annie could see was a bunch of stuff.

"What exactly are we looking at here?" Mike asked. Annie started poking something that was in the bag, causing Dustin to gently grab her hand and move it away.