The Hawkins Boys

Chapter Two - Isobel

I was happy to be stuck in Hawkins. For a time. Aunt Claudia was happy to have me and even from my first night here she had never asked how long I would be staying for. I was waiting for her to ask still, three weeks later. But Aunt Claudia no longer referred to the room I was staying in as the guest room and announced over dinner one night to my cousin, Dustin, that he needed to clear out his old things from the wardrobe because it was my room.

Dustin and I shared a look, the kid was as surprised as me to be hearing this from Aunt Claudia. I awaited Dustins protest, knowing he was an only child and used to his own space. Dustin just shrugged and continued eating his dinner.

Since then I'd been able to call Hawkins home. Aunt Claudia was pedantic and insisted in doing everything around the house so I made sure that my bed was always made and my things were never left lying around. Dustin was hardly ever home, always rushing off to go to his friend Mike's house or to some after school game night called Hellfire Club that Aunt Claudia wasn't a fan of. I know the two of them were glad to have me, I was never made to feel out of place but I still felt I was intruding on her and Dustin's life. We all knew my stay was temporary.

I was an adult and should have been out on my own, so of course my guilt manifested into my overuse of manners and thankfulness. Dustin told me to cool it, that Aunt Claudia was just glad to have someone else to fuss over. It was her way of loving people. I cried at that and Dustin promised not to tell her should she fuss some more.

I put my spare time - all my time - to good use. Sketching, painting, drawing, creating. Filling up sketchbooks and journals and every spare piece of paper I could find, with my art. Trying to find my medium, to find my muse, to tell my stories. To try and purge all the guilty thoughts in my head onto paper and through ink.

Hawkins didn't really inspire me. It was quaint and a little cursed but overall pretty average. The one thing I appreciated was the quiet.

It was late Friday afternoon and I was concentrating deeply on perfecting my shading on a sketch when I heard rummaging behind me. I broke out of my creative reverie and turned away from my place at my desk to find Dustin crouched in front of my wardrobe, stuffing his hands with miscellaneous objects.

'Do you need a hand?' I asked him as I watched him struggle to gather everything in his arms.

'Nah, I'm good.' He said and rushed out of the room.

A red box on the floor caught my eye. I went over and reached for the box, Dungeons & Dragons - Fantasy Role-Playing Game. An illustration of a dragon lurching over a knight stared back at me.

I glanced back at the desk, my creative spark had already gone and I was desperate to have a conversation that didn't involve Aunt Claudia trying to get me to be an Avon representative or talk about how I could style my hair. I followed Dustin to his room. He had dumped the stuff from my wardrobe onto his bed and was pulling on his hat when he noticed me by the door, the game in my hands.

'Are you going somewhere?' I asked him as I offered him the game, he placed it gently on his desk and not with the rest of the junk littered on his bed.

'Hellfire Club.' There was a small smile on his face, a giddy energy emanating from him - much more than usual. He shrugged on a jacket that was hanging on the back of a chair tucked under his desk. I think he was waiting for me to leave, his eyes moving back and forth behind me.

'Friday night game night?' I asked him, trying to continue the conversation. Really I was bored, in need of social interaction and desperate to do something tonight other than go to bed at nine o'clock after devouring another trashy romance novel. Not that the books weren't good -  they gave me ideas I knew I could never explore in the real world and a yearning for a certain type of man I knew I'd never meet - but I could hardly stand to put them down knowing when I closed the pages I had to face my loneliness alone.