If I Stare Too Long

Chapter 10: I Know It's Been Coming (For Some Time)

The next day, it's still raining, the heavens bucketing down.

The ground of the trailer park is nothing but puddles, brown and muddy, and with just a bike, there's nowhere else to escape.

At some point in the early morning, Billy had left for his own trailer. No amount of assurances from Eddie had made Billy feel fine with spending the night. Billy knows what time Wayne Munson usually comes home from his shift—everybody knows everybody's business here. No way not to. And apparently, Wayne knows about Eddie, and would be fine with finding a boy in his nephew's bed, but Billy just—can't. Can't take that risk.

And he can't even watch TV. Apparently, according to the radio, a tree knocked out power to most of Hawkins sometime around 7 a.m. when Billy was sound asleep. And now the trailer is getting warm and Billy's getting bored and restless, left with nothing to occupy his time other than think back to last night, of the feeling of Eddie's hands on his body. How the ghost of his touch lingers.

The hiss of a hand radio knocks Billy out of his boredom-induced stupor.

"Max, do you copy? Over."

Max is in the bathroom. Billy knows because the whole trailer smells like nail polish.

"Max, do you copy? Over," the radio repeats. Dustin, Billy thinks, is on the other end.

It repeats one more time before Billy picks it up and snaps, "She's busy. What the fuck do you want?"

There's a hiss of static and then Dustin's voice crackles back over the line. "Is it just the power out at your place or the phone lines too?"

Billy has no idea. He keeps the radio in his hand as he gets up and takes the few steps it takes to get to the phone. When he picks it up, there's only quiet.

"Both," Billy says.

A year ago, he wouldn't have even entertained this shit. Now—well, now he knows better than to just let shit sit. But he still can't help himself from ribbing the kid just a bit.

So he brings the radio back up to his mouth and asks, "Scared of the dark, Henderson?"

Max rips the radio out of Billy's hand before Dustin can even reply. "Sorry about that," Max says. "Over."

"Watch it," Billy hisses, frowning at the line of black nail polish she just smeared across the back of his hand; he hadn't even heard her come out of the bathroom.

She rolls her eyes, shoving a hand in his face as Dustin's voice comes back through.

"When the power went out, we started calling around– couldn't get through to Eddie or Steve." Dustin says. "El says it isn't anything but a storm, but I figured I'd just radio and check. Over."

Max frowns a little, but she doesn't seem concerned, not with the assurance that El thinks it's nothing to get worried about. Still, she exchanges a look with Billy.

"Think Eddie and Steve are fine?" she asks.

"Doesn't Harrington have one of those little radios?" Billy asks Max, and then he peers outside the window, over at Eddie's trailer. "And Munson's right there."

She nods with a little frown.

"Is Steve not answering? Over," Max asks Dustin over the radio.

There's another, longer pause.

Then Dustin is saying, radio blurring with static as he sighs, "He never has it on weekends. Just says to call if there's an emergency. But that's not really possible right now, so–"