STICKS AND STONES ↝ S. HARRINGTON

[10]

Shortly after Tommy's car vanished from sight around the block, Becca's bedroom door opened once more, and the blonde resurfaced at the top of the stairs. "Is he gone?" she asked, footsteps pounding down the stairs as she looked around for her cousin, though Steve was already long gone. "Where'd he go?"

"Yeah," Anna said, nodding as she crossed her arms over her chest, Steve's words from before still fresh in her mind as she looked back out the window to the same spot where he'd gotten into the car. "Tommy and Carol came back to pick him up. Looks like they managed to outrun Officer Callahan, after all."

"Shame," Becca sighed.

A shrill ring sounded through the house as the phone began to ring on the wall, pulling both of the girls' attention to the source of the noise. Becca exchanged a brief confused glance with Anna before walking over to it and picking up the device, holding it against her ear.

"Hello?" Becca asked into the receiver. "Michelle, oh my God, are you guys alright? How's Jonathan?" she paused as she listened to whatever Michelle was saying on the other line before she held out the receiver in Anna's direction. "They want to talk to you,"

"They?" Anna mouthed, but Becca merely shrugged as she passed her the phone. "Hello?" she asked. "Michelle?"

"Hey, Anna," Michelle's voice came through the device. "You haven't seen Dustin around today, have you?"

"Dustin?" Anna asked, her eyebrows furrowing together slightly. "I saw him this morning before I left, he said he was going over to Mike's, but not since then. Why?"

Anna could hear murmuring from the other end of the call, though she couldn't make out any distinct voices before a new one spoke into the receiver, one that she didn't quite recognize right away. "Anna, this is Chief Hopper," he said, "It's a lot to explain over the phone, but we have reason to believe your brother and his friends may be harboring a girl that escaped from Hawkins Lab last weekend. We don't know where they are, but we might be able to reach them. Could you meet us at the Byers' house?"

"Yes," Anna said, her eyebrows furrowing together as panic began to set into her chest, "We'll meet you there, Chief."

"Chief?" Becca asked as Anna hung up the phone. "Why were you talking to the chief?"

"We need to go to the Byers', right now." Anna said urgently. "The boys are in some kind of danger, and we need to find them before somebody else does. Where are your keys?"

"By the door," Becca said, rushing for where she'd dropped her purse in her haste to come inside the house earlier, scooping them up off the floor and beginning to rummage through the bag for the familiar jingle of her keys. "Got them, let's go."

The two girls ran out of the house for Becca's car, jumping inside the vehicle as Becca immediately put the key in the ignition, the engine roaring to life in response. Her tires squealed against the pavement as she reversed out of the driveway, before turning onto the main road that would lead them back to the Byers' house. While Anna had never considered the drive between the two houses to be far, each second felt like hours, the blood pounding in her ears as she wracked her brain trying to think of where Dustin and his friends possibly could have gone that had gotten them into so much trouble.

"So what kind of danger are we talking about?" Becca asked. "Did the chief say?"

"Something about a girl that escaped from Hawkins Lab," Anna said with a shrug. "I don't know, he hasn't told me any of this, but if the chief is calling us about it, it can't be good. Why wouldn't Dustin tell me?"

"In his defense," Becca said, pulling onto the gravel road that led to the Byers' house, "have you told him about anything we've been up to this week?"