'tis the damn season

Forty-One: this is me trying

"It's hard to be at a party when I feel like an open wound" 

"What are you guys doing?" Nancy yells, startling both Steve and I.

"Dustin! Hello!" Steve continues to shout.

"Maybe he really does have rabies," Robin remarks to Eddie and Nancy, trying to be quiet about it. "He probably gave it to Lauren. Can it be transferred by saliva?"

"Very funny Robin," I comment. The look on her face didn't suggest she'd meant for me to hear that.

I guess if Robin was so casually throwing a comment like that around, she'd obviously talked to Eddie while they were upstairs, and Nancy by extension would know about us for certain now too.

"Dustin he's here, that little shit he's on the other side, but here," Steve tries to explain.

The three of them look to me, obviously needing some clarification.

"We can hear them talking on the other side, we're just trying to see if he can hear us," I say. "Just listen."

We all go quiet, and for a minute there's nothing, but then there's muffled talking again, making Nancy, Robin and Eddie widen their eyes. "What do Eleven and Vecna have in common?" Dustin says.

They were here, just on the other side; they had to be. The only problem was getting in contact with them.

All of us start yelling for Dustin, but still he's not answering us.

"Okay, either this kid can't hear us, or he's being a total douche bag," Steve says, eventually.

"Will found a way," Nancy says, suddenly.

I nod, knowing she's on the right track. "When Will was here, he used the lights to communicate with Joyce," I explain. "So we just have to... figure out how to do that."

Robin moves to the wall, flicking on a light switch, but nothing happens. "I don't think electricity has been invented in the upside down yet," she remarks.

I can tell the wheels in Nancy's brain are turning, when she walks over to the chandelier in the front hall. "When we were following Vecna in the Creel's house, the lights turned on and off as he walked by, so maybe we just have to get close to them," she suggests, holding her hand up to the chandelier hanging in the entryway of the house.

When she puts her hand close to the lights, little gold particles start to floating around her hand. The rest of us gather under the chandelier, moving our hands up close to the lights, engulfing our hands in the fairy dust like particles.

"It... tickles," Steve remarks, after a moment.

Robin chuckles, waving her hand around in the air. "It kind of feels good."

It felt like my hand was buzzing, almost as if it had fallen asleep, and started giving me that pins and needles feeling. The whole chandelier glowed with all of our hands near it.

"Does anyone know morse code?" Nancy asks us, and we all shake our heads no.

"Does SOS count?" Eddie asks, looking serious. "Is that good?"

We all look at him dumbfounded. "Yes, SOS counts," Robin chuckles.

Eddie shrugs defensively, before we all lower our hands. Eddie steps ahead of reaching up to make the lights blink the code for SOS. If we could get Dustin to notice it, he would know it was us.

A minute or so goes by before I hear Erica's voice again.

"Uh, guys... didn't you say you followed Vecna by the lights?" She asks.