Love me •|Billy Hargrove|•

•|12|•

I race to Dustin's house in my car trying to be there to greet him as he comes back from summer camp.

I park my car on the street, away from the house.

When El and I get inside, the whole group is there, waiting.

"Took you long enough," Mike sasses.

"Grow some facial hair you little shit," I sass back, moving passed him.

20 minutes later I hear Dustin and his mom arrive. We all hide until Dustin is in his room.

El makes a robot go into his room. I close my eyes and control other little toys of his to move. We make them move towards us, down the hall.

I hear Dustin padding towards us. When Mike whispers now, we stop. The toys go silent, creeping behind him with our welcome home banner.

We all yell surprise.

Dustin screams, spraying Farrah Faucet spray in defense. It goes right into Lucas's eyes.

We all gasp. I move my hand and Dustin loses hold on his can. It flies across the room.

I move towards Lucas. "Honey, are you okay?"

"It burns," Lucas cries out. Tears roll down his face because of the burning.

"It's okay, let's go get it rinsed off," I say, patting his back. "Welcome back, Dustin."

Dustin gasps for air. "Yeah. Uh huh. Sorry Lucas."

"Shut up!" Lucas snaps, rubbing at his eyes.

"It's okay, Dustin," I say giving Dustin an awkward smile. I don't remove my hands from Lucas's shoulders. "Let's go Lucas. We need to wash out your eyes. Quit touching them."

Max follows me into the kitchen. I push Lucas's head into the running sink water.

"Help the helpless, Max," I sigh out, returning to the others.

In Dustin's room, he shows us some windmill looking thing. As he tells us about it.

"I call it the Forever clock. Powered by wind. Very useful in the apocalypse," he finished by giving it to Will to hold.

He holds up a finger and moves across the room. "Then I give you the Slammer." He holds up 'the Slammer.'

It's a hammer duck taped to a contraption. He moves it towards Mike after he turns it on. Mike and Eleven back away from it.

Dustin sets it down. "But this, this is my masterpiece." He has a big heavy duffel bag. He sets it on the ground.

"I would like you to meet Cerebro," Dustin smiles up at us, opening the bag.

It's a bunch of metal parts. I couldn't even begin to say what it was.

"What exactly are we looking at here?" I ask Dustin, crouching down to look closer.

"An unassembled one of a kind battery powered radio tower," I zone out after he says this, standing to check on Lucas. I couldn't care less about this.

When I'm almost out the door I hear Dustin say "my girlfriend."

I immediately turn around. "Girlfriend?"

The kids want to go use the radio, but I decide that I need to head to the pool, it's almost time for my shift.

I get in the car, driving to the pool. I walk into the pool house, changing into my swim suit. When I'm done, I wait for my shift to start.

I hum to myself, picking at my finger nails. I'm a little early, but if I would have went with the kids I would have been a lot late.

I can't wait to tell Billy about Dustin's girlfriend. I'm sure he'll be thrilled. Dustin is our favorite after all. Billy also has bonded with Will a bit too. Billy and Max have become quite close as well.