It's finally over

Aftermath

Wills pov

It's been two weeks since all of this ended. Since me and El killed Vecna with the help of the others. How El closed the portal, while I was distracting him in my mind. Making it end once and for all.

Even when Hawkins is now at peace and everything is fine, I still find it hard to let go.

All of the people that died, all that was sacrificed, my childhood, my  innocence, even some of my friendships. I would never ever be the same. I still got nightmares frequently, sure it was over, he is gone... but a lot of it.. maybe even all of it, sticks with me.

What sort of bothers me is how everyone seems to be normal. Happy even. God, I sound selfish.
It's just that everyone just... seems to have forgotten all that has happened during the progress. Just thinking about it turns my stomach upside down and brings the itchy ache of tears to my eyes.

I needed to get over this. It's done. Finished, Will. Now be fucking happy damn it.

I get out of bed and put on blue jeans and one of my plaid shirts.

A lot of my friends are helping out with repairing the high school since it was really damaged and Im pretty sure it also still has a bunch of sleeping bags and boxes of food to be put away.

I see Jonathon by the dining table.

"Hey Jonathon I was wondering if you could drive me to the school?" I ask as he's reading something from the newspaper, probably something about how Hawkins, the world almost ended.

"Oh sure Will!" He immediately gets up and picks up his keys from his pocket.

We get in his car and after a couple minutes we are here.
He goes in the parking lot and we both come out, guess he also wanted to help. We go our separate ways, he walks over to Nancy as I give him a small wave.

I turn and see Dustin waving to me, I come over.

"Hey Will."

"Hi." I see him looking at me curiously.

"You here to help?"

"Well yeah I guess there aren't really any classes here."  He practically rolls his eyes at me scoffing.

"Since when did you become a jokester?" He says, now it's me rolling my eyes.

"Yeah, yeah anyway is there anything I can help with here?"

"Yeah just basically help with whatever, like if there's boxes put them in storage rooms blah blah blah."

"Wow. Big help."

"Okay, anyway I gotta go help other people."

"Like that?"

"Shut up."

And he leaves, leaving me alone in the crowded room. I see a pile of boxes in a corner that no one seems to be looking at and walk over to them. There's a big label on the box with very sloppily writing (probably Dustin's hand writing) that says 'food, goes in storage room B'. I picked up the box only to realize that I have absolutely no idea where storage room B could be. I look around realizing that there's probably no point in asking Dustin and just walk in a random hallway.

The lights are darker here, probably some of the many that broke during the second earthquake.
I continue to walk cluelessly around until I see a tall familiar figure. Mike.

"Hi"

"Hi"

He looks at me.

"Do you need anything?" He asks.

"I have absolutely no idea where storage room B could be." I say embarrassed slightly.

"Oh, well in that case it's all the way across the school." He laughs, while I'm now even more embarrassed.

"Here I'll help." He walks over to me. "We will just take the long route."

"Yeah." I say smiling slightly.

He guides me through the halls, I can't help but look over my shoulder at him every once in a while.
He's still taller than me, even though I've catched up, now up to his nose.

"So how have you been with everything happening...you know with all of this being over." He looks over to me.

"I'm fine..everything's fine Mike." I think he could tell that I wasn't totally fine but he didn't push it.

"Okay.." He looks back up away from me.

I don't know why but something just feels off with him. I mean yeah it feels weird that all of the upside down stuff is over but I think it's more than that for Mike.

"Have you and El talked yet?" I don't mean after the confession, that was ages ago. I meant after this was finally over.

The dark haired boy looks back up.

"Yeah we talked, El is definitely gonna need some rest after this." He laughs, seeming normal again, maybe even more chipper.

Sure I have known, for a while now, that I may like Mike a bit more than friends but I'm still happy for him and El. I might be a bit sad but I definitely wasn't jealous. I liked seeing Mike happy.

"Cool."

"Cool."

We smiled at each other continuing to walk.

Gosh how big was this school?