𝐇𝐈𝐓𝐒 𝐃𝐈𝐅𝐅𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐍𝐓 - 𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐯𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐭𝐨𝐧

04. the body

THE SAME NIGHT AS LAST CHAPTER

Blue and Red lights lit up the Byers house. Police cars and officers swarming the place to officially deliver the news to Joyce. Hopper had given Aubrey and Rue a lift back to the Byer's house. Aubrey stood there still and numb as he delivered their story to her mother.

"A trooper found something in the, uh... water that's a the quarry. Our working theory right now is that Will... crashed his bike, he... made his way over to the quarry and, uh... accidentally fell in." He explained to her and her mother as they stood together. His words sounded muffled to Aubrey, even though he was standing right beside them.

"The earth must have given away." He said, neither of them spoke, especially not Joyce as she stared blankly at the wall ahead of her, "Joyce?" He asked, "Joyce? Do you understand what I'm saying?" He asked her again, suddenly his voice was clear again as Aubrey looked over at her mother.

"No." She replied, "Whoever you found..." She trembled, "Is not my boy. It's not Will." Joyce said.

Aubrey scoffed, "Mom." She said weakly.

She stammered, "No, y-you don't understand. I-I talked to him, a half hour ago." She said.

"Oh my god." Aubrey cried and took off to her room.

"He- He was here. He was... talking with these." Her mother said, she couldn't hear another word about those damn lights.

She shut her door and fell onto her bed, crawling into fetal position and holding herself as she cried and cried.

Finally, she couldn't cry anymore, her tears were slowly drying up after about 10 minutes of that. Then the telephone on her bedside table started to ring, she slowly looked up at it and then finally grabbed it.

"Hello?" She answered, her voice scratchy from the sobbing.

"Hey." She recognized the voice immediately, "Please don't hang up." Steve said through the phone, just as she was going to do so. She stopped herself and held the phone back up to her ear.

"What do you want?" She asked.

"I'm seeing the news." He said to her, "Aubrey, I'm so sorry." He apologized.

She let out a scoff, nearly laughing, "You're sorry? After the shit you pulled today, you're sorry?"

"I was trying to protect you." He defended himself.

"By breaking a nearly 200 dollar camera that my mom worked her ass off to buy?!" She scolded him, "That's being an asshole, while he may've deserved it, you could've handled that a lot better if you wanted to actually protect me."

He hesitated, "Aubrey, please."

"Screw you, Steve." She yelled into the phone before slamming it back down. Staring at it for a moment before lying back down in her bed, turns out her tears hadn't dried up just yet as they streamed down her face again.

Trying to protect her... since when did he care about anyone other than himself?

At some point she had fallen asleep, she couldn't remember when in the morning, but it happened. She woke up to her alarm, but quickly shut it off. She wasn't going anywhere today, besides the goddamn morgue.