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THERE WERE RUSSIANS IN HAWKINS.
That was all Amara could think about as she left the mall, dropped Robin off at her house, and returned home for the night. It was a quarter past nine and most households were conveying accounts of their day or watching Sixteen Candles, but once again a group of castaways was among the first to unveil something the rest of the townspeople had overlooked. Sleepy, boring Hawkins had captured the attention of the Russians, although Amara had to remind herself that Hawkins was no longer sleepy nor boring after being propelled into the national spotlight following the revelation of Barbara Holland's death from a chemical leak.
There was only one explanation Amara could come up with for why there were Russians in a town Robin often quipped was a toilet stop away from Disneyland, at least before she'd learned of otherworldly beasts and telekinetic girls, but she didn't want to consider that possibility until she and her friends had gathered additional evidence.
"Long day?" Kevin commented when Amara swanned through the doorway after parking her car. Sat at the kitchen table with a bowl of ramen for dinner, he had had a very long day himself.
"Yeah," Amara sighed, plonking herself in the chair opposite her brother and dropping her face in her hands. "Erica wouldn't stop badgering us to give her samples. It's bad enough that we only make three bucks an hour."
"Hey, you're making more money than I am at this point," Kevin reminded her, though it wasn't as if he had been at Melvald's for most of the day, and not because of the demonstration at Town Hall. He subconsciously felt his gaze drift to the refrigerator where magnets littered the ground, refusing to attach to the door. "At least the Chief was in a good mood today. He said his heart-to-heart speech with Mike and El worked."
"That, I don't believe," Amara countered, recalling Max's disclosure that Mike had supposedly treated Eleven like garbage, but it now made more sense to her where the abrupt rift in their relationship had originated from. Regardless, it was nice to see Eleven spend a day in the company of someone who wasn't her boyfriend. "El came to the mall today and she was mad at Mike for some reason. I guarantee that the Chief's at least partially responsible for that."
"Yeah, that sounds more like him," Kevin agreed through a mouthful of ramen. "I should hope that he'll stop showing up at Melvald's every day, but he'll probably find some reason to. He's got it bad for Joyce."
"Wait, so did you end up not going to that protest?" Amara queried, only just realizing that Kevin had indicated being at work that day when he had been looking forward to rallying against Starcourt for days. Usually, she would've caught information like that earlier on but there was something about finding out about there being Russians in Hawkins that made it challenging to think of anything else.
"Yeah... " Kevin trailed off, thinking back to how the magnets had stubbornly refused to cling to the whiteboard at Melvald's so similar to how the ones at their house did to their refrigerator, as well as Joyce's. He wanted to believe that it was apophenia or whatever it was that the science teacher from Hawkins Middle had cited as a prospect, but Joyce had a history of being right even when nobody believed her to be telling the truth. "I kinda got caught up with something."
