The Side Ways [mileven]

chapter 8 - the four corners

Nancy's point of view..

I feel awful about being sneaky when it comes to Steve, but he wouldn't particularly like the idea of me going over to Jonathan's house 'just to hang,' not that that was what we were doing. We had to meet up again to talk about our discoveries with Eleven. It's not like we could tell Steve, though. Even though Steve did see the Demogorgon, he was still too far from the situation to understand what's going on. Even if I could tell him, it would be hard to explain all of the past details, plus the current situation. Too complicated. A waste.

Jonathan drove me to his house after school to talk. As soon as I walked into his house, his mom greeted me. "Oh, hello, Nancy! Funny Jonathan's brother is at your house and you're over here, huh?" Ms. Byers said with a smile. I chuckled a little. "Yeah, well, thank you for having me over, Ms. Byers. I don't really know how long I'll be, honestly..." I said trailing off. "Oh, it's fine! I'm going to go out for a bit, anyways. I'll be no more than two hours," she responded. "Oh, I should gone before then I think," I responded. "Either way, it's fine. Stay as long as you need," she said.

"Where are you going, mom?" Jonathan asked. "I'm just going to talk with Hopper for a little bit. It's nothing. I won't leave for a few minutes, anyways," she answered. "Oh, I see, well, Nancy and I will be in my room if you need anything before you leave." "Okay, honey, thanks," she said before we walked back into Jonathan's room.

We went into Jonathan's room and sat down on his bed. We had all of our notes with theories and discoveries about Eleven inside of it. Yesterday, we had remembered what Mike had showed us. The flea and the acrobat. It was
something that he said his science teacher had explained to him.

(Mike's point of view)

"So, you know how in Cosmos, Carl Sagan talks about other dimensions? Like, beyond our world?" "Yeah, sure, theoretically," My biology teacher, Mr. Clarke responded. Him saying 'theoretically' honestly made me upset. This clearly wasn't a theory. "Right, theoretically," I responded with, anyways. That's when Lucas joined in on the conversation. "So, theoretically, how do we travel there?" He asked. That's when he commented on something regarding Hugh Everett, which none of us really understood, so instead, we stayed silent. He continued, anyways.

"Well, basically, there are parallel universes, just like our world, but just infinite variations of it, which means there's a word out there where none of this tragic stuff every happens-" "Yeah, that's not what we're talking about," Lucas said, interrupting. "Oh," Mr. Clarke said. "We were thinking more of like an evil dimension like The Vale of Shadows." I nodded. "You know The Vale of Shadows?" Dustin asked our teacher.

Once we were all on the same page and understood the direction this conversation was going to head in, I spoke up again. "...how would we travel there?" "Theoretically," Lucas added to my question. "Well..." Mr Clarke began to say. Then he took his paper plate and pulled out a pen from his jacket. He started to sketch on the plate. "Picture and acrobat standing on a tightrope, and the tightrope is our dimension, and our dimension has rules," Mr Clarke was explaining. "You can move forwards or backwards," he said again, drawing arrows next to the small stick figure person. "But, what if right next to our acrobat there is a flea? Now, the flea can also travel backwards and forwards just like the acrobat can, right?" "Right..." I responded, nodding. "Here's where things get really interesting. The flea can also travel this way," Mr. Clarke said, drawing another arrow. "He can even go underneath the rope."

"Upside Down.."

(Back to Nancy..)

Yes, upside down is right. Upside down was right, however, no one gave any attention to what he said before about going on the side of the rope. No one ever cared about the side ways. And now, that's where we think Eleven is. Long ago, we've definitely ruled out the possibility of Eleven being in The Upside Down. We would have known if she was in there. The signs we've been given now are different than what we saw before, and that was our biggest clue when it came to understanding where she was.