IF I FELL | STEVE HARRINGTON

one | remarkably resilient

THE LAST WEEK OF OCTOBER BROUGHT the promise of a colder season. A brunette perused the aisles of The Roundabout, sighing at all the records customers had picked up and set back down in places they didn't belong. It was a common occurrence, of course, one that she knew happened at any store— but still, it was annoying. Especially because it was her job to organize and shelf the records that people had moved around.

"Seriously, how hard is it to put things back where you got them?" She complained as the pile of discarded records in her arms grew.

A snort had her head turning to the left to look at her coworker as an amused smirk tugged the corners of his lips. "People don't care about things that aren't their problem," he told her as he counted all of the money in his register.

Jonathan Byers had never been much of a talker. It was one of the reasons their coworkers didn't want to work with him, because while he was polite to customers, he wasn't really a guy most people could have an amicable conversation with to pass the time. He was quiet, he kept to himself; more of an observer than a partaker in things.

But Rachel Henderson never minded that. In fact, she preferred Jonathan's silence over the stupid shit other people talked about. Especially their coworker Eric, who was a thirty year-old degenerate that still lived with his parents because his dreams of being in a punk-rock band never took off. Which, you know, was none of Rachel's business... but neither were the many airheaded conquests that gave him another notch on his bedpost; something he loved to tell her about, which made her unbearably uncomfortable.

Anyway, the thing was, Eric was probably her least-favorite coworker. Jonathan, with his timid nature and ability to actually work instead of hit on any female that walked into the record shop, was probably her most-favorite.

Until last year, Jonathan and Rachel's friendship had never spanned further than The Roundabout, where they worked together, or the high school's art room, where they often ran into each other while Rachel was painting and Jonathan passed through on his way to the developing room. But when Jonathan's little brother Will, who happened to be one of her little brother's best friends, went missing, Rachel took it upon herself to help look for him.

It was still crazy to her, the amount of things that could happen in a week. It had been the most insane seven days she'd ever experienced in her life, and it had literally turned her whole perspective on the world upside-down. (No pun intended.)

No, Rachel never would have thought that precious little Will would have been abducted by a carnivorous dark creature and brought into an equally-dark dimension that was full of toxic air and hideous goo. Nor would she have thought that her friend Barbara would be pulled into the same dimension before being murdered by said creature. Or that she and her other friend, Nancy, would momentarily find themselves in it as well, before thankfully being able to find their way back out with the help of Jonathan.

The entire ordeal still frightened her from time to time. Rachel would never tell anyone, but she had nightmares about that week still. Flashes of what the boys had named a demogorgon pass through her mind, its faceless head blooming like a deadly venus fly-trap, opening to reveal thousands of teeth intent on ripping her apart.

She had survived an encounter with this creature last year, when Steve Harrington began beating it with a bat before they set it on fire... but in her dreams, Steve and her friends weren't there. In her dreams, she was alone, with no gasoline or lighter, or even a bat with multiple nails protruding out of it. She was alone and defenseless like her friend Barb had been and in her dreams, the demogorgon catches her by the ankle as she tries to run and then it —

"Rach?" Jonathan's voice, slightly tinged with concern, pulls her out of her haunting thoughts. "Are you okay?"

She looks back over at him and musters up a smile, the same one she used whenever someone asked her that question. "Yeah. Just.... a lot on my mind, I guess," Rachel told him with a shrug. Before he could ask anything further, she approached the counter and set down the pile of records she had managed not to drop. "Okay, we'll split this in half and get it done quicker."