HOW TO STOP LIKING BOYS ━ Stranger Things ✓

SIXTEEN: GONE

SIXTEEN: GONE

THE BOYS (AND GIRL) FOUND THEMSELVES AT MIKE'S HOUSE ONCE AGAIN. That funeral had been torture for Daniel and he wished he had just left with Heather and his mother so he didn't have to endure more conspiracy theories about their small town. Yet still, he had found himself in the back of Karen Wheeler's car riding back to Mike's house.

As of now, Mike was trying to explain the flea and acrobat metaphor Mister Clarke used earlier. Daniel watched as Eleven's eyes went wide when Mike's pencil stabbed through the paper.

"It would take a lot of energy to create a gate like this," Mike exclaimed. He was sitting in close proximity to Eleven, which Daniel wasn't sure he liked. "But that's gotta be what happened. Otherwise, how'd Will get there, right?"

"R-right," Eleven nodded. She was ever so slowly learning words, but she still couldn't seem to hold a conversation. She was getting slightly tolerable to Daniel now that she wasn't acting like a scared little child.

"What we want to know is," Lucas cut in, "do you know where the gate is?"

"Unlikely," Daniel muttered, but no one besides Dustin seemed to have heard it. Dustin looked at the other boy and shrugged. He was unable to tell if that was a sign of agreement or not.

Eleven confirmed Daniel's beliefs by shaking her head as an answer to Lucas's question. Lucas, who was pretty much saying what Daniel was thinking, sighed.

"Then how do you know about the Upside Down?" the dark-skinned boy asked in a shout, clearly as tired of this guessing game as Daniel was. Everyone looked at Eleven, expecting an answer, but they didn't get one.

"The gate's obviously somewhere in Hawkins," Daniel suggested in an effort to help, but his mind was exhausted. He still had a headache left over from all the science talk early with Mister Clarke and Lucas yelling wasn't going to help anyone.

With the silence, Mike turned his attention to Dustin, who was walking in circles with something in his hand. "Dustin, what are you doing? Dustin? Dustin!"

"Dustin!" Lucas yelled, while Daniel just watched with a furrowed brow and curious eyes.

Dustin looked up with a confused expression on his face. "I. . . I need to see your compasses."

"What?" Mike asked.

"Your compasses. All of your compasses, right now!" Dustin shouted, which was unlike the curly-haired boy. He never raised his voice in such a demanding tone.

With little hesitation, Daniel took the compass he kept (per Mike's request) out of his coat pocket and tossed it into the waiting hands of Dustin. Whatever the boy's plan was, it was better than sitting around yelling at a girl who couldn't even put a proper sentence together. They tossed every compass they could find onto the table which still had the flipped Dungeons & Dragons board on it. They managed to wrangle up about five or six compasses before Dustin started sorting them out.