PARANORMAL | ❝Nothing is stranger than believing.❞
Cath knows a thing or two about Will Byers. Daphne, on the other hand, knows virtually nothing about Tonya McCarthy. Still, none of that changes the fact that both of them have up and vanished with...
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MONDAY 7th NOVEMBER, 1983
CATH'S friends puzzle her, and she means well by that — they are extraordinary in the most ordinary of ways (Daphne claims they're "about as interesting as drying paint", but she figures that's borderline offensive if you're describing your own friends).
She can't quite recall how she ended up with them. There was no limbo, no stage between the Before and the After. One minute, she was alone: floating aimlessly, trying her best not to look too purposeless, although maybe that's exactly what she was. And then, in a blink, she'd ended up sharing lunch tables and entering Science Fairs with the likes of Pamela Gillespie, Sandy Brooks and Gina Lawson.
The three tightly-knit girls, she remembers, accepted Cath effortlessly — in the way they would accept a leaf drifting into their periphery, while obsessively craning their necks like hunchbacks over textbooks, on those lunch breaks sat underneath the beech tree by the school library.
Having taken all of this into account, Cath would have liked to think it would be easy to reel Andrea into their group, however much she might stick out. But the instant souring of Pamela's face once she asks speaks more than words.
The girl sucks in a sharp breath as she bundles a Maths exercise book into her arms. "Oh, I don't know, Cath..." she says doubtfully.
"She's really nice," Cath feels her defences rising, but only coming out in a timid murmur. "I met her on the bus this morning. We had a nice chat on the way here."
"I know. I've seen her in first period."
"Oh?"
"She was babbling on so much, I could barely concentrate."
Cath's cheeks begin to burn, the same way they do every time she can feel what little courage she has diminishing; like a balloon pathetically deflating. "... Maybe she was just nervous?" she says, her voice squeaking nervously. She clears her throat.
"Well, we were thinking of hitting the library at lunch, anyway."
"Oh, cool," she smiles. "I'm sure she'd—"
"— get bored stiff. Yeah, exactly."
"Pam..."
Spinning around, Pamela sets her eyes on Cath with a hard, stern glare. It's never deliberate (she thinks), but it's enough to make her cower, wondering what she had done wrong. For a fresh-faced and all-round pleasant girl, she could stare down even the most confident folk in Hawkins Middle until their mischievous smile would vanish in surrender. You would never think she was the offspring of the woman who infamously became the talk of the town years ago, after an owl attacked her hair thinking it was a nest.
