Trapped

The Vanishing of Will Byers

Rosalyn Henderson was staring at the coffee maker, waiting for it to finish making the pot. She did a graveyard shift as a kennel attendant at Hawkins Veterinary Clinic. It closes at 10 pm, but someone had to stay overnight to make sure the animals got their medicine and care. When the old night kennel attendant quit, Lyn did her boss, Penelope Myung, a favor and took over the graveyard shifts until she could find a replacement.

The phone rang. "Can you get the phone dear? I'm making pancakes." Claudia Henderson asks her daughter.

While she didn't give a verbal answer, she moved to grab the phone from off the wall. "Hello, Henderson's resident." She yawned.

"Hello Lyn, this is Joyce Byers." It was the mother of Will Byers who was a friend of her brother, Dustin.

"Hey Ms. Byers, is something wrong?" Lyn moves her brows to meet in the middle. It wasn't like her to call for a chat. She was a busy single mother.

"I was wondering if Will is at your house. Did he spend the night?" She asks.

She looks around the kitchen in search of the quite well-mannered child. "Is Will here? Did he spend the night?" She put her hand over the bottom half of the receiver to ask her brother.

"No, last time I saw him was last night when we rode our bikes home." Dustin shoves a piece of pancake in his mouth that their mom put in front of him.

"He's not here. Dustin said that they rode home on their bikes together last night. Did Will not make it home?" She asks, making the room go silent. Dustin and her mother stop what they were doing to stare at her.

"You know what I think he went to school early. Yeah, that's what he did. Thank you. Bye." She sounds like she was trying to convince herself more than the teenager.

"Bye." She hung up the phone, no longer tired as adrenaline was pumping through her veins from the fear she was feeling for the preteen.

"Is Will okay?" Dustin asks his sister.

"He wasn't there when they woke up and they're not sure if he made it home last night. His mom thinks he went to school early." She explains with a pit in her stomach.

"Yeah, that sounds like Will." A smile replaces Dustin's frown. Lyn and her mom share an unconvinced look.

She went over and poured herself a cup of coffee. "I can give you a ride." She offered even though she knew the answer.

"I'll ride my bike with Lucas and Mike." He told her like he had been doing since he met his three best friends on the first day of the fourth grade.

"Are you sure you should be driving? You just got home an hour ago, you didn't get any sleep." Claudia narrows her eyes at her daughter.

"I slept eight hours before I went to work." Lyn grit her teeth knowing where this was going.

"I don't know why you even have that job." Her mother rolls her eyes.

"I'm not hungry." She drank the rest of her coffee and put the mug in the sink. She walks out of the house, ignoring her mother yelling that breakfast was the most important meal of the day. She sat in the driver's seat of the black 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS 454 that had two white stripes going down the hood that she named Darling. She took deep breaths as she calmed down. It took everything in her not to snap at her mother, that she had to have a job because she refused to get one.

The summer before she went to the ninth grade, her father divorced her mother for a woman closer to her age than his. Her mom got the house, the kids, the van, and Darling. Claudia got a few jobs but quit all of them in the first week. Then, she sold their old house and moved them to Hawkins. It's a cheaper, smaller, safer town she told them.