Joey Hopper//Will Byers

The flea and the acrobat: Part 4

Mike pokes a pencil through the paper, demonstrating what Mr. Clarke had shown us earlier.

"It would take a lot of energy to build a gate like this," Mike starts. "But that's gotta be what happened, otherwise how'd Will get there, right?"

"Right," El says in a timid voice.

"What we want to know is, do you know where the gate is?" Lucas questions.

She shakes her head.

"Then how do you know about the upside down?" Lucas raises his voice.

I notice Dustin has been pretty quiet and look over to see him walking around the room with a compass in his hand.

"Dustin what on earth are you doing?" I ask, standing up from where I'd been sitting on the couch.

"Dustin?" Mike asks, turning towards him.

"DUSTIN!" We all yell, minus Eleven of course.

He turns towards us, "I...I need to see your compasses."

"what?" Mike asks confused.

"Your compasses, all of them, right now!" Dustin exclaims.

I let out a small giggle. "Dustin, who just carries a bunch of compasses around with them?" I ask looking around.

Apparently everybody, since Mike, Dustin, and Lucas drop about ten compasses onto the table.

I look over at El.

 "Boys," I say while rolling my eyes.

She looks like she can tell I was being funny but she can't exactly comprehend the joke. Nonetheless, she gives me a little smile.

"What's exciting about this?" Mike asks after he finds another one in his pocket and places it with the rest.

"Well, there all facing north, right?" Dustin exclaims with a toothy grin.

"Yeah, so?" Lucas asks, clearly not seeing the point.

To be honest, I don't really get what Dustins going on about either.

"Well that's not true north." He says in a smart voice.

"What does that mean?" I ask, trying to understand.

Dustin sighs. "It means exactly what I said. That's not true north."

"Well no duh," I exclaim. "I meant, what is true north?"

"Are you all seriously this dense?" Dustin groans, receiving only a shrug from Lucas. "The sun rises in the east, and sets in the west, right? Which means that's true north." Dustin points over my head.

"So you're saying the compasses are broken?" Mike questions.

"Do you even understand how a compass works?" Dustin retorts.

"Well considering I don't even own one, probably not." I shoot back, raising my eyebrow.

"Well do you see a battery pack on this?" Dustin continues waving around one of the compasses

"No." Mike responds.

"No you don't. Because it doesn't need one. The needles naturally drawn to the earths magnetic north pole."

"So what's wrong with it?" Lucas exclaims.

"Well that's what I couldn't figure out but then I remembered. You can change the direction of a compass with a magnet. If there's a presence of a more powerful magnetic field, the needle deflects to that power. And then I remembered what Mr. Clark said. The gate would have so much power-"