Joey Hopper//Will Byers

The bathtub: Part 4

I get Dustin a pen and a pad of paper as he list off what Mr. Clarke is saying.

"Uh-huh," Dustin starts. "Okay-how much..? Yeah, yep, alright. Yeah we'll be careful...definitely. All right, Mr. Clarke...Yeah I'll see you on Monday Mr. Clarke, bye."

Dustin sets down the phone.

"Do you still have that old kiddie pool we bobbed apples in?" Dustin asks as he turns towards Joyce.

Joyce stares off for a moment. "I think so. Yeah."

"Good." Dustin exclaims, "then we just need salt."

I look up, "well that's easy."

"No, no, no." Dustin begins "We need lots of it."

"How much is 'lots'?" My dad questions.

Dustin puts his fingers out in front of him seemingly doing the math. "1,500 pounds."

We all just stare at him.

Nancy finally speaks up, "where are we gonna get that much salt?"

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My dad loads the whole party into his truck while all the teens get in with Joyce. Apparently my dad just randomly knows that my school has an abundance of extra salt lying around in the back. After a fairly short drive, we all get out. Lucas, Dustin, and I take it upon ourselves to drag in the kiddie pool. You might be thinking, 'Joey why in the world would you need three people to carry in a kiddie pool?' Well I will respond to that by saying, have you ever had to lug a tightly wrapped rubber pool through an entire school? I didn't think so. But seriously, I swear someone must have loaded this thing with rocks or something. We finally set the pool down on the gym floor. Now the real work begins.

It takes us about five embarrassing moments of trying to set the thing up until we realize it's upside down...oops.

"How does this even work?" Dustin exclaims as we all struggle to keep the sides from falling.

"I think we need to blow it up." I guess, having no idea how to set up a kiddie pool.

Dustin looks for an area on the pool to blow air into the thing.

Lucas finally says, "check the other side."

Dustin tries but when he moves the whole thing collapses, "son of a bitch."

"Come on Dustin!" I shout.

"Pull it back." Lucas exclaims as we all begin to lose our cool.

Dustin rolls his eyes, "I am!"

"Maybe we should just switch?" I say.

Dustin looks over at me. "How would that help at all?"

"We'll maybe if we had someone not acting like an idiot on your side it would help." I state.

"Oh, shut it-"

Lucas interrupts him. "Everyone hold on. Three, two, one-"

On that note we all throw the plastic pool up in the air only for it to catch on my head and bring me down with it.

I thump against the ground and start lightly laughing, "well that plan was shit."

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By some miracle we manage to set up the pool. Right when we finish, Mike and Nancy walk in with the hose. We prop it up so that Mike's holding it, Lucas is watching the thermometer, and Nancy's controlling the nobs.