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THE FUNERALS were more common than not that summer. There were so many, in fact, that they started to merge them together. Hopper's was first, he had the biggest turnout. The chief of Hawkins, their finest protector, and a dad to a girl the world didn't know existed. Billy's was next, Neil hadn't said a word since the news broke. Jackie had been the one to tell him, sobbing over a lie about a car wreck. The cry had been real, the story was far too simple compared to the truth.
How did one tell their step-father his son died to an invasive species called the Mind-Flayer that had taken over his body to turn others like him and control the world? You didn't—so Jackie kept to her lie, and the others did, too.
The rest were lies about a mall fire—Heather's was a suicide in her bathtub. Jackie had cried the entire night after attending the funeral, curled up in her bed without a light on, still in her black dress and old cheer jacket. She knew Heather would have appreciated it.
Knew. Past-tense. Death was a bizarre concept. She couldn't wrap her head around it. Not then, probably not ever.
She liked to pretend it got easier, the hole in her chest only seemed to grow larger—with Billy's empty room and absent car. Heather's house sold within the next month, no family to claim it—all dead due to the Mind-Flayer.
Jackie had snuck in the night before the foreclosure, through the back window and with the tossing of a rock. Everything would be gone the following morning, every memory of Heather would fade into nothing. Jackie maneuvered into her friend's ghostly room, the smell of her perfume and the last outfit Jackie had seen her in still on the top of her hamper.
Her throat closed—she grabbed the photostrip of them from off of Heather's mirror, the pictures black and white and a little blurry from the poor quality booth. She tried not to sob, tucking it into her pocket. She snagged a few more of Heather's favorite things, things she couldn't dare to think about being thrown into the town's dump, crushed and destroyed into nothing.
It made her feel better, if only a little. Knowing that with these things, she'd always have a piece of her friend with her. Back home, in her own room, she thumb-tacked the photostrip next to her bed, surrounded by her favorite posters and magazine covers. Her fingers lingered on it, staring at the middle box of them laughing, the next with their middle fingers out. It had been right after the mall opened.
Jackie felt her mouth turn up, dropping her hand back to her side. "Goodbye," she whispered, to Heather, to their times together, and to the girl who had brought her out of her shell.
