••••• "Don't don't you want me? / You know I can't believe it when you say that you don't need me" •••••
"This might be the stupidest thing I've ever gotten myself involved in, but I'm in."
In which Steve Harrington and Kimberly Henderson go from be...
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Kim and Nancy walked into the funeral home, both feeling incredibly awkward but knowing they had to talk to Jonathan.
"Hey," he said nervously, really not wanting to be yelled at by the two girl, no matter how much he knew he deserved it.
"Hey," Kim said quietly. "Your mom, um, she said you'd be here. We just- Can we talk for a second?"
The three sat down in the hallway and Nancy showed him the picture of Barb and Kim sitting by the pool that she had taped back together. Kim still felt incredibly uncomfortable that Jonathan had even taken the picture in the first place.
"I mean, it looks like it could be some kind of perspective distortion, but I wasn't using a wide angle. I don't know. It's weird."
Nancy took the picture back from him with a sigh. "And you're sure you didn't see anyone else out there?"
"No," Jonathan replied, still feeling awkward around the two girls. "She was there one second and then, um, gone. I figured she bolted."
"The cops think that she ran away," Nancy told him. "But they don't know Barb. And I went back to Steve's and I thought I saw something."
"Wait, you didn't tell me about that in the car," Kim said, looking at her friend.
Nancy felt a little bit bad, but she hadn't wanted Kim to think she was crazy. "It was just some weird man or- I don't know what it was. I'm sorry. I-We shouldn't have come here today. I'm so sorry."
"What'd he look like?" Jonathan blurted as the girls started to walk away.
"What?" Kim asked, not knowing why Jonathan cared.
"This man you saw in the woods," Jonathan clarified. "What'd he look like?"
"I-I don't know," Nancy stammered, closing her eyes and trying to picture it more clearly. "It was almost like he didn't have-"
"Didn't have a face?' Jonathan finished, terror on his face.
"How did you know that?" Nancy asked. She didn't know what was scarier, her going crazy or that thing she saw actually being real.
•••••
The three teens stood in the photography room at school, trying to enlarge the image of Kim and Barb and see if the shadowy figure in the background was what Nancy had really seen out behind Steve's house.
"And you're-?" Nancy started to ask Jonathan, knowing nothing about photography.
"Brightening, enlarging," Jonathan explained.
"Did your mom say anything else?" Kim asked, still trying to understand what Nancy and Mrs. Byer's had seen, and how it could relate to Eleven. "Like, um, where it might have gone to?"
Jonathan shook his head as he fiddled with the photography equipment. "No, just that it came out of the wall."
"Great," Kim said sarcastically. "There are monsters that live in our walls now."
"That's it," Nancy gasped once the photo was fully developed. "That's what I saw."
It was shadowy and a bit blurry, but there was definitely a creature in the background. Kim felt sick as she looked at it. She should have stayed out there with Barb instead of going to the bathroom to have a breakdown about Steve. She should have at least made Barb come inside with her. What kind of person would leave their friend out in the cold?
It was equally terrifying that she had been only feet away from this... monster. The same monster that had presumably taken both Will and Barb. Had it been waiting for Kim to leave before attacking Barb? As happy as she was to not have come in contact with whatever was in the background of the photo, why had it just lurked in the shadows? Why not just attack Kim and Barb while they were just sitting on the edge of Steve's pool? They would have been easy prey.
"My mom," Jonathan said, still staring at the picture. "I thought she was crazy cause she said that's not Will's body. That he's alive."
"If your mom was right about this," Kim said, thinking about the whimpers she had heard over the walky talky at Mike's house. "Then maybe she's right about Will."
"And if he's alive-" Nancy started to say.
"-then Barbra could be alive too," Jonathan finished, looking at the fear-stricken best friends.
The three of them exchanged glances in the dragging silence before Kim finally spoke again. "I don't know about you guys, but whatever that thing is, if it took Will and Barb, I want to find it and kill it. Make sure it never hurts anyone else ever again."
