footnote, mike wheeler

Hawkins smells like smoke and old grass. Sometimes it smells like nothing at all, just empty streets and the quiet that makes your ears ring. I've lived here my whole life, and I still don't get it. How a town this small can hold so much... wrong.

People like to pretend it's normal. Like kids don't disappear and come back different, quieter, like something followed them home.

Somewhere across town, there's a boy who knows this too.