504: i wish i had a free bag of chippsssssuhhhh

504 / i wish i had a free bag of chippsssssuhhhh 👀

School the next morning did not feel the same without Holly Wheeler to welcome to class.

Lucy, in attempts to buttress her brief reencounter with the supernatural the night prior, acted as though everything were the same the following morning. She woke up on time today, packed herself lunch, dressed in her just-right denim jeans and the sweater pink sweater that nearly swallowed her whole, got in her car, and drove to Hawkins Elementary, just as she had all done every day before. She had not bothered to turn on the radio this morning for fear that she would think too much about Steve Harrington.

It was a problem she was used to, but one she was trying so desperately to ignore.

Science class was regular today; the students had time to work on their diagrams and add finishing touches to the projects they had been working on since January. Lucy helped Anna with her potato clock, handed out no less than four Bandaids, and wished at least twenty times that she would stop thinking about Steve—it was truly impressive how much he managed to take over her mind.

"Today is nice," Miss Harris commented at recess. "It's warm, but the sun isn't out. The breeze is coming from the south so it isn't too chilly. Yesterday was too cold. Today, Lucy, is just right."

"Mm, I see that," said Lucy agreeably, hardly listening.

"And I've got my tuna salad for lunch today," Harris continued, pleased, her arms folded across her chest contently. "You know, I always add more raisins than called for because I think they add much more flavor."

"I think so, too." Lucy had never tried tuna salad and was in fact allergic to grapes.

"I did get stuck in traffic today, something about the MAC-Z seemed off—officers coming and going like nobody's business. Spent twenty minutes sitting at the corner of Millberry and Main."

"Must've been unpleasant," said Lucy, now paying even less attention than she had been; the mention of the MAC-Z reminded her that Hopper and El were still stuck in the Upside Down. If there was extra commotion happening around the military base, could that be bad news for Hop and El?

"Eh, wasn't too horrible," said Miss Harris, oblivious to the fact that she had lost Lucy ages ago. "I had on the Squawk since the boy who lives next door to me taught me how to turn on the radio in my stereo."

"I hate the Squawk," Lucy said dryly.

"Do you?" said Miss Harris, entirely surprised; she turned to Lucy curiously. "They played that weird European band you like this morning. I was surprised to hear it."

Now Lucy was interested. She faced Harris and furrowed her brow, tightening her arms as they were folded over her to combat the chill (which Harris was wrong to claim as 'warm'). "They played ABBA?"

"Is that what they're called? Oh, I don't know, and I always said we should really only be playing American bands in this day and age—"

Lucy shut her eyes and shook her head, trying to imagine the situation in which Robin would have went out of her way to play an ABBA song. "What did they play?"

"Something live-recorded," said Miss Harris, waving a hand dismissively. "Eh... The Way Old Friends Do, I think it was called. Doesn't matter anyway. I called and gave them a piece of my mind, how we live in America and should listen to American music—"

Lucy returned to ignoring Miss Harris as her mind began to race. She could not wrap her head around why Robin would suddenly start playing Lucy's favorite band today, right now, immediately after Lucy had chewed out Steve for playing such terrible songs that she hated. He had not seemed pleased to hear her input but apparently had listened anyway; if she had switched on the radio that morning on her drive to school, she wondered, would she have heard other artists she actually liked? Had Joel begun to request Pat Benatar rather than Bruce Springsteen? Would he suggest Robin play Head Over Heels instead of Hot Blooded?

Then she came to the understanding that she was thinking too hard about these things. After all, she knew Steve, and she knew he could hold a grudge. It was likely he knew Lucy had stopped listening to the Squawk entirely and was only now playing her favorite songs, just to get under her skin that much more.

"Oh, shit," said Miss Harris, and with such urgency that it snapped Lucy out of her thoughts. She was watching the other side of the playground where Derek Turnbow was slowly approaching Mary and Anna, who had already been upset all morning without Holly there.

Shit was right. If Lucy knew Derek, she knew he would have nothing nice to say to Mary and Anna—probably something snotty and vulgar which would make them cry harder.

But, her feet carrying her quickly toward the scene, as Lucy watched, she saw that Derek was not approaching Mary and Anna at all. In fact he was walking directly past them, paying them no mind at all; he was on his way to the back fence, smiling at nothing in particular.

Lucy paused, breath catching in her throat. It was rare that Derek would pass up any opportunity to bully the other kids, and to ignore a chance as golden as this one, Lucy knew it must have been something very strong and persuasive that had caught his attention.

He approached the fence, paused, then smiled up at something on the other side of it, and Lucy's stomach fell into her toes.

"Good," Miss Harris said after a moment. "He's finally got an imaginary friend. Hope it keeps him off the others for a while."

But Lucy could do nothing except stand there and gape at Derek Turnbow, who was talking to nobody—he beamed at the other side of the fence as though somebody there had cracked a joke. With a lurch deep in her stomach, Lucy pictured Holly doing the same thing just twenty-four short hours ago.

Ten hours before she had gone missing.

"I—have to go," Lucy told Miss Harris, and she hoped her exit would come off urgent enough that it meant Harris would not ask any questions later; Lucy veered off from the playground and grabbed her purse from Miss Harris's classroom, then took off running toward the parking lot, where her car awaited her. She hopped in, turned the engine, and did not pick up her foot from the gas pedal the entire drive out to the Squawk radio station.

The van was still parked outside; next to it sat Joyce's little Ford, and the Wheeler Wagon. The lights inside were off and any unsuspecting person would have assumed the station was empty, that everyone was off on their lunch break, but Lucy was no unsuspecting person. She threw her car into park and tore inside, following the path which Robin had led her down only the night prior.

She barely registered that the door to the hidden passageway was ajar and instead shoved it open fully to come rushing down the stairs and into the code room. Voices carried up the stairwell as she took the steps two at a time, nearly missing the last one as she burst into the room.

"I was just at recess," she said breathlessly, cutting over their ongoing conversation and stealing the attention of the room, "and Derek Turnbow was talking to nobody."

There followed a heavy pause, in which everyone sitting around the room exchanged terse glances, and Lucy was able to catch her breath. She nodded as everyone returned their eyes to her.

"Just like Holly," she continued, and she crossed the room to approach Mike as she spoke, her eyes glued to him. "She talked to us about Mr. Whatsit yesterday after school. Remember what she said, Mike?"

He watched Lucy closely, as did the others; but slowly Mike's brow furrowed and he nodded with Lucy, understanding as he remembered what Holly had said.

"Mr. Whatsit told her there were monsters in Hawkins," he said cautiously, eyes lowering as he tried to remember her exact words. "She said he was helping her. Protecting her from the monsters."

"Exactly," said Lucy, her chest stinging with pain at the thought. She looked around at the others, imploring them to understand what she had only just realized. "Mr. Whatsit is how Vecna appeared to Holly. It's how he gained her trust and became her friend. Then, just when he promised he would protect her from the monsters—"

"—the monsters came," said Nancy, her voice hollow, eyes glinting with resentment. "And they took her. Except it wasn't a monster, it was Henry."

"And 'Mr. Whatsit' isn't protecting anyone," said Lucas, nodding. "He's baiting them. Then he struck, the Demogorgan came, Holly disappeared, and now—"

"Now Derek Turnbow is next," said Will. Lucy turned toward him immediately, nodding quickly, and his eyes widened as she encouraged him on. He swallowed, stepping forward, letting everyone's attention fall on him. "It makes sense. Complete sense. Derek has to be the next victim."

"Just to be clear," said Steve, spreading his hands and glancing around with a doubtful expression on his face, "we're talking about Derek Turnbow? Like, as in the Turnbow family? Like... Turnbow Realty?"

"That's the one," said Lucy, nodding.

"Whole family's a menace," Lucas said grouchily.

"I don't understand," said Nancy, leaning forward and resting her elbows on her knees. "How can you be so sure? That Derek is the next target?"

"I saw," said Will, adamant. "I've learned that when I'm close enough to the hive mind, I can tap into it, into Vecna's mind. I can see who he's targeting. The first time it happened, I saw through Holly's eyes the same day she was taken. And this morning, it happened again. Only this time, I wasn't Holly. I was Derek Turnbow. I'm positive."

"Hold on," said Steve, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I'm a little lost."

"Shocking," said Dustin.

Steve ignored him. "Were you seeing through the eyes of... Vecna or of Derek?"

"Both," said Will. "I was Vecna, but inside Derek's mind."

"Vecna's like a psychic serial killer," suggested Robin. "He stalks his victims, but he does it by invading their minds. That's what he did with Chrissy, Max—hell, Lucy."

"Exactly," said Lucy, pointing to her. "But the way he's doing it this time is completely different. He's gaining trust, acting like a friend. A protector."

"He doesn't appear as Vecna," Nancy agreed. "He appears as Henry. That's what our mom told us—that Holly was seeing Henry as a friend."

"He was trying to earn her trust," said Mike, nodding to Lucy. "Like you said. The question is why he went to all that trouble, because I highly doubt his long-term goal is friendship."

"Whatever it is," said Will, "whatever he's planning, we have to stop him. And we have to save Derek."

The team—which Lucy now begrudgingly could admit to herself that she was, once again, a member of—delved into preparations and planning for just how they would save Derek and defeat Vecna. The premise of it felt familiar to Lucy—as though she had sat around a war-room like this one and considered different ways to defeat Vecna before. Maybe this time, she thought, they could consider one that would stick.

"This is where the Turnbows live," said Will, gesturing with a metal pointer to the blueprints of a house on Bay Tree Road, displayed on one of the walls of the basement. "We wait in a van across the street. As soon as they're asleep, we move in, we grab Derek, and we take him to here—the McCorkle farm. It's completely isolated. It's abandoned. The only thing is we need to make sure he doesn't see us or know where he is. So we'll need to blindfold him," he finished in a quieter voice, pushing down the metal pointer.

"Wait, hold on," said Steve, running his hands down his face. "W–what?"

"So that Vecna can't find him," said Robin.

"Yeah," said Jonathan dryly. "What, and, Mom, you're okay with just kidnapping a child?"

"No, we're saving a child via kidnapping," said Joyce firmly. "And, yeah, it's fine, I think. I don't know. Lucy's the teacher."

Lucy swallowed as everyone turned to look at her again. She lifted both her shoulders in a listless shrug.

"Isn't anything fine as long as the military doesn't find out about it?"

"Right," said Joyce, back to her mom voice. "This isn't the time to play it safe, Jonathan."

She gave him a look and he retreated a few steps back, arms crossed, eyes wide with disbelief. Dustin came forward, picking up the pointer from Will.

"If I may," he said, taking place in front of everyone, "I'm not morally opposed to any of this, but there are a few holes."

"Yeah," said Lucas, shrugging. "Like, what if Derek falls asleep before the Demogorgan attacks him?"

"That's one," said Dustin, nodding to him.

"Or what if Derek wakes up before we grab him, and he alerts his family?" said Nancy, raising her eyebrows; Lucy only now realized that she was wearing a nurse's outfit from the hospital. "We'll go to jail!"

"There's another," said Dustin. "But the third and most gaping hole is even if by some miracle this plan even works, Holly's still missing. Hop and El are still MIA. This doesn't bring us any closer to finding Vecna. This plan just buys us and Derek some time. That's it."

"Not necessarily," said Mike, tipping his head to the side in thought. "There might be a way to save Derek and find Holly."

They circled around the table and watched as Mike pulled from his pocket the blue pouch he'd shown Lucy and Holly just yesterday. From it he dumped Dungeon and Dragon figurines out, then picked one up, showing it to the others.

"This is Derek," he said, then placed Derek down. He surrounded it with three other figures. "And this is the rest of the Turnbow family. We're gonna need to recruit someone that the family can trust; someone that can gain access to the house." He placed another figurine down. "This person will knock the family out. Then we'll extract the family from the house."

"Knock them out?" repeated Joyce uncertainly.

"Well, safely," added Mike, wobbling his head from side to side. "With sleeping pills or something."

Robin raised her hand. "I might know where we could get some benzos. Those things could knock an elephant on its ass."

"Perfect," said Mike. "That way if Vecna spies, he'll just assume Derek is fast asleep in bed. He'll send his Demos to grab him, only he won't find Derek. He'll find us."

He placed one Demogorgan figure on the table, then surrounded it with a bunch of other warriors to attack.

"We'll be ready," he told everyone, looking up and meeting each person's eye. "We'll get Murray to supply us with the traps. We'll burn the sucker. Send it scampering home to its master, but not before we stick him with one of these."

He pulled from his pocket a blinking red electronic vial, which he placed on the table next to the D&D site.

"We'll track the Demo across the Upside Down in the Squawk van, just like we did with Hopper. If we're lucky, the Demo will lead us back to its lair, to Vecna, to Holly. Holes?"

He glanced around at everyone, and though they all waited for somebody to pipe up with one, none seemed to appear. Lucy couldn't find any, at least. She raised her eyebrows, met Mike's eye, and nodded, alight with hope that they would finally do something right.

Though her job as a teaching aid had not amounted to a real career, Lucy was able to make some use out of her role in the Hawkins education system; she flashed her badge at the front desk of Hawkins Middle and was inside the school without any fuss.

She walked swiftly down the empty hallways, glancing around until she had approached the science wing. She risked a glance out the corner window in the hallway and caught sight of Mike and Lucas, urging her on with quick nods of their heads and gesturing her to go inside the classroom behind her. She turned over her shoulder and saw through the doorway a middle-aged man in a patterned sweater vest drawing on the chalkboard.

Lucy pasted a smile on her lips and knocked twice on the door labeled Mr. Clark, then pushed it open, looking all around the classroom with a grin before landing her eyes on Mr. Clark himself. He, along with the rest of the class, turned toward the door at Lucy's entrance.

"Mr. Clark?" she said, voice sweet and innocent. "Hi! I'm with the Hawkins High yearbook club, and we're doing a piece on the—um, scientific scholars of the eighth grade."

He was smiling at her, though seemed rather confused at her statement. "You're writing about middle schoolers in the high school yearbook?"

"Mhm!" said Lucy happily. "So, if you don't mind terribly, could I steal, um—" she pretended to verify with a roster in her hand— "Erica Sinclair?"

"Oh!" Mr. Clark was beyond pleased at the idea that his student would appear in the yearbook as a scientific scholar. "Well, certainly. Erica?"

He and Lucy together turned their heads to the front row of the classroom, where Erica sat. She whipped her face away from the window—Lucy glanced over and caught a glimpse as Mike and Lucas's heads disappeared below it.

"Seriously," said Erica a beat later, following Lucy's swift footsteps down the hallway, "you'd better tell me what I'm missing my favorite class for, because I know it isn't some stupid yearbook thing. What grade are you even supposed to be in? Twentieth?"

"Just hang on a sec," said Lucy, gritting her teeth as she led Erica down toward one of the side doors leading to the parking lot of the school. She shot Erica a glance. "And I do not look like I'm in twentieth grade."

Erica scoffed. "Tell that to the mirror, oldie."

Lucy stuck her tongue out at Erica and then shoved the door open to reveal a panting Mike and Lucas, who stumbled inside immediately.

"You have sixty seconds to explain why you interrupted my favorite class," Erica warned them, raising her arm to start her watch.

"Erica," said Lucas, pressing his hands together, "this is really serious."

"Fifty-seven, fifty-six..."

"Okay, it's kind of hard to explain everything in fifty-six seconds! Basically, everything went bad at the crawl last night."

"Wouldn't know." Erica shrugged and shot Mike and Lucy sardonic smiles. "I wasn't invited."

"That's why I'm EXPL—"

Mike and Lucy shushed Lucas and glanced over their shoulders; Lucas sighed and shut his eyes for a second.

"That's why I'm explaining. Things went bad at the crawl, and a lot of stuff happened, and now we think Tina's little brother is in trouble."

Erica scowled. "That literally makes no sense. And even if it did, why would I care that Dipshit Derek is in trouble?"

"You're just gonna have to trust us," said Mike desperately. "And to help Derek, we're gonna need you to help get us into the Turnbow house. Tonight."

"Not possible."

"Of course it is," said Lucas, frowning. "Just make plans to hang out with Tina."

"Tina and I don't hang."

"You hang nonstop! She's your best friend!"

"Was."

"Was?"

"We are now enemies," said Erica matter-of-factly.

"Enemies?"

"Arch."

"Since when?" demanded Lucas.

"Since P.E. class twelve days ago."

Mike shrugged, looking very much on the verge of losing his mind. "Then just apologize for what happened in P.E. class twelve days ago!"

"No can do," said Erica.

"Yes, can do!" exclaimed Lucas. "All you have to do is use your mouth to form a word that rhymes with starry!"

"I'd rather learn about wormholes than apologize to Tina and help you all save Dipshit Derek. Sorry." She glanced down to her watch as the timer began to beep its alarm. "Time's up."

She turned to go, pleased that she had won the conversation, but Lucy stopped her.

"It's not about saving Dipshi— Derek," she said, trying to cover up her mistake of calling one of her students a dipshit. "It's about saving Holly."

Erica paused on the stairs and turned back to face them.

"Vecna took her," Lucas explained.

"And, sure," said Lucy, nodding, "now he's after Derek, but that's not the important part. What matters is that we have a plan to both save Derek and find Holly. But it's an insanely stupid and crazy plan, and after it's over, I promise you that Tina is never going to want to talk to you ever again."

Erica narrowed her eyes. "Well, why the hell didn't you just start with that?"

A delivery of supply from Murray later, Lucy joined the others in preparing for the execution of their risky plan later that night.

The sun—too warm for a Hawkins fall day—beat down on her back as she leaned into the front of the Squawk van, peering at the engine and tapping her chin as though she understood a lick of what was happening beneath the hood. Every once in a while she offered a falsified "ah!" and reached down with a wrench in-hand to act as though she were fixing something, simply so Steve, in the back of the van, would leave her alone. It was working so far; he had not uttered a word to her since they had both been assigned by Mike to "modify" the van to chase Demos.

Lucy bit her lip and tapped the wrench against one of the many metal pipes staring up at her from the engine of the van and then cringed at the clanking sound it made. As she did so, Dustin came up behind her, hands on his hips as he appraised her work with a sardonic look of surprise on his battered face.

"So you're a mechanic now," he said, and she startled, dropping the wrench. When she turned, he raised his eyebrows. "Hi."

"Hi," she replied, reaching down to pick up her wrench. "Steve's in the back if you wanna talk to him."

Dustin paused, then frowned slightly, and he leaned around Lucy to get a view of her work. "Well, I guess you can answer my question just as well as he could."

"Yeah?" She sighed and leaned against the hood of the car. "What's that?"

"What are you doing?"

She raised her eyebrows, offended. "Um, what does it look like, Dustin? We're modifying the van."

"I'm modifying the van," came Steve's irritated voice from the back. Lucy glanced over her shoulder and watched him lug a piece of radio equipment out the back door. "She hasn't done much besides act like she knows what she's doing."

"Well, she's not very good at that, either," said Dustin, narrowing his eyes at the engine. He sighed, glancing between Lucy and Steve. "I'm surprised neither of you have realized by now that this is a lost cause."

"Yeah," muttered Steve, straining as he pushed a large piece of the system out of the trunk. "That's the attitude."

"This van once stalled out chugging up Pickett Road like it was the Little Engine That Couldn't. It's not fast enough to keep up with a Demo without serious modifications."

"Has anyone ever told you how encouraging you are?" said Lucy, offering Dustin a humorless smile.

"We are modifying, Henderson," said Steve, climbing up to the front seat and sticking his head out the door. "A lighter van is a faster van. If we're just tracking and mapping, we don't need half the crap that's in here. Speaking of, Luce, have you emptied the window washer fluid yet?"

"I'm not sure which one it is," she replied.

"It's the container labeled window washer fluid."

"There isn't one."

"Yes, there is, it's right next to the oil pan."

"You expect me to know what the oil pan is?"

"Yeah, you should," he replied smartly, putting his hands on his hips. Then he glanced down at the engine. "And while you're at it, empty the oil, too."

"The window washer fluid and the oil!" repeated Dustin with a dry tone, clapping his hands slowly. "That'll do it. Great job. Steven."

Steve glared at him, standing in the front of the car and resting his arms on top of the door. "You know, Henderson, I think we should go back to our agreement from yesterday."

"What agreement?"

"The no-talking agreement." He put a finger to his lips. "Shh."

He returned to the back of the van. Lucy ducked her head back over the engine in search now of the oil pan, and she saw in the corner of her eye as Dustin turned slowly toward Steve's BMW, parked next to the van.

Dustin paused. Lucy raised her eyes and watched as he circled the van to grab something from Steve's tool bag.

"What are you doing?" Steve muttered. "Henderson, I'm using that. Hey—you little shit!"

Dustin returned to the front of the van, clutching the electric drill Steve had been using in the trunk; he leisurely and wordlessly approached the BMW, Steve chasing him, Lucy watching with an amused glint in her eye.

"I said I'm using that, man!" Steve exclaimed, spreading his hands. "What are you—yo, HEY! Get off the Beemer, man!"

Dustin had hopped onto the hood of Steve's car and climbed the windshield, and he now looked down over the other two with the drill in his hand. "You were right, for once. We don't need half the crap in there for our mission. In fact, the only thing we really need is a telemetry tracker, which I can affix to any vehicle."

As he spoke, he had knelt down on the top of Steve's car, preparing the electric drill with an open bit. It became clear to both Lucy and Steve what his plan was; Lucy laughed out of pure shock, and Steve leaned forward, furious.

"Henderson," he said, his voice scarily even, "don't you touch her."

Dustin revved up the drill once, smiling down at Steve.

"Henderson, I'm dead serious!"

"Shhh." Dustin put a finger to his lips. "No talking."

"Wait, wait, wait—HEY—"

Dustin aimed the open tip down into the top of Steve's car and drilled straight through the ceiling, much to Steve's dismay; he cursed and waved his hands to stop Dustin, but the deed had been done.

"Jeez," said Lucy, and she walked up beside Steve to stare at his car. She turned to him, smiling. "That's gotta hurt, huh?"

He fixed his glare on her momentarily, then turned heel and walked back toward the station without another word; it was only as the speakers on top of the Squawk station roof crackled to life and Dancing In The Dark by Springsteen roared across the field that Lucy realized what he was doing with a groan and hang of her head.

Via Chatter

Lucy is so me because wtf is an oil pan lol? Also let it be known that she assumed the tool she was holding was a wrench but it was actually literally a screwdriver