Chapter Thirteen: Over And Out

I sat on the floor in Nancy's room, my back up against the dresser while Jonathan and Nancy sat on the bed, Jonathan's sweater wrapped around her, along with his arm as he tried to comfort her.

"You...you were in that place for a whole year?" She asked, her voice shaking. I nodded. "Riley, I had no idea..." I shook my head.

"Nobody did." I stood up, tightening my ponytail and putting my hands on my hips. "Don't worry about that right now, you just worry about calming yourself down, ok?"

"You told me not to go in. I should have listened." She said. I shook my head.

"Its ok...you didn't know." I saw something move outside and my eyes travelled to the window over their shoulders to see the face of Steve Harrington through the glass, watching as his girlfriend cuddled up to Jonathan Byers in her room. "Ok, um...why don't you go take a shower, and I'll be right back."

As he disappeared I opened the window, climbing out just in time to see him jump off of the AC unit.

"Steve...Steve wait, Harrington!"

"Shut up, Hopper, I don't wanna talk about it." He said, stalking away from me. I rolled my eyes, jumping off of the roof.

"That was not what it looked like."

"Really? It looked pretty cozy in there to me." He said, continuing towards his car. I walked over, grabbing his arm and turning him to face me.

"Ok, just, please, get ahold of yourself, Harrington. We don't have time for you drama right now."

"My Drama, my drama?" He asked, gesturing towards the window. "I just watched my girlfriend cuddle with Jonathan Byers and you're telling me I'm being dramatic!?"

"Newsflash genius, typically if people are going to cheat on their boyfriends, they don't invite their best friends along for the ride!" I exclaimed.

"Then why are you the one out here talking to me? Why-Why isn't she telling me this?" I sighed, shaking my head.

"Its been a really crappy night, ok?" He nodded, turning and walking away from me.

"Right."

"Steve...Steve!" He ignored me, getting back in the car and pulling away from the curb at lightning speed. I sighed, pushing my hair back. I really hope that's not gonna cause problems for us later. I sighed, shaking my head and climbing back up through Nancy's window to find Jonathan setting up a pallet on the floor.

"Hey, where'd you go?" He asked. I shook my head, sitting on her bed.

"Nowhere important." He furrowed his eyebrows at me, but before he could press it any further, Nancy came back in, freshly showered and wearing blue pajamas, her arms wrapped around herself.

"Better?" Jonathan asked.

"Yeah." She said quietly.

"Is this ok? I found it in the closet." He said, gesturing towards the blanket. "I can go home, I just figured-"

"Yeha, no. I...I don't wanna be alone. Do you?"

"No. Uh...no." She looked at me.

"I'm just gonna run downstairs really quick, I'll be back." I said.

"What? Why?" I shook my head.

"Nothing, don't worry, everything's fine. Just um...you two get settled in, and I'll be right back." I walked out the door, creeping downstairs as secretly as I could until I reached the basement, wanting to check on El and the boys.

When I got down there, Mike was the only one there, and from the looks of things, Eleven's bed was empty. I furrowed my eyebrows, pointing to it.

"Riley, Hey." He said, standing up.

"Where's El?" I asked. He shot me a guilty look. "Mike! I gave you one job-"

"I know, ok? I know." He said. "But things went bad, she ran away."

"What do you mean things went bad?" He sighed.

"We figured out that there's an opening to the upside down. A bigger one, the gate we called it, and its disrupting the town's electromagnetic field so Compasses point towards it instead of pointing North, so we were following the compasses-"

"Hold on," I interrupted, "So let me get this straight, you guys think you found an opening to this other dimension and you went to go and find it by yourselves?!" I hissed. "Mike-"

"I know, I know, I know, I'm not really in the mood for a lecture right now, just listen." I sighed, crossing my arms. "We never found it anyway, because El was messing with the compasses so we couldn't find it."

"Trying to keep you safe, good for her, I agree." I said. "So where is she?"

"Well, Lucas and I got in an argument when we found out, we started fighting, she freaked out and threw him across the junk yard with her mind, knocking him out, I freaked out on her and then she ran away, and now I don't know where she is." I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose.

"Ok, um...ok-"

"You don't have to worry about it. I'll get Dustin and Lucas and we'll go look for her tomorrow." I sighed, shaking my head.

"Mike-"

"Don't give me the, this is too dangerous speech!" He exclaimed. "El is our friend, and its my fault that she's gone so I'm gonna to find her. Clearly you've got other stuff going on, so you focus on that, we'll focus on this, and we'll let you know if we need your help, ok?"

"Mike do not go looking for that gate on your own again, ok? Ok?"

"Ok!" I nodded."Wait, why are you here right now?" He asked.

"Not important, just do what I say and please, for the love of all that is good and holy, do not go looking for trouble again by yourselves, please?" He sighed, but nodded. "Thank you."

I headed back upstairs, only to find Jonathan in bed with Nancy. He was passed out. She sat up, looking at me. I smiled.

"Its cool. I'll take the floor." I told her, toeing off my boots. "I don't really sleep that long anyway, so..."

"Every time I close my eyes, I see that thing...that place." I nodded, laying down on the floor and pulling the blanket over myself.

"Yeah...it'll do that to you."

"How do you deal with it?" She asked. "Especially after enduring all of that and then having people make jokes out of your pain at school, how do you do it?" I rolled my eyes.

"Well the school thing is easy. They're morons who think they know how life actually works. They think they're big shots now, but most of them won't last a day int he real world and they'd last even shorter in the upside down, so...I'm not to worried about what they have to say."

"You must have been so annoyed with us." She said. I furrowed my eyebrows, looking up a the ceiling.

"Why would I be annoyed with you?"

"Because, you know...you're out here surviving and...fighting monsters while Barb and I stay on the phone at all hours of the night gossiping about boys and high school drama." I shook my head.

"I wasn't mad at you for acting like normal teenagers, Nance." I said. "Do you know what I would give to be able to go back to not knowing any of this existed? To a time when the only thing I had to worry about is if the boy that I liked liked me back?"

"Its not fair." She whispered. I shook my head.

"No, its not. But its the cards I've been dealt...and its ok. I can handle it. But you...if you have even the slightest inkling of a chance to go back to your normal life when this is all over, you should take it. Its a blessing that's not afforded to everyone." She sighed.

"That really doesn't seem like a possibility right now." I nodded.

"You would be surprised. Humans are resilient, we...we know how to bounce back. It might take some time, but...we can do it eventually."

"Have you?" She asked. "Bounced back." I thought about that.

"I don't know. Ask me again when we have Barb and Will safely back in our dimension."

~~~

Jonathan and I woke up at the same time the next morning to find that Nancy was already awake with books and a notepad in her lap.

"Oh, hey." Jonathan greeted as I began folding up the blankets.

"Hey."

"Couldn't sleep?" He questioned. She shook her head.

"It happens to the best of us." I stated

"Wherever I was, that place, I think that thing lives there. It was feeding there. Feeding on that deer. That means that if Will...and Barbra..." I nodded, crossing my arms over my chest.

"Hey...my mom said she talked to Will. If he's alive, there's a chance Barbra is, too."

"But that means that she's trapped...in that place."

"And we will get her out." I said.

"We have to find it again." Nancy whispered.

"You wanna go back out there?"

"Maybe we don't have to." She said, causing me to furrow my eyebrows. "When I saw it, it was feeding on that deer, meaning its...its a predator, right?"

"Right."

"And it seems to hunt at night, like a...a lion or a coyote. But it doesn't hunt in packs like them. Its always alone, like...like a bear. And remember at Steve's when Barb cut herself? And then last night, the deer..."

"Blood." I realized, earning a nod from Nancy. She pulled out another book, showing us a picture of a shark.

"Sharks can detect blood in one part per million. That's one drop of blood in a million, and they can smell it from a quarter mile away." She looked up at us.

"So you're saying it can detect blood?"

"Its just a theory."

"We could test it," Jonathan said, "But if it works..."

"At least we'll know its coming." Suddenly the doorknob jerked and I jumped to my feet, pulling my gun from its holster and pointing it at the door while Nancy instinctively grabbed Jonathan's hand.

"Honey, are you up?" I blew out a sigh as Mrs. Wheeler's voice drifted through the door.

"Yeah, I'm...I'm getting dressed." Nancy said, breathing heavily.

"I uh, made some blueberry pancakes."

I'll be down in a second." Nancy and Jonathan let go of each other's hands, staring at the floor awkwardly. I sighed.

"Ok um...so we need to go get some supplies and come up with a plan." I suggested. They nodded in agreement, and Jonathan and I packed up our stuff and waited for Nancy to get dressed before we all snuck out the window, hopped in Jonathan's car and my truck and made our way into town. As we were going however, I passed the grocery store, which was now surrounded by cop cars and from the looks of things the front door was shattered. I shook my head, grabbing the radio. "Mike? Come in, Mike."

"I'm here, over."

"Yeah, Mike, the grocery store's door has been shattered, it might be a good place to start on your search for El, ok? Over."

"Duly noted. Over and Out."