“What?” El tilted her head.
The Byers’ kitchen clock read 11:47 PM, but its second hand had been stuck for three years. That’s how it felt to Mike Wheeler, anyway. “What
Mike looked at El. Her hair was longer now. Her wrist was free of the silver bracelet he’d given her at the Snow Ball—she’d lost it in the quarry a month ago, trying to skip stones. Mike looked at El
A flicker of heat lightning lit up the sky over the new mall. For a split second, the silhouette of the ferris wheel looked like a spider’s leg. A flicker of heat lightning lit up the sky over the new mall
December was harder. The snow melted into brown slush, and the quiet became its own kind of monster. Mike and Eleven discovered that “every day for a week” wasn’t the same as “saving the world.” They argued about comic books and whose turn it was to choose the radio station. Hopper, eating cold spaghetti from a can, began to count the hours until she’d come home.
April brought rain. So much rain that the quarry swelled and the woods turned to mud. Will and Mike biked to the arcade, but Will stopped drawing the shadow. He drew castles and dragons and nothing with tentacles. He tried so hard to be normal that his jaw ached from smiling.