Just Call My Name (And I'll Hear You Scream): Chapter 2

A Stranger Things Fanfic

Trigger warning: mentions of eating disorders and child abuse

A quest against monsters and society changed things. It led to justice returning to places where it had been absent for some time. It led to freedom for some, wisdom for others. Through it people grew into themselves and had a better understanding of their place in life.

A quest was not supposed to make things worse.

When Eddie finally made it back to school after he was released from the hospital, it became clear that, while the police believed Chrissy’s story, no one else did. He found his locker covered in words like “freak”, “murderer”, and many others that didn’t bear repeating. He ignored them, opening the locker to pull out his Chemistry textbook and, though it hurt his pride, he accepted Jeff’s offer to carry his books.

He sat ramrod straight in class to keep the unforgiving wood from digging into his wounds and sending spots dancing in front of his eyes. He picked at his lunch and ignored the stares and whispers. He tried to ignore Chrissy as well, on the other side of the cafeteria and surrounded by cheerleaders, but that was harder.

Dustin had said she came back to life. That wasn’t entirely true. She was a ghost now, hiding from the world. If she had been falling apart when he met her at the picnic table, she was shattered now, lining up the broken pieces of herself and pretending she was whole. He didn’t understand why he was the only one who could see it.

People said she broke up with Jason. They also said Eddie had dragged her out to the woods and threatened to kill her if she didn’t tell the police he was innocent, so he was hesitant to believe it.

“You’re staring,” Gareth muttered, stealing an apple slice. “You look like a creep.” Eddie dragged his gaze down to his untouched meal.

His friends had been tiptoeing around him, and he could hardly blame them. It’s not every day the entire town gets stirred up on a witch hunt for your friend.

They asked where he’d been. His vague answer sent a flash of hurt over each boy’s face, but it guaranteed they wouldn’t ask again. (It wasn’t the first time he had lied to them, but it sent a painful burning through his chest and down to his left wrist anyway.)

A loud clatter drew everyone’s attention, and Eddie looked up to find Dustin sprawled on the floor across the room, Sinclair helping him up, and Mike cleaning his spilled food. One of the basketball players leered over them, laughing.

Eddie clenched his fist, and all he could think was that it wasn’t supposed to be this way.

The monster that had been stalking her for days was dead. Chrissy had watched him die with her own eyes, so things were supposed to be better.

And they did get better, for the first couple of days. Her parents had cried when she came home, and her little brother didn’t leave her side until school started back. Everyone treated her gently and left her alone if she wanted to be.

(She didn’t run to the bathroom after every meal either. It had killed her once. She wouldn’t let it kill her again.)

Graduation was in only a month, and it began to feel like everything would be okay. She had been reborn, given a new opportunity, and she wouldn’t ruin it this time.

Then everything fell apart.

Jason told her he had mourned her, missed her, and fought for justice for her. A short conversation with the police revealed exactly what he considered “justice”.

Her first instinct was to defend him, make excuses, but no, he had attacked children, and all in her name. All for some twisted, convoluted idea of justice.

She broke up with him.

He took every opportunity he could get her alone to beg her to take him back, showering her with gifts and affection. And maybe it was sweet (her mother sure thought so), but he felt like some distant part of her old life, something she couldn’t connect to anymore, and she just wanted to be left alone.

The kids at school began to stare at her, and she realized how much of a shield the basketball team had been. She buried herself among her friends, her teammates, and, just like she wanted, they left her alone. They talked amongst themselves and never bothered her. She didn’t think much of it, except to be grateful, until she asked Rachel if she could catch a ride home one day. She felt the wall go up instantly, and the silence filling the car the whole ride made her determined never to ask again.

Then came the day her cheer uniform fit a little too snugly.

Her mother noticed, of course. She noticed as soon as Chrissy made her way downstairs for breakfast.

They fought about it. She couldn’t remember the last time she had argued with her mom, and it was not an experience she wanted to repeat.

When she ended up hunched over the toilet for the first time in several days, she knew she couldn’t stay in Hawkins another day or it just might kill her again.

She pulled her schoolbooks out of her backpack and filled it with clothes, all the money she owned, and a few other essentials. She looked around her room, sure there must be something she would miss if she left it behind. There wasn’t. Finally she searched her bookshelf, full of gifts she never had time to look at from aunts, uncles, and distant cousins. She grabbed a couple that looked interesting and stuffed them in her bag.

The next morning, she ate an extra helping of breakfast, skipping out the door before her mother could lecture. She kissed her brother’s cheek as he headed to the middle school, then she found a bus to get her out of town.

Chrissy Cunningham was gone for the second time in a month. Her parents panicked, insisting when the police asked that she couldn’t have run away, despite the fact that many of her clothes and things were missing too. She wasn’t that kind of girl. (Eddie agreed, but everyone has their breaking point, and sometimes eighteen years was just too much.)

Not surprisingly, Eddie was the first person the police questioned after the family, asking if he had any idea where she’d gone. He didn’t. He wished he did.

(No, if he was honest with himself, he wished that when he saw her trip the day before, staring at the blood dripping from her scraped knee as though it were a fatal wound, he had picked her up, helped her to his van, and asked how far she wanted to go.)

He stopped going to band practice because he hated the way seeing his friends felt like another lie. He stopped going to school because he hated watching helplessly as the basketball team tormented his freshmen, and he hated the way his eyes were drawn so often to Chrissy’s place.

Wayne noticed. He asked what was wrong, and Eddie just stood there, staring at him, every lie dying on his lips because he couldn’t lie to Wayne. He couldn’t. So instead he ran to his room and slammed the door. He didn’t come out all weekend.

Monday morning he woke to Black Sabbath shouting in his ear. He cursed and fell out of the bed as he scrambled for the tape player. He clicked it off.

“Oh good, you’re up,” Wayne said dryly from his doorway. “Get to school.”

“Why?”

Wayne stared at him for a moment, and Eddie shifted uncomfortably, feeling like his uncle saw much more than his bedhead and old pajamas. “You said you wanted to graduate this year.”

“Yeah, well, you said it didn’t matter if I did,” Eddie grumbled, dropping back on his bed.

“It didn’t, back when you were trying your best. And I know you’ve been through a lot lately, and I know I don’t know the half of it, but you’re a fighter, kid, and I’m not letting you give up now. So you’re going to school, and you’re going to ask what you have to do to graduate, and then tonight you’re taking that guitar of yours to Gareth’s, and you’re staying there at least an hour.”

Eddie gaped at his uncle. Wayne sighed and sank beside him on the bed. “Those kids . . . you can’t let them win.” He patted Eddie’s shoulder. “Now get to school.”

The look on Carver’s face when he found Eddie sprawled across the lunch table, holding court like it was any other day almost made it worth it to go back to school. His friends' smiles at lunch and Wayne’s look of relief when he got up on his own the next day actually did.

He signed up for tutoring. It was a stupid idea, he knew. He would clash with whichever student the teachers decided to pair him up with and he wouldn’t learn a thing, but maybe it would let them know he was serious about graduating.

To his surprise, someone volunteered. Even more surprising, it was Nancy Wheeler.

She was a patient teacher, explaining concepts as many times as he needed until it finally clicked. She was stern too, and when he started to get distracted or ramble, or if he wanted to step outside a moment, all she had to do was give him that look (the same one he imagined her giving Vecna before shooting him), and he would sit back down in his seat, mumble, “yes, ma’am,” and do whatever she told him.

At least, he usually did.

“Why are you doing this, Wheeler?” he asked one day as he tilted his chair back and flipped his pencil in the air.

She tried to snatch it away, but his hand was faster. “Doing what?”

“Tutor me.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You wanted to graduate. Would you rather me not?”

Annoyance flared up in his chest, but he quashed it down, trying hard not to think about Sinclair surrounded by the basketball team that morning.

“I’m just saying this isn’t usually your scene.”

“So I can’t just help a friend–”

He couldn’t help the bark of laughter that spilled out. “Is that what we are, Wheeler?”

(“Traitor” they had called him. “Coward.” This boy who had fought for his friends even with a gun pointed in his face by one of them. This boy who had nearly watched his girlfriend killed in a horrific way, and they were laughing.)

She sat back in her chair, folding her arms with that stern look on her face. For once, he didn’t care. “I think you have something else to say to me, so why don’t you just say it?” she said.

He bent the pencil, wondering how much pressure it would take to break it. (Eddie had nearly leapt out of his chair. “No,” Sinclair muttered, only loud enough for him to hear. His firm gaze was the only thing that kept Eddie in his seat.) The pencil slipped out of his fingers and slung across the room.

“Why are you acting like everything’s normal?” He searched for another pencil, but couldn’t find one. “I mean, people died, we nearly watched several friends die, and you looked that monster in the eye and killed him, so why are you pretending everything’s okay? Why are you here, tutoring me, keeping up your GPA, and scheduling in your little newspaper club meetings?” She slammed the textbook shut, and he flinched, but he still didn’t look her in the eye.

She took a deep breath. “When the Upside-Down opened the first time, I lost my best friend.”

Eddie’s chair clunked back to the floor. Barbara Holland. He remembered the redheaded sophomore. The police thought she ran away, and he had thought good for her, making it out of this town that stifled and suffocated. Later, stories came out that she had died of a chemical leak from the lab. He had long suspected it was lie, but he had never considered she had been involved in the Upside-Down. A wave of cold rushed all the way to his toes.

“We killed the monster that killed her, and then everything just . . . continued. Steve and I were still dating back then, and he convinced me to go to parties, to go to school, to apply for college. We visited the Hollands for supper fairly often, but otherwise we pretended it never happened. He and I never, um, had this conversation.” Nancy gestured between the two of them. “Maybe if we had, things could have ended easier between us, but no, I got drunk at a party and broke up with him.” She dragged her hand down her face. “I don’t even know what I said, and the next day Jonathan and I ran off because we both needed to do something.”

Eddie studied his hands and twisted his rings. He felt guilty now for asking.

“Eddie? Look at me.” He swallowed, but obeyed. “School gives me something to do, a schedule, a routine to follow so I don’t get lost in my head. Newspaper gives gives me something I’m in control of, something to keep me busy. Then I go home and I spend time with my mom, and Holly, and Mike, and when I go to bed, I stuff a towel under the door and shut the curtains so my mom doesn’t notice that I haven’t slept with the lights off since I was sixteen.” She glanced around, then leaned over the table, lowering her voice. “I keep guns in my closet. Do you still think I’m pretending to be normal? I keep them there so that if something comes for my family, I get it first. It may look strange to you, but I’ve found my ways to cope, and now you need to find yours.”

She leaned back and tucked the textbook in her backpack. “I think we’re done for today.” She looked back up. “Oh, and you asked why I’m tutoring you? Consider it . . . an olive branch.” She started to walk away.

“Nancy?” The word stuck in his throat, but he managed to force it out. She turned back to him, surprised, and he realized it was the first time he had used her first name. He tried to swallow past the lump in his throat. “I–I’m sorry.”

She gave a small, sad smile. “Thank you.”

Hopper never thought he would be so happy to see that old cabin.

Once they got to Hawkins, Joyce had gone to every motel in the area, looking for their kids. She panicked when she couldn’t find them, until Hopper reminded her that if they were running from someone like they thought, there was another place she might be.

He was right.

After a tearful reunion, El stuck to his side, and she, Jonathan, and Will gave a jumbled account of what had happened since Joyce left. After hearing the full story, Joyce hugged each kid again, then declared she never wanted to speak to Dr. Owens again.

Of course, with the way their luck was going, he called the next day.

Putting in a new phone was the first thing Hopper did to repair the cabin, mostly because there were so many kids coming to check up on Will or El or Jonathan, and if they kept showing up, well, someone was bound to notice.

They cleaned up the cabin a bit and managed to work out how to fit everyone. The cramped building wouldn’t hold their odd, cobbled-together family for long, but no one was willing to split up just yet.

When Owens called, Joyce took one look at Will and El, both slumped over, asleep on Hopper and got up to answer it.

“Hello? Who’s this?” Her expression shuttered, and she slammed the phone back down.

Hopper jumped at the noise. “What’s wrong?”

She pointed at the phone and glared at it. “It was Owens.”

The phone rang again, and they both stared at it. Hopper carefully disentangled himself from the kids, then picked it up.

“Hello?”

There was only silence for a moment, and Hopper started to hope this one was only a prank. “Oh my–Jim, is that you?” Hopper sighed. “I thought you were dead!” Owens explained.

“What do you want.”

“I’ve been trying to get in touch with Joyce for weeks and I’ve been calling anywhere I could think of, but, Jim, why are you in Hawkins? You can’t be there right now!”

Hopper looked at Joyce. She couldn’t hear the conversation, but she was biting her nails, still glaring daggers at the phone. She met his eyes and wrinkled her nose.

“And why should we trust you?” Hopper asked.

Owens sighed. “You’re upset, I know, and you have every right to be. I never wanted to hurt Eleven, but I thought the Nina Project was the only way to protect the world. I didn’t want to keep her there, only help her access her powers again, and what Dr. Brenner did was horrible. Now I’m not asking you to like it, hell, I’m not asking you to forgive it, but I do want to help your family, Jim, and right now that means getting you out of Hawkins. There are people in our government right now, looking for your daughter, and they plan to get rid of her for good.”

He didn’t like it, but as long as he and El could stay together, everything would be alright. If Owens tried to pull anything, he would be there to keep her safe.

“Okay.”

Owens sighed in relief. “Good. I’ve found a safe house where you can stay for a few weeks while I get things sorted out here. It shouldn’t take too long, but I need to make sure you’re both perfectly safe before you go back to Hawkins. Now, I assume the whole family has to go as well? Joyce and the boys?”

Hopper glanced up again, and oh, sometimes he could just swear that woman could read his mind. She chewed her nail and raised her eyebrows, just daring him to argue.

“Yes.”

“Okay, okay. I’ll be there soon. Pack your things, and I’ll have a car for the five of you–”

“Six.” The word spilled out, and Hopper knew there would be questions, but he couldn’t take it back now. He wouldn’t take it back.

“Six? Really, Jim, did you, what, adopt another kid or something?”

“Or something.” Hopper hung up.

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