Blink (Billy Hargrove x OC)

#4 Somewhere Over the Rainbow Room

▶️ We'll Meet Again by Vera Lynn

For my second day in Hawkins I decide to go to the library. I push away my thoughts about California and focus on my mission. After spending most of the day yesterday moping, and a little bit of it blinking in and out of my storage unit getting supplies and my suitcase full of clothes, I just want to sit down and make myself useful. I want to find out what has happened in town. I walk to the library with nothing but my camera bag and climb up the steps tentatively. It's nice, for a small town.

"Hello." I say.

"Hello, I don't think I've seen you before." Says the librarian.

"You haven't, I'm new to the town." I say.

"Well, welcome." Says the Librarian. "Would you like to sign up for a library card?"

"Not right now, thank you." I say.

"Suit yourself." The librarian turns away from me and back to the computer she was looking at when she hears I don't want a card.

I find a couple books on the history of Hawkins and I read up. Seems normal so far, but the books aren't recent enough, so I go to the archives and peruse the newspapers.

 I figure out trouble started about two and a half years ago, at Christmas when a boy got lost in the woods and a local teen mysteriously disappeared. The boy had a funeral and everything soon after his disappearance, apparently they thought he was dead. Then, the next year a local government laboratory was deemed responsible for a chemical leak that killed a bunch of trees and plants, and pumpkins in the surrounding area. Right before Halloween too, the pumpkin patches lost a lot of business.

 Then, what the newspapers spin as completely unrelated is this year there was a fire in the new mall that killed 20 something people including the chief of police and a bunch of others. Oh, also the mayor was corrupt and he was arrested as well. Who spends the Fourth of July evening in a mall? Surely it would be closed at the time they said the fire happened. Apparently this is when the conspiracy theorists started clocking in and the thrill chasers. 

The little town of Hawkins went from nonexistent in many people's eyes to the suspect of much scrutiny and speculation. Some articles suspect Russian invasion, alien invasion, government experimentation; I find ridiculous article after ridiculous article in which uneducated people jump to insane conclusions.

Now, I'm not stupid, I know something is going on here, I just don't know what. I would call myself a skeptic, after all, Tom did teach me to question everything. Also I have magical powers and grew up in a lab so I'm not a big fan of the government. We don't know for sure that I was tested on by the government, but Tom thinks I was because of what I described my lab to be like.

I keep perusing through the papers until I find an article that sends chills down my spine. I read about how there was a government-run project, a behemoth called Hawkins National Laboratory, existing right under everyone's noses. Well, until their shutdown of course. That's probably for the best. Best not to have something like that so close to a town, especially if it was responsible for a chemical leak.

 The whole thing screams to be something bigger than the articles make of it, there seems to be a lot of details left out. I close the newspapers. There's definitely something going on in this town, I just have to figure out what. I have a feeling it has to do something with the lab, but I'm not quite sure what. 

So I do what I do best, I investigate. I clean up everything except for a picture of the lab and I pull out my Polaroid camera. I'm very observant, and I have a good memory, but in order to get the best mental picture of a place with the most details to make the blink easier, I use pictures. And to take pictures I bring my Polaroid camera with me. I have a bunch of albums full of pictures I've taken, and a small album full of key places. I took a picture of the clock tower like the one I originally saw when I was young and I keep that with me. When I blink, I can go anywhere I've been before or to any picture I see.