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NONE OF THEM BOTHERED GOING HOME that night. Amara, Dustin, Steve, and Robin collectively agreed that with the Russians actively searching for them, the best thing they could do was barricade themselves in the backroom of Scoops Ahoy rather than venture outside and risk being caught. It also didn't help that it was still pouring torrentially and Amara hated driving in low visibility, so she was more than okay with the arrangement even if they had to sleep in chairs. She was grateful that Eurydice and Scott were out of town for the week and she didn't have to notify them of her whereabouts; as for the other three, they insisted that their parents just assumed they were at a friend's house for the evening. Amara hoped that Kevin wasn't too worried in light of her absence, but if she had gone home that night she would have found that he hadn't returned.
It was one thing for them to pick up on a Russian broadcast and realize it came from Hawkins, but entirely another to hear someone speak Russian and prove it was all too real. And they'd been so nearly busted – Amara didn't want to think about what could have happened to them if they had been captured.
Amara wound up sleeping on the floor, which she found the slightest bit more comfortable than the chairs. From time to time, her bed lacked the stability that the floor provided and she would migrate there, gazing up at the myriad of stars and planets sprawled across the ceiling as if hoping to join them. As if hoping she could forego the stress that came with her day-to-day life as a person with autism in a world that valued accordance but only succeed in reminding herself just how ephemeral life was, how small her problems were compared to the scope of the universe. And then Eurydice would knock on her door and ask what she was doing on the floor, and she'd scramble back to her bed rather than delve into a monologue about how insignificant everything was. Even so, she'd never slept on the floor before, so it was no surprise to her that her back was slightly stiff when she awoke the following morning.
"Where's Dustin?" was her first question, her voice somewhat hoarse and directed at Robin. Steve was still asleep, head nestled against the table, but Dustin was nowhere in the vicinity.
"He's gone back out to take a look at the Russians," Robin relayed, observing her reflection in her compact mirror and grimacing at the sight of her smeared mascara from yesterday. "I told him he should take advantage of this dingus being asleep to go back out there on his own. Last night was too close."
Though Amara believed that their almost being detected yesterday had more to do with their lack of preparedness than Dustin and Steve's quarrel over the binoculars, she saw Robin's point that they would have a better chance of acquiring additional information without the interference of Dustin and Steve's clashing egos. Glancing at her watch, she found that it was almost a quarter to nine, or when 'blue met yellow in the west.' A little over fifteen minutes before they were supposed to open up shop. Though her parents had required both her and Kevin to work every day other than the Fourth of July, she was half-inclined to pretend to have caught a cold from the rain if it meant not having to engage with Erica Sinclair again.
