Heartbreak Story - Byler

Prologue - December, 1984

It's been two weeks.

Two weeks since Hawkins Middle School's Snow Ball of 1984 and a lot had been playing on my mind.
I hadn't been sleeping, I hadn't been eating, I'd barely left my room and my family were starting to worry about me. I tried to hide the fact that my brain had been all over the place, whirring with a million thoughts a minute from them but wasting so much of my energy on trying to pretend I was mentally okay, meant that I began to neglect myself and they noticed. All in all, my efforts were in vain.

Never did I expect to hide this emotional turmoil from my friends, they know me better than even Nancy does so I wasn't surprised when Will, Lucas, Dustin and even Max staged an intervention for me via our walkie-talkies, demanding to know what was going on with me all at once. Max didn't say that much to me, she just politely asked if I was okay and when I told her to leave me alone she just said "Over and out" and that was that. She probably still thought I didn't like her but it wasn't anything personal to her that made me not want to speak.

The other three weren't so easy to get rid of. Lucas and Dustin took the hardline approach: "Michael Wheeler, you tell us why you've been ignoring us recently right this second! I won't take no for an answer. Over."

"Yeah, Mike. We haven't even played D&D in weeks now! Over." And then the bickering between themselves started as they are incapable of going thirty seconds without a fight.

"Is that really the issue right now? Over."

"I think it is. Over."

And so on and so on. Then when they finally circled back to me, they began to get angry and said that it wasn't fair of me to hide myself away and not let anyone know if I was safe, for all they knew I could have been taken by a demo-dog. Or something worse.

The words of two of my best friends did make me feel a little guilty but that didn't change the fact that I wasn't ready to face them yet. I needed my alone time to figure out what the hell was going on with me. I zoned out of their relentless lectures until I heard a much quieter voice chime in, a softer voice, a voice that made butterflies begin to flutter in my stomach. "Guys, you're not helping." Will muttered to them before speaking directly to me: "Mike, Jonathan said he'll drive me to your house. I'm on my way now, I'll see you in ten. Over and out."

The knowledge that I would be seeing him, William Byers, within the next ten minutes made my heart begin to race and the panic set it. Will was always the friend I was closest to ever since Kindergarten, the one who always knew how to cheer me up no matter what was happening in my life and he probably thought he could do it again. What he didn't know, however, was he was the reason that my life had turned upside-down in the last couple of weeks.

It all started when I heard the words "Hey, Zombie Boy. Do you wanna dance?" And Will instinctively looked right at me and I gazed into those beautiful hazel eyes of his. I pushed him forward because I knew he needed a nudge in the right direction to dance with this girl. I thought I was doing what was best for him but that didn't stop the uncontrollable jealousy that erupted within me as he lay his hands on this girl whose name I didn't even know. I'd never been so confused in my life as to why I was feeling this way, why should I be jealous that my friend was dancing with some girl? I should have been happy for him, right? Yet I wasn't and all that I knew was that watching Will's little smile light up his whole face as he looked into the eyes of another sent shockwaves of pain throughout my body. The agony I was feeling was real and intense but I didn't know why.

When El arrived and we danced together, she cleared my thoughts and dulled the pain I was feeling for a moment or two but that was only temporary. Every time I glanced over to Will, my heart began to ache all over again.