EVANESCENT.
❝I have an idea.
possible? Perhaps.
Dangerous? Definitely.❞
STRANGER THINGS.
BOOK ONE of the GENIUS TRILOGY.
PART OF THE HAWKINS LEGACIES SERIES.
[ SEASON ONE ]
*****
*I do not own Stranger Things, nor any of it's characters, ideas of...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
[ xvii. the thought that counted ]
november 11th, 1983. friday.
⇝ ⇝ ⇝
"IT WENT LIKE THIS! See?"
Melanie Wheeler watched, only partially invested, from across the shadowy basement as Mike reenacted Mr. Clarke's earlier presentation from the funeral home down to a very confused and anxious Eleven. Holding up a folded piece of paper in one hand and a sharpened pencil in the other, he tore a hole through the paper, and Eleven flinched at the shearing sound it made. Finally, Mike let his devices drop and beamed expectantly at her.
"It would take a lot of energy to build a Gate like this," He admitted. "But that's got to be what happened. Otherwise, how'd Will get there, right?"
Melanie pursed her lips. A week ago, she would not have seen any logic within her brother's explanation of their friend's disappearance. She would have simply put it down to fact and knowledge. Before the weight of the universe and alternate dimensions were thrown into play, she would have believed Will had truly been lost or kidnapped. Reasonable explanations, right?
Wrong.
Now, Will Byers was still both of these things . . . Just with the impossible thrown in, too. An impossible that Melanie now had to accept. Logic no longer worked in this situation where a portal to another world, a deadly monster, and an enhanced little girl controlled the field. To survive this deadly game of chance, she was now playing her cards down to mere hope and imagination. Unfortunately, Melanie did not like either of those fallbacks. She liked black and white. Never the void of gray in between.
Nevertheless, Eleven feebly nodded her head, pulling Melanie from her train of thought. "Right," she told Melanie's brother. She seemed less than sure.
"What we want to know is," Lucas carefully addressed, "do you know where the Gate is?" Eleven immediately shook her head, causing the Sinclair boy to frown. "Then how do you know about the Upside Down?" At this question, Eleven only looked down with no answer to give.
"What are you frowning so intensely for, Mel?"
The concerned question rattled Melanie's thoughts. While she had been sitting in a faraway daze on the flimsy couch across the room from the others, Dustin Henderson had stayed nearby. For nearly fifteen minutes, he had paced openly back and forth in front of her, his head down and attention narrowed onto a compass that he once had attached to his bicycle. Now, though, he had stopped his pacing. He was looking directly at Melanie.
"They expect so much from her," Melanie said quietly, making sure that only Dustin could hear her words. "But El's just a kid. She's like us. How can they possibly expect her to know every aspect of the Upside Down when she's only encountered it herself once or twice? How can they expect her to remember everything? We don't know what she's seen. We don't know what she knows."
