AS ABOVE, SO BELOW (BENEATH HIS FEET) | STRANGER THINGS ✓

CHAPTER NINE | I HAVE TO GO BACK

When Amanda finally got up to her room that night, she mulled over what El had said to her. Why would El ask if Mike was important to her? Did she know something that Amanda didn't? There was a possibility to that considering that Amanda had been missing for two plus years. It just didn't make sense. So Amanda left it at that and tried to go to sleep.

*･゜ﾟ･*:.｡..｡.:*･'

It was safe to say that Amanda felt like complete shit the next day.

She had tried to sleep last night but she had spent it just staring at her ceiling in the pitch dark. It didn't help that she could hear her mother crying over her in the living room downstairs. She had been coming home to that a lot as of late and it sucked she couldn't do anything to make it better for her mom.

     It was nice to see that her mom was going on about her day like usual, but it was days like particularly hard ones after work that she would sob about it to her memorial picture. That's when Amanda would go upstairs to leave her alone to have her moment.

Now here she was, lulling in and out of sleep on the couch in Mike's basement because she had such a rough night.

     "You okay?" Will asked, sitting down next to her. "Yeah. I'm fine." She was barely keeping her eyes open at this point as she fell head first onto the arm of the couch with a thump. Amanda groaned as Will patted her sympathetically on the back. "Do you wanna talk about it? 'Cause I'm kinda getting tired of Mike thinking that Max and El are conspiring against him."

"Conspiring?" Amanda peeped one eye open to confirm what Will just said. "Yeah," he nodded, "he thinks that Max is brainwashing El into some 'girl power' machine or whatever. Max argues that she's just 'enlightening her.'"

"Not to diverge the conversation, but who are the missing Bananarama member and Bananarama's boyfriend?" Amanda pointed to the two people conversing with Mike and Lucas while Max and El were in the bathroom. "That's Nancy, Mike's sister, and Bananarama's boyfriend is my brother Johnathan," Will explained.

"Oh. Wouldn't it be awkward if they broke up?"

"I don't think so. They don't hang out with us all that much. They've got their own friends."

"But Steve hangs out with you guys."

Will chuckled. "Steve's different. He's like a mom to us."

"How long's it gonna take before one of them starts looking at you weird for talking to the empty air?"

"Not long apparently," said Will. Amanda sat up instinctively as Nancy and Johnathan both came over to talk to Will. Nancy crouched down to be eye level with Amanda. "Hi," she said. "You can see me?" Amanda asked. Nancy crinkled her eyebrows as she chuckled nervously. "Of course I can see you. Why? What made you think that I couldn't?"