far too young to die ✰ m.w.

CHAPTER ONE

HAWKINS, INDIANA, USA

NOVEMBER 7, 1983

"Emily!" Joyce Byers called to her sleeping daughter as she opened the door and entered her bedroom. "It's time to get up, honey, breakfast is almost ready. Em, come on." She began to shake the young brunette, and only then did she begin to stir.

"Leave me alone," Emily groaned, turning over so that she was facing away from her mother.

"No, you need to get up for school."

"I'm not going."

"Yes, you are. Get up." Joyce turned to leave to go and wake up Emily's twin brother, Will, who she assumed was also asleep in his bedroom, but stopped and looked around for a moment. "You need to clean this room after school, too."

"No!" Emily groaned even louder, becoming annoyed, but Joyce had already left the room and did not respond. She decided that she would continue to lie there until the very last minute like she did every morning before school, but when she heard her mother ask her older brother, Jonathan, if Will had come home the night prior, she immediately became curious and abandoned her plan, rising out of bed and wandering into the kitchen, where Joyce was scolding her oldest child for taking a shift while she was working, something she had explicitly told him not to do.

"Mom, it's not a big deal," Jonathan defended himself. "Look, he was at the Wheelers' all day. I'm sure he just stayed over."

Giving her son a look, Joyce turned to Emily. "Do you know if Will came home last night?" she asked her.

Emily thought for a moment, vaguely remembering waking up three separate times throughout the night. The first time, she had been startled awake by the feeling of the house shaking subtly like a door had been slammed, but the loud music playing in her room had drowned out any actual noise, so she didn't hear anything and fell back asleep almost immediately. The second time, she had woken up for seemingly no reason, though she recalled feeling immense anxiety. Assuming she had had a nightmare that she just couldn't remember, she decided to get up for a glass of water and then go back to bed. She remembered having to tell the family dog, Chester, to shut up, for he was barking incessantly at what Emily thought was nothing. The third and final time she had woken up during the night was when Jonathan came home from his shift and turned down her music, because he knew that if Joyce came home to hear her music so loud again, Emily would get in trouble.

"I think so?" was Emily's response to her mother's question, which she knew wasn't helpful at all, causing her to feel a pang of guilt when Joyce sighed and went over to the phone to call someone. Nevertheless, she turned to her brother. "Is breakfast done? I'm starving."

As Joyce spoke with Karen Wheeler, the matriarch of the Wheeler family, on the phone, Emily fixed herself a plate of breakfast, listening to her mother talk as she ate.

"Will didn't spend the night?" Joyce was saying. "Um, you know what? I think he just left early for... for school. Thank you so much. Bye."

Knowing fully well that if Will had indeed left early for school that Jonathan would've seen or at least heard him, all of the Byers' looked at each other in silence with their eyes full of worry. Emily set her fork down, suddenly having no appetite whatsoever.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

Just to make sure they weren't jumping to conclusions, Joyce called Hawkins Middle School to confirm that Will was not there. The secretary in the office put her on hold briefly, probably to check with all of the teachers in the school, before informing Joyce that no one had seen Will yet that day, but that they would call and let her know if he happened to show up. That was enough to make the woman call off of work and go straight to the police station.