[ 10 ] 

THIS OVERCAST GLOOM was a perfect setting for such a shitty day, Jodie thought as she shook her third-to-last Camel from its paper safe, more than ready for her ten-minute smoke break from the hell of Hawkins Theater. Her heart was heavy. 

      Poor kid, dead in a watery grave. 

      Jodie lifted her cigarette to her lips and fished her lighter from the deep, endless pockets of her father's faded sweater.

      And to think, Jodie was probably one of the very last people to lay eyes on Will Byers while he was still alive. 

      She let go of the lever of the metal lighter, extinguishing the flame before it could light her Camel, and turned it over in her pale, quivering hand. Her stomach churned with the clouds overhead. 

      Softly, Jodie rubbed the pad of her thumb over the engraving etched into the smooth side of the lighter. She read the words out loud, "Always in our hearts, Jamey A. Whittier." 

      Sighing, Jodie flicked the lighter and ignited her cigarette, inhaling deeply.

      The nicotine did very little to heal the hurt, however. 

      Jodie leant against the dumpster behind The Hawk and exhaled a cloud, her words carrying heavy along with it. "Well, Will Byers . . . so you too will be."

      She clutched the silver lighter tightly, playing with it in the palm of her hand. She thought about the day she took the lighter to the jeweller's store, red-eyed and pumped full of Jack Daniels. The pain was still as sharp as it had ever been.

      That was the day Jodie Whittier given up hope that her brother would ever be found. That was the day Jodie Whittier knew Jameson Whittier was dead. He wasn't coming back. Not ever.

      The lighter felt icy in the palm of her hand, but Jodie continued to toy with it, flicking the flame on and off with a click, click, click.

      Jodie noticed the bottom corner of the thing was dinged and, frowning, she held it closer to her face, rotating the lighter under the sun as it lazily crept out from the gloom. 

      This lighter had been in Will's possession when he had disappeared. It had been found in the Byers' shed, dinged up and damaged. Jodie's heart sagged, feeling the weight of the missing child almost as heavy as when her own little brother had disappeared. 

       And to think, Jodie's lighter was probably one of the very last things Will Byers touched while he was still alive.

      Jodie stopped mid-inhale and yanked her cigarette from her lips, sputtering and coughing as she gasped for air, being struck with a terrible thought that she couldn't quite shake.

      If Will was holed up in his shed, with her lighter, Jodie questioned, then how the hell did he happen to fall into the Quarry?

      Jodie's brown eyes started down the street, her heart thumping in her chest. "How the hell does that make any sense? He'd gone home, why would he even be at the Quarry? That doesn't make sense, unless . . ."

        Her mind jumped to the conclusion faster than she wanted it to, but Jodie hastily shook it away. 

      No, no, that would be crazy. It would be crazy to think . . . "It's crazy, Joyce even said it herself!" Jodie cursed aloud, her forgotten cigarette dangling between two fingers as she ran her hand through her blonde hair.

       "Fuck!" Jodie hissed, burning herself with the hot end of her cigarette. Jodie muttered more obscenities, tossing the damned thing to the cement and stomping down on it a little harder than necessary.

       As the pain faded, the thought continued to linger. Jodie could hear the argument from earlier, Jonathan's voice playing over and over in her head like a broken record.

"Will, that's not his body because he's in the lights, right?" 

     "It's crazy, it sounds crazy . . ." And, yet, Jodie couldn't shake it. She wasn't sure if it was desperate, wishful thinking or an actual inkling of truth within the crazy theory that Joyce had spewed that afternoon, but Jodie was on board. What if, somehow, it wasn't Will that they had found?

     "I've gotta tell Jim," she murmured. "Something ain't right."

     Jodie, feeling her anxiety creep up like a wounded animal, shook her second to last Camel from the package and lit it. This time, she was determined not to let it go to waste.

     Just as Jodie started to light the cigarette, three bikes rushed past her at an alarming speed. She clicked her lighter shut and pockets the rest of the cigarettes as she watched them pass, realizing that she recognized the misfits on the bikes. 

     "Hey, boys!" Jodie called after Lucas, Dustin, and Mike. 

      The boys slowed down but didn't come to a stop. Lucas raised one hand and shouted back, his voice carried by the wind and speed. "Sorry, Jodie! Can't stop, we gotta get to school!" 

     "It's nearly lunchtime!" Jodie yelled back, standing on her tiptoes. "Why aren't you there already?!"

     Jodie watched as they became smaller and smaller on her horizon. Dustin's voice called back to her with a high-pitch that struck a chord of worry with Jodie. It almost sounded. . . scared. "See you later, Jode!" And then, they were gone.

     Jodie scoffed and looked around the street, looking for any other witnesses of the unusual sight. "What the hell," Jodie cursed, tugging her sweater tighter around herself. "Damn town's losing its mind."

     As Jodie prepared herself for more monotonous work, she paused, thinking of the boys. They hadn't seemed particularly sad to her. Rather, Dustin's voice had sounded anxious, scared. Lucas, who had been a silent mess since they had announced Will's death, had been the first one to speak.

     And, Jodie stopped as she touched the handle of the door to the Theater, had that been a girl riding on the back of Mike's bike?

     Shaking the thoughts and confusion away, Jodie braced herself for another three hours of torturous work and yanked open the door to the Theater. 

     The time passed aggravatingly slow for Jodie. It was a workday, so the most traffic she had seen was in the morning, and the day would continue to drag until the late afternoon, only picking up around dinner time. Lucky for her, Jodie was in charge of this shift. 

     Around one o'clock, Jodie decided she had worked enough for the day. "Carlos," she called to the boy behind the counter, restocking the Milk Duds, "I'm leaving now. You're in charge until the next shift comes in at two."

     Brenda, a teen material girl with crimpled blonde hair and purple eye shadow, stopped leaning on her register and perked up with a scoff. "What? Why does he get to be in charge?"

     "Because I said so," Jodie retorted, stripping her black apron from her slim waist and tossing it in the used bin with a sense of release. "Don't page me if you need anything."

     Brenda groaned as Carlos cheered for the small victory. Secretly, Jodie had put him in charge because he was the only one of the pair that of them that actually worked in the slightest. But, she wasn't bothered to say it.

     Strolling out of the theatre, Jodie headed towards the Hideaway. It was a local bar that many miscreants and delinquents liked to hang out at. Jodie smiled at the thought, as she was one of them. Plus, the Hideaway had a public telephone right outside. Jodie could use it to call Jim with the theory about her lighter, even if it did seem like a crazy conspiracy.

     As Jodie approached the Hideaway, she watched as the front door with peeling red paint swung open by its hinges at a rapid pace. Jim Hopper tumbled out of it, his hand outstretched as he dragged a man outside with him.

      Jim decked the man across the face and pressed him up against the hard, brick wall of the Hideaway. Jodie was too far away to hear what the commotion was all about, but she quickly rushed to the scene.

     As soon as Jim released the man's collar, the guy took off, running as fast as possible from the seething Chief of Police. 

     "Please tell me you didn't have a good reason to beat the shit out of that man, and you just did it out of some wild, carnal build-up," Jodie called to him, stopping in front of the towering man, a hand on her hip.

     "What?"

      "Nothing," Jodie chuckled, unashamed as she let her eyes travel across the strong plains of Jim's chest, his heavy breathing drawing her line of sight.

      Jim brushed at the blood on his shirt sleeve and offered Jodie an arched brow. "Are you checking me out?"

      "Is that surprising?" Jodie quipped back.

     Jim started to respond, but Jodie cut him off, more concerned about telling him her theory. 

     "—Jim, what if Will is still alive?"

     "Jodie, let's—"

     "—No, listen to me, what if Joyce—" Jodie started again, knowing that Jim was more than likely going to tell her that she was just as damaged by a child's disappearance as Joyce.

     Jim stepped close to Jodie, causing her to pause. The heat radiating off of him wafted over her smaller frame and she felt her heart pulse and quiver at the change. Jodie flushed and parted her lips to speak softly, peering up at Hopper's towering frame. "Jim,—"

     "—Jodie, listen to me," the deathly serious tone in Jim's voice is what caused Jodie to stay quiet. Jodie took this moment to look at Jim, truly look at him. He was distressed, his eyes darting from one end of the street to the other. She realized that he was just as frantic as she, if not worse. "We'll talk, but someplace private."

     Raising a slow hand, Jim pressed his pointer finger to his lips and made a hushing gesture. He looked around the pair of them and nodded, chin tilted authoritatively, for Jodie to follow behind him as he made a curved path from the Hideaway to his police cruiser. It was parked under a shady tree, hidden slightly by the thick trunk and nestled where cops liked to hide out for speed traps.

     Jodie let Jim open the passenger door for her and she climbed in, watching Jim make his way to the other side and join her in the car. She analyzed the deep furrow on his brow and she worried that he too was taking Will's death. . . or possible disappearance upon his shoulders.

     Once Jim's door slammed shut, he held up a finger signalling for Jodie to keep silent as he flicked on a radio station. Old country tunes filtered through the cruiser and Jim adjusted the volume so that they could barely just hear one another.

     "Jim," Jodie started once Jim lowered his thick finger, "I don't think Joyce is crazy. . . I don't know how to describe it. But," Jodie led on, rifling through her sweater pocket and pulling out her lighter. "But, look here, this lighter worries me."

     Jim softly took the lighter from Jodie's outstretched hand and turned it over in his palm with a grunt. "Worries you?" His trained eyes examined the thing in his palm, turning it over and over with slow, calculated movements.

     An uneasy pause tremored Jodie's breath. She wasn't sure. Jodie hated when she wasn't sure of anything, but mostly, Jodie wasn't sure that she could trust Jim to believe her. Trust, it seemed, was what Jodie lacked for Jim. 

     "Don't laugh at me," Jodie whispered, hardly loud enough to be heard over the radio tunes. 

     Leaning to closer, Jim's solemn gaze peered piercingly into Jodie's soul. In that moment, it felt to Jodie as if Jim was truly looking at her, and she at him. "I would never do that."

     It felt like an eternity that she held his gaze before Jodie caught her breath once more, rapidly blinking away the feeling his look bestowed on her. Just the mere gaze was enough to cause a slight blush to spread on Jodie's cheeks. She hated herself for it.

      Jodie cleared her throat as the song faded out from the radio and a new, more upbeat tune began. Wetting her bottom lip with her tongue, Jodie continued. "It doesn't make sense, Hop. If this lighter was in Will Byer's pocket the day he died," she said cautiously, choosing her words with care as the static on the radio drummed on, "why isn't it at the bottom of the quarry somewhere?"

     Jim frowned and placed a hand on his steering wheel, inching closer to Jodie and keeping his voice soft. "Jodie, there are a million good reasons as to why Will Byer's death makes sense. A perfect trail," he told her, turning his eyes to the Hideaway as a couple teetering out from the bar. 

     His words stung, but only for a moment as he continued on. "Which makes too much sense. It's like a neatly wrapped gift."

     "How do you mean?" Jodie blurted out, shifting her weight in the passenger seat. The smell of leather and aftershave wafted up around her, swaddling her in a way she couldn't quite describe. She could feel her pulse quicken with the surprising turn of affirmation from Jim's words. 

    "Usually, with these things. . . it takes time, there're holes and missing data. But, here?"Jim pounded his fist against the steering wheel, losing his temper for just a moment before reeling it back in. "Here it's too clean. The coroner didn't even perform Will's autopsy. They called someone in from state. Claim it was a state-run quarry, but I know for a fact that quarry is run by the Sattler company."

     "Sattler company?" Jodie repeated back. She didn't have a mind for puzzles quite like Jim. "So, someone is lying?"

     "A lot of someones." Jim nodded, placing his eyes back on her and bumping up the radio a couple more notches as the song faded out. "NSA, Hawkins Lab. . . there is a lot of shit going on, Jode. A lot of shit." Jodie's heart hammered in her ears. "Now there's another missing person, right alongside Will."

      "Another?" Jodie frowned, shaking her head. "Jesus, Jim. You really think there is a conspiracy here?"

     "Do you?"

      Jodie played with her fingers. It was a lot to take in. What had started as a silly theory and a scare with Joyce had slowly trickled into a budding concern. She wasn't sure if she was ready for where this rabbit hole would take them. "Do you think Joyce is right? Do you think Will is still, still alive?"

     With a grunt, Jim sighed heavily and pressed his thumb and forefinger against his closed eyes, rubbing roughly. "Honestly, Jodie. . . I'm not sure. But, I won't rest until I figure this out." 

     "Where do we start?"

⌱ ⌱ ⌱

[ wow an update???? i know this is filler, but it's necessary (;]

This one goes out to EVERYONE who reads this chapter. All of you who are actually still interested in this book, comment here. You all deserve a dedication in the future!

lots of love, x