Will letting out a loud gasp woke the pair on the floor. Jude sat up first, realizing he had his arms wrapped around Mike, one of his legs on him. Mike sat up too. "Will, what's wrong?"

Will looked over with wide, panicked eyes.

"I'll get Miss Joyce." Jude spoke up quickly, getting up from the pallet on the floor and hurrying through the house.

"Sorry about before." Jude cleared his throat when he met Mike in the hallway, the pair looking for anything familiar on the walls of drawings.

Mike looked over. "Wha- oh. It's fine, I sleep weird too."

"Yeah, so weird." Jude spoke with a forced, awkward laugh. "Did you...find anything?"

"Find anything?" Mike looked his way with a weird expression.

"That will help." Jude nodded toward the walls, giving a small tug to the red and white striped sweater that felt a little too tight around his neck.

"Not-" Mike began, looking back at the wall. "Here!"

Joyce's feet ran through the house, meeting the boys in the hallway as Mike pointed up to a drawing. Joyce matched the new one in her hands, seeing how they'd blended perfectly. "Okay, so Hopper is here."

"Here." Jude leaned next to her and tapped the drawing so she hadn't had to hold it.

"Yeah. Now we just need to find out where here is, right?" Mike nodded his head.

"Right." Joyce agreed.

"Did he say anything?" Mike continued.

"Before he left." Jude added in.

"Something about vines?" she gave a weird expression. The sound of a car approaching had the three hurried toward the window, in hopes of finding Hopper, instead seeing Bob get out of his red car.

"Want me to get him out of here?" Jude suggested, holding his head a little higher.

"I've got it." Joyce moved past him, leaving the two inside.

"I bet dating as adults is worse then dating as teenagers." Jude said honestly as he watched the two talk outside.

"What do you mean?" Mike asked oddly.

"Like, you have to deal with them all the time. When you're young, you just go to school together and can make the excuse that your parents won't let you hang out on weekends." the curly haired boy went on, his breath fogging up the window in the slightest.

"I think that's the point." Mike gave a snort. "Usually when people date they want to be able to see each other."

"I don't think i'll ever date." Jude shook his head honestly. "I like my alone time too much. I couldn't be around them constantly."

Mike looked over at him. "I think you will date one day."

"What?" Jude frowned his eyebrows.

"I think someone will come into your life and you won't mind them being with you all the time. Even when you wanna be alone, you still want them there." Mike promised him, looking down in the slightly. "And I think you'd be a good boyfriend. Girls like the sort of stuff you do."

"What do I do?" Jude almost snorted at his words.

"When you give your books to us to borrow, always writing someone super cheesy on the inside. And how you always bring your teachers flowers on the first day of school. And how you fold your notes into envelopes before sneaking them away." Mike listed on, his eyes locked with Jude's for a second. "Girls like that, it's why they like you so much."

Jude hesitated, warm in the face as he took an inhale. "Yeah, but what if I get board with someone? Or don't like having to share all my space and have to go out all the time."

"Not everyone likes to go out all the time." Mike reminded him. "Someone could be just the same way you are."

The same way you are.

Before the pair could say anything else, the door opened and Bob and Joyce came in. Bob looked at the drawing on the wall with an astonished look across his face. "Humm. You drew all these yourself?"

Will nodded his head.

"Why exactly?" Bob continued on.

"I told you the rules. No questions, okay?" Joyce reminding him quickly. "We just need you to help us figure out what- Bob! Bob?"

He turned, following after her quickly as the trio of boys did the same.

"Where this is." Joyce scribbled an x across the drawing Will said Hopper was in.

"That's the objective. Find the X." Mike nodded alongside her.

"Yeah? What's at the X? Pirate treasure?" Bob made the joke, even though no one laughed.

"Bob, no questions." Joyce reminded him yet again.

"Okay." he whispered, peering around the hallways and back at Will. He grabbed Joyce's arm. "Let me talk to you a second, hang on, guys."

It wasn't long under Bob was running back in, looking at the walls. "Okay, that's Lake Jordan. And if that's Lake Jordan, then you can probably find.. yeah, that's, uh, Sattler's quarry."

"My dad threw me in there to teach me how to swim." Jude spoke up, getting concerned looked. "I was faking him out and saying I didn't know how to swim because I was scared monsters were gonna get my feet."

Mike rubbed his back with a clear of his throat.

"And if you just follow it naturally it moved to...the Eno River." Bob traveled into the other room, the rest not too far behind. "And there it is. That's the Eno, do you see it?"

"That's where Winkel was found." Jude spoke up again.

"Jesus, do you have a story for all the lakes?" Mike gave him a questionable look.

"Okay, so the lines aren't roads. But they act like roads. And they act like roads cause when you follow em, you'll see they don't go over water." Bob moved quickly toward the kitchen. "And that's the giveaway. That's the giveaway. Ha! Don't you get it? It's not a puzzle. It's a map. It's a map of Hawkins."

Jude and Mike looked over in Wills directions with wide eyes.

"All right. I'm 3.6 inches, what do you got?" Bob called through the house not too long after they figured the map out.

"I'm not sure. Jude?" Mike called.

"It's a lot." Jude called back, looking at the tape measurer. "Mrs B?"

"Twenty-one feet, four inches!" Joyce called from the other room.

"What about Tippecanoe to Danford Creek?" Bob yelled.

"Where's Danford?" Joyce sighed.

"I got it! My mom took me there once and she taught me how to skip rocks!" Jude called, running down the hallway.

"Oh my god." Mike said in disbelief.

"Sixteen feet, ten inches." Jude looked over at Bob from where he was in the dining room.

"What about Danford to Jordan?" Bob asked, earning an over dramatic groan from the Mackenzie boy.

"This has got to be enough." Joyce came into the room.

"It's not. It's-it's really not." Bob explained with a shake of his head. Mike joined them at the table.

"Okay. Can't you figure it out?" Joyce looked down at the map he'd been drawing.

"Yeah, I thought you were Bob the Brain." Jude rose his eyebrows.

"Well, it's hard. The ratio isn't exact one-to-one. I mean, if you're twisting my arm, and you are twisting my arm, I would say the X is...maybe half a mile southeast of Danford?" Bob suggested, using the ruler to draw a perfectly straight line.

"Thank you." Joyce kissed his cheek quickly.

"I'll get the keys!" Jude called, running through the house.

•

kylie speaks

judith mackenzie being
the best bf for another
chapter straight.