Chapter 26: WILL BYERS
Max called at noon two days later, needing her skate wheels.
"I forgot them this morning. They're in my closet. Can you bring them? I need them for after school."
"On my way."
Hawkins Middle School sat on the other side of town from the high school, a squat brick building surrounded by playing fields and parking lots. I pulled into the visitor section during lunch period, when students spilled out of the cafeteria to enjoy the September weather.
I found the wheels in Max's closet, grabbed them, and headed back to the car. The delivery should have taken five minutes.
Instead, I saw Will Byers.
He was standing near the bike rack, alone despite the crowds of students moving around him. Not moving. Not talking. Just standing there, body rigid, eyes fixed on something no one else could see.
I stopped walking and watched.
Three minutes passed. Will didn't move, didn't blink, didn't react to the students passing within feet of him. The other kids gave him space—not the deliberate avoidance of someone being bullied, but the unconscious circumnavigation of people who'd learned that Will Byers sometimes went somewhere else.
The wrongness spiked.
I felt it like a sudden pressure change, that cold presence I'd sensed at Merrill's farm now concentrated in the small body of a twelve-year-old boy. The fire in my chest churned in response, agitated, like it recognized an enemy.
Then Will gasped.
His whole body shuddered, tension releasing all at once. He looked around with the panicked confusion of someone waking from a nightmare, hands patting his chest, his arms, his face—checking that he was still real, still present, still in his own body.
I knew what I was seeing. The now-memories. The visions of the Upside Down bleeding through Will's consciousness, the Mind Flayer using him as a window into our world.
The possession was active. Maybe had been for weeks.
A horn sounded behind me—not a honk of anger, but the frantic beeping of someone in a hurry. I turned to see a worn station wagon screeching into the parking lot, moving fast enough that several students scattered.
Joyce Byers. I recognized her before she was out of the car—small, intense, moving with the desperate energy of a mother who'd learned the hard way that her son wasn't safe.
She ran to Will, hands on his face, asking questions I couldn't hear from this distance. Will shook his head, said something—probably "I'm fine," the universal lie of people who weren't fine at all. Joyce didn't believe him. I could see it in her posture, the way she kept touching him like she was afraid he'd disappear if she let go.
"Billy?"
Max's voice snapped me back to the present. She'd come outside, probably wondering why her ride was taking so long.
"Got your wheels." I handed them over without looking away from the Byers scene.
"Thanks." She followed my gaze, frowned. "That's Will. The kid I told you about. The one the others are weird about."
"Yeah?"
"He does that sometimes. Zones out completely. The teachers don't know what to do with it." She shrugged. "His mom takes him home a lot."
I finally looked at her. She didn't know. Couldn't know—she'd only been here a few weeks, hadn't been present for last year's nightmare, didn't have the context to understand what was happening to that pale boy near the bike rack.
"See you at three," she said, and headed back inside.
I stayed another minute, watching Joyce help Will into the station wagon. The mother held her son like he was made of glass, like she was afraid something inside him might shatter if she squeezed too hard.
She was right to be afraid. Something was inside him—something cold and vast and hungry. And it was growing stronger every day.
The drive home gave me time to think.
Will's possession was further along than I'd hoped. The episodes were happening in public now, visible enough that other students had learned to avoid him. Joyce knew something was wrong—of course she did, she'd nearly lost him once—but she couldn't know the full scope of what she was facing.
I could help. The fire was the natural counter to the Mind Flayer's cold. If I could get close to Will, establish a relationship, maybe I could slow the possession's progress while we figured out a more permanent solution.
But how do you approach a mother who's already lost her son once and tell her you know what's wrong with him? How do you explain fire powers and interdimensional monsters without sounding insane?
The answer, for now, was: you don't. You build the network. You establish trust with the people who already know the truth—Hopper, the kids, eventually the Byers themselves. You prepare for the moment when everything breaks open and alliances become necessary.
I pulled into the driveway and sat in the car, thinking about Joyce Byers hugging her son in a middle school parking lot.
A mother fighting for her boy. Fighting alone, without understanding what she was fighting against.
I'd help her. I just needed to figure out how.
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