Chapter Text
Crickets sounded in the distance, repeating in a sort of rhythm that would become ingrained to one’s head after a short time outside. Dry fall leaves crunched under feet covered by worn brown boots, using only the moon’s light, shrouded by the overhead trees, and a pocket flashlight to navigate through the dark forest. Was the body familiar? She didn’t feel it to be so. A sound piped up from the deep woods, soft but still distinguishable.
Cries.
Will’s cries.
The unfamiliar boots took off at a sprint towards the sound. She(???) stopped at the road, where a fresh trail of blood led to a lump and a bent bicycle. Will’s body lay mangled across the concrete, blood pouring out from under him. Car marks trailed away from the scene. Her vision began to distort. Will had died. Her little brother had died and she had let him. Her selfish, ignorant self let him.
—
Juniper Byers sat up in a cold sweat. Her headphones still half-clung to her ears from the night before with the tape she used to try to drown out everything playing a song that she hadn’t yet woken up enough to recognize. Her grey t-shirt stuck to her shoulders, making this experience even more uncomfortable than it was. She sunk back down to the comfort of her worn-out pillow, really just wanting to waste away. It’s what she deserved for taking that stupid extra shift. After a few seconds, however, the muffled sobs of her mother from another room brought Juniper back to reality. She rubbed at her eyes and forced herself out of bed, grabbing her silver-rimmed glasses off of the bedside table (Will had picked those out) and pulling her right sock that had slipped down her foot overnight back up to her ankle. As soon as she pushed open the door, she found the sobs had come from the living room. Joyce was sitting on the floral couch, leaned over the coffee table that was filled to the brim with…pictures? As Juniper made her way closer, she recognized the photos as her own. Apparently Mom had been in her room overnight. That was besides the point, though, for the pictures were all of Will. A little Will drawing at the coffee table, a grin overtaking his face..Will preparing for a recent Dungeons and Dragons campaign…Will and herself posing together in front of a theme park ride…Juniper’s vision started to blur. Joyce turned around at the sound of her daughter’s sniffle.
“Oh, Junie…” Juniper hated when her mother called her that, but that was at the bottom of the concern list right now. She approached and brought her mother into a tight hug, breaking down as she practically jumped onto the creaky couch. Both of them cried for what seemed like a lifetime, before Joyce finally turned back to the task at hand.
“I was..trying to find a good shot for his…poster” The words seemed forced out, but Juniper understood fully.
“How about this one?” She gently picked up a picture of Will standing in front of Castle Byers, smiling hopefully at her mother though tears seeped through.
“That one is great, but we want one that really shows his whole profile. He needs to be distinguishable.” Joyce replied, scanning over the array of photos. Juniper nodded, joining in searching for the perfect photo. She finally settled on one that felt right.
“Is this one better, Mom?” She held up a close-up shot of Will, taken after he had gotten his last haircut and for some reason begged her to take a photo of it. He looked so great in that picture. A perfect encapsulation of my little brother was the thought that appeared in her head.
Joyce’s eyes watered as she examined the photo. “That…that one’s perfect, honey.” She brought her daughter close and kissed her forehead. “Now take this money.” Juniper opened her mouth almost instantly to refuse as she spotted the wad of cash in her mother’s hand. “No..no arguments. You take this and spend every last dime printing as many copies as you can, okay?”
Juniper only nodded, not able to produce words at the moment. She took the money, gave Joyce a promising look, and rose to head to the table for formatting. She wrote out all necessary information, along with a large “HAVE YOU SEEN ME?” at the top. Joyce ended up coming over holding another photo, a farther back shot from last year’s County Fair photo man, and they taped it to the poster right beside the first.
“Now get changed and take your car to town” Joyce said, patting her reassuringly on the back.
Juniper didn’t want to get changed. She wanted to go out right away and solve this. Find her brother. But she guessed she would be taken more seriously if she were not a sweaty mess. In her room she picked up the first combination of okay clothes she could find; a pair of worn jeans, a white t-shirt with a red neckline that had an old ketchup stain, and a dark purple jacket. She hastily put a brush through her brown slightly past the shoulder-length hair, pushing her overgrown bangs out of her face. God, she really did look like a creep. The choppy layers of her at-home haircut hung like a curtain over her face as she leaned over the sink, staring into the drain. Maybe it really was fate, for a creep like her to have lost her brother on her own accord. Nothing good comes to outcasts like her, right? She sighed hard and brushed her teeth before gathering the poster and almost storming out of the house.
The drive was only made bearable by the radio. Music in general made life bearable for Juniper. The collection of cassette tapes in the glovebox almost filled it to the point of popping open, and she had a new pick for each day of the week. Most of the time, though, she just stuck to her favorite tape. Today was one of those days. She merely went through the motions as she copied the base poster, for the first time spending money like it’s nothing, like they won’t be starving tomorrow even though they very much will. Juniper knew that this money was practically all her mother had, she knew that this would be detrimental to their financial situation. But, as the stacks of missing posters laid in the backseat of her car, Juniper found inside her no guilt whatsoever. Instead, a gnawing feeling. The feeling of needing this to be solved and done with. She needed Will. She needed her little brother.
—
Juniper hit all of the crucial stops first; the police station, the town hall, the library, the Hawkins Post, the movie theater where she worked, random power line posts, even the church, which she had never before entered. As she sat down in the car for the upteenth time, she noticed the box only contained two more posters. Shit. The places she had hit were nowhere near enough. If money were infinite she would plaster that fucking paper on every flat surface in Hawkins. Maybe even outside of Hawkins. Oh, if money were infinite. She flipped through the imaginary handbook of every place in Hawkins. She could go to the local diner, but they probably don’t have a corkboard to hang the poster up on. Her mind stopped at the thought of Hawkins High School. The school she was supposed to currently be attending. She knew she had a history test today, but that could be made up another time. Would it be wrong to pop in and hang the poster on the very empty bulletin board? Juniper pondered this for a long moment. She really did not want to deal with the whispers that would come with her general presence on school grounds, but if it meant her brother possibly coming home? Any day. She pressed on the gas and turned in the direction of the high school.