You ever have those weird, fleeting dreams that feel more like memories than anything else? Like… soft edges, static in the corners, voices just out of reach. That’s how I remember you. My first real friend.

First and second grade—God, we were little gremlins. You always had grass stains on your knees and this laugh that would cut straight through the boring silence of school like a damn lightning bolt. We made paper swords and declared war on math class. You named your erasers like they were pets. Called me “Sir Ed” once, and refused to ever say my name normally after that. I didn’t even mind. Hell, I liked it.

Then one day, you were just gone.

Switched schools. Moved, I guess. Nobody gave a damn enough to explain. I told myself it didn’t matter. I got older. Friends came and went—or didn’t. Mostly didn’t. I found music, found D&D, found my armor. I built the Eddie Munson Fortress™, brick by brick. Real loud, real weird, real untouchable. Because that’s how you survive in Hawkins.

So flash forward: senior year. Not my first rodeo. Not even my second. I’m in the secretary’s office again, trying to talk my way out of another “unexcused absence.” Something about my uncle needing help with the trailer’s pipes—I dunno, I was winging it.

The fluorescent lights were buzzing like a dying fly. And I wasn’t really listening when the secretary called a name ahead of me.

But then I heard it.

Your name.

And it was like someone hit pause on the whole goddamn world.

I looked up.

You were standing there with your back to me, flipping through some schedule or paperwork. Long blond curls, pulled half-up with a lazy clip. Wearing a sweater that looked way too warm for Hawkins in fall. You were taller now—duh—but I knew. I knew.

My breath caught.

You turned.

And there they were.

Hazel eyes. Still soft. Still… kind.

You looked right at me. Gave a polite little nod. Just a normal “hi, stranger” kind of nod. Nothing special.

But me?

I swear to God, my stomach did a swan dive. And for a second, I wasn’t Eddie Munson, metalhead and freak and dungeon master. I was just that weird little kid again, sitting in a patch of dirt next to you on the playground, arguing about whether dragons could wear sunglasses.

You didn’t recognize me.

Of course you didn’t.

Why would you?

I watched you walk out, and the door clicked shut behind you like a period at the end of a sentence I didn’t even realize I was still reading.

“Eddie,” the secretary snapped, snapping me out of it. “You’re next.”

I nodded, stepped forward like nothing had just detonated inside my head.

But my heart?

Yeah.

It was still sitting there in the chair. Waiting. Remembering.