Will never fit in, that much was clear. But now? Now, things were... different.
Not better. Not exactly. But not worse, either. Just—different in a way that made him question whether he'd somehow slipped into an alternate dimension again.
It started in the bathroom, because of course it did. Will had barely made it through third period when the cold spike hit the base of his spine like a shard of glass. One moment, he was washing his hands in the mirror, willing himself to look normal, to be normal. The next, the world tilted sideways. The lights flickered. The air changed. A thunderous roar echoed in his ears—only it wasn't real, not here. It belonged to somewhere else. Somewhere darker.
His knees buckled.
He barely remembered hitting the tile floor.
When he came to, blinking up at the harsh fluorescence of the school infirmary, there was a jacket folded under his head and someone was sitting next to him, flipping through a copy of Sports Illustrated like he hadn’t just dragged Zombie Boy out of a panic attack in the boys' bathroom.
It was Elijah Oaks.
Will's brain struggled to reboot. Elijah Oaks was not the type of person who knew Will Byers existed, let alone cared whether he passed out in public. But there he was—Hawkins High royalty in a letterman jacket, legs kicked out like he owned the place, asking if Will wanted a Sprite from the vending machine.
And it didn’t stop there. That afternoon, Chrissy Cunningham smiled at him in the hallway—like a real smile, not the kind people gave him when they were afraid he'd start crying or evaporate. One of the other jocks waved him over at lunch. By Friday, someone had offered him a ride home. And no one—not a single one of them—looked at him like he was breakable.
They didn’t call him “Zombie Boy.” They didn’t flinch when he zoned out for a second too long. They didn’t whisper about what happened last year. Because they didn’t know.
And for the first time in what felt like forever, Will wasn't being pitied. He was just being... included.
And that might be the weirdest thing of all.
Will was just walking through the cafeteria with the Party, walking towards their usual lunch table in the corner of the cafeteria, when he glances over at the ‘popular table’ in the very centre of the cafeteria, making eye contact with Elijah, who was already looking his way.