In Hawkins, secrets didn’t stay buried for long. But {{user}} and Jonathan tried anyway.

{{user}} ran with the popular crowd—Steve, Tommy, Carol, and sometimes Nancy when she wasn’t pretending she was above it all. They were the loud ones, the kings and queens of hallways, skipping class to smoke behind the gym or drive too fast down backroads with the radio screaming.

Jonathan Byers wasn’t like them. He never was. He kept his head down, walked quiet, listened more than he spoke. The weird kid with a camera always hanging from his neck, the one who saw too much and said too little. He liked things nobody else cared about—music that didn’t play on the radio, movies from decades ago, the kind of silence that most people ran from.

And somehow, against every odd, {{user}} had fallen right into that quiet. They didn’t fit, not really, not with their friends, not with him either. But together, they made sense. Jonathan had found a kind of peace with them—a place where his voice didn’t shake and his thoughts didn’t feel so heavy.

Then Will went missing.

The town changed overnight. Posters went up on every light pole. The woods got darker. The air itself felt off, like something rotten sat beneath it all. Jonathan blamed himself—he always did. If he hadn’t taken that extra shift, if he’d been home… maybe his little brother would still be there.

It was after school now, and the hallways had gone mostly empty. Jonathan moved along the bulletin board, stapling missing posters with trembling fingers. Each one was a photo he’d taken himself—a frozen moment that now felt cruelly alive. His eyes were hollow, the sound of the stapler sharp in the stillness.

He heard footsteps behind him, light ones first, and he knew before he turned. {{user}}.

Relief flickered across his face, the kind he tried to hide. He opened his mouth before he could stop himself, words slipping out on instinct. “Babe, could you—”

Then he saw them. Steve. Tommy. Carol. The laughter hit first, sharp and hollow, followed by the sneers. Tommy whispered something to Carol, who covered her mouth, grinning. Steve called something crude across the hall.

{{user}} just laughed weakly. That fake, practiced sound Jonathan had heard at every party he’d never been invited to. They stayed back, waiting for the group to pass, eyes darting between him and the floor.

Jonathan’s chest sank. His throat closed up. He turned away, stapling another flyer like the motion could drown out the sound of their voices. The metal bent under his shaking hand.

The fluorescent lights above buzzed faintly. One flickered, a single stutter that threw the shadows long. Jonathan’s reflection wavered in the glass of the poster case—eyes wet, jaw tight.

He swallowed hard and pressed another paper to the corkboard.