091 — Mike Throws a Fit
Bob called back the next morning at seven-fifteen, which Richard took as a good sign.
He'd expected skepticism — healthy skepticism, the kind that came from being a professional who'd seen plenty of people with big ideas and thin technical foundations. What he got instead was Bob talking fast, the way people talked when they'd stayed up too late reading something they couldn't put down, tripping over his own enthusiasm to get the words out. The requirements documentation. The trial program.
The architecture decisions that shouldn't have been possible to make yet because the underlying research to support them didn't publicly exist.
"Where did you get this stuff?" Bob asked. Not suspicious — genuinely awed, the way a musician was awed by a piece of music that did something they hadn't thought to try.
"I've been sitting on it for a while," Richard said. "Waiting for the right partner."
There was a pause on the line that had a specific quality to it — a man recalibrating his near-term plans. Bob had been loosely talking about heading back to California for development work, something that had been a quiet pressure point in his situation with Joyce. This removed that variable entirely.
"I'm in," Bob said. "Completely in. When do we start?"
"Soon. Right now I need to deal with something first."
The operating system could wait. The Mind Flayer's remnants couldn't. Those black particle clusters were doing something down in the dark — consolidating, maybe, or learning, or just persisting on instinct — but any of those options got worse the longer they were left alone. Richard was not willing to find out what they looked like after Henry recovered enough to reestablish contact with them from the other side. That particular combination of circumstances was not one he intended to allow.
He packed his kit the next morning and rode out to the cabin first.
Eleven wasn't there. The cabin was locked and quiet, Hopper's truck gone from the driveway. Richard stood on the porch for a moment, then remembered — Terry Ives. Hopper had been building toward taking Eleven to meet her, or at least to understand more about her. That was probably today.
He pulled out the compass, took a reading, and sighed.
"Looks like it's just us," he said to the compass, which did not respond.
He got back on his bike and started following the needle.
The good news about winter approaching was that tracking through Hawkins on a bicycle didn't leave him drenched. The air had gone properly cold overnight — the kind of cold that made the woods smell like woodsmoke and dead leaves — and Richard moved through it in methodical loops, compass out, building a map in his head of where the readings spiked and where they dropped back toward normal. Slow work. Necessary work.
Somewhere across town, a different kind of navigation was happening.
Max had been working up to the apology since first period.
It wasn't her fault — she knew that, technically, rationally, in the part of her brain that could evaluate situations without the other part of her brain overriding it with guilt. Billy's behavior wasn't something she'd caused or could prevent. But she'd watched the gravel spray across the parking lot last night, watched four people she actually liked get coated in dust, and the look on Lucas's face when the car pulled away had stayed with her through the whole ride home and most of the night.
She found them at Lucas's locker before second period and said it straight: "I'm really sorry about last night. Billy was out of line."
Mike, who had apparently gotten an earful from his mom about coming home dirty on a school night, looked like he was trying to decide whether to be gracious about it. He landed on honest instead. "Your brother made us eat a mouthful of gravel."
"I know." Max crossed her arms, not defensively — more like she needed the armor. "I know. I'm sorry."
"We're not mad at you," Dustin said, with the firm clarity of someone drawing a distinction that mattered.
Lucas nodded. "You're not him."
The tension in Max's shoulders came down a notch. She looked at Lucas for a moment longer than was strictly necessary, which Dustin registered and filed away with an expression of private suffering.
Will leaned against the locker next to Mike. "Is there any way to talk to your mom about it?"
The question landed and the boys — all except Mike — instinctively went quiet, which was its own answer about how much they understood. Max gave a short, tired smile. "It's complicated."
It was more than complicated. Her mom had finally gotten stable after years of the opposite, and Neil Hargrove was a big part of that stability, which meant he was untouchable as a subject. Billy had learned everything he knew about power from watching his dad, and Max had learned the house rules early: complaining up the chain didn't make anything better, it just redistributed the hurt.
She understood Billy, in the way you understood a pattern you'd watched repeat your whole life. Understanding didn't mean forgiving.
"The best way through something scary is to go straight at it," Will said, with the careful tone of someone repeating advice they'd actually tested. He glanced at Mike. "Bob told me that."
Dustin had been quiet for about thirty seconds, which for Dustin was a geological event. He looked up. "Honestly? You beat him once, on your own terms, and he stops. Guys like Billy — they respect one thing. You take that from him once, even just once, and the whole dynamic changes."
Max stared at him. "You want me to fight my stepbrother."
"I want you to win against your stepbrother. There's a difference." Dustin's expression was earnest and slightly unhinged in the way that his best ideas sometimes were. "It doesn't have to be physical. It has to be undeniable. Something where he can't reframe it afterward."
Max spread her hands. "With what? He's got six inches and about eighty pounds on me."
Lucas and Dustin exchanged a look. Will's mouth curved. It was the specific telepathy of people who had a secret and were deciding together whether to use it.
Mike read the room a half-second late and stepped into the center of the group with the energy of someone pulling an emergency brake. "No. No. We are not doing that."
Max looked between them. "Doing what? Who's El?"
The name had come out of Mike's mouth before he'd caught it. He turned to her. "Nobody. Don't worry about it."
Max felt it like a door closing in her face. She'd been eating lunch with these guys for weeks. She'd told them about Billy. She'd told them about her mom. And Mike Wheeler was standing there telling her don't worry about it like she was a stranger asking for directions.
Lucas stepped toward her. "Friends help each other," he said, and it was directed at Mike more than at her. "That was the whole point."
"She doesn't know El," Mike said.
"El would want to help," Lucas said. "You know she would."
Mike made a sound of pure frustrated helplessness, turned on his heel, and walked away down the hallway, hands shoved in his pockets.
The four of them watched him go. Max waited until he'd rounded the corner, then looked at the remaining boys with an expression that was equal parts confused and stung. "Did I do something wrong?"
"No." All three of them answered at the same time, with identical certainty.
"Then why —"
"It's not about you," Will said, and he meant it kindly. "Mike is just..." He searched for the right word.
"Protective," Dustin offered.
"Scared," Will said, which was more accurate and they all knew it.
Max looked down the hallway where Mike had gone. The bell rang. She picked up her bag.
"This El person," she said, not quite a question.
"She's our friend," Lucas said. "And she's going through some stuff. Mike's just —" He stopped. "He'll come around."
Max nodded slowly. She filed it — the name, the weight the boys put on it, the way Mike's whole face had changed when it came up — and headed to class.
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