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Hunched shoulders. Pen on paper. Dustin knows that she’s up to something, because Max has, like, an 8-track brain encased in bullet-proof glass.
Huh. He’s mixing his metaphors. He’s not even sure what his metaphors were trying to do.
The point is, Max is spending the last hours of her maybe-last day writing, while Dustin is searching for words.
You’ve always been a good friend to me. Day 1, you were offering to take me trick-or-treating even though I was being a total bitch about it. I’ve learned a lot from you, and you’re probably the smartest person I know, even though I only want you reading this after I’m dead so I don’t have to listen to you gloat about it. You’re allowed to gloat to Mike, though.
(I really hope things between you and Suzie stay good, Dustin. You deserve to be really happy.)
“Your lady-love,” Eddie says, twirling a nail between his fingers, the can-lid-turned-shield balanced on his knee. “Suzie, right?”
“Oh, yeah,” Dustin says, feeling the tell-tale heat of a blush spread over his face. He had sort of hoped that Eddie wouldn’t see what he was writing on his makeshift bracers. Then again, why display a talisman of true love if not for your comrades to see? “Yeah. Suzie. She’s from Utah, she’s a—”
“Mormon,” Eddie finishes, pulling a droll grin. “Dude, I know. I pay attention to what goes on in my party, OK?”
What you did for me, for Lucas, I’ll never forget it. You saved us. You’ve saved us a lot and I know we give you so much shit but you put up with it and I guess that’s just how some people show they care about each other. Giving and accepting shit. Thanks for always being there and for driving us places and for letting me talk to you about Billy that time even though he broke your nose and you really shouldn’t have had to hear anything about him ever again.
(Dear Steve, I kind of feel like you’re my brother. I hope you don’t hate the thought of me as your sister. Hey, little sisters are supposed to be annoying right?)
He knows Steve’s the one who carried him out, but Dustin’s memory—which has never failed him before—goes absolutely haywire trying to play it all back. Maybe he’s trying to protect himself from himself, from the feeling of Eddie’s body going cold against him, from the sight of Eddie’s sightless eyes.
He knows he didn’t make it easy for Steve, and not just on account of his screwed-up leg. He kind of remembers Steve saying, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, over and over, and he kind of thinks that Steve was crying too, but none of it makes sense in the smoke-blurred light of day.
The point is that they left Eddie’s body there. The gate wasn’t closing, it was opening so wide and so hot and so fast that they barely made it through. Steve had to carry Dustin.
It’s the only explanation that Dustin can live with (and barely even then).
Let me go, Dustin screamed (or thinks he did). Let me go, Steve, let me go—we can’t just leave him.
But Steve didn’t listen, and so they made it out.
The question Dustin hasn’t been able to ask himself yet, the question his mind’s trying to protect him from, shutting it down every time he asks it—
So what I want you to understand is that it wasn’t a mistake. None of it was. Every second we were together, you were the best part of my life. Even the bad seconds. Even the ones I ruined.
(Dear Lucas, it feels so stupid to have to write all this down.)
“The basement’s flooded,” Ted Wheeler says flatly, as if nothing more or less has happened in Hawkins in the past twenty-four hours beyond a minor inconvenience in his gingerbread house.
Dustin never realized, until now, how quickly disdain and dislike could morph so swiftly into outright hatred.
Dustin never realized, until now, how much he didn’t want to hate anybody that he didn’t have to. Not even Ted Wheeler, who deserved to be Upside-Down-chow a lot more than—a lot more than a lot of people, that was what.
“We left some things down there, Mr. Wheeler,” Dustin explains, through his teeth. “Mind if I look for them?”
Ted glances over the rim of his glasses. “It could be toxic, Mr. Henderson,” he says. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
A hand settles on Dustin’s shoulder, and suddenly, Steve is there.
Steve, who carried him out.
“We’ll be careful, Mr. Wheeler.”
“Fine, Steve. Hey, you heard from your parents?”
“They’re in Montana, Mr. Wheeler.”
Steve doesn’t even live with his parents anymore. But of course Ted Wheeler, shit-for-brains, wouldn’t know that. Dustin scowls at him and follows Steve downstairs. They came over to help Nancy go through old clothes, old toys, old bedding—donation fodder. That was the plan. Mom and Steve told Dustin he didn’t have to come. Dustin wouldn’t hear of it. His leg isn’t broken, just sprained. He’s coping.
He wanted to come.
“Careful on the stairs,” Steve murmurs, catching his elbow, and Dustin has to suppress the urge to strike backwards, hit Steve squarely in his injured ribs.
What the hell is wrong with him?
“Not too bad,” Steve says. He means the basement. There’s only like an inch of muddy water, and sure, some of the cardboard boxes are soggy, but everything else is fine. Leave it to Ted Wheeler, shit-for-brains—
Dustin throws off Steve’s hand, surges forward. His leg hurts like a son-of-a-bitch, broken or not.
“What’re you looking for?” Steve asks. “Nance’ll be down in a minute, I bet. Help us sort this shit.”
Steve didn’t make it out unscathed. The bites. The raw red line around his throat. The bruises on his wrists from the vines that apparently almost crushed him, and Nancy, and Robin.
(Maybe there was a chance that none of them get through that gate. Maybe Dustin stays with Eddie’s body until fire and slime and earthquakes overtake him—)
“Buddy.” Steve’s voice is somehow even softer than it was a moment before. “You OK in there?”
Dustin could be cruel to him. Could let the hurt turn to hate, even though Steve doesn’t deserve it all.
He says, “Yeah, I’m fine.”
What does he want? What is he looking for?
Was it worth it? Was it worth it? Was it worth it?
The letters are all there. Lucas brought his to the cemetery, but they all crashed here the night after, so Lucas’s is here too, the edges slightly crumpled.
“Oh,” Steve says, and his voice—breaks on that one word, not in a crying way but in a tired way, like the will to live has been pulled out from underneath him like a goddamn rug. “Shit.”
“We should read them,” Dustin says, and he’s surprised by how steely his own voice his, how well he’s able to say the hardest words, if not the cruelest ones. “It’s what she would have wanted.”
“Jesus, I don’t know if—”
“You can, Steve. You can handle it.” Dustin takes the envelope that says Steve in Max’s neat, plain handwriting and basically slams it against Steve’s chest. Steve doesn’t even wince, but his eyes say a lot more than his mouth ever does.
“On our own time, Henderson,” he says. “We should read them on our own time. There’s no rush, OK?”
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
Let me go, Steve. Let me go—we can’t just leave him—
Was it worth it?
“There’s no rush, huh?” Dustin snaps. “No rush?” He didn’t know he could ever be angry, like genuinely angry with Steve, but this might just do it.
“Dustin—”
Dustin can’t see anything for a second. Not the letters in his hands. Not Steve, staring back at him with the memories Dustin can’t bring himself to string together mirrored in his eyes. Not the Wheelers’ silt-stained basement.
They didn’t stop Vecna. Not for good. They didn’t save Max. And Eddie—
“C’mere,” Steve says, and it isn’t a question, or even a command. It’s just an offer, a rope dangling between two worlds. The last connecting thread between life before and after.
This is how Dustin ends up hurting Steve’s injured ribs: hugging him so tightly he can practically claim responsibility for any reopened stitches. Steve doesn’t make a sound. He’s got one hand on Dustin’s back, rubbing slow circles. His other hand is tangled in Dustin’s hair, basically cradling Dustin like he’s a big stupid baby who never had a chance to save his friends at all.
Never change, Dustin Henderson.
Was it worth it?
“Thanks,” Lucas says, taking the letter. His letter. The eye he can open is shiny with tears. “For—bringing this.”
“You been reading to her, huh?” Dustin asks. They’re all there: El. Mike. Erica. Steve, stroking Max’s hair back from her forehead.
“Yeah. They say people can—hear.”
“Wherever they are,” Dustin says. It’s not that a lightbulb goes off. He can’t—he can’t think of it in terms of light. But it’s something. “You’re right.”
Dear Eddie,
It’s been three days. That’s three days too late to write this. Things aren’t getting any better, and actually, they’re getting worse. It seems like the Upside Down is coming here. I don’t know if this is stuff I should bother telling you, because I figure hey, at least you’re free of it. But the point is, I keep wanting there to be a way where you make it back, too. Where it’s all a big final play. “So it was thought”—but you’re back from the dead, not Lord Vecna. Stupendous and spectacular, Eddie-the-Banished no more.
I know that’s stupid. I know the whole thing ended up being so much bigger than D&D and you never stood a chance in this screwed-up town, once it had its sights on you. You needed more help than we could give you, I guess, but we took all your help. You gave us everything.
The worst part is that I should be a better person because of you. I know that’s what you asked of me. But since you’re gone I kind of want to be worse. Like I want to just turn into a boiling cauldron of anger because it’s unfair and stupid and I should have done more while there was still time.
Was it worth it? I don’t know.
I didn’t get the idea to write this on my own, by the way. It was Max’s idea. Max didn’t make it out either, though I guess there’s still hope for her. If you were here, I know you would say there was still hope.
Eddie, you were brave and good and true. You were a warrior.
We can’t just leave him, and let me go, and pen on paper, blood for ink. My year, and our lives, and running, running, running, until the walls of the world rise up around you and you have to make a choice.
Never change, Dustin Henderson—a wish, not a command, and one it’s too late for.
(He starts writing again.)
I guess I just wish that there wasn’t any war.
I guess I have to keep fighting anyway.
Dustin the Wanderer
He almost crosses his own name out, but if Eddie’s out there watching, he already knows what Dustin wrote.
And if he isn’t, the letter’s not really for him, anyway. It’s about him. It’s for remembrance, and for answers.
It’s about not leaving anyone behind.