Chapter Text
December 31, 1983
Dear diary, here we go again.
The tradition is apparently still alive. I am once again sitting here at the end of the year writing down everything that happened and trying to determine whether I have improved as a person in any meaningful way.
I have not. There were other developments this year, though. More interesting ones, technically. More horrifying ones, definitely.
I started 1983 assuming Hawkins would remain as painfully normal and painfully forgettable as always. Sometime around the end of August, I distinctly remember saying, I don’t think anything else is going to happen this year.
Which was, in retrospect, a stupid thing to say out loud. I tempted fate, opened my giant mouth, and threw my boring little year directly into the trash.
If I thought Sam was getting too deep into fantasy land with his nerd friends before, it turns out he somehow dragged me—and basically the whole town—into it too. Because I am fairly certain no other girl my age spends her afternoons wondering whether there is an entirely different world underneath this one and whether hell might actually be the less disturbing option.
Sam told me everything from the beginning. Well, no. That’s not true. I forced him to tell me everything from the beginning.
Will Byers disappeared, Hawkins collectively lost its mind, and Sam started acting suspicious enough that I briefly considered reporting him to the authorities myself.
He skipped school on a Wednesday—lasagna Wednesday, which Mom never misses—claiming he was “playing at Mike’s house,” which was insulting because if you are going to lie, at least lie creatively.
My first theory was that he and his little friends were hiding Will somewhere. Reasonable conclusion, in my opinion.
So I called the Wheelers’ house, confirmed Sam was nowhere near Mike’s, tuned into the boys’ walkie-talkie channel, and discovered words like Eleven and Upside Down, which are not words you particularly enjoy hearing when you think your brother is simply being annoying.
By the time Sam came home on his bike, I was already sitting on the roof with every cassette he owned lined up beside me like hostages. Maybe that was a little excessive. But in my defense, he had done worse things.
He told me everything—or at least everything he knew. I did not believe him. Not even slightly. It sounded ridiculous, completely insane, and Sam is not exactly a convincing storyteller, which is why he is never the Dungeon Master when they play D&D. Sorry, Sam. It’s true. I regret laughing now.
Mom was worried, obviously. Joyce Byers was on television talking about lights flickering and hearing Will’s voice through telephones, and Hawkins did what Hawkins always does when confronted with genuine distress: smiled politely and pretended none of it was happening.
I watched. A lot. Because something about all of it felt off, and whenever something feels off it sits in my brain like a splinter until I cannot think about anything else.
Then they found Will’s body, everybody spiraled, and we all went to a funeral that felt wrong in a way I could not explain yet. Now I can.
Somewhere in the middle of that collective disaster, I started running into Jonathan Byers more often. I knew him enough to know he had good music taste and the facial expression of a permanently exhausted raccoon. That was about it. Nancy Wheeler also started acting weird around then. Yes, Nancy Wheeler. She got quieter. Stopped answering every question in class like she was legally obligated to. Started looking like she had not slept in approximately seven years.
Eventually Jonathan and Nancy became impossible to avoid, because the two of them were suddenly roaming Hawkins like sleep-deprived amateur detectives with unresolved issues.
The first time the three of us really talked was in the photography room at school. That was where I saw it. The shape behind Barb Holland in the photograph. The blurry figure that made every hair on my arms stand up before my brain had time to catch up. That was basically the point where everything spilled out.
I told them what I had overheard from Sam and the boys—about Eleven, about the place underneath Hawkins, about the upside-down version of everything. They told me about a portal in the roots of a tree.
Which still sounds insane even now that I know it was real. Somewhere around there, I started bringing the bow with me. Not because I thought I was going to become some kind of heroic forest warrior. Please. I took it because it made sense. Distance matters. Having one more option matters. And in that weird improvised little group, everyone contributed whatever they happened to be good at. That was mine.
Sam and the boys had their own separate operation by then—bike routes, code words, half-whispered plans, and secrets so badly hidden they might as well have written them on poster board. I made sure Sam came home. I checked the time. I invented excuses for Mom. I pretended not to hear conversations that started with ‘don’t tell my sister’.
Sam pretended not to notice that I knew absolutely everything. Honestly, it worked better that way. Then there was Eleven. I did not know her as a person then. I knew her as proof. As the thing that confirms you are not exaggerating, not imagining things, not participating in some town-wide nervous breakdown. Knowing she existed did not make me feel relieved. It made me feel responsible, which, if I am being honest, was somehow worse. That is not Eleven’s fault.
There was also Harrington, who entered the story at the very end. Literally at the end of the insanity. Nancy had been emotionally disappearing for weeks, and then suddenly there was Steve Harrington—bleeding, confused, and holding a bat like that was a completely normal Saturday night activity.
I remember thinking he did not fit the image Hawkins had built of him. That happens a lot here. People start believing their own rumors.
In the end, Will came back. That should be the perfect ending, right? Lost boy returns home. Tears. Hugs. Collective relief. Everybody in town breathing for the first time in weeks. And yes, technically all of that happened. Will was alive, Will was home. That was what everybody kept repeating. I repeated it too, so many times it almost started sounding true ‘Will was back, end of story’.
Except it never actually felt like an ending. The way the Byers’ house somehow felt smaller, the way Sam stopped joking for a few days like he had burned through his entire supply.Mostly it was the way everyone started treating the whole thing like a box that needed to be shut quickly and shoved somewhere nobody would look too hard.
I had no proof of anything. Just that deeply irritating feeling you get after cleaning your room and making everything look neat while knowing full well you shoved every unresolved problem into the closet.
Maybe it was paranoia. Maybe after that many weeks of tension the human body forgets how to relax without feeling irresponsible.
Either way, once you notice something faint in the next room, you keep listening. So I went back to doing what I always do: functioning. Schedule, responsibilities. Making sure Sam ate something, did his homework, and returned home with all limbs intact.
The bow went back where it belonged—cleaned, stored away, not because I thought I would never need it again, but because Hawkins is not an action movie and casually walking around armed tends to generate questions.
Questions are inconvenient. Sam started spending time with the boys again. He was Sam again. Or close enough to fool most people. I pretended not to watch him so carefully. I pretended a lot of things, actually. It is a useful skill.
Tonight is New Year’s Eve. There are fireworks going off somewhere in town. We cannot see them from here, but we can hear them. Mom says tomorrow everything will be different. Sam says tomorrow is just Monday with a collective hangover. I do not say anything. I do not know if next year will be better. I do not know if it will be worse either. I just know I look at things differently now.
If something breaks again, I want to be ready. That’s all for today.
Happy New Year.
Fun fact: this year I wrote twelve songs.
— Maggie B.