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It was five days since Mike’s best friend had gone missing.
Five days of searching. Five days of hoping he’d return, hoping he’d be fine. Five days of please find him El, please find him.
Five days of not crying.
Five days marked the time he’d spent without meaning, without purpose, without Will.
There’d been a body, there’d been a body, there’d been a body and still, still Mike had hoped and now he was faced with the alternative to denial because this way he could see Will again, right?
He was twelve, and he was learning how it felt to want to die.
Dustin was screaming at him, ‘I don’t need my baby teeth anyway’, but Mike’s ears were rushing with his heart going a million miles per hour and he couldn’t hear.
If he was going to die, he may as well do it to save Dustin. Nobody would have to know he’d wanted to. Nobody would have to know he would’ve done it for ten dollars, done it for nothing, that maybe late at night he’d wondered too many times what it felt like to hit the quarry water.
This was the perfect opportunity.
Mike’s hands shook as he stepped to the crumbling edge of the quarry.
He couldn’t hear what Dustin was screaming, he couldn’t hear what Troy was saying, he couldn’t hear anything over his heart.
His heart that maybe, hopefully, could join Will again, his heart that would be quiet soon.
He wondered if Heaven was real. If it was, Will would be there, he was certain, because Will was perfect. Mike only hoped he would go there too.
If he didn’t, that was okay. He knew kids like him didn’t, he’d heard his father talk about it enough times. If he didn’t, then it would hurt, not seeing Will again. But that way he’d know he wasn’t meant to be with Will anyway.
His mind wandered over to Lucas, to Dustin, hell, even to Nancy and his mother. He wondered if they’d miss him. He knew with a certainty in his bones that for the first time in his life, they’d have to be nice to him, if he was dead.
Mike hoped they wouldn’t miss him. He didn’t want to make them as sad as Will had made him by dying.
He wondered if he’d feel the impact. It didn’t seem so much of a problem, now, as it had late at night.
Mike stepped forward. It was one little step, but he saw Dustin’s face crumple out of the corner of his eye, held back by Troy and his knife. He knew Dustin had screamed even though he couldn’t hear, and felt gravity take him.
For a moment, it felt like flying, and he braced himself.
When he felt the air still, he let out a breath.
Was this it? Had he died?
Sounds came rushing back, then. He opened his eyes and he was floating, barely a few feet from the ledge.
No, no, no, this wasn’t supposed to happen.
He wasn’t dead.
He wasn’t dead, because El had saved him.
Disappointment slammed down on him, forcing his eyes back closed. Even as he stepped back onto land. Even as he forced himself to look relieved, acted like he’d been forced to jump, even as he hated El for it.
Mike watched numbly as Eleven broke Troy’s arm. He didn’t know she could do that. He didn’t know she could catch him, why she would catch him.
He didn’t know why he had wanted to fall.
He didn’t know what was wrong with him.
Once Troy’d run away, he hugged El. Hugged her properly, like he meant it, trying to distract himself from the fact that he’d also meant to jump off the quarry. He had jumped off the quarry. And he’d failed.
Dustin joined the hug, and Mike could almost believe it was okay that he’d failed.
He nearly convinced himself he was wrong to have jumped. Because wanting to die wasn’t normal. It wasn’t something twelve year olds were supposed to want.
But he still returned, that night. He still returned to the quarry. He’d written a small note and left it on his bed, but it wasn’t anything special. It explained where he’d gone. The only person he’d wanted to write to was Will, and Will was dead.
It wasn’t under any heroic circumstances, this time. He wished it was, because this way he knew everyone would blame themselves.
This time, there was no Troy, no Dustin at stake. It was just him and his thoughts, at the edge of the quarry.
He wondered what he’d say when he saw Will again.
As Mike’s foot left the cliff, it felt like flying.
Three days later they held a funeral. Not for Will, this time.
Mike watched them as they lowered his body into the ground, and he cried. He’d thought it’d be okay if he got to see Will again. But by dying, he’d found out Will was still alive.
And there was nothing he could do when Joyce found him in the Upside-Down, and there was nothing he could do when Will sat up in his hospital bed, surrounded by his friend’s tear-streaked faces, and asked quietly, ‘Where’s Mike?’
And Mike had been right there, but Will couldn’t see him. Mike hugged Will so tight, but he couldn’t feel it, and he couldn’t hear it when Mike whispered, ‘I’m sorry.’
And there was nothing he could do except watch as Will mourned him the same way Mike had mourned Will.