ONE MONTH LATER

I.

A lie is only a story. And sometimes stories are safer. But what would I know? I'm just a girl who fucked around with fire and ended up burned.

At least that's as much as I tell Mr. Ache.

I try not to stretch the truth too far, and he tries not to look too analytical as he scratches notes in his padfolio.

I found his email address, the one Mrs. Larrabee offered me, buried at the bottom of my backpack, excavated alongside the debris of other forgotten things.

I decidedly don't hate talking with him—Mr. Ache—or the meticulous cleanliness of his office, the tick of his wall clock, the crisp pleat of his pants. Don't hate the way he hums comprehension as he listens or tries to pry further into the deepest dead-ends of my thoughts and feelings toward my father. Because I promised myself I'd try and Ache promised me he could help.

"What's that you've brought this time?"

My composition book, the one from Mrs. Larrabee's class, sits patiently in my lap. She told us to keep them this last day, encouraged us to continue writing through the summer.

I almost dumped it in the trash by her door, but I couldn't find it within myself to.

"It's private," I say, to which he arcs a brow. "I don't think I want to show you."

"You don't have to show me anything. I'd just like to know what it is. What it means to you."

My thumb grazes the warped and worn corners of the pages. That's all it really is—bound paper, a stupid assignment, a participation grade. But it helped when nothing else did. When I really chose to try. "It's a story, I guess."

He hums. Scratches that down. "Fiction? Non-fiction?"

"Does it matter?"

I manage to earn myself a chuckle from Mr. Ache. "No," he agrees, "I suppose it doesn't. Some of the best memoirs feel stranger than fiction. Some of the best novels feel painstakingly real. And what is true to you might not be to someone else."

"Exactly," I say, and we share a smile.

II.

"You're late."

"My bad."

I plop down on our bench—the one at Grant Park—in the space Nathan and Danny left open for me. Nathan passes me his smoldering cigarette, and I inhale, long and deep.

They've talked, I know now. To what extent, I don't. But it doesn't matter. It's their truth, not mine, and anyway, sometimes it's better not to know.

Nathan and I have never been good at pretending with each other. But, for Danny's sake, we try. Sitting with our backs to Lake Michigan, watching the sun sink behind the city, we play make-believe like we are perfectly normal teenagers with perfectly normal lives playing our perfectly normal favorite game—drafting unbeknownst strangers for our hypothetical zombie apocalypse teams.

"Your team," Nathan says, eyes narrowed on a tourist trying to orient himself and his map.

"Fine," Danny says, "But you get her," and gestures to an elderly woman feeding breadcrumbs to birds.

"Oh, fuck no. She's Baby's team. No doubt," he says, and tosses me a scheming smile.

"What happens if the world ends while I'm gone?" I ask.

"We'll come find you," says Nathan confidently.

"How?"

"Whaddya mean, 'How?' Danny's got a great navigator," he jerks his chin to the man with the map, struggling to find which direction he's already facing.

Even Danny chuckles. Asks, "What time are you leaving tomorrow?"

I shrug. "Whenever we can get the kid in the car."

He nods slowly, and we begin to slip away from playing pretend. "Let me know… y'know, if they say anything."

Nathan turns to me, eyes earnest in that me, too look of his.

Here's the thing about Danny Reis: As much as he wants to distance himself from everything that has happened to him, wants to be skeptical of anything that could potentially push him outside of his own ideal, his curiosity gets the best of him sometimes. And that's the part of him that's still six-years-old. Always will be.

"I doubt they will," I say instead of sure.

After everything, I needed space to figure things out. To decide if I really believed all my brother had laid out before me. And while the jury's still out, he's been doing a good job of letting me have it.

"It's a long drive," Danny says simply, knowing what I mean anyway. Because if shit ever really hit the fan, we three already know the only "team" we're part of is with each other.

I nod shortly and we leave it at that. Make the most of the evening until it is time for us to go. Until Danny squeezes my shoulders and tells me to take care like he means it. Until Nathan hugs me goodbye, and although it won't be for long, the volumes and volumes we have written between ourselves over the past couple months weigh down on us still, tighten the air in our chests.

"See ya, Baby Spice," he says.

"In another life," I say, and mock his salute if only to make us laugh.

Because this is what it means to get by. To distance ourselves from the past, pretend we're normal friends who do normal things until we actually are. Not for the sake of forgetting, but for the sake of knowing again what it is to feel fully present in our own lives.

Someday, I know, we won't have to work at it so hard.

III.

Two weeks. That's what I get. What we agreed on—Ted and Karen and me. One in August, sleeping on Ted's pullout couch, and one right after school gets out, in my own bed at home.

Home. I've been calling it that my whole life, the house I shared with my mother at the end of Maple Street. Only it looms like a stranger over me now as I stand in its humble driveway.

But a house is still a home until a new one is built, and my nine-year-old self forever belongs in Hawkins.

Ted helps with my bag and Karen greets Charlie and Jane and Michael me, in that order. Her arms are stiff around my shoulders and her blouse reeks of menthol masked by Chanel No.5, a gift from some faceless boyfriend two or three Christmases ago.

My parents have decided to set aside their differences through the next hour or two for the sake of soaking up as much time as they can get with their granddaughter. We'd all promised each other a civilized lunch, which turns out to mean damn near as much silence as the car ride down.

After I've resorted to shuffling diced carrots around my plate, Ted clears his throat. "How's the new school, Holly?"

"Fine."

"Still running track?"

"Coach wants me on the basketball team in the fall," I divert as a noncommittal matter-of-fact, but my father runs with it like a promise.

He smiles his rare Proud Dad smile, the one that twinkles behind his eyes. I'd forgotten what it looks like. "That's my girl! A real sport."

"Is track not a real sport?" Michael murmurs almost to himself. Almost.

Ted's expression flashes bitter.

The legs of Jane's chair scrape back against the hardwood.

"More wine?" she reaches for Karen's near-empty glass.

"Thank you, Jane."

Jane smiles kindly and disappears into the kitchen.

"How's your boyfriend taking this whole thing?" Asks Ted, attention back to me.

"Ryan's fine. We're still together."

I haven't seen him for a month. Not since he and Summer had to leave the day after my conversation with Michael.

There is still a lot he doesn't know. A lot I don't how the hell I'll ever tell him. But he is patient in a way I know I'll never be, and still calls regularly, and made plans for us to celebrate his graduation tonight. Along with plans for the rest of the week I'm here.

"Well, not the whole week," he had told me. "Summer threatened to sue for joint custody."

"Good. Good kid." Ted nods in agreement with himself. "Good family."

Karen hums her concurrence if only to fill the silence, to make an effort.

"Yes," I say to my father, but can't help a sidelong glance Michael's way. "Big family, too."

"You know, Richard Frazier's company tore down that old house on Pine Street," says Ted, to everyone and no one in particular. "It'll be interesting to see what they do with the land."

"They remodeled Marcia Dolgan's last fall," Karen says with a smile to me and Michael. And to Jane, too, as she returns from the kitchen and hands Karen a fresh glass. A smile that says, See? I know my lines. I can play nice.

"Marcia… Marcia…" Ted racks his brain. "Which one is that?"

"You know Marcia, Ted."

"Marcia Dolgan!" Jane epiphanies, setting herself back down at the table. "She has—what?—seven dogs or something. We used to get noise complaints at the station all the time."

Karen absolutely beams like this is all going swimmingly for her now.

The oven dings. Karen flies from her seat. "That'd be the cookies. Who wants one?"

"Me!" exclaims Charlie, little limbs flailing.

"Actually," Michael checks his watch, "we have to be at Will's."

Ted checks his own time, tosses down his napkin, and prepares to excuse himself, too, at a moment's notice.

"Already?" asks Karen, her expression impassible.

"You sure you don't mind watching Charlie?"

"Of course not," she smiles her best grandmotherly smile at the toddler.

Michael stands and Jane does, too. Karen retreats to attend the oven.

"You should come," Jane says to me, her hand on my arm.

I am about to say no, or why the hell would I want to do that? Until I see the openness on my brother's face, the bare honesty, and recall the slight lith hope in Danny's voice when he said, It's a long drive. I am about to say no until I find myself nodding my head yes.

IV.

What once was Hawkins Lab towers at the end of a long and winding road. The guard manning the gate waves us through without question.

This, decidedly, is not the Byers'.

I lean forward in my seat. "Uh, I thought we were meeting Will...",

"We are meeting Will," Michael says simply.

But before I can retort, or scrunch my face, or decide how to feel, I see him there—Will—standing and talking in the parking lot with Chief Hopper and another older man I do not know.

Michael parks and jumps out to greet the men enthusiastically.

"What are we doing here?" I ask Jane. We both stare up at the building, all steel and concrete and anything but welcoming. It has been so long-abandoned, the kids of Hawkins High believe it to be haunted. "Hasn't this place been vacant for, like, years?"

"It's a surprise for everyone," she tells me, unbuckling. I follow her lead out.

The men all smile and greet Jane warmly, but eye me as I follow with varying levels of suspicion.

I overhear Will in a low voice to Michael, "She knows?"

"She figured it out."

"She is a Wheeler," Hopper mumbles, stomps out his cigarette.

"I can hear you," I tell them.

The Chief claps me on the shoulder, introduces me to Dr. Owens before my brother has the chance.

Owens' grip is firm as he shakes my hand. "I help out your brother and his partners."

It takes damn near everything in me to not roll my eyes at partners, like the same vein Michael spoke of Kali in.

"But mostly," he continues, "I help patients like Mr. Byers."

Will smiles sheepishly, though he is still attached to an oxygen tank. How much is he really helping? Or is what Will has one of those things that gets way worse before it can get any better?

"Should we take a look?" Michael adds, nodding toward the building.

"Lead the way," smiles Dr. Owens.

On the way to the door, Jane tries her best to bring me up to speed—something abought Michael having bought the place to continue his research and utilize some of the resources the old lab left behind. The whole building is being renovated because of it, and judging by the wonder in the crowd's eyes, the awe in the voices of Michael, Hopper, Will, Jane, and Owens, it looks like a totally different place.

If so, I wouldn't know. The laminate flooring seems shiny enough and everything reeks of fresh paint, but the hanging curtains of plastic marking off areas make it hard to get a good look at anything.

Still, Jane and the men are enraptured by it. Jane is smiling so wide tears well in her eyes and her father wraps an arm around her, murmurs something into her hair. Owens and Will begin to stray further ahead of the rest of us, anxious to see what else has been done.

Meanwhile, Michael guides us confidently through the corridors, posture tall, smile beaming, like the proud architect of his world.

This whole thing is so much bigger than I can ever know it to be. Danny warned me and Michael did, too. And it is obvious this part of it is a huge step for them. One that is out of my reach.

Yet, I find myself smiling along with them.

While the men continue to fawn over every last new detail of the medical wing, Jane leans over and whispers to me, "Can I show you something?" but in a way that feels important. A way that feels like I don't have much of a choice.

I follow her down a few halls and around a few corners and up a flight of stairs, through a plastic curtain and into a wing that hasn't yet been touched, let alone remodeled. It sits stagnant, a museum of what this place once was, as cold and concrete as the outside of the building. The kind of place kids could be convinced was haunted.

There is a door with a rainbow painted on the frame. She twists the knob and leads me inside. "This is where they kept us when we were young. While our powers were still developing. Before they could really start testing on us."

Powers. Such a strange word to hear her say, but isn't that what they are? What else could explain what Charlie can do? Powers.

I can't dwell on it, because once inside the room, it commands my full attention. It is a playroom with steel tables and concrete walls. Tile floors and few toys.

And it hits me dreadfully that this is where Charlie would be.

"They used to put me in here with Kali," Jane's voice is soft, right here yet so far away.

I try to picture with her—Kali in here, as a child. Wide-eyed, helpless, and trapped. But I can't.

In my mind, she always stares directly into my soul, dark eyes ablaze, smirk cunning and humorless.

I try and picture Jane in here, too. A test. A number. A human experiment. It's a little too much for me.

I distract myself from the idea with the drawing of crayon miraculously still taped to the wall. Something like Charlie would scribble. A portrait of a person that is merely a circle for a head with hair and a smile, two stick arms and two stick legs coming straight out from it. Underneath is a scrawl that looks something like 102.

"It's Danny's."

This is what Nathan meant when he said Danny was from Hawkins. His life before the Reis'. This is what Danny meant when he said he got out too young to feel a connection with the other numbers. It all comes back to this lab.

"He was the last," Jane nods. "But I don't think he was in here long. He developed very early. Like Charlie has been."

Right. More like Charlie, he had said. Not Jane. "Is that how he's different from you?"

Jane leans back against the steel table, watches me as I take in the room around us. She can't bring herself to face quite so many details. "My mother signed up to be part of some psychological experiment here in the '60s. They wanted to see if they could expand the boundaries of the human mind or something like that. At the time, that's mostly all this lab was. They brought in their subjects and tested them with LSD, electroshock, you name it. Thing is, people didn't understand genetics then nearly as much as they do now. They didn't realize expanding the mind meant mutating something in the genetic code. And Mama didn't realize she was pregnant. So, not only did it alter something in her—gave her a sixth sense almost—but it altered something in me, too. Same with the rest of my generation, the ones that come from those initial experiments. Only with us—"

"You have it stronger," I say, recalling Danny's words.

"Much stronger."

"You can find people?" Like Danny mentioned she found him.

"I can find people," she smiles. "I can do this…"

A discarded letter block on the floor lifts into the air, as if attached to an invisible string, and floats over into Jane's outstretched hand.

She sets it down on the table like it's nothing. Like she hasn't just defied every law of gravity.

Before I can ask her to show me again, she breezes on. "But Charlie, she's even stronger. She doesn't have to concentrate like I do. She just does. And right now all she's figured out is the lights, but what happens if there's more she can do and can't control?"

"And Danny's the same. That's why you want his help."

She shakes her head. "He's the same in the way that he's in the next generation, yes. His powers are even stronger, developed earlier. Like I said, he doesn't have to try, he just does. But in a way, it's worse in him. More intense. He was bred, not born. Designed is the word they used. They wanted to see if when the genetics of people with two different abilities combined, they would create a certain outcome. If they could manipulate which powers Danny would get. I mean, can you imagine living with that?"

"That's…" I say, because there is no other way to put it, "fucked."

God knows I certainly wasn't made out love, either, but to no way this extent. To no way so medical or methodical. And, besides, I'd never been forced to feel that lack. My siblings, in their own way, loved me until they left. My parents loved me until Summer and Ryan came along and they didn't have to anymore. Even when I had to leave, Nathan hardly ever held a doubt for me during even my most batshit moments.

But Danny…

Who, in his whole life, has ever loved Daniel Reis? Fully and honestly. If he cannot even open up to his own brother, who has he had to share even the most shadowed part of himself with and be certain that he will be believed unconditionally? Who but him alone?

"You don't want anything else from me," he explained to me the night of the show, the night he sort of let me in. Gave me a glimpse inside. I thought I understood then. Now, the memory stings.

With a life like that, I wouldn't trust a single soul, either.

Knowing it now makes me feel dirty. This is not my secret to bear.

"That's why we want to help him, too," continues Jane. "That's part of what Mike's working on. He's trying to pinpoint the gene, so he can stop it from being passed down if one of us doesn't want to. Or cure those of us who want to be cured, but it's a choice. We're giving everyone a choice."

It makes me think of those names up on that board, all those tests listed out after each one. Pending after Danny's, like he still might decide to change his mind.

Maybe Michael really is simply searching for the truth.

"And I know Kali comes off strong," says Jane. "I've already told her to lay off off Danny, but both of his biological parents had the gene. He could give Mike a lot of information, and Kali's hung up on that."

Kali seems to be hung up on a lot of things. But who am I to say I've never taken drastic measures to prove something important, to protect my own cause?

"We never should've lied to you, Holly, but there are things about what happened in this place that aren't safe—"

There's that word again. God, I fucking hate it. "That's what I don't get. This lab has been shut down for years…"

Jane nods. "That's what they're so upset about."

They, again. A looming entity in its own right. The one that truly haunts the place. Just how Danny spoke of them, the ones to wage a war against. How Michael spoke of them, the ones who created the chaos worth fighting for.

"But why? What really happened to this place?"

Jane smirks with nostalgia. "Nancy Wheeler happened. Jonathan Byers, too."

I scoff. Nancy?

"Seriously, Hols. They're the ones that came up with the whole story about a gas leak."

Another piece slides into place, and the picture takes the shape of this lab. Again, it all comes back to here. All of it. "The one that killed Barbara Holland."

Jane nods.

"So what was it really, then?"

She hesitates. Considers her next words. Her face flashes, testing out a few different expressions.

I cross my arms. "Don't lie to me."

"I won't. I don't want to. It's just hard to explain…"

"Is it what killed Bob Newby? And Connie Frazier?"

Her eyebrows scrunch together, pained. "Bob, yes. And what made Will sick. And Frazier…" she sighs deep and wide.

They are hard words for her to get out. I can sense she is on the verge of tears, but I can't bring myself to stop her. I am so, so close suddenly it doesn't matter that it's none of my business. I have come so far to make it here. I need to know.

"It was me. I opened something… This gate. And it let so much darkness in."

The gate. The one Michael told me about, which takes tons and tons of energy to open. Lets things pass between two different dimensions.

But what Jane is saying can't be true. The Jane Wheeler I know is lovely and collected and practiced. Sure, she can find people. She can make a block float across a room. But the Jane Wheeler I know doesn't open a direct door to hell with only her mind.

Not unless, maybe, she was under the duress of this prison of a place. In which case, she shouldn't have to walk her whole life carrying this guilt inside her, but clearly, she does. She does.

The part of her that is still twelve-years-old will forever be stuck here.

"I closed it, eventually, but it was too late for a lot of people."

"Too late for Will?" Had our monster crawled in and made him sick somehow? The kind that never gets better?

She shakes her head vehemently. "I hope not. He's been working with Owens and Mike, but even they don't know as much as they'd like. He spent a long time lost in the Upside Down—the other world. Who knows what could've happened?"

"What about you? Is it too late to save yourself?"

She shrugs, dejected. "I think the bad men would be watching us either way. And I doubt it's about the gate as much as Mike thinks it is. They're more upset that, after everything, all their numbers got away. I don't think they ever fully got what they were looking for from us, and now that Mike and Kali are learning more and more..." she trails off, loses herself in her own thought. "It feels like living in a Cold War. We've been learning to keep out of each other's way, as long as everyone keeps quiet."

"But if the gate had never been opened," I say, "if Barbara Holland never died, then all of you would still be trapped here."

She never would have met Michael, had Charlie, known me. She never would have taught me to put on makeup, taken me shopping on the weekends, convinced me to try out for track. She never would have been there babysitting me with Michael on Friday nights, or letting me practice braids on her curls, or watching chick-flicks with me no one else could seem to stomach. And I never would have known what it means to have a sister.

If the gate had never opened, if Barbara Holland never died, who would we be?

"Maybe," considers Jane. "Or maybe we would've all found our own ways out, anyway. Kali did."

"She did?" I'm not surprised. If anyone could, it'd be her.

"She's been seeking some sort of revenge ever since."

The kill list. Suddenly, it makes sense. The file wasn't random, it was to keep track of those who are no longer a threat.

Connie Frazier was one of them. My head draws back in surprise. It is another thing to file away and process later, retrace my steps and figure out how the fuck I missed that. For what it could mean for Ryan's general safety. But for now, we're on Kali, and I am all for taking the chances I can get.

"And how, exactly, is she doing that?" I ask, trying to keep my voice level.

"Now? It's all this," she says simply, skimming over Kali's likely murderous past, gesturing widely, not to the room but to encompass the entire building. "It's Newby."

When it's all put in perspective like this, it's clever enough to make me smirk. Even though my own stupidity.

Yes, Michael is testing on people. Yes, his house, his company, and God knows what else are all in Bob Newby's name. Because yes, this was their prison, Jane and Kali and however many others. Only now, they are overtaking it. Making it something better, something light, something they believe in.

None of it was ever meant for hiding in plain sight. It is all a message to them, however close they may be, that there is no use in dwelling in the past. Jane and Kali, Danny and Charlie, and any others like them cannot be touched anymore. They are much more powerful than any dream or design, and they will always be one step ahead. Always.

V.

I could say I'm a big believer in happy endings, but that would be a lie.

However, there are, I admit, certain places where life pauses. Where one composition book overflows into the next, were lungs and legs overtake thought mid-sprint, where the match still glows orange embers seconds after the flame flickers out. And sometimes, these places are enough.

We make our way back through the halls, Jane and me, the oldest we have ever felt. When we find the group again, Nancy's addition takes me by surprise.

She's joined by both Jonathan, snapping photos of the remodel, and Kali, a gleam of awe in her critical eyes.

Jonathan tells my brother that Bob would be proud. Everyone agrees, continues to fawn over how different everything looks.

And Nancy looks different, too. She wears her hair slicked back in a low knot and her lips painted brick red. Her heels clack intelligently against the new flooring and her stomach is halfway swollen.

No one told me she'd be here, not that I should've suspected anything different.

And judging by the look on her face when she sees me, no one told her about me, either.

"Holly," she says before she can attempt to arrange herself.

"Hi."

She steals a skeptical glance at Michael, who in turn watches his wife.

"Isn't it nice?" asks Jane, deflecting like we Wheelers do, looking up and around, easing the settling tension.

"Very impressive," says Kali. She wills a smile at me, and I return the favor.

Maybe someday, after we find much, much more stable common ground, it will feel natural.

The truth, I am sure, we will all get to later. But sometimes the truth is hard to swallow. Sometimes, for the moment, this feels safer.

Will mentions he'd love to see what they've done with the third floor and Owens concurs. Michael motions for them to lead the way.

"It's good to see you, Holly," Nancy assures, falling into stride beside me. Her eyes are wide and clear and honest, the same color as mine.

"You, too."

"Do you remember," Michael beings, matching our pace, and his face tries very hard not to look concerned, "the last time we were all together?"

Nancy frowns, and for a moment she looks just like our mother. I can tell she can't remember, and I can tell not even Michael knows his own answer, and maybe it's supposed to sting, but maybe it doesn't matter as much as it does that we are all here now, included and back in Hawkins.

And for a minute, life pauses.

"You both came home for Christmas my freshman year," I say, and they both grin.

"Oh, yeah! Didn't Dad show up for that, too?" asks Mike.

"Only because Chris was there," I say. It was his first Christmas that year, my nephew.

"And Mom thew a fit because Baby Holly forgot to thaw the ham," Nancy says, and we lock eyes, begin laughing about it together.

Michael tosses an arm across my shoulders and squeezes tight and I can feel it then; all the intentions he's had to protect me, whether it be from bad men or our own family, regardless of what is right or wrong or honest. All these years, my big brother. Nancy reaches up to rumple his hair and he swats her away.

If there is one thing I feel I can be sure of in this moment, it is this:

We three, no matter time or distance or secrets, are Wheelers.

We do not have to be a family burning to the ground.

We are Wheelers, and we can resurrect ourselves in stone.

A/N: I feel like I don't know what to say other than thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you! I feel like I've been working on this story forever. For a long time, seventeen-year-old Holly felt like an imaginary friend to me, and one I wasn't sure anyone else would ever meet because I genuinely didn't think anyone would be interested in the concept. My earliest Google doc draft for this story dates back to March of 2018 and, my God, has so much changed since then. Brilliant Lies is one of the longest, most difficult things I have ever written, but it has been by far the most rewarding process for me, one that pains me to say goodbye to. For that, I cannot thank you enough, because if it weren't for all of you I am certain this never would have been finished and Holly, Nathan, Ryan, and Summer would all still be just imaginary friends to me.

This is the part where I'm supposed to plug my new, upcoming fic, but to be honest, I'm back in that same boat of not being positive it'll ever see the light of day for no reason other than my own crippling self-doubt. But who knows? Winter break is coming up so I might just bang out something short. Stay tuned, friends.

ishiptoast: I'm so sad, too! Thank you so much for being so supportive throughout this whole journey. I'm so glad you've enjoyed the story and Holly as a character. It means the world to me.

phieillydinyia: Yes, Mike has finally come clean a bit! As for the passport thing, I like to think he'll have one made for her haha. I really hope you enjoyed this ending! Thank you so, so much for always supporting my stories.

TorontoBatFan: So glad you enjoyed the last chapter! Hopefully, this one answers some of your questions. Thank you so much for all of your support throughout this story.

JayneFawn: I'm excited, too! And also very nervous. I hope you liked it! Thank you so much for all the support through this story.

xx starsandwristrockets