sincerelyjanies

[sincerelyjanies]

“In some families, ‘please’ is described as the magic word. In our house it was ‘sorry’.”

before.

I

Janie is eying Jo’s giddiness. It’s not like Janie has never seen her best friend giddy, it’s not even like Jo’s a miserable person who never feels joy. It’s just that there’s something to this emotion that sends a signal of something changing to Janie. Jo is a quiet girl, like her.

The look on her face… it’s like all her dreams have just come true. And if Janie didn’t know any better, she’d say it mirrors the face she had gotten when Nate admitted he liked her back. It was that feeling you could only get from love: that feeling like a balloon that made it feel like your heart, your happiness, had expanded beyond you.

When Janie asks, Jolene goes a red that contrasts with her orange hair as she mumbles something into her turkey and swiss, brushing it off as nothing.

after

II

Janie is laying in bed, curled into a ball. Loud, angry sounding music is blasting from a stereo that she hadn’t touched in years. Long after sleepover dance parties and fake concerts between her and Jo had ended, but she’d popped in an old death rock CD and if her mother were home, she knew that the stereo would be taken away and a lecture would be given.

Janie doesn’t hear the music. She doesn’t feel the angry beat of the drums and the shouting that seem to rock everything on her shelves. She is numb, lying in a bed two weeks after Jo’s funeral.

Her mother had washed the sheets and remade the bed yesterday. This had made her so angry, as if her mother had taken another piece of Jo that Janie could never get back.

She knows early that she heard Nate outside the window, somehow. The music was loud and she was enough her comforter, despite that fact that May had bleed into mid June, but she could hear the window rattle distantly.

Nowadays, Nate feels like a distant dream, but sometimes he’s right in front of her, touching her cheek. She just feels so alone and she keeps calling Jolene’s cell, hoping against hope it’s a joke. Jo will be leaving for Chicago. She was going to be an engineer, and she’s going to answer and tell Janie about her dorm and classes and her roommate, Carrie.

But Jo’s phone was missing. Missing, just like Jo had been. Like the matching charm bracelet she had with Janie. The one with the Ravenclaw charm and the matching sea horse and carousel horse.

Janie’s wrist still has the charm bracelet, and she presses it tight to her chest, and a piece of her thinks about how she didn’t give Jo the last charm and how they were supposed to shop for dorm room things in Terre Haute in July to shop for shower curtains and comforters, and all she can do is cry about that.

before

III

Caitlyn Gallagher is skateboarding away, down the long hill in the back of the school that leads to Sweet Pea Drive, and Jo is watching her leave, a big stupid grin is plastered on her face. Her back is to Janie as the small girl comes up to her, her notebook opened to trig equations. “I hate Mr. Brenner,” she whines, looking at her notebook with red cheeks and a pout on her lips.

They’re in their usual spot, waiting for Nate, his siblings, and Henry. To Janie, nothings changed. Everything is as it always was. She doesn’t see that Jo’s in love and is currently watching as Caitlyn skates into nothing more than a memory.

Jo hums and turns to her friend when the red head is gone. “We can study later, if you want to.” Janie looks up finally, beaming and hugs her friend.

“Jolene Grace Olsen, you’re the love of my life.”

It’s a would-be-ill-timed statement, because behind her stood Nate and a bunch of middle schoolers, one including Clara Gallagher who is holding a skateboard of her own, blowing a massive bubble with her chewing gum. Soon, she too follows suit of Caitlyn and skates down the hill, holding up her middle finger to one of her friends who shouts something at her.

Janie is kissing Nate’s lips softly and Jo sees, then turns to look back at the hill, thinking of Cait again, but no one knows or asks.

Janie links arms with her best friend and they begin to talk as always. She’s nervous about acceptance letters that should be coming in soon.

A normal girlfriend would be glued to her boyfriend, a different type of boyfriend would have felt annoyed by being a third wheel to a best friend, but the girls know Nate’s aware that he stumbled into a sisterhood that runs deep. Janie’s first choice is Jo, and Jo’s is Janie.

after

IV

He’s talking to her. They’re laying next to one another, but she can’t hear a word of what’s being said. She tries to listen, feels guilty that she can’t. She’s playing with her charm bracelet. It spins and spins, making noises. Charms clank and the noise is the give away that Janie truly isn’t here.

She’s staring at her charms, as if they are talking, giving clues as to what happened and why.

Elephant charm: the one Jo gave her for her tenth birthday. Clover charm: for her acceptance to William and Mary. There’s a charm that’s not from Jo, and it makes her mad. She pretends to be mad at Nate for it. It’s easier to place this upon him. He got her a charm and she shoved it eagerly on her charm bracelet. The one she shared with Jo.

It was their thing.

She’d taken it off one night and threw it against her wall. She thinks it landed in her hamper but pretended not to care.

The bracelet spins like a carousel, and her mind is blank. It’s empty and hollow, but deep down she just wants to call her best friend and tell her how she feels. They’d talk about this loss and go to the bowling alley for cheese fries and then go for a drive. She had made Jo a mixed CD  her trip to Chicago.

Jo’s car was too old for an aux cord. Janie didn’t even have her license yet. She was supposed to get it in the beginning of June. She’s going to live in Pennsylvania soon, so it’s practical.

It’s July now and a piece of her mind thinks she should get it before August.

She feels Nate tighten his grip around her waist, but she doesn’t register it. She thinks about Jo’s car. Earl, the clunky Toyota hatchback that could hardly start is probably still there in the driveway, waiting for someone who isn’t coming back. Just like Janie.

before

V

The three of them are at the Bowling Alley. Lucky Strike hasn’t been cool since eighth grace, but neither of them care. Lucky Strike has the best cheese friends and neither girl has ever wanted to party down by the reservoir - the cool thing to do.

Janie is sitting beside Nate, he has his arm draped across the back of her chair and Janie is talking fast, her whole body alight and animated as she talks about a book they’d recently read. To an outsider, it’s clear that Nate, despite being the boyfriend, is the duo’s third wheel, and Jo likes that he doesn’t feel threatened by it. Other boys would’ve told her to get lost, but Nate seems to understand that Jo got here first. She had dibs.

When Caitlyn comes in with Clara, who takes off to join her friends, Jo’s throat dries, but no one seems to notice that or the way she’s looking at the red head.

If Jo’s hair is orange, Caitlyn’s a deep shade of red, almost like an autumn leaf. Her face - her entire body, really, is covered in freckles that Caitlyn says she doesn’t hate, which is rare for a redhead.

Caitlyn is standing beside Tally Edwards, a girl in their class. The lesbian. The one who chopped off her hair and screamed. The girl Jo most envies. She’s the one people know, but not the only one who likes girls.

Caitlyn is a year younger, and she’s somewhat popular in the way sporty girls seem to be. She’s the captain of the girls field hockey team and plays ice hockey. She once told Jo that the track coach wanted her to tryout, but she hated the idea to run for sport. She loves running up by the old abandoned mill where the hills are so steep. She had introduced Jo there. Or, really, reintroduced Jo. She hadn’t been there since her and Janie were ten, when they believed it was haunted and tried to spend the night before Henry accidentally told.

She’s so pretty. It’s all Jo can think as Caitlyn steals some fries. She, Tally and Nate get their own table, their own fries, but Jo wishes they’d stay just as much as Janie wishes Nate wouldn’t leave. Neither will say it aloud though. Janie doesn’t want to look obsessed and Jo doesn’t want the questions.

Despite being a year younger, Caitlyn is way more confident than Jo. Sometimes, Jo thinks about throwing caution to the wind and telling the world she’s in love. She knows Caitlyn would too. She’s had two boyfriends prior to Jo, but Jo was her first time.

Janie had told Jo the slight details of her and Nate’s first time: the atmosphere, all the candles and the music, she talked about how there was a slight pressure but she didn’t bleed or feel torn apart. She had been too red face to share more, just that it’d been everything she could have hoped it to be.

“Are you okay?” Janie asks, head cocked to the side and Jo blushes, realizing she’s been staring and mumbles a yes.

after

VI

She found a photo of Jo she took on her polaroid. The room is dark, sans the glow from a nightlight she had to recently uncover from a box beneath her bed. The dark has begun to scare her. She swears she hears Jo begging for help, or worse, mercy, and even worse, her.

She’s sitting in the middle of the floor, clutching it like it’s a life raft. Jo is laughing, she thinks it was taken around Jo’s fifteenth birthday. Regardless, they were in the barn. Jo is sitting so her legs dangle off the edge of the hay loft and Nate is beneath her, off to the side, laughing.

Janie wants to crawl inside the photo and never leave.

She doesn’t remember the joke or what made her grab the camera, and that makes her sob like nothing else has yet.

before

VII

Janie is holding up her new polaroid camera. It’s from the thrift store, but Janie doesn’t care. She should be careful with her photos, the films expensive, but she’s snapped three of Nate with no signs of stopping by the time Jo rides in on her bike.

Janie turns, camera in hand, and snaps a photo that causes Jo to protest.

“I cannot wait for your project to be over,” Janie says as they lay in the grass, cloud watching. Jo makes an agreeing noise, but says nothing. Her and Caitlyn’s French assignment ended weeks ago. She knew Janie would understand, but lying has become the only clear logic she has, and she hates herself for it.

Janie is playing with grass and Jo knows Nate is content with their silence, but Jo feels restless. The lie seems to weigh down her chest and she wants to bellow the truth. Maybe she’d scream so loud, it’d make a tornado and her chest would be weightless.

She doesn’t do any of that, though. She’s tried to tell Janie, many times. It’s always a variation of an excuse: Nate’s here, she’s tired, I’m tired, it’s late, we’re at school, it’s not the right time. They pile together and soon, she’s know they’ll explode.

Janie knows something is wrong, it’s the way she turns and eyes her, but instead of asking she grabs Jo’s hand and smiles.

after

VIII

“I miss you,” she’s saying to Jo. They’re up in the loft. Jo is going on about graduation details, pacing back and forth by the ladder. Janie is laying in the hay, watching her move back and forth. “I miss you so much,” she whispers and a sob is clinging to her voice.

“My mother was going to by streamers, Janie! Streamers! As if we’re five!” She’s venting as if this is somehow a tragedy. And to Jo, they would’ve been. Streamers were, after all, for babies.

She can hear Nate bellow by the ladder, but she doesn’t really hear him, she’s watching Jo pace and talk, and she’s clinging to this mirage of her best friend venting about a party the Olsens’ aren’t having for something she died to early to attend.

Graduation is tomorrow. She’s supposed to give a big speech, but she hasn’t written a single world.

Jo turns, smiling, just like she did when they parted ways at Sweet Pea road, back when they were going to sleep over. “There’s something I need to tell you. Later, though. Okay?” There was no later and she curls her arms around her head, wishing she could scream. She’s scream so loud she’d rip a hole into time. Henry always talks about things like that. He’s nine, but so unbelievably smart.

She hears the ladder rattling, feels Nate beside her, and she wants to curl into him. She wishes he’d yank the pain from her, or tell her how she’s going to move on. Nate is, without a doubt to her or Jo, the love of her life, but Jo was a piece of her she realizes she may not be able to live without.

before

VIIII

“God, he’s such a creep!” Jo hissed beside her. They’re watching Eddy retreat down the hall and Janie sighs, but says nothing more.

Janie used to tolerate Eddy’s crush. She’s not mean, she just… doesn’t like him. Not like that, but lately, she hardly stands him. He antagonizes Nate, and she gets the sense he wants to own her, not love her. She and Nate are partners, and she can’t imagine having a love that feels like ownership.

Caitlyn passes them, and in the pass, she and Jo exchange a note that Jo puts in her pocket. Janie is busy maneuvering the crowded hallway to notice and Jo feels grateful for that.

Later when Eddy finds Janie she’s in the library with Nate, studying. He’s glaring at the scene when Jo shoves past him. Jo is not a confrontational girl at all. But the way he leets and borderline stalks Janie creeps her out. She knows Eddy is giving her a death look, and Jo pretends not to care. He kind of scares her, but nothing scares her as much as Janie’s older brother, Frankie.

Frankie has never done anything to Jo. In fact, he avoids his younger siblings entirely. There’s something about him that terrifies Henry and Janie. Henry avoids him at all costs, and Janie told her a story how once, when she was four, he talked her into going into the pig pen at their Uncle Hank’s farm. He had been seven, and knew things about animals. Janie had been sure about that when she told the story, and her face had been pale thinking about how her uncle had seen her go in from the kitchen window. Frankie had gotten a belt to him, and Janie stopped telling it abruptly. Jo knew and Janie knew that Frankie had meant harm, but neither girl said anything.

Frankie has this look in his eyes Jo has never seen in another human being. He’s dark and it sends chills down her spine. Jo keeps her mouth shut, though. He’s Janie’s brother and that means something. And she loves Henry.

Janie’s younger brother, Henry, can be really annoying. He’s loud, enthusiastic and talks about things no one cares about, but Jo can’t help but melt around him, especially when he grins. He’s pure and innocent and the most genuine person she knows.

Throwing a warning look across her shoulder to Eddy. Avoiding Nate and Janie’s table, she goes to the back of the library where the old AV room that’s been abandoned since they moved to the room by computer lab years ago is. She knocks softly on the door and it opens hardly a crack and she grins and goes in.

after

X

Janie is laying beside Nate. She, like him, is naked and covered in sweat. She’s facing the wall of his bedroom, her eyes unseeing as she looks ahead. It’s so hot in his room, but she’s wrapped in the sheet as if it’s below zero outside. She regrets doing this. She shouldn’t have. She knows that.

Earlier, she’d been in his room, searching for the girl she’d been back in May.

Janie had been eager for life; she’d been eager for the future. She had hung up her acceptance to William and Mary on the bulletin board above her desk. She had the supply list beside it, ticking off her accomplishments as she’d finished them. Her bedroom calendar hasn’t been touched.

Before, Janie crossed out every single day to the start of college, which had been circled over and over again. September felt forever away that March when she wrote it down, now it’s coming so fast she can’t even breathe. Janie’s calendar still reads May and Jo’s disappearance is left uncrossed.

She’d been so scared to leave Nate in the fall. Jo was going to Chicago, and she felt scared to be apart from them. She was sure Nate would find a better girlfriend and Jo would find a best friend who loved architecture, science and Star Wars as much as her and forget all about her.

Ironic how that turned out.

She shouldn’t have used him. He’s the love of her life, she shouldn’t look for emotions in their sex. It’s always made her feel beautiful and loved, but this time felt empty and mechanic. Janie knows she’s being unfair, but she can’t stop.

If she’s not sad, she’s angry and resentful, and if she’s not that, she’s robotic and empty.

Henry and Nate are the only ones who seem to care, so it’s easier to be mad at them. Janie never knows why she resents them, and she hates herself for it.

Her parents are useless. They act like nothings wrong, as if it’s hormones and not depression.

Janie’s grief stages are erratic. She’s not even sure if she’s in the grieving stage. Depending on the hour, she bounces around between depression, anger, denial and bargaining.

Nate tries to touch her shoulder, but she lets out this gasp like he’s burnt her flesh. Jerking away, she gathers up the sheet and hides her body from him, making excuses on why she needs to leave. Janie knows that he knows she’s lying, but she can’t stop herself. Maybe there’s a stage of grief that shoves people away who love you. Maybe it wants her to ruin Nate and Henry. She has already ruined herself, why not the rest of the good in her life?

before

XI

Janie runs into the barn. Nate is doing backbreaking work, and Janie launches herself at him, a letter clutched in her hand. “I got in!” she’s shrieking with joy.

William and Mary has been her dream college since middle school. Her parents had taken them to Williamsburg, and her mother had taken her on a tour of the campus. Her Aunt Meg had gone there, and the moment Janie entered the campus, she felt at home. She just knew this was where she belonged.

Jo had been accepted to the U of Chicago the week prior. Jo had always loved the idea of being lost in a big city, but not Janie. The idea of being  lost had always scared her. The idea of being far from Hawkins and Jo and Nate scares her, but she’s so excited.

“We’ll stay together, right? This won’t end for us, will it?” she asks him that night. She’s curled against him and tracing patterns along his torso. That was March and the world had been theirs. She closes her eyes as she kisses his chest, smuggling closer and wishing they could stay there forever.

after

XII

A black dress, that’s what she wore. Jo hated black. She vented about the myth of black being slimming more than once. Jo loved color. Her favorites had been electric blue and neon pink. “I love the eighties,” she’d say with a grin.

Her hair had been too short for scrunchies. Jo always kept her hair short, pixie-like. Unlike Helena, who Jo envied, her hair had been a more orange hue and had an awful kink if it grew past her chin. It would be stick straight at the top, and then, like a week, grow in toward her neck and then out past her shoulder. Jo had cried after the many attempts of fixing it. She loved long hair and had almost cried when Tally Edwards had sheared off all of hers.

Janie had been meant to read a eulogy. She knew Jo would’ve been strong enough to fight past the pain, but Janie can’t. The words she has no memory writing blur into a fog and she looks at the paper, flushed, thinking how she should’ve teased her hair and worn a neon pink scrunchie and electric blue dress and eye shadow.

When Jo’s dad comes beside her, touching her lightly on the shoulder, he assures her that it’s okay. He has tears in his eyes as he leads her back to her seat by the front. Her mom is looking at her with shame and disgust, they raised her to be stronger than that.

Turning she finds Nate and his family. Henry is beside her and he squeezes her hand and she wants to cling to his neck and sob, but somehow she looks ahead with dry, hard eyes.

When the casket lowers, the noise Jo’s mom makes is something Janie has never forgot. It was like someone tore her soul apart, and Janie is just looking at the white casket lowering further and further away from them.

Soon, she will be putting a yellow rose and dirt upon it. Janie thinks it should’ve been sunflowers. Jo always liked sunflowers.

When it’s hurt turn, she bites back bile and a sob claws her throat, but she just stands there, thinking that she and Jo should go to the sunflower field again, that Jo would like that. She’d take polaroids. Monday when they go to the mall, they’ll do the photo booth as their last hurrah before college.

before

XIII

They’re at the park on the swings. Jo is almost flying, Janie is more subdued. She’s worried and Jo slows, then stops.

“I keep thinking how this is the end of an era, you know?” She answers when Jo asks her what’s wrong.

Jo snorts. “Jane, we are always going to be best friends. I demand it to be so, and we have matching charm bracelets. That bonds us for all eternity,” she says matter of factly, shaking the bracelet in Janie’s face. She smiles and grabs her best friends hand and they share a grin. Then Jo’s slowly fades and she opens her mouth, swallowing hard.

Jo wants to tell Janie. Now is a perfect time as any, but she can’t, and she voices her fears of college instead.

after

XIIII

“Janie, you have to talk him. At least say goodbye!” the Jo of her imagination says. She’s sitting on the bed as Janie meticulously folds her fall sweaters and places them in the suitcase in front of her.

She has nothing new for school beyond a set of zebra print sheets Jo made her buy, a floral shower curtain and some room decor. She and Jo had way more plans and she’s shamed by the fact that she’d wasted it when Jo couldn’t go.

“I can’t,” she whispers, unable to ignore the ghost anymore. Jo has been there everyday the closer September came. She hasn’t seen Nate since that night, almost over a week.

He comes by, but she hides under the comforter and hasn’t opened her curtains since May, anyway.

Janie knows she can’t say goodbye to him. She wants to; she even wrote him a letter one night, trying to explain, but she tore it to confetti and curled into her bed.

Henry came in one day and yanked the cover off of her and yelled at her for treating Nate this way, so her door has been locked since then and her room feels more like Rapunzel’s tower now, and she’s too scared to let down her hair and let the prince in.

“Janie talked to him. Please! You love him, don’t throw that away.”

Janie folds another cardigan and soon Jo is gone and she is truly alone.

before

XV

It’s May. Jo and Janie were supposed to go to Terre Haute and do more shopping tomorrow. Janie was going to spend the night, but called to cancel. Asher is in the hospital and that makes Jo’s heart freeze.

Asher is tiny and cute, and the idea of him sick and looking small in a bed with IVs in his arm makes her blood go cold.

“No, it’s fine! I’ll bring him something fun tomorrow. I promised him I’d teach him crazy eights, but I haven’t had time, but tomorrow I’m going to make time!”

When they hang up, Jo plays with the carousel horse charm. She’s a month shy of eighteen, but all she could think of was tonight she planned on telling Janie. She keeps blaming fate, but she’s a coward. Her and Janie are intimate in a way best friends are. They’ve shared a bed, skinny dipped in the pond, got undressed together during sleepovers. All that could be taken different, seen with new eyes and that scares her.

Janie would fiercely support her, and while she knows that, the fear wins every single time.

Soon… Soon, she will tell her.

after

XVI

There’s a lot Janie loves about college. Her roommate, Clemence, is nice. She’s from Delaware and they bond over small towns.

She loves the library and her ethics class, but her favorite place is the coffee shop off campus. When she was younger, she knows she’d imagine the perfect romance. Now, she imagines Nate finding her there.

It’s almost Thanksgiving and Janie hasn’t made plans to go home. She knows she won’t, she’s a coward.

If she saw Nate now, she don’t even know what she’d say? A sorry. How pathetic.

She sits there and thinks about him, wishing she was back in Hawkins just to know he was okay, that she hasn’t broken him, that he’s free of whatever they were and chalks it up to young, puppy love.

Deep down, Janie knows that’s a lie. They were real, and that’s the tragedy of it all.

before

XVII

Janie is laughing as she’s holding up their display. “Frankie has a spare in his room, I’ll hold it and you grab it.”

They’re building a solar system model with Henry and Asher, Jo hesitates and nods. Henry eyes her, but he’s holding three planets and Asher has Orion’s belt and Jo just sucks it up. Frankie isn’t here and he won’t know.

Hurrying, she runs up and opens the door, paling. It’s dark in here. He has blackout curtains and it smells sweaty. Everything looks purposely placed, and she wonders if that’s just paranoia or the truth. Taking a deep breath she goes to the dresser by the window, looking at everything. She’s scared to touch any of it, but Janie wouldn’t send her up here if there was any real danger.

They’re borrowing wire cutters for crying out loud!

Henry accidentally cut a thicker piece of wife and they broke in half. Surely they’d go to a hardware store and replace them if Frankie real was dangerous, she justifies to herself after another deep breath.

She’s so busy convincing herself she’s safe that she accidentally knocks a coffee canister to the floor. Cursing loudly, she drops to the floor and frantically begins picking things up. There’s normal shit like spare change and random lint, but then theres weird shit like rocks and when she reaches her hand beneath the dresser, she freezes. Pulling it out, it looks like one of the bracelets her and Janie used to be obsessed with making in elementary school. They had them as bracelets, necklaces, keychains, but Frankie doesn’t strike her as sentimental.

Looking at it, something feels wrong. It’s just a little kids bracelet, but why is it here? So along with the wire cutters, Jo leaves with the bracelet in the pocket of her denim jacket, her heart racing.

When she asks Janie after their done and Henry and Asher are outside playing, Janie doesn’t seem to recognize it. Jo says nothing more and when she leaves, the bracelet is still in her pocket.

She doesn’t know why this is important, but something isn’t right here. Frankie is not sentimental. That’s the only fact she has to go by. If Janie gave him a bracelet, he’d have thrown it out immediately back then, and the alarm bells wont stop ringing in her head.

By the time she gets home she’s covered in cold sweat. She’s afraid of what this means and when she shuts her bedroom door, she rushes to her bed and goes to the loose floorboard and takes out her box.

Jo’s small jewelry box didn’t really have things that are secret enough to warrant a loose floor board. Before, it was just to be cool and she showed Janie once. Now, the box hides letters from Caitlyn and this bracelet.

after

XVIII

She can’t believe she left him. She just can’t! Janie is laying in her dorm a week after she left and the guilt of what she’s done is drowning her.

Jo hasn’t visited her in awhile, but she can see the ‘I told you so’ face she’d wear so clearly in her mind and Janie swallows hard.

Janie tried to text him, but what could she even say to him? Nothing. That’s what. Literally nothing she can say will make up or fix what she’s done.

Curling into a ball, she decides to sleep and when she wakes she’ll call him. Even if she says nothing it’s better than what she’s done to him.

before

XVIIII

Frankie leans against the counter. At six feet, he’s an inch shorter than Nate, but unlike Nate, Frankie looms menacingly over Janie’s petite frame. She stiffens at his presence, but is pretending to focus on her task of chopping the vegetables in front of her.

When it’s obvious he’s not going to say anything until she does, she goes, “What’s up?” but doesn’t look at him.

He looks at her for another moment and then goes, “Did you go in my room?”

This makes her freeze.

She doesn’t know why, but the question was asked casually, and he knows he’s looking for an answer. If she lied, he’d know, and that makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand on edge.

“We borrowed your wire cutters. Dad’s broke. Why? Did I put them back in the wrong place?”

He won’t stop staring at her and she’s trembling slightly and can’t bring herself to cut anything. Then he just smirks at her, as if he pieced something together and leaves.

Janie watches his retreating form through the reflection in the kitchen window, but says nothing.

He’s just Frankie being Frankie. That’s where she forces herself to leave it at that, because everyone knows his room is off limits. No one knows why, but Janie tells herself she respects it. She hates when her mother snoops in her drawers, looking for signs that Nate is having sex with her, or something else his poorness does that’s so offensive.

Janie shakes her head and once she’s calm, she begins to go back to her task.

after

XX

She stayed on campus. That was the decision as she sits in the empty mess hall with her bowl of cheerios the morning of Thanksgiving.

It’s empty on campus and she’s now physically alone to accompany her mentality.

Janie saw Eddy at her coffee shop earlier that week, before everyone but the foreign students who don’t have a reason to fly back home for a few days left. She invited him to sit and it was nice just to talk to someone from home. Someone who knew the her before Jo’s death and the one who knew her now. He seemed to understand that she was grieving and not like the girl he knew all those years at Hawkins High, but didn’t harp on it. He apologized for Jo’s death and they just talked.

He’s at a college in town and he gave her his number. It felt weird to have it in her phone. She knew Jo would want to prank call him, or something just as immature, but for some reason, Janie likes that she can rely on Eddy.

Eating her cheerios, she knows she’d be playing with her charm bracelet about now, but she took it off in September. It is laying beside Nate’s necklace she used to wear; the one with the ballet slippers that she adored. Even though Nate didn’t know her as a dancer, he understood why she stopped. She could tell him things like that and he’d just understand. But with Jo… Janie likes to think of Jo and Nate together, inside her jewelry box, tucked away safe from harm.

Henry used to talk about alternate timelines, and she knows that there is a version of her that has Jo and will marry Nate and have kids that Jo will be the godmother and cool aunt of, and Janie despises the version of herself that has that.

That girl doesn’t know grief like she does. She doesn’t know what it’s like to walk the world without a best friend. That girl isn’t alone.

But for now, she thinks about how she’s excited to see Eddy later and talk. He offered to stay in town with her, and they’re going to order take out and maybe watch a movie. Janie has good things here: her roommate, Eddy, her classes. For the first time in a long time, she feels normal. And maybe that’s just enough.

before

XXI

Jo is waiting in the abandoned mill for Janie. She usually comes here with Caitlyn, but she’s glad this is where Janie agreed to meet her. The barn and Jo’s house felt too dangerous, and she needs to tell Janie what she discovered.

It had been a far cry to make the connection, but she had seen Iris and Tally with Caitlyn a month after finding the bracelet and she just remembered something so random. It was inconsequential to hear her mother say “Poor Robert and Elizabeth, they were so young.”

Rose and Daisy Franklin were probably around Henry’s age when they went missing, maybe older - maybe Henry wasn’t born, she can’t even remember how old the girls were. Jo had been seven or eight when they died, she didn’t even understand what it meant to be abducted, but their story played for weeks on the news as she’d lay on her stomach and play with her Barbies in front of the TV, but she had this feeling…

Googling them, she went through the photos. Every missing persons photo she clawed through, but there it was. Zooming in on Daisy Franklin’s wrist, the four year old was wearing the same haphazardly made one Jo was holding and she’d vomited in the trash can beside her desk.

This was proof, but how much proof was it really? So Frankie had a bracelet that matched Daisy’s, but the proof was flimsy at best, but she needed to tell Janie. She needed to tell Janie’s parents!

When the door opens, Jo gets up and then freezes. It’s not Janie’s petite frame that’s shadowed by the moonlight and Jo’s blood goes cold.

He’s dark, but she recognizes the tall boy instantly and all he says to her is, “Hello Jo.” He says a few things to her when he cuts her, making the torture last a bit because no one will hear her out here, but the last thing she ever hears is those two bone chilling words.

Jo tried to fight him, but he was taller and stronger due to spending his whole life farming. He could’ve knocked her out, but for him it’d been a long time and he wanted to savor this kill, and when he dragged her out to the riverbed, he has with him her Bikini Kills button and the carousel charm.

now

XXIII

Caitlyn is looking pointedly at Janie’s wrist. Due to Tally’s comment about her and Jo, Janie doesn’t even question what the look is alluding to.

Her cheeks redden and she tugs down the sleeve of her sweater.

“If you supposedly loved Jo,” Tally says with a sneer, getting closer to Janie as she talks, “wouldn’t you want to know?”

Janie’s blood is searing her from the inside and she shoves Tally with a strength neither girl expected her to have. “Don’t you dare!” Janie seethes through clenched cheeks. “Neither of you know me, and you didn’t know Jo!”

Retrieving her basket from the floor of the Stop and Go general store she adds something equally un-Janie-ish. “Fuck you!” she’s looking right into Tally’s grey eyes. “I know I hurt Nate. I know you two are best friends and you’re a mean bitch regardless and just pretend not to care about what anyone thinks about you, but don’t you ever say I didn’t love Jo! If I knew what happened, U’d have said something a long time ago. I wish I knew, but I was with Nate and Asher at St Mary’s that night.”

She clenches her jaw and she’s biting back tears as she says, “She was like a sister to me. Sorry if it pisses you off that I’m not with Nate, but I lost my best friend and I couldn’t be here anymore!” She dropped the basket on the floor, and Caitlyn is mildly surprised that Janie didn’t throw it at them as she leaves.

Caitlyn’s cheeks are red from anger, but also pity as she watches Janie literally throw the door out of her way and cross her arms as she marches up the sidewalk of down town Hawkins. Tally, however, looks a bit stunned, but if anything, she’s contemplating something.

“So… what now?” Caitlyn asks.

Tally is quiet for a moment, then sighs. “I don’t know. I feel like the answer is so close, as if it’s obvious, but none of it makes sense. I just…” she shakes her head. “Let’s go back to the house and regroup with the others.”