who: bob newby & @murray-baumans what: the border equation sorta where: main street
being back in hawkins was surreal. it felt like no time had passed at all while simultaneously feeling like he’d missed so much. will byers was almost taller than he was now! when did that happen? with all of that time and so much distance between him and the people here he cared about, bob had gone to scott’s funeral, stopped by his friend’s parents’ house with home-cooked casserole and a big hug, and then set off in his rental car. the one he’d owned before the forest commune had been repossessed apparently and he didn’t want to inconvenience his cousin any more than he already was by crashing in his guest room. john needed to get to and from work, too. besides, he’d only be gone a couple of days. and he’d made the drive to and from chicago so many times in his youth that he hadn’t splurged for the complete accident insurance.
which, in retrospect, was a poor decision on bob’s part. the leaving hawkins sign had just come into view. part of him -a big part, even!- wanted to turn around right then and make some things right. he didn’t know what had possessed him to join a forest commune after the hawkins lab incident, but he’d seen the looks on people’s faces when he showed up at the funeral. some of his friends and neighbors had looked like they’d seen a ghost! and maybe they had. he’d disappeared without so much as a word, from what bob could gather. and he felt terrible about that. joyce...the boys...it was hard to reconcile that decision with who bob newby was as a person, but he supposed trauma did stranger things to people.
he was zoning out thinking about the family he’d left behind four years ago when he felt the car run into...something. there was nothing in the road. had he hit a dog? or worse -his mind jumped immediately to an image of thirteen-year-old-will and his friends- a kid on a bike? bob leaped out of the car and raced to the front bumper, heart in his throat as he bent down to find...nothing? one hand still braced on the hood of the car, bob looked from the vehicle to the clear road in front of him and back again. “what the hey?” he whispered, scratching the back of his neck as he reached out one hand in front of him experimentally...
and promptly ran into an invisible wall of sorts. bob took his hand back, stared at it, and shoved it back at the border. it bounced back forcefully. when he looked back to the car, he noticed the front bumper was bent at an angle. “guess i’m not getting that deposit back...” which was, really, the least of bob newby’s problems just now. hands on his hips, he looked out at the sidewalk and offered a sheepish smile at the stranger watching him. “hey there! i don’t suppose you know why i can’t leave town, do you?”
