ok here's an excerpt of next chapter
While he’s gone, Chance studies the rest of the room. The books intimidate him a little, most of them almost falling apart with how much they’ve been reread, with titles like A Wizard of Earthsea and The Last Unicorn. The comics are easier to recognize (even the guys from the team aren’t removed enough from nerd stuff to not know who Batman is), and some of the magazines, like Weird Tales, remind Chance of his mom, sending a brief pang in his chest.
She would have liked Will, Chance thinks. She might never have liked what Will means to him, but she could’ve liked him.
The memory board leaning against the wall, still not hung, grabs his attention next. Chance smiles at a picture of Will and his mom next to some kind of wooden structure, the sign Castle Byers between them. In another, a shaggy dog rests its head on someone’s lap. A couple movie tickets tacked in between the pictures: Ghostbusters, Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi, and (Chance’s heart takes a leap of embarrassing excitement) The Thing. Not a lot of drawings—Chance imagines Will’s mom has made sure most of the ones he’d want to display take places of pride around the house.
And, of course, Mike Wheeler. He’s everywhere: in AV club meetings, group Halloween costumes, even in kindergarten pictures. Chance tastes bile in the back of his throat. The other boys are there, too, but his gaze fixates on the skinny, dark-haired kid who has become some kind of waking nightmare to him. He looks as loud and annoying as ever.
Then Chance notices a different image, a dark mixture of red and black hanging on the corner of the board. It’s dated: Will Byers, 1984. It’s a brain scan.
Chance’s first shameful thought is that it looks kind of beautiful. The red is vivid on the page, the grayish shapes around it as if something is blooming. Two other scans hang around this central one, in which there are only a few dots of red here and there. Chance only paid mild attention to Mr. Clarke’s class, but he knows this must mean active areas, and he immediately wishes he could know what stimulus created each pictures, what kinds of paintings anything could create in Will’s brain.
“Oh,” Will says when he returns, seeing what Chance is looking at. “I, uh. I got these done after they found me.”
“Dr. Owens did them?”
“Yeah.” Will touches one of them, the tip of his finger right where the grayness starts. “Hopper said I could keep them, so…” He eyes Chance hesitantly, as if waiting for his reaction.
“They’re beautiful,” Chance blurts. Will’s eyes widen and Chance shoves his hands in his pockets, his cheeks warming. “Uh, I’ve never had any kind of imaging done, but if I did I’d want to keep it too. Not like you can see it anywhere else.”
Will nods. “I used to wish I had more,” he says, his smile half-apologetic but a bit mischievous. “Know what my stomach looks like, and all that stuff. I mean, I guess we can have an idea, but it’s not the same as having a picture.”
“No,” Chance says. “But I bet that didn’t stop you from trying to draw it.”
The mischievousness takes over, Will looking away with a bashful pride Chance thinks he’ll never get enough of. “Yeah. It’s on an old notebook somewhere. I did—the stomach, the inside of my chest, this kind of stuff.” He picks up the record. “I’d say hopefully you’ll get to see yours someday, but I guess you never get those done without, like, some kind of problem.”
“If I ever do, I promise I’ll show it to you,” Chance says, just to make him chuckle, though he’d never let Will Byers look inside his chest.