"No."

My face was written with shock, everything I was worried about was becoming a reality. All the negative thoughts returned to my brain, making the whole situation a lot worse when nothing has happened yet.

"No?" Mike asked, looking nervous.

"No," El said again.

The girl continued to eat her Eggo like nothing happened. I was starting to worry but then I became somewhat curious. Something must have happened to her, something serious.

"No... you don't want our mom to get help?" Mike asked cautiously.

El looked from me to Mike with fear in dark eyes, then she slowly shook her head.

"You're in trouble, aren't you?" I asked, no longer hiding my questions.

El, who had been staring at me, turned to look at me, right in the eyes. Her eyes were dark but I could see the fear behind the brown color. I need to know more, I wanted to help her.

She didn't answer the question with words, she just looked from me to Mike, her eyes wide.

"Who..." Mike said slowly, "Who are you in trouble with?"

The girl looked away from us and mumbled, "Bad."

"Bad?"

"Bad people?" Mike asked.

El turned her head to look at us. She nodded her head sharply, my mind immediately filled with thoughts, who could these bad people be.

"Do they want to hurt you?" I asked in a soft voice.

"The bad people?"

I expected the girl to move her head to answer the question but this time she made a finger gun. She put the finger gun up to her head then she pointed it at me and Mike.

"Understand?"

Me and Mike looked at each other with shock and nervousness in our eyes. What the hell have we gotten ourselves into?

"Micheal! Amanda! Where are you?" My mothers yelled, making me jump out of my skin, "You're gonna be late! Let's go!"

Mike looked at El and said, "All right, I'll be back. Just stay here, okay? Stay here."

That's when Mike closed the fort and started towards the stairs with me quickly on his heels. I didn't know what to think at this moment, my thoughts were all over the place. But I knew that I wanted to help El, and I wanted to help Will. I was going to find some way to do both, no matter what.

Mike made it up the first two steps before I grabbed his sleeve, trying to get his attention. He turned and I expected him to have an annoyed look on his face, but he didn't. He looked worried.

"What Amanda?" Mike asked in a soft voice, giving me a light look.

"What's the plan, we can't just leave her here," I tell him, "I-I don't know what to do."

"Do you think that I know what to do," Mike asked, somewhat snapping at me. I shook my head in response, not wanting to snap back at him. "I'm gonna come back. I'm gonna hide away from the house, hide, wait for mom to leave, and I'll come back here to be with her."

"Ok," I said, "Then I'm staying too."

"What?"

"Yeah, I'll come back too," I tell my brother, "I mean why do we need to go to school anyway."

"Come on," Mike winces, "I'll be fine on my own."

"Well I'm coming back, and there's nothing you can do about it," I say before I start up the stairs.

~~~

I knew it was easy to trick Mom but I didn't think it was going to be this easy. After we left like normal, me and Mike waited behind an overgrown bush until we saw our mother's car drive right by us. Then we started back to the house.

Once we got back, El hadn't moved a muscle. She just looked at us with her big eyes, and didn't say anything to us when we took her upstairs into the now empty house.

"Do you want some juice?" Mike asked the girl as we walked out of the basement, "We've got OJ, slim milk, what else?"

But the girl wasn't paying attention to Mike as he continued to mumble to himself about different beverages that we had. But once he realized that El was more interested in the living room.

He said, "Oh, this is my living room."

"Our," I mumbled to myself, correcting his sentence

Mike overheard me and gave him an annoyed look but he quickly turned back to El, who was looking at the black television screen.

"It's mostly just for watching TV," Mike continued, "Nice, right? It's a 22-inch. That's like 10 times bigger than Dustin's."

Just like before, El lost interest in what my brother was talking about and turned to look at something else.

"Next time you try to impress a girl, don't brag about stuff like television," I mumbled to him with a slight smirk on my face.

Mike made a face at my comment, but he focused more on watching El as she wandered around the living room. She started to look at all the photographs that sat peacefully on top of the fireplace.

She stood in front of one picture, Nancy's school photo. The girl touched it lightly, before she cracked a small smile.

"Pretty," She whispered.

I think that was the first time I ever saw her smile, and it looked nice on her. It made her seem more human when she did because even though she been through a lot, she was about to smile about something.

"I guess," Mike said, "That's our sister, Nancy," I told her before she started down the line of photos, "And that's baby Holly, and those are our parents."

"What are your parents like?" I asked lightly, not wanting to put pressure on the girl, "Do they live close by?"

El ignored both of my questions, she was too into her own little world, which I was okay with. After she looked at the pictures, she looked at Dad's chair with curious eyes.

"That's our La-Z-Boy."

"More like Dad's La-Z-Boy," I muttered to myself.

El was still looking at the chair, touching and squeezing the fabric, not really paying attention to what either of us were saying.

"You can try it out if you want?" Mike tells her, trying not to be too pushy.

That's when she finally looked at us, with nervousness in her eyes. She didn't say anything, she just stood her eyeing the chair and us.

"Come on, it's super fun," I say but El didn't seem to believe me, "I promise that it won't hurt you."

"Yeah, you'll be safe," Mike tells the girl, "Just trust us. Trust me please."

El looked at Mike right in the eye, then sat down in the La-Z-Boy. She still had nervousness written all over her face but as she watched Mike, it started to soften. I could feel a trust beginning to grow between the two. El felt a safeness towards my brother and he felt a protection of her, and they started to trust each other.

El watched Mike as he pulled the lever of the chair, making it unfold and it lightly threw her back. But after it was over, El creaked a smile and gave a small laugh.

"See? Fun," I tell her with a light smile on my face.

The girl gave a light nod as Mike put the chair back into position, then did the same thing again. El's smile grew a little bigger after each turn until it got boring for her. But I was happy to see that we, mostly Mike, could make her happy.

~~~

"Ready are you?" Mike said in his Yedi voice as he showed El his action figure, "What knows you of ready?"

El looked at the action figure weirdly, not understanding the little green creature from Star Wars. But she almost jumped out of her skin when Mike started slamming them on his table that we were all sitting at.

"Come on, Mike," I tell him with some annoyance in my face, "You're scaring the poor girl."

"Sorry," Mike said quickly before moving on, "His name is Yedi. He can use the Force to move things with his mind, like this."

Mike used his arm to swipe all of his action figures off his table but El had already lost interest in the world of Star Wars, so she was already on her feet and looking for something else to look at.

But even though El wasn't paying attention, Mike continued to talk, "Oh, this is my dinosaur Rory. Look he has a speaker in his mouth, so he can roar." The dino gave a small toy-like roar but the girl had moved onto some of Mike's science stuff.

"Sorry to tell you Mikey but she's not impressed," I commented, but my brother didn't react in any way. He just got to his feet and started over to her, which after a second, I did the same.

"Oh, these are all my science trophies," Mike explained as El looked over the shiny plastic trophies. I had all the same trophies, but mine were in huge boxes somewhere because I didn't want anyone to see them. "We won every year but we didn't win last year, we got third."

"It was totally political," I mumbled, remembering how stupid that competion was. They should have won, there's was the best.

That's when El looked at pictures of us winning the science fair two years ago. My last science fair before everything changed. Sometimes I missed those days, just being careless and free. Only worrying about D&D and not anything else. But I shook those thoughts away, since I would always remember how emotionally drained I was. The times where I hated myself more than anything else.

But I looked at Will, and I felt my heart drop. I wanted to know where he is, so I knew that he was safe. I wanted him to be safe, he didn't deserve any more pain.

That when El pointed at Will's face, a worried look on her face.

"You know Will?" Mike asked, in shock, "Did you see him last night?"

"On the road?" I asked, interrupting Mike, "Do you know where he is?"

Suddenly, there was a sound of a car pulling into a driveway. And I knew at that moment, that Mom was back.

"We gotta go, now!" I said as we started on the move.

Mike grabbed El's hand and we started out of Mike's bedroom and towards the stairs, so we could take her back to the basement. We only made it halfway down the stairs before Mom and Holly walked through the front door. We immediately started in the opposite direction.

"Ted? Is that you?" Mom yelled, hearing our loud footsteps.

"Just us home!" I yelled back to her as I started back towards Mike's bedroom.

"Amanda? What are you doing home? And us?"

"Just one second!"

"Mike?"

We ran into Mike's bedroom and I immediately opened Mike's closest door, knowing that was the only place for her to hide.

"In here," I tell her.

"We'll be right back ok," Mike reassures her but the girl didn't move. She just kept looking at the both of us with wide eyes that were filled with tears.

"Come on, we need to go," I say a little too coldly. My heart rate got faster with every millisecond that El was out in the open. "You gotta get in here or our mom is gonna find you."

"We won't tell her about you," Mike tells the girl, "I won't tell her about you. I promise."

"Promise?"

"It's something that you can't break, ever."

"Micheal? Amanda?"

"Can we get moving?"

"Please," Mike tells El, giving her a long, worried look.

That's when El finally walked into the closest, giving us each a fearful look before I closed the doors.

Mike and I looked at each other then when downstairs to find our mother, who didn't look very happy to see us both here.

"Living room now," Mom said as she started in that direction. I gulped, not excited for how this was gonna go.

We all sat in the living room, all three of us on the couch. Mom had her arms crossed and didn't take her eyes off of us for even a second. She demanded to know why we were both home, not wanting a lame excuse from either of us.

"I just... I don't feel well," Mike explained, "I woke up and my head, it really hurt bad and my throat was all scratchy, and I wanted to tell you, but the last time I told you that I was sick you made me go to school anyway, and--"

"Michael?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm not mad at you."

"No."

"No, of course not," Mom tells him sweetly. I tried to not roll my eyes, he was about to get himself out of the issue but he didn't bother to try to help me out of it. "All this that's going on with Will, I can't imagine what it's been like for you and you, Amanda. You were friends with him at one point."

I nodded, agreeing with her.

"I just... I want you too to feel like you can talk to me," Mom tells us, "I never want you to feel like you have to hide anymore from me. I'm here for you, both of you. Okay?"

Mike nodded and I gave her a light thank you.

This all seemed so weird and unbelievable. El knew something about Will, I knew that deep down, she would be about to help us find him. But we needed to find him soon before something happens to him, and before these "bad men" come for El.

That's when a loud thud came from upstairs.

"Is someone else here?" Mom asked, giving both of a look.

"Nope," Mike answered calmly, not looking suspicious.

I tried to hide my smile, there was a lot of stuff we still had to do. But I knew that the next thing we had to do was convince Lucas and Dustin to let the girl stay.