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ADLER WAS IN HIS ROOM, IN THE MIDDLE OF STUDYING FOR A PRECALCULUS TEST      when a kid by the name of Will Byers went missing the night of November 6, 1983. He had also been on the phone with the kid's brother Jonathan before he was unfortunately cut off by his mother because she had forgotten he was on the line. He had a phone of his own he could've made use of, but he had been told time and time again that it was for "emergencies only" so he used it for that sole purpose—and because it only had a certain amount of minutes that he couldn't go over so there wasn't much point in using it so excessively, anyway.

     When it came to Adler, he had a reason for pretty much everything. They were what kept his life in order, helping him in seeing a new day and keeping the domino that would soon flash his life before his eyes when his time would come from toppling over too soon, messing everything up, and screwing everything over. Whether the reasons were good, bad, logical, or stupid, he had one for each and every situation he put himself in or was thrown into. There weren't many of the latter, but if only he knew what would soon come.

     He wasn't the most popular kid at Hawkins High by any means but he was pretty well known (albeit not needing to rely on the social hierarchy of the school to survive) as he had picked up a side hobby of writing other people's papers but only taking offers from the ones who were up for paying a pretty penny for a "B" paper—anything higher (or better) would draw unwanted attention from the teachers, especially when the student in question wasn't doing well in the class—which was about most of them. He did it all so he could have a little extra money for college even though he was ninety-nine point five percent he had a grant in the bag but schools like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology needed more than just a shiny sheet of paper with a couple of zeroes, signifying that Adler wasn't totally broke.

     Adler let out a sigh as he looked over his Pre-Calculus notes, all sprawled out across his desk in a whirlwind of organized chaos, all color-coded and tabbed to the nth degree as if they were mile-long dissertations—and they might as well have been. It was a minute before he was about to get back to studying when his stomach decided to disrupt him, reminding him that he hadn't eaten since dinner and that was about a good four hours prior. Knowing that he wouldn't be able to concentrate while his stomach was making so much unbridled noise, he shoved his chair back and made his way out of his room to go find something to eat, the old wooden floors creaking beneath his feet as he walked down the stairs and into the kitchen.

     Scratching his head, Adler raided through the kitchen cabinets, sifting and searching for his box of emergency granola bars. "Jesus Christ," he grumbled, "where the fuck are they?"

     After ransacking through the cabinets once more, he grappled at a familiar-feeling box and pulled it out to see that there was only one left. He took the box with him upstairs and made a mental note to buy another box. Or two.

    Pulling out the last and final granola bar, Adler made a move to toss the box into his recycling bin, missing it, before settling back down at his desk and pouring over his Pre-Calc notes that he's already looked at twice now but now wanted them burned into the back of his brain and showing up in his sleep as though they were phantoms, haunting him and his dreams.

     As far as Adler knew, he was intelligent enough to not have to go to such extreme measures when it came to studying, but it was the one of the things that kept his simple life from becoming much more simple. That, and his bass guitar he had gotten for Christmas when he was fifteen because his father had thought that he was "in desperate need of a hobby". And he had been right, of course, however, there hadn't been a need for him to say it like that.

     The bass had been in need of some new strings for some time as the current ones that decorated the fretboard were oxidizing and starting to smell. Getting up, Adler moved over to where the bass sat on its stand and grabbed hold of it, throwing the strap over his body, kicking the amp on, and beginning to fingerpick a random pattern before it slowly turned into "Stayin' Alive" by Bee Gees. Yes, it was nearing one in the morning but the amp was at the lowest volume it could possibly muster and Adler needed something to wear him down before he was able to pass out, leftover energy that had to be used up so he could be able to sleep and attack the morning when it came.

    And so he played. He played until his fingers began to bleed against the silver strings and his eyelids began to droop, close to seeing stars, sleep seeping on the horizon, improvising the bass line until it was no longer recognizable.

     It wasn't long until he was reaching the point of exhaustion and he set his bass down before landing face first into his twin bed, mattress squeaking with the pressure of his weight barreling into it. That night was marked as the final week of Adler's life that was ever going to be seen as normal. Dominoes would fall left and right and nothing would be the same ever again.

Hawkins, Indiana was the same as every other small town with its one and only, middle-of-fucking-nowehere gas station, its two schools Hawkins Middle and High, and its own little celebrity that came in the form of one King Steve "The Hair" Harrington.

     Steve seemed to be the neutral type of popular kid but Adler couldn't quite tell from where he was standing. He knew that Steve's friends were total assholes but he wasn't sure if Steve was one of them. And if Steve was an asshole, he was less obvious about it. The only experience Adler ever had with him was the time during their freshman year when they were reading The Catcher in the Rye in English class.

     A paper had been assigned to the students and Steve had offered to pay Adler to write his, thus giving him the idea to take up the offer and turn it into an opportunity, making a small name for himself within the confines that was Hawkins High School. He wasn't on anyone's social radar for the most part and no one ever really thought twice about him, which was more than okay on his part because that way, he'd be able to keep his head down, graduate without a hair out of place, and not have to remember anyone's name once he finally left Hawkins.

     And that was the thing with small towns. They were small. They were suffocating. They went through the same washing machine of a routine every single day and every single night and what was so ironic about it was that it drove Adler nuts. He may have known the reason as to why the town was the way it was but it didn't stop the unsettling feeling of some small-town-related claustrophobia from seeping in and leaking into his bones, grinding away until he was one with the small town, mixed into the soil, and stuck there forever.

Adler had a plan and that plan had been set in stone ever since he stepped into the high school—graduate and get out. He could find new reasons as to why people were the way they were because he seemed to have found all his reasonings in Hawkins.

     Oh, if only he knew.

𝐀𝐔𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐑'𝐒 𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄 .｡.:*
chapter that went from an almost introduction
to a rant about small towns and wanting to escape them. . .
idk man, first chapters are hard

n.e. way, i hope you enjoyed !
thoughts are much appreciated
🤠