Suspicious Minds (Stranger Things Novels #1)(88)

“But Alice won’t come back, will she?”

Terry stared into the little face. “No, she can’t. Alice will have to be gone. Forever.”

“I want her to stay!” Kali stomped her foot again.

“Kali,” Terry said, “I understand. I want her to stay, too. But you don’t want her to be hurt and neither do I. Right?”

“Right.” But it was grumbled.

How could she make the girl understand?

“You know how you remember your mom? How she’s inside here?” Terry put her hand to her head, then her heart.

“Yes.”

“That’s because she’s your family. Friends are like your made family—and so you keep them with you even when you’re not together anymore. Even if you forget parts of them, because you get older…We hold our friend-families close. But we don’t have to be with those people for them to be a part of us. We carry them with us all the time.” Like she did Andrew.

“So Alice will always be with me?” Kali asked, after thinking it over.

“And so will I.”

“I’ll help you. And I won’t tell. I’ll protect you.” Kali smiled. “We’re family.”

Terry bent to kiss her forehead. To her surprise, Kali let her. “I won’t forget about you,” Terry said. “Ever. I promise. Now go. Remember, make it look like Alice is deep asleep. Not breathing. But don’t let on it’s you doing it, no matter what.”

“No matter what!” Kali capered away into the black, and not a moment too soon. Terry followed a sound out of the darkness, back to the exam room. An alarm.

Gloria.

It was time.





4.


Gloria had wanted to at least put one over on Dr. Green, but he’d phoned it in even more than usual. After giving her a tab of acid—which she did not take but pocketed—and a sheet full of coordinates to memorize, he left. No orderly with her, nothing.

This was her big chance to live out some adventure. She was going to play her comic-book moment to perfection. She even got to pick the lock, using the methods Alice had taught her.

She went into the hallway, and found the fire alarm. Then she pulled it.

Nothing happened.

This fire alarm was disabled? So Terry had been right about the eavesdropping on her room.

But they couldn’t have disabled them all. Not even mad scientists would risk something so foolish in a facility like this. A fire could destroy everything.

And so Gloria’s heart pounded, blood drumming in her ears, as she got her wish for a more difficult task. She hurried up the hall looking for another alarm to trigger. The hunt took precious minutes—she worried she was messing up the timing of everything—but finally, at last, she saw one up ahead.

Right past an orderly with a cleaning cart.

If we’re doing this, we’re doing this.

She shoved him out of the way with an “Excuse me!” and then pulled the alarm. There was a half-second of silence when she thought she’d failed again, but then the blissful sound of obnoxious sirens filled the air.

I did it. Just like Jean Grey.

The orderly had recovered and grabbed for her, but Gloria was too quick. She ducked his arm and raced back the way she’d come. Her work wasn’t done.

It turned out that Alice had given them the more covert entrance they needed in her electroshock wanderings. And so Gloria made for the rendezvous point on the north side of the building to meet Ken. She hoped her alarm would work as expected, confusing the reaction to his grand entrance.

Which should be happening any minute now. Any minute.

She laughed a little as she ran. She’d never realized it before: Superheroes were insane.





5.


Ken had never considered himself a car guy. He’d grown up around them. His dad was a car guy, and had wanted to go to auto shows and discuss prices and spoilers and paint jobs. But it wasn’t Ken’s thing.

Although he’d enjoyed their trip to the Brickyard enough. Alice and Gloria’s interest in the cars had almost been strong enough to transfer, like rubbing a pencil over an object to imprint it.

If Ken had been a car guy, he doubted he’d have felt even a hint of regret for Terry’s poor car as he drove closer to Hawkins. It wasn’t much of a car—a not insignificant reason for its being made into a sacrificial lamb.

But because he was Ken and decidedly still not a car guy, he told the old Ford how sorry he was that it had to end this way. “You’re a good car that has served Terry well. You’re not showing off. You’re not too speedy. But you’ve done your job with dignity. And now? You will be a warrior chariot.”

For Ken was driving it into battle.

The chain-link fence appeared on the left, floodlights within, and Ken grinned. He wasn’t all that good a driver either, due to the lack of being a car guy, and so he said a silent prayer of thanks for the certainty that today was not the day he died.

The gate came closer and he took the turn toward it at a screech, gunned the engine, and hit the horn. The soldiers didn’t move fast, but they were out of the way by the time he plowed into the gate and took it down.

The car shook off its remains and kept going.

“Good job, Nellie.” So what if he’d named Terry’s car? It was a good car. On Ken went, up the drive toward the lab, blowing through the wooden barrier at checkpoint two, honking the horn madly the whole time.