You are 16 and your brother’s best friend goes missing. You don’t really take it seriously at first cause a kid going missing is something that happens on tv or on other towns, not on Hawkins. He probably just skipped class or got lost on the way home or smth. You disobey your mother who wants you to stay home out of fear for you going missing too (you don’t take her seriously, he’s is probably fine) and lie to her to go with your best friend to your boyfriend’s house. Except, the moment you leave her alone to go with your boyfriend is the last moment you see her. She disappears. And you might not have known your brother’s friend very well, so you could just think he skipped class, but you do know your best friend. And you do know she wouldn’t just ditch you and disappear. You start taking the disappearances seriously. A body is found. Your brother’s friend is dead. You feel guilty about not really caring when he went missing, but your mind is still focused on your friend. Are you going to her funeral next? All the police does is ignore you, saying she probably ran away, and not helping. You feel crazy, you know something is wrong, why don’t they listen to you? You wonder if this is how your brother felt, but policemen were looking for his friend. You get involved in some weird supernatural stuff and turns out, your brother’s friend is not dead, but stuck in some other dimension. Your friend is probably there too. Still no news of her. You work with your brother’s best friend’s family and your brother’s other friends and a weird girl to rescue him. The girl manages to talk to him somehow. You hold hope. She tells you your best friend is dead. Your brother’s best friend comes back. Why him and not her? But you feel guilty just to think that, he’s just 12, it wasn’t his fault. You feel guilty about your friend. It was your fault, your mind whispers, you killed her. If you were with her at that moment, if you hadn’t left her behind. You left her behind, for what? To have sex with your boyfriend? Boyfriend you eventually break up with. Boyfriend who also doesn’t take your friend’s disappearance seriously. It takes a year for her to get a proper funeral. You don’t have her body, you’ll never do, you go grieve at an empty grave. You look at the casket at the funeral and know she’s not there. It seems you’re the only one who cares, you and her parents, who have no idea what happened. You hear your brother and his friends playing in the basement. You hear your brother’s friend laugh. You’ll never hear her laugh again.
