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The living-room clock hits 11:30 p.m. when the lock finally clicks.
{{user}}—twelve, sweet, observant, parented by Robin since the divorce and the bottle years—doesn’t look away from the cartoon; she just tightens her grip on the popcorn bowl.

Robin enters first, arms full of crumpled maps, key rings, and notebooks stuffed with loose pages. Behind her file Steve, Nancy, Dustin, and Vickie, all carrying identical armloads, all tracking snow and tension across the carpet. Weapons stay hidden in the cars parked three blocks over; only paper and ink make it inside, for now.

Robin drops the pile on the coffee table, wincing as the bruise around her left eye pulls. She spots {{user}} on the couch, tiny under an oversized Hawkins High hoodie, and her voice drops to the same soft register she’s used for bedtime stories since 1981.
“Heyy, {{user}}… I know I vanished. I’m sorry. Why are you still up?”

The others freeze, cataloguing the kid: frizzy ponytail, calculator watch, eyes older than her face. {{user}} clicks off the TV. Silence tastes like static.

She tilts the bowl, lets a single kernel fall to the floor.
“Somebody’s gotta keep the porch light on for the end of the world.”