"I'm sorry my heart's too big for my own good! I just want to be a good person!"
~
Theodore Chambers moves from his home in London to Hawkins and realizes this town isn't what it seems
Or
In which the new kid in town is thrown into all sorts of insa...
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chapter nineteen; a little TLC goes a long way
Night crept upon Teddy faster than he ever could've imagined. One second the sun shined down on him with blue skies... but now all the boy could see in the sky was some stars and the moon. How did that happen so quickly?
Well, all of today felt like a fever dream... Teddy would not have believe anything that happened today if he didn't experience it first hand. Looking for El, almost being killed by his school bullies, El saving them from said-bullies, being chased by bad men in vans, almost getting run over by the vans, the van flipping in the air, being chased to a junkyard to hide and being saved by Jim Hopper. It was just a huge mess...
And now the boys sat in the back of a police cruiser with his friends while being taken to "some place safe" by the Chief of police.
Yeah... Teddy believed there was no way today could get any worse.
The car pulled along a dirt road toward a house Teddy soon recognized as the Byers. As the car haunted to a stop, three figures rushed from the inside of the house. On the front patio of the house now stood Nancy, Mike's Sister; Jonathan and Joyce Byers. The other children in the car immediately jumped out of the car as soon as Hopper parked the car, but Teddy didn't move. Once again, his mind wondered to his dad. The entire car ride, his mind focused on his dad. The ginger knew earlier he couldn't return home at the moment... but he wanted to. He wanted to so badly. He wanted his dad to embrace him and tell him everything would be okay. That all these problems that arose in the last week could just disappear.
"You coming?" Hopper questioned, unbuckling his seatbelt.
The click of the seatbelt caused Teddy's eyes to dart around for a minute to assess how to respond back. He fiddled with his fingers, not daring to look the man in the face, "I need to go home." He mumbled.
"What?"
"I need to go home!" The boy repeated, his voice cracking as he did so, "M-my dad! H-h-he needs-he needs to know I'm safe! I-I-I promise him I'd—"
"Hey, hey, hey." Hopper placed his hand on Teddy's shoulder causing the boy to slowly make eye contact with the Chief of Police. The ginger trembled before Hopper with fear in his eyes. Teddy knew that Hopper was a good guy—really, he did. Just... the man's whole demeanor was slightly threatening to the tiny ginger. The man sighed, removing his hand from Teddy so he'd not jump or continue to shake, "Listen, kid. I don't make the rules right now, but the one place we can't go is your home. Those 'bad men' might be waiting for us there. Do you understand that?"
Teddy wiped at his eyes before any tears could properly form and nodded. He couldn't cry again–not for a second time that day. Besides, he promised El that he'd stay strong and brave for her...
"Great." Hopper said, "we'll figure it out though. I can assure you that. That's the best advice I can give you at the moment." At that, the man left the front seat, leaving Teddy alone in the cruiser.
