JENNIFER HENDERSON LOVES HER LITTLE BROTHER.

Admittedly, when her mother had first told her she was having another baby, the four year old girl had protested. She didn't understand why they needed another child in the house and had asked her mother if they could get a puppy instead. Claudia Henderson told her only daughter that it wasn't that simple, to which Jennifer argued back that she was pretty confident the hospital wouldn't mind switching.

Flash forward nine months, the Henderson household had grown to two children... and zero puppies.

Little Dustin had been a loud baby but Jennifer had cautiously decided that he was kind of cute. Not old enough to play games with just yet but she was assured he would get there, plus he seemed to trust her fairly quickly. When she walked into the room, his face would light up and he would grin with his little gummy mouth as if he knew that was his big sister — someone that would love and protect him for life. The first time he smiled, Jennifer swore to herself that she would never let him down.

For the most part, she's succeeded in this task. Other than the usual sibling squabbles, Jennifer is doing her sisterly duty. She cleans up any cuts Dustin may have gotten while playing, she babysits while their mother was working, she complains only minimally when Dustin has his friends over and their volume almost bursts her eardrums, she attends dentist appointments with him and threatens any bullies who made comments about it.

And in return, Dustin looks out for her. He makes dumb jokes to cheer her up when she's sad, he helped convince their mother that what their house really needed was a cute little pet, he goes to see cheesy movies with her when nobody else will (and secretly enjoys them).

So, yes, Jennifer loves Dustin.

But at this moment? She's going to kill him.

"Get back here, you dweeb!" Jennifer runs through the hall after her menace of a brother, gracefully leaping over their cat, Mews, who sits at the end, unbothered and clearly used to the antics of the Henderson siblings.

"THIS IS ASSAULT!" Dustin screeches.

"You're damn right!"

Bursting into his room in search of safety, Dustin quickly realises his mistake. He knows that he's trapped — his sister is now blocking the only exit. Briefly, he considers crawling out the window but he knows Jennifer would drag him back by his scruff.

"Look, Jen," Dustin begins, raising his hands in surrender in an attempt to placate the girl. "It was an honest mistake. I had no idea those cookies were yours."

"Oh, really?" Jennifer crosses her arms over her chest. "So you just forgot when I brought them home after school yesterday and said that if anybody touched them, they were dead?"

Dustin blinks.

"That sounds vaguely familiar."

"Dustin!" Jennifer's foot childishly stomps against the floor. "You know I had to drive out of town for those, right?"

"I'm sorry, okay?" he replies, desperately. "I—I will get you more cookies!"

There's a small pause while Jennifer considers her options. "The same ones? From Jill's?"

"Yes! Yeah, the exact same," Dustin quickly agrees, despite having no feasible way of achieving this feat by himself. Whatever, he can figure that part out later.

"Fine," she nods hesitantly. "And if not, I get your Atari for a week."

"Wh—" Dustin's protests are cut short by a sharp eyebrow raise from his sister. "Alright, fine. Deal."

To finalise their agreement, the boy spits straight into his palm before presenting it in front of Jen who quickly slaps it out of the air, earning a sharp "ow!" in return.

"Yeah, I'm not shaking that thing." With her nose scrunched in disgust, the now satisfied Jennifer starts to retreat back to the kitchen to pack up the measly two cookies that remain, calling out over her shoulder as she slips the Tupperware container into her bag. "I'm heading to Jonathan's! Tell Mom I'll be back by eight, okay?"

Knowing that the loud grunt of affirmation that travels from Dustin's room is as much acknowledgement as she's going to get, Jennifer shrugs and shoulders her bag, Walkman in hand and ready to make the journey on foot to the Byers household.

It's not that she can't drive — no, she worked hard for her driver's license as soon as she turned sixteen — but with her mom always at work or bingo, the only car in the family is usually unavailable, meaning she has to resort to good old fashioned walking to get around town; and while those in Hawkins who are lucky enough to find themselves more well off may have thrown a tantrum at the idea of not being able to afford their own car, Jennifer doesn't mind in the slightest.

Sure, it means she has to leave a little earlier to get to her destination on time and yes, sometimes she does end up furiously breathing through her inhaler halfway through, but she would rather do that than hound her mother 24/7 for a larger allowance every week. Times are tough as it is, and she doesn't want to make things even harder for anyone.

This is her normal routine for a Saturday; sleep until noon, have lunch with Dustin if he's home, then visit Jonathan to watch a movie and have dinner with his family.

Jennifer loves Saturdays.

On her walk, she shares a smile with a girl from her science class that walks by, waves in greeting to Mrs. Holland — Barb's Mother — who responds in kind before returning to her gardening, and stops to pet the friendly golden retriever that wags its tail as soon as it sets eyes on her, preparing for the scratches the kind girl always gives when their journeys coincide.

"Some boys take a beautiful girl and hide her away from the rest of the world." The sounds of Cyndi Lauper accompany her trek, steps all but bouncing against the pavement to the beat of the song she sings along to under her breath. "I want to be the one to walk in the sun. Oh girls, they wanna have fun."

The brunette is lost in the music, body on autopilot as it takes her down the same familiar streets she passes every week and continues to greet the usual neighbours that are out and about.

The one person she doesn't notice is the rich boy with the best hair in school, who pauses the process of unlocking his car to chuckle at the girl that skips by, music blasting from her headphones.

When Jennifer arrives at Jonathan's house, his mother is there to greet her with open arms.

"Jennifer! Oh, come here," the woman exclaims with a grin, arms already enfolding the young girl in a warm embrace which she happily returns.

Joyce Byers is a kind woman with the biggest heart in all of Hawkins. Despite being a single mother, she's done nothing but work her ass off to support her family, and has never once made Jennifer feel unwelcome in her home, no matter what was happening in their lives. Over the years, she's come to view Jen like the daughter she never had, and the eldest Henderson would be lying if she said she didn't think of Joyce as a second mother of sorts.

"How are you, Joyce?" Jennifer asks politely, dropping her bag on the table.

"I'm good, sweetheart," Joyce replies as she searches through piles of crayon drawings for her keys. "How are you? How's your mom?"

"Good!" Jennifer does a quick scan of the kitchen counter and scoops up Joyce's keys from next to the fruit bowl before passing them over. "She won like $20 at bingo last week so, y'know, she's been pretty happy."

Their laughter is cut short by the boys that begin to filter into the kitchen.

"I thought I heard your voice," Jonathan says with a teasing glint in his eye. "Don't you have your own house to live in?"

An exaggerated gasp of surprise leaves Jennifer's lips, hand flying to her chest in feigned hurt. "Wow. And here I was, about to give these cookies to my favourite Byers boy."

Jonathan chuckles. "Alright, alright, I'm sor—"

"Will? These are for you." The tub is produced from her bag and thrust in Will's direction before he can finish. "There would've been more but Dustin ate them all."

Now it's Jonathan's turn to gape in shock, stumbling back dramatically as if physically injured. "Jen, you wound me!"

Their silly antics are somehow enough to make Will laugh, and the sight of his happy grin causes Jennifer's own to widen.

Much like his mother, Will is an absolute sweetheart. When Jennifer had first became friends with Jonathan, his younger brother had been too shy to say much to her — he wasn't entirely used to being around females other than his mom, and being timid is simply part of his nature — but the girl had been determined to show him that he had nothing to worry about. A few weeks of cracking jokes and making obscure movie references later, and Will began to loosen up; the first time being when Jennifer had compared Jonathan's hair to Velma Dinkley's, causing the young boy to laugh so suddenly that his milk shot straight out of his nose.

"Behave, you two," Joyce says with a smile. "I've gotta get to work. I'll be back in a few hours and I'll pick up dinner on the way, so try to keep the house in one piece."

With a ruffle of Will's hair, Joyce leaves Jennifer and her two sons behind, the three of them patiently waiting for the telltale sound of the car ignition fading into the distance.

"So," Jennifer begins after a beat of silence. "It's totally my turn to pick the movie, right?"

Both Jonathan and Will groan in unison.

"We're not watching Flashdance again," says Jonathan immediately.

"Why not? It's a good movie!"

"What about Poltergeist?" Will suggests.

"Uh, why would I wanna watch a little kid get snatched up by some demon?" Jennifer's nose scrunches up in disgust. "No, thank you."

"Jennifer, listen to me very, very carefully," Jonathan moves in front of the girl and places his hands on her shoulders, steady gaze never wavering. "I am not — I repeat, not — watching Flashdance."

Flash forward around an hour and a half later and the film credits are rolling, the upbeat tune of 'What a Feeling!' blasting through the little television speakers.

"See? Wasn't that great?" Jen asks, crunching on another piece of popcorn with a smile.

"Super," mumbles Jonathan, chin resting in his palm in defeat.

"It wasn't that bad," Will speaks up from his spot in the middle of the couch. He doesn't really mind what they watch together as long as he gets to spend time with them. "It was... fun."

"Uh-huh," his brother nods. "I bet when you're playing D&D tomorrow, you'll even be thinking 'darn, I wish I was still watching that weird musical!', right? "

"You guys have a game tomorrow?" Jennifer asks, pointedly choosing to avoid Jonathan's criticism.

"At Mike's," Will explains, shifting in his seat from excitement. "He says the campaign has taken him two whole weeks to plan."

Jennifer's lips part for an impressed whistle. "Wow. One of these days you've gotta explain this whole thing to me. Last thing I remember was a few years ago when Nancy and I had to dress up as... I think it was elves, for some reason."

"For the Eldertree campaign," Will laughs. "I don't think Nancy would do that now. Mike says she's become a real..."

"A real what?" Jonathan prompts.

Will's eyes shift nervously to Jen, who nods in encouragement. She may be friends with Nancy but even she's curious as to what Mike really thinks about his sister.

"A real jerk," he finally admits.

"Yeah?" Jennifer's brows furrow. "Why's that?"

"Something to do with that Steve guy?"

"Steve Harrington," Jonathan tells him. "The douchebag of Hawkins High."

"I think that title goes exclusively to Tommy H," Jennifer argues, a grimace plastered onto her face. "I hate that guy."

"You're really defending King Steve?" Jonathan asks in disbelief, his tone mocking at the nickname the popular boy had given himself.

"Of course not. I just think that his douchebaggery is amplified by a thousand when he's around Tommy."

"Birds of a feather flock together," Jonathan says, though Jennifer isn't sure it's that simple.

Truthfully, Steve hadn't been so bad in middle school. Sure, he asked dumb questions all the time and somehow managed to be late more often than not, but he had never been cruel. That personality change only came when they entered high school and he began to alter himself into a bigger, badder version of who he once was, all to fit in with the so-called 'cool kids' that none of the other students genuinely like. Fear is not the same as love.

"Well, regardless of the kind of guy Steve is, Nancy won't let him change her," she replies, steering the conversation back on track. "Before you know it, we'll be elves in your elderflower thingy again."

"Eldertree," Will corrects her politely.

"Yeah, that's what I said."

The youngest Byers laughs despite himself. "I don't think there'll be any elves in tomorrow's campaign, anyway. Mike says it's pretty hardcore."

"Well, then you go in there and kick some troll — are there trolls in this game? —"Jennifer pauses briefly for affirmation before continuing her motivating spiel. "— kick some troll ass! If anyone can do it, it's Will the Wise. Right, Jon?"

"Absolutely," he agrees, nudging Will's shoulder. "Those trolls won't know what's hit 'em."

The next few hours are spent with the two teenagers hyping up Will's ability to destroy various fictional creatures, each explanation of how he would do so becoming more and more ludicrous by the second. According to them, he could kick witches into next year, cause giants to pee their pants (there was a brief debate over whether or not giants wear pants) in fear, and send dragons flying home with their tails between their legs.

When Joyce eventually returns home with some takeout from Benny's, all conversation is dropped in favour of the meal. As the kids dig hungrily into their burgers and fries, the only adult in the room has to interrupt more than once to tell them each to pause for breath in between their ravenous bites, and when Jennifer bids the Byers goodnight after dinner, it's with a full stomach and a bright smile.

If only she had known this would be the last time she'd see Will, she would've hugged him that much tighter.