Eleven trailed behind the boys as they walked along the train tracks, trying to ignore the soreness in her nose and ears and the buzzing in her head and the pit of guilt and worry in her stomach. Usually manipulating an object as small as a compass needle wouldn't give her any trouble, wouldn't even trigger a nose bleed, but trying to keep the compasses steady for hours while trudging through the woods was a different story. After a while her vision started getting blurry and she felt sure that any moment she might collapse. But she had to keep going. She couldn't let Mike and his friends anywhere near that thing, or the dark, cold world it lived in. She tried to hide her distant stare and bleeding nose, and silenced the voice inside her that whispered friends don't lie.
She was so focused on staying upright and on pulling against the weight of the magnetic field with her mind that she didn't notice when the boys stopped in front of her and began to argue.
"There's something else screwing with the compasses," said Dustin in confusion.
They know. Eleven stared at her new friends, trying to stay quiet, trying to make herself disappear. Don't let them find out.
"It's not a magnet. She's been acting weirder than normal," accused Lucas, pointing at her. He was angry. Eleven didn't know much about people but she knew anger. Anger was when Papa found out the woman who brought Eleven her food every day had let her sit on her lap and look at picture books. Anger was what made Mike push down that mouth breather, and how Eleven felt when she looked at the bruise on Mike's chin. Anger was dangerous.
"If she can slam doors with her mind, she can definitely screw up a compass!" declared Lucas.
Mike came to her defense. "Why would she do that?"
"Because she's trying to sabotage our mission. Because she's a traitor!" Lucas looked right at her and the hate in his eyes made her stomach ache. She was frozen in panic, unable to deny his accusations.
"You did it, didn't you? You don't want us to find the gate. You don't want us to find Will."
"Lucas, come on, seriously, just leave her alone!" shouted Mike. There was some happiness, even now, in feeling him come to her defense – but it was outweighed by the dread and the guilt. Lucas ignored Mike and continued to challenge her. "Admit it!" he spat out.
She tried to deny it, forming the word no on her lips, but it was too late. They could all see her for who she really was. Lucas grabbed her arm roughly and showed the blood stains on her jacket. "Fresh blood. I knew it."
"That's old blood, right El?" asked Mike. He didn't see the monster in her like other people did. Her mind screamed at her to lie, to say yes, Mike, to let him believe what he wanted to believe, because he wanted to believe in her. But she looked into his eyes and saw the trust there and she knew it was impossible to lie to him as long as he was looking at her like that. "Right, El?"
She tried to form an explanation but fear was choking off air, making her forget the words she so desperately needed. She had to make them understand. "It – It's not safe."
Lucas cut her off again, directing his anger at Mike now. Their raised voices frightened her and made her feel a new stab of guilt, like she had taken something precious and broken it, coming between them.
"She used us! She helped just enough so she could get what she wants – food and a bed! She's like a stray dog," shouted Lucas. Eleven felt tears coming hot down her cheeks. She couldn't understand why her chest felt like it was collapsing. "Did you ever stop to think that maybe she's the monster?"
Suddenly Mike tackled Lucas, pulling him to the ground. Eleven called out, "Stop!" because they shouldn't fight, they shouldn't be angry at each other when she was the one to blame. Then she saw Lucas roll on top of Mike and start hitting and kicking and all that was in her mind was stop hurting him stop hurting him stop stop stop
And suddenly Lucas flew across the yard and collided with a piece of sheet metal with a sickening slam and for a few seconds she wasn't even sorry because how dare you touch him you mouth-breather how dare you.
And then she realized that he was right, he had been right all along.
I am the monster.
And she knew that Mike realized it too, because he looked at her with the kind of loathing and disgust that Lucas had been wearing a moment ago. "Why would you do that? What's wrong with you? What is wrong with you?"
Anguish wrapped around her like a straitjacket, like the darkness of the water tank, and she ran.
She heard them call after her; she heard Mike begging her to return; but she knew she could never go back – not now that she knew what she was. She had kept the truth buried inside, trying to deny the obvious fact that everything that had happened to their friend Will was her fault, all her fault. She found the Demigorgon. She set it loose. Mike acted like he wanted to protect her but the truth was, she was dangerous. She had killed people. She could have killed Lucas. She was just as bad as the bad men from the lab. Mike would be better off without her. She wandered blindly through the trees, her body wracked by sobs, until she could go no further and collapsed on the forest floor, overcome by an exhausted sleep.
Eleven woke up around dawn, surrounded by the smell of earth and moldy leaves. Her head ached from crying and the ground was hard and cold. She pictured the warm cocoon of blankets and pillows that Mike had made for her in his basement and swallowed a lump in her throat. She couldn't think about that anymore. She tried to imagine taking all of her sadness and putting it away in a little room, like the place Papa sent her to when she disappointed him. She knew she had to lock away these memories. It was the only way she could keep herself from being swallowed up by pain.
Focus on what you need to stay alive, her mind told her. Water. Food. Lucas's words echoed in her memory. "She helped just enough so she could get what she wants – food and a bed! She's like a stray dog." She flinched. He was right about that, too.
She needed food and food meant people and people meant attention. She looked down at the wig in her hand. She had taken it off last night because she didn't like the way it itched on her scalp, but it kept her from attracting stares or being recognized by the bad men. And Mike said it made you look pretty whispered a voice in her head, a voice that she wished she could ignore. So she clambered down to the lake and put the wig back on. Looking in the water, though, she saw instantly that any beauty Mike might have seen in her before was gone. Her skin was dull and dirty, the pristine white collar of her new dress had turned brown, and the skirt was wrinkled and torn. The blonde wig was limp and lifeless on her now, tangled and matted with dirt. Ugly. She tore it off and threw it on the ground, tears starting to spill into her vision. This was who she really was. Other people gave her things, pretty things like dresses and watches and friendship and trust, and she ruined them. She turned them ugly. What right did she have to wear pink dresses and act like a normal person? She looked at her reflection and screamed out her hate until the ground shook and the birds took flight.
If Eleven had been in a more reasonable state of mind, or more concerned for her own safety, she might have chosen a different strategy for getting some breakfast. But she was in the grip of an angry, bitter numbness that didn't give a damn about self-preservation. Let the bad men find me, she thought to herself. I have no one to protect. I am a monster. They cannot hurt me. So she stormed into the grocery store, almost daring one of these mouth-breathers to get in between her and her Eggos. She didn't hear them ask where her parents were or demand that she pay for those young lady. She took what she wanted and left a trail of broken glass and bewildered suburbanites behind her.
But as she sat beneath a sagging oak tree tearing the boxes apart, she learned that Eggos just don't taste as good when you're eating them by yourself.
She heard Mike and Dustin calling out to her again. For a moment she imagined going back to find them, telling them everything. Maybe they would forgive her. All she wanted was to see Mike smiling at her one more time. Instead all she could picture was the way he looked when he screamed at her, when he spat out "What is wrong with you?" She stayed where she was, breathing slowly in and out and trying to turn to stone.
She heard voices again, but they weren't familiar – at least not at first. Then she realized they belonged to the boys who had tried to hurt Mike at the school. They were angry. They wanted to hurt someone. She hid behind a tree as they passed by. Then she heard screaming. She heard Dustin, and Mike, and they were screaming.
She was on her feet and running before she even realized what was happening. Brambles tore at her skin and her muscles ached from sitting out in the cold, but she didn't let herself slow down for a second. She started pushing branches out of the way with her mind before she even reached them, clearing a path through the woods.
She rounded the corner just as Mike stepped off the cliff into the quarry. No. With a burst of effort, she halted his momentum, picked him up and dropped him back on solid ground. She dropped him a little harder than she needed to, but he deserved a bump on the head for trying a stunt like that. Besides, she had other things to attend to. Like these mouth breathers for instance. One started towards her but she easily toppled him backwards. The second one – the meanest one, with the knife – she disarmed with a twitch of her neck. He dropped the knife with a cry of pain. "She broke my arm!"
She stared them both down. If she was a monster, so be it. Nobody was going to hurt Mike or his friends ever again and get away with it. "Go." This was mercy, telling them to run. She could have torn their eyes out of their sockets or tossed the two of them into the quarry and they would have deserved it, too.
The bullies ran off. Dustin taunted them as they ran, but Mike just stared at her, and she couldn't quite read the expression on his face. As the rush of adrenaline faded and her energy level crashed, she lost control and crumpled to the ground. Mike rushed to her side, and the warmth of his hand gripping hers brought her back to reality.
"El, are you ok?" he asked. It was his concern for her, after everything that had happened and everything she had done, that broke down the last of her defenses. She couldn't hide the truth from him any longer.
"Mike… I'm sorry…" she sobbed.
"Sorry? What are you sorry for?" he asked, the tiniest of smiles on his lips.
"The gate… I opened it. I'm the monster." She closed her eyes, bracing for rejection and anger.
Instead his voice was gentle and as reassuring as a flashlight in a storm. "No. No El you're not the monster."
She looked at his face and saw that hint of a smile, the kind that made her skin feel all warm and tingly. "You saved me, do you understand? You saved me." He wrapped her up in a hug that told her she belonged there, that she was perfect and good and safe. A hug that said, I understand.
Mike's hands traced gently over her back, and Dustin, too, laid his head on her shoulder, and she thought about how it felt the morning after she ran away from home, the moment when she first saw the sunrise. The way the clouds lit up and the trees turned gold and suddenly, at least for a little while, all the darkness faded from the world.
And she thought to herself: this is just like that, only better.
Author's Note: I literally wrote this in one night because the idea wouldn't leave me alone. I'm kind of obsessed with Eleven right now. I hope it gave you a sense of what she might have been going through. Please leave reviews! I feel about reviews the way Eleven feels about Eggos :)