chapter three
the way i am
october twenty-first, 1994
Mike, Dustin, and Lucas left before lunch, rather unwillingly.
"I'll see you all tomorrow." she promised, her voice still quite raspy and quiet. They all enveloped her in a massive hug and nearly knocked her over. El giggled and gently pushed them off.
"See you tomorrow!" chorused the boys as they hopped on their bikes and drove away. El and Will waved from the door until they were gone.
"So," he began, "What would you like to do? What if we made you a place to sleep?" he suggested. El nodded,
"A fort?" she asked.
"If you'd like. I think you should at least have a mattress." he responded. Joyce walked in on them while they were talking,
"I was actually just coming in here to tell you both; we're going to build El a bedroom!" she said, smiling. "Hopper and I worked it all out last night. We think it should be the first thing we do because you need a place to sleep whatever happens." El grinned at her,
"Thank you." she whispered.
"It's no problem." responded Joyce. She then led them to the end of the hallway and pointed to the empty wall space closest to Wills room. "We think it should go here, that way you'll both be close." El gently touched the wall with her fingertips and nodded,
"Here is good." she said. Joyce gave El's hair a short pat before leaving the two teens in peace.
"Well, building a whole bedroom doesn't take one day. Let's go build that fort." said Will, grinning. El nodded enthusiastically and they set off in search of any unused pillows and blankets they could find. They came back to Wills room not long after they left, El's arms laden with pillows while Will carried the blankets. They gently tossed the items on the bed and set to work, El would toss pillows at Will and he'd gently set them in place. It wasn't long before Will draped the final blanket on the top of their fort, completing it. "Ta da!" She sat down inside and patted the space next to her. WIll sat down and turned to face her,
"I was there." she said.
"I heard." said WIll, nodding.
"But, the uh, coughing, I- I don't do that." she responded, tilting her head.
"The Demogorgon. It got me." he said solemnly. "In the end. You wouldn't know this, since you were gone by the time everyone found out. But it got me. And put this thing in me, and it must have planted eggs in me or something because for the past year I've been throwing up these- these slugs." El cut him off,
"Slugs?"
"Yes. Except I don't think they are slugs. They're slimy and sometime move but they don't look like a slug, y'know?" he said. El didn't know but nodded slowly anyway.
"Where are they going?" she asked.
"We usually flush them away or keep them in a bag in the shed, mom thinks we can take them to the lab and they'll tell us what they are."
"The bad men." El whispered, her face paling. Will shook his head,
"The bad men are gone." he said, "Some new guy is running it now." El wasn't convinced but went along with it anyway.
That night, El came back into Will's room after taking a shower and found him reading a book.
"What's that?" she asked, tilting her head in hopes of seeing the title.
"The Hobbit!" he exclaimed, "do you know how to read?" he added as a second thought. El shook her head and Will placed his book down and ran to his closet and opened the door. El couldn't see what he was doing, and was surprised when he turned around carrying a precarious stack of books ranging from kindergarten to eighth grade. "Here! Start with the ones on the top, they're mostly picture books but they'll get you started. I stacked them so the books get harder as you go down." El widened her eyes and sat down in her fort. Will placed the books next the her.
"Thank you." she whispered.
"It's no problem," said Will, shrugging, "let me know if you need any help." They fell into a comfortable silence as Will went back to The Hobbit and El picked up the first book in the stack. The first picture was of a dog, a similar looking dog to Daisy (who was sleeping at the end of Wills bed at that moment). She looked at the text "d-o-g" it said. She figured that must say dog, seeing as there was a picture of a dog next to it. She went through this book pretty quickly, and went through the rest almost as fast. She only had to ask Will for help a few times and by midnight, El had almost finished the entire stack. Will had fallen asleep about an hour before and El eyed The Hobbit determinedly. She was going to start it tonight.
october twenty-second, 1984
The next morning, Joyce found El surrounded by books and clutching The Hobbit, a finger stuck between the pages marking where she'd left off. She shook Will awake gently,
"Did you teach her to read?" asked Joyce, sitting on his bed. Will laughed,
"She mostly taught herself." he said.
"She's a very fast learner." observed his mother. Will nodded,
"I thought it would take her a bit longer than one night." He went and sat next to her, and the sudden jostle of the books awoke her.
"Will!" she said after a moments panic.
"Good morning." he said, "did you read all of these books last night?" El nodded,
"Have you got anymore?" she asked, "I'm almost done with this one." Will saw she was right, she was far past halfway.
"Uh, yes. But let's eat breakfast first." Will pried the book out of her hands and pulled her to her feet. They followed Joyce out of the room and went to eat.
Later that day, They went over to Mike's house. El met Nancy and later, after a lot of talking with the older girl, once they were all down in the basement, she got teary eyed seeing the fort that Mike had kept up over the past year. She didn't even mind when he told her it was technically the second fort, it just touched her to see how much he really cared.
october twenty-third, 1984
Monday came and the four boys went into school, happy and still on such a high they didn't even pay notice to Troy and his asshole friends. Will's day however, took a hit when he opened his locker and a bundle of papers fluttered to the ground, all labeled "zombie boy". As he picked them up, a soft voice started up behind him:
"Hey." it said. He turned to see Daniel, one of the new kids.
"Oh, hi." he said, his cheeks turning a shade pinker.
"So what's this about?" Daniel asked, taking the papers from Will with one hand as he ran his fingers through his curly hair with the other. Daniel had blonde hair the was curly on the top and shaved on the sides. He was tall, tan, and had hundreds of little freckles scattered across his skin.
"You don't know? Surely someone's told you." responded Will, taking his science book from his locker and closing the door behind him.
"Nope."
"Last year, I went missing. I uh, fell from a cliff and survived, but everyone thought I was dead so um, I was declared dead for a bit but eventually, I woke up and got the name 'zombie boy'." Explained Will, taking the papers from Daniel and throwing them away when they passed a trash can.
"But why would people think you came back from the dead if you were only in a coma?" asked the other boy. Will shrugged,
"It was more than that. I almost had a funeral and everything." said Will.
"Almost?"
"Yeah well thankfully I woke up before I got buried alive." said Will, jokingly. He knew that if Daniel asked any of the kids, they'd tell him that there was actually a funeral. A funeral that Jennifer Hayes cried at (not that he'd need to know that part). Daniel grinned at him.
"I'm Daniel by the way. Daniel Everett." he said holding out a hand. Will took it,
"I'm Will. Will Byers." they smiled at each other and as Daniel walked away, he looked over his shoulder and winked. Will blushed even harder and scurried into his class, his friends giving him confused looks the whole period.
"So you know Daniel?" Will asked cautiously as the four boys rode home on their bikes.
"Which one?" said Mike.
"Daniel Everett." responded Will, choosing his next words carefully. "I-I think he's really cute and sweet and he isn't as mean as the other kids. I told him today, what happened. Not all of it obviously but he asked when he saw some kids call me zombie boy. So I told him and that was that, he didn't laugh or act super weirded out." he said all this in a super fast slur, and when he finished he wasn't even sure if his friends knew what he had just said. Although, as their bikes came to a halt, he figured they had heard correctly. They stood in awkward silence for a moment before Mike started biking again and everyone joined in.
"He does seem pretty nice," said Mike, shrugging.
"He has nice hair." said Dustin. Will nodded,
"He does, and freckles." he said dreamily.
"Is he why you were blushing so much in science?" asked Dustin. Will nodded, grinning slightly.
"I heard he moved from Massachusetts, you caught yourself an east-coaster!" said Lucas, laughing.
"I haven't caught anyone yet." said Will, laughing along with him, "we're not even friends, really."
"Well, you will be friends with him, I can't think of a reason why he wouldn't want to be your friend." said Mike.
"Thanks." said WIll.
"Speaking of new kids," began Lucas, "and nice hair…"
"Max? Again?" said Mike, frowning and rolling his eyes.
"We actually talked today! In PE, I accidentally hit her with a basketball and when I said sorry, she told me to go away." he said.
"Well that's progress I suppose." said Dustin with a snort.
When Will got home, he immediately ran to the bathroom and threw up all the slugs he'd had to keep down while at school. He found early on that people weren't going to just ignore someone throwing up in school. El had silently crept up on him and ne nearly jumped out of his skin when he turned around and was met with her concerned stare.
"Your cheeks." she said, "they're pink." she held out and pressed a hand against his face. He brushed off her comment but made a mental note to explain everything to her later.
"Have you been here all day? Alone?" he asked. She shook her head as they went to find a more comfortable place to talk, ending up in El's fort.
"I was at Hoppers."
"Doesn't he have to go to work?" asked Will. El shrugged,
"He didn't go today." she fiddled with her hands, "no one knows where to put me." she added quietly.
"That doesn't mean we don't want you!" said Will hurriedly, "maybe you can stay with Mike's mom? I'm sure his little sister would love you." El looked up,
"Really? I wouldn't be uh, a burden?" she asked. Will raised his eyebrows,
"That's a big word." he laughed.
"I read it in a book." she responded, smiling.
"But no, you wouldn't be a burden. And you're not a burden now." he said. "Okay, well I have to go do homework. Do you want a new book?" El nodded,
"first, do you need help with your uh, homework?" she asked, "what is homework?" she added after a moment.
"It's basically just schoolwork that teachers give you to do at home." he said. She mouthed a silent 'oh'. "I have math homework if you want to help. I don't know if you already know any math but if you don't maybe I can teach you." he took out his math binder and removed the sheet he was supposed to do. El looked it over before pointing at the first question,
"Thirty-five." she whispered. Will looked over with raised eyebrows.
"Uh, okay." he quickly did the math while she looked over his shoulder. "Oh." he said, when his answer did end up at 35. The rest of the homework went mostly like this and they finished the whole sheet in ten minutes. This left them lots of free time to do whatever they wanted before Jonathan and Joyce got home. "I think we should go take Daisy out. Then I think I'll give you the Sherlock books." El nodded and they stood up to go look for Daisy.
"Sherlock?" El asked as they sat on the back steps, waiting for Daisy to come back with the stick they'd thrown for her.
"Yeah, he's a detective." El and Will sat outside for at least another hour, Will telling El all about Sherlock Holmes and El sitting quietly, simply enjoying sitting outside with her friend and soon to be brother.
the way i am by ingrid michaelson
