It's a quiet morning in late Spring when El finds it. It's a wonder she hasn't already come across it in the small cabin, but her favorite show just ended for the season and she's bored out of her skull. It's not quite time for her to leave the cabin, but also not quite time for school to be out, so the days that Hopper goes to work are boring. Hiding away is more bearable now that her friends visit frequently, but there's nothing El can do about their school schedule.

She finds the old dusty book in a box up on the top shelf of a cabinet tucked in the corner. It's as if the whole section of the cabin has been forgotten, as silly as it seems in the tiny space, but El's eyes fill with wonder as she picks it up. She'd gone exploring in the cabinet and found the box, and was now picking through its contents. The book doesn't look very different from the others, but the familiar name of the local high school catches her eye.

It's a crimson book with gold lettering and El slowly reads the title. Hawkins Senior High School Yearbook… 1960. El can read the word "yearbook" but she doesn't quite know what it means. She'll have to ask Hopper about it later.

She opens the book and is greeted with a large puff of dust. The girl sneezes, careful to turn herself away from the old book and she uses her other hand to wave away the dust cloud. She remembers the dust clouds that filled the old cabin the first few days after she and Hopper moved in, and she wonders how long it has been since this book was touched. As she leafs through the crisp, perfectly flat pages, she assumes it's been a while, if it was ever touched in the first place.

She gazes at the pictures and their captions, though she can't read some of the large words and doesn't understand many compounds or colloquialisms like "Cheerleading Squad" and "Forensics Team." But, still, she feels a sense of longing as page after page of smiling teenagers stare back at her. It's a strange feeling, and she doesn't know why she feels a knot in her stomach when she thinks about what it would be like to go to school like them. It's something like jealousy, not that she knows the word itself, and she feels sad that she has never gotten the chance to go to school like these kids. She wonders briefly if she ever will.

El turns the page and finds herself looking at rows upon rows of smiling, posed faces. These pictures are so different from the ones at the beginning of the book and she finds she doesn't like them as much. They're too fake, too crafted. The other pictures show kids laughing, having fun, and being with friends, while these are just snapshots of a painted on smile.

Still, though, she skims the pages, eyes glancing over names that she doesn't take the time to read. But, then they land on a picture of a young man who looks so strikingly familiar, that she can't help but spell out the name.

"J-A-M-E-S," El whispers aloud to herself, pointer finger tracing each letter of the name. "James." Yes, that sounds right. "H-O-P-P…" She pauses, staring at the name and then back at the picture again. "Hopper. James Hopper."

That's why he looks so familiar. She brushes the picture lightly with her thumb, removing a bit of dust that has clung to the glossy surface. That's Chief Hopper. Which, she realizes, makes quite a bit of sense. After all, if this book comes from the high school, it would be more strange for Hopper to have an old yearbook that he's not in.

For another few minutes, she examines every part of the picture with determined eyes. He's facing left, but his head is turned to the right and he's not quite smiling, but his lips are curved just the tiniest bit upwards. He has more hair and tall hair at that, and he's wearing what looks like a suit or a tux with a bowtie. El has no idea what color his hair is or if the suit and bowtie are totally black or just a darker color because the picture is in black and white, like all the others. But, she can imagine, and she's determined to remember this picture.

She notices the woman next to him, Joyce… Horowitz? The first name is easy enough, but the last name gives her trouble, and she's not sure if that's Will's mom since it looks so much like her, but the name is wrong. El decides she'll ask Hopper when he comes home.

She flips through a few more pages and reaches the last one. It's blank, save for one little note in the top left corner, written in curvey pretty letters and with I's dotted with hearts.

To my dearest Jim. All the best, Joyce."

Joyce. Again that name, though this time it's written larger with a big looping cursive J and a Y that connects straight to the C. It's written on its own line and then below the name is a heart with a tail and pushes further down the page. El stares at this for a long while too and she wonders if this is the same Joyce that Hopper's picture is next to a few pages back. She gets the feeling it is.

Suddenly, the front door slams and El jumps, slapping the book shut on reflex. She scrambles up, throws the yearbook on the end table next to the couch, and hurries over to the door.

"Sorry, I'm late, kid, got held up at work and then some dumbass-I mean dumb person decided to do ten under the speed limit the whole way home," Hopper says as he kicks off his boots and shrugs out of his jacket. He takes the big coat and throws it over a chair haphazardly instead of hanging it up on the hooks next to the door.

Late. Huh, El must have lost track of time because she doesn't feel sad that he was gone longer than expected. So, she just shrugs and gives him a hug. Hopper returns it, glad that she isn't mad at him. "So, how was your day?" he asks the girl and El grins up at him. She scampers off for a moment, only to return with the yearbook. Proudly, she holds it up to him.

"Year. Book." She pauses. "Yearbook." Yes, that sounds better smooshed together. "Yours?" It comes out as a question, but she already knows the answer. Of course, it's Hoppers; it's in his cabin after all.

Hopper is thrown off guard and he takes the book he hasn't laid eyes on in years. "Oh," he says dryly, leafing halfheartedly through the pages. "Yeah, that's my yearbook. It's a big book of pictures from high school. You know, for memories."

Memories. El doesn't have many memories that she hasn't tried to block out. But the kids in that book look like they have memories they do want to keep and look back on.

"Will I have a yearbook?" she asks and Hopper shrugs. He's not even begun to think about enrolling her in school at all nevermind her graduating and getting a yearbook of her own. But, he recognizes a glint in her eye and knows that she's longing for something good to hold onto, so he quickly morphs his shrug into a nod.

"Yeah, kid. Someday," he says and hands the book back to her, hoping that is the end of her questions about the thing. But, she instead opens it back up to the page with all the posed pictures and shows it to him again.

"You," she says, pointing to his picture.

"Oh yeah. Yup, that's me, penguin suit and all."

El scrunches up her nose, not knowing what a penguin suit is, but she decides not to ask. She has another question that's more important. Sliding her thumb over to the next photo, she taps on the glossy page. "Joyce?" She then flips to the back and points to the single note on the last page. "Joyce?"

Hopper again takes the book and looks at the note he hasn't seen in years. Joyce was the only person to sign his yearbook and the only person he had wanted a signature from. "Yeah," he says in a low, breathy voice. "Joyce."

"Our Joyce?"

'Our Joyce.' Ours, like the woman belongs to the both of them. And, after all that has happened, Hopper figures she does in the same way they both belong to the rest of the group that has saved Hawkins more than this little town ever thought it would need to be saved. Ours. Like Joyce belongs to El just as much as she belongs to Hopper because, though she and Hopper have history, El has saved Joyce's son twice and the girl looks up to the woman more than she's ever said.

"Yeah. That one."

"Pretty."

Hopper looks at the picture for a moment. "Yeah. Pretty, isn't she?"

"Why?" El asks and then stops as she considers what words she needs to use to get her question across. "Joyce wrote in your book. Yearbook."

"Why did she write in it?" Hopper asks. El nods. "It's just something people do. Well, it's what friends do, and Joyce was… is my friend, so she wrote me a little note."

El doesn't quite understand the nuances of yearbook signing, but she figures that his explanation makes about as much sense as anything else. She also has many more questions about the yearbook, why it's signed, and what Hopper and Joyce were like when they were younger, but Hopper speaks before she can string the words together.

"Alright, enough of the old yearbook. Let's get something to eat." He's making his way to the kitchen, and when he gets there, he pulls out two frozen meals. El doesn't follow immediately, but her stomach growls and she finds herself pretty hungry, so she decides to place the yearbook on the end table and head into the kitchen.

As they eat, Hopper is grateful El has stopped asking about the book. He doesn't really know why he kept it, but also can't bring himself to throw it out. In the interest of steering the conversation away from the distant past, he tells El about his day in as much detail as he can possibly push into a boring workday with only a few calls.

El doesn't ask about the yearbook again that night, but after Hopper sends her to bed, he finds himself flipping through the pages on the couch as the dim lamplight illuminates the pages. He lingers on Joyce's picture for a few more minutes than he'd ever admit and then studies the note at the back of the book. Briefly, he wonders if her handwriting is still the same.

When his eyes grow tired and his heart weary from the walk down memory lane, he shelves the old book and goes to bed. It's amazing to look at their faces, so young and full of potential. The Jim and Joyce of the 1960 Hawkins Yearbook had no idea what the future would hold. They had no idea that they would suffer love and loss and fight supernatural beings from another dimension. Everything back then was so simple; go to school, do your homework, bum a cigarette behind the bleachers.

Now, things aren't so simple, and there are a lot of things Hopper wishes he could go back and change, or at least have a little control over. But, still, he's glad. Glad to be here, right now with El fast asleep and safe in the other room. Glad that Joyce is getting on the path to happiness and that her son is safe as well. And glad that he thinks Joyce is still pretty because she is.

Maybe, he thinks before falling asleep, maybe he should tell her that sometime.


As always, thank you for your support even after I've been gone for so long! I loved the idea someone gave me about the yearbook, so I had to write it! I also see the request for an argument and I'll write that eventually, but I need to be in the right mood because it makes me sad when they fight haha! If you have a request, please feel free to let me know and I'll write it as best I can!

*As a note, the "Forensics" team is basically a fancy way of saying Speech and Debate Team. I did forensics for 6 1/2 years in high school and into college, so shout out to any fellow speechies!