El seems different now. Not in a bad way, not in a way in which it seems like she's really changed. But she just seems different.

Mike notices that she smiles a little more now. Cries a little less. And with each visit to Dr. Hart, she seems to come out a little lighter. Her eyes seem lighter. Or whatever emotion that her eyes display seems better. She seems better.

Mike was worried when Dr. Hart told her that she didn't want El to go to school as soon as El had hoped. He was worried that it would make her spiral. That it would send her into some sort of deep dark place. Mike knows how many times that El has been let down, how many times she's been disappointed. So he was pleasantly surprised to see that she handled the news pretty well.

And now El seems different. The dark bags circles that had taken up residence on her face are fading. She's been calling him less in the middle of the night. She's talking more. Little by little she is revealing her past life to him and to everyone else. Of course, sometimes she still cries and sometimes she still calls him in the middle of the night and sometimes she still doesn't want to talk about whatever it is that's bothering her. But she's better. She's doing better.

It makes Mike's heart flutter. It makes him hopeful. It makes all of the shit that he is going through at home with his mom and his dad so much more tolerable. He finds that it is easier to ignore their bickering and their fighting and his dad's overall disappointment in him. He has El. And El is getting better. That's all that matters to him right now.

The next couple of months pass in a blur.

When the Party said that they were going to help El get ready for school, they really meant it. Every spare moment everyone had was devoted to helping El.

Mike, Lucas, Will, and Dustin would rush home the second that school was over so they could get home and get their work done and then Nancy or Steve or Jonathan would take all of them over to the cabin and they would sit with El for a couple of hours and teach her everything they could.

It wasn't as easy as Mike thought it was going to be at first. El was smart and everyone knew it, but they had to start with kindergarten stuff pretty much and work their way up. El kind of knew how to read and write, but she didn't know anything about grammar. Max and Nancy worked with her a lot on that. They taught her grammar and spelling and vocabulary words and just about anything else that you could that had to do with English.

Mike was (although he would never say it to her because he knew that she would kill him) pretty surprised at just how good at English that Max was.

El picked up on English the best. She soaked up everything like a sponge. She devoured any book that they put in front of her.

She picked up on history pretty well, too. She just loved learning about the past. She told Mike one time the reason that she liked it so much was because so much of her past was a mystery and if she couldn't piece together all of the puzzle pieces there, at least she could do it somewhere.

She struggled a lot with math and science. Something about numbers were just hard to wrap her head around. When she came out of the lab she at least had a basic understanding of words. Well, she knew some. And she could communicate. It was kind of like talking to Holly, but regardless she had some sort of foundations. When it came to math, she had absolutely nothing except for the number eleven. And then later she had the ability to read the time off of an analog clock. But other than that, numbers might as well have been a foreign language to her.

And she wasn't a big fan of science because she said that it made her think of the lab. Which made total sense. She grew up being a science experiment. Oftentimes Mike's science lessons ended with El sighing heavily and putting her head down on the table and stating "No more."

Despite this, she tried. She tried and tired and tried so hard. She also got frustrated a lot, too. And Mike and the rest of the Party quickly found out that she was very impatient. She just wanted to be able to get it. To understand it. She was, of course, willing to work for it. But Mike knew that it upset her that it didn't come as naturally to her as reading did. And he knew that she had an additional block to work around when it came to science. Once, when he was telling her about scientific methods and different kinds of research and experiments, her entire face went blank and she went to whatever place in her mind that she goes to when she feels overwhelmed or sad or when she thinks about the past too much. He quickly decided to call it quits and just sat there with her. Waiting to see if she would want to talk about whatever was on her mind. She just stared blankly until Hopper came home and Mike explained what had happened. Hopper put her to bed and went out to smoke and to call Dr. Hart.

But nevertheless, she persisted. She tried so damn hard to work past whatever it was that she had to work past. Whether it was a hard math problem or a hard emotion, she soldiered on the best that she could. Mike knew that when she was alone at the cabin, that when Hopper was at work and Mrs. Byers wasn't able to sit with her, she worked through workbooks and readers and spent just about every waking moment she had devoted to catching up on roughly seven years of learning.

And Mike was proud of her, don't get him wrong. He was proud of her for working so hard to get to school and proud of her for working so hard with Dr. Hart and just constantly trying her hardest, but he was tired. Even on the weekends El insisted on trying to learn something. And as much as he loved watching her learn and grow and as much as he loved being a part of that process he was tired. He needed a break from the 24/7 school work. And he thought the El and the rest of the Party needed a break, too.

Hopper had promised that he would let El go out into the real world, but she was so focused on school and learning that it hadn't actually happened yet. So one night when Nancy came to get him after spending about three hours explaining the basics of biology to El, he decided to talk to his sister.

Even after everything that they had been through, Mike still had kind of a hard time talking to Nancy.

They were riding together in silence when Mike cleared his throat and said "Hey, um, Nance?"

She glanced over at him briefly before returning her eyes to the road.

"Yeah?" She answered, almost sounding suspicious and maybe sounding worried.

"So you know how hard El has been working to learn everything that she needs to so that she can go to school? Like day in day out? Like how she lives, breathes, and eats schoolwork right now?"

Nancy chuckled and responded, "Yes, I am aware."

Mike laughed a little too because it was kind of a stupid question to ask her. Nancy had been helping El just as much as everyone else had, and then some.

"Well," he says, "I was just thinking that it might be nice if we did something for her. Like what Steve and you guys did when she went to therapy for the first time. Only bigger. And better."

"What did you have in mind?" She asks, glancing at him again out of the corner of her eye.

"Well," he begins again, "you know how Hopper said that he would like, let her out into the real world and stuff now? So that when she goes to school in the fall it won't be some big scandal because people will already know who she is and so that she can actually do stuff like go to the movies and to the arcade with us?"

"Yes?" She questions, not really being able to see exactly where Mike was going with this.

"I was thinking that maybe to like, reward her, and for all of us and especially her for everything that she's been doing that we have like, an adventure." Mike says tentatively.

"An adventure?" Nancy questions.

"Yeah!" he responds enthusiastically. "We could all take her somewhere like to the zoo or the aquarium or to the lake or something and we could just make a whole day out of it! She's never gotten to do anything like that before and we could even turn it into like some sort of lesson!"

"Like a field trip?" Nancy asks, laughing a little.

This amps Mike up even more. "Yeah! Like a field trip! An awesome, adventurous field trip where El gets to go out in public and do fun things and have fun with the rest of us. Just like everyone else gets to!" He's grinning when he finishes.

"Have you talked about any of this with Hopper?" Nancy asks, "Have you made an actual plan? You know with Hopper that you're going to have to have every single little detail planned out to get him to agree to it. I'm sure when he said that he would let El get out he was thinking of her first outing being something like going to the movies or to the arcade or even shopping, I don't know how up he would be for an 'adventure.'"

Mike mulls this over as they pull into their driveway.

"I know!" He says, and Nancy can practically see the light bulb go off in his head.

Mike then goes into great detail about his grand plan. Nancy listens to him intently and has to make a few alterations to some of his more extravagant ideas here and there, but between the two of them, they've worked out a pretty solid, fun idea.

"That sounds really great and all, Mike, but you're still forgetting one thing. Hopper. You've got to convince him into letting all of this happen.

"Actually," Mike says with a grin on his face that Nancy doesn't exactly trust, "I don't."

"And why don't you?" She retorts.

"Because you're going to!" He states, grin even bigger.

"Me? I have to? Why the hell do I have to?" She says, looking offended but honestly feeling a little scared at the idea of asking the chief to whisk his daughter away on this grand plan of Mike's.

"Because he likes you and it'll sound better coming from you. You are the responsible young adult, after all."

Nancy tries to come up with some sort of argument but realizes that it probably wouldn't be worth it. Once Mike sets his mind on something, there is no changing it.

"Fine." She says, giving Mike the side-eye, "but you have to do all the planning and all the coordinating."

"Yes!" Mike says, literally pumping his fist in the air. He opens up the car door and literally runs to the front door.

"Why are you so excited to get inside?" She asks, walking up behind him.

"Because," he says, "I have to let everyone else know. And I have some planning to do."

With that, he yanks upon the front door, yells a greeting to his mother, and then rushes upstairs.

"What's that all about?" Their mother asks, turning to look at Nancy.

Nancy smiles up the stairs in Mike's general direction.

"He's got some planning to do."