Mike stumbled in the dark. A lip of broken concrete caught his toes, but he barely seemed to notice. He kept moving at top speed, his breath coming in heavy heaves, block after block, until he couldn't keep running anymore.
It took no time for a sinister voice to catch up with him as his pace slowed down.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?"
The curse cut from his own lips, clear and sober. He felt it slice through his mind with a sharp sting. In the timespan of a breath the reality of his actions became clear.
And what he realized was not good…
He opened his phone and navigated to his camera app. Without taking even a split second to think it through, Mike erased the unsent photo that he'd just taken at El's home.
It didn't feel like enough. So, he continued.
Finger stabbing at the screen, he erased the photos from Thelma's that he'd taken a few hours before. He erased the text messages that he'd shared with Mrs. Byers. He opened his browser and with a shaking finger closed every single one of the tabs that he'd amassed, effectively hurling away the breadcrumbs of potential evidence that would have helped him stitch together his hypothesis.
… His hypothesis that instantly seemed deranged, crazy, and absolutely off base …
It still didn't feel like enough.
He wished he could erase so much more.
Honestly, he wished he could erase every single moment going all the way back to the night before. Every manic move and spinning conjecture, leaving him on pause in a much more peaceful and less shameful place: Holding El in the quiet of her bedroom.
He wished that he could erase the part of himself that couldn't simply let things be.
Shame pooled through his chest like a thick sludge. Mike growled and shoved his now evidence-less phone into his pocket.
"What kind of self-sabotage is this, Wheeler?" he barked under his breath, "You probably scared the shit out of her in her own home!" His hands found their way into his hair, pulling at it until he winced. "You're convinced she has powers?! Powers. Powers?! You're a physicist who is convinced that a woman has telekinetic POWERS. So you go to her HOUSE in the middle of the NIGHT like a fucking MANIAC?! You insane fucking stalker!"
Scurried movement ahead snapped him out of his red haze. He looked up to find two young women eyeing him nervously. They moved to the very edge of the sidewalk as they scurried past.
Mike sighed.
He didn't blame them.
He probably looked crazy.
Maybe he was crazy.
...Maybe he needed help.
A new therapist or new medication or… or something. Because all of this: the anxiety, the paranoia, the intense and insatiable curiosity? The conspiracy theories that he was cooking up despite his stellar grasp on the laws of science?
It wasn't safe.
It wasn't safe for him. It clearly wasn't safe for the people he cared about.
...It wasn't safe for El.
Turning down the final street toward his home, Mike's pace slowed and a thread of cold clarity parted the turbulent waves of his mind.
El deserved so much better than this.
She deserved a stable person. Someone with their shit together. A rational person who could do simple everyday stuff like drive a car or make a phone call without it absolutely crippling them. She deserved someone who was excited about life, not someone who was constantly preparing for something bad to happen. And she definitely deserved someone who didn't build dangerous conspiracy theories around her and someone who respected her fucking privacy.
Maybe the lights in her home had been on a timer that just happened to line up with a twitch in her sleep. Maybe there were electrical issues in her home...and in the bar. Maybe it really had just been the wind that had whipped him up into the air the day he met her.
Maybe it had been nothing more than a series of unremarkable events.
Or maybe... maybe he'd made it all up.
Mike gulped, fear permeating through him as the worry sank in. Tears began to threaten the edges of his eyes. Stomach queasy, shoulders slumped and at a loss for what to do, Mike turned down the final road and shamefully, thick in thought, made his way home.
It was a place that he never should have left.
He could only hope that maybe he hadn't given her too much of a fright.
In a plummeting descent, the most lovely day had been snatched from El's fingers, raining reality on her with an intensity that she hadn't tasted in years.
With it came flashes of what she had attempted to keep permanently buried in the back of her mind.
Whispering memories of his silver hair and his cold eyes. His perfectly pressed suits and cufflinks, always precisely centered on his wrists as he reached for her hand to lead her through the cold empty hallways. She could hear his voice, clear and cold, coming for her, as though he was just standing on the other side of her door.
…Papa...
Tears welled in her eyes, her chest so tight that she could barely breathe.
In a desperate rush, she tried yet again to recall the words that her true father had spoken just hours before: It might be nothing.
A cat, maybe? Or a dog off of its leash? A teen playing a harmless prank on her step as headlights flashed through her window?
A simple misunderstanding?
A coincidence and nothing more?
Yet… it didn't feel like nothing. Not by a long shot.
A creeping sense of being watched was bearing down on her, making her feel on display within the confines of her own home. It hadn't felt so intense in so long, and it was impossible to shake.
The ache in her tucked legs was beginning to become too much, though. They were begging to be moved. They had been pulled into her chest in tense stillness for at least thirty minutes as she sat stalk still with her back against the kitchen wall. Thirty minutes of silence broken only by the chirp of crickets coming from outside.
It truly did seem that there was no presence outside at all, but there was only one way to tell for sure.
It felt dangerous, abandoning her body in such a tense moment, but El only had two choices: do it, or sit frozen between fight and flight until the sun rose.
So, with a shaky breath, El closed her eyes and willed herself away, to another place. To there. To the black emptiness that she so rarely visited.
It was a long journey to get there. Her heart was beating too loudly, and the light of the kitchen was much too bright. After a long while of ineffective concentration she carefully slipped the hood of her sweatshirt over her eyes and pulled the drawstrings to cut out the light.
It helped.
Focusing on the hum of the refrigerator, El's consciousness succeeded in its quest of floating out of the kitchen and into the black stillness of the void.
Cold permeated her whole being as she stood upon the front stoop of her very own home, just a sliver of a reality away. She could sense no presence but her own body left behind. Nothing in the bushes. No one around the corner. Just her body crouched in on itself on the other side of the window, in the other dimension.
She looked toward her feet to find the culprit that had frozen her body on the other side.
A planter, long neglected, scattered in a messy array. The husk of a small nearly dead fern peeked out of a pile of glazed terra cotta shards, potting soil, and old leaves. El bent down, her hand ghosting over the shadow of its existence. It was not a simple drop. It had been kicked a significant distance, scattering across the walkway as proof of someone's quick escape.
Definitely further than a cat or a dog could have flung it.
Pulling herself back up to standing, El took a wary look around once more. Her senses tingled in an attempt to locate anyone who might be in the area. Yet again, she came up with nothing. Sighing, she slipped back through to the other side.
Opening her eyes, El pulled her hood down with more freedom to her movements than before. She let out a hard exhale. Slowly, she let her shaky legs unfold in a stretch before her. Her overly tight joints protested at the stretch, yet she barely noticed. For her brain was scrambling in search of something much more important: a plan.
The moment the next step became clear, she sprung up from the floor. Heart still racing, she sped through the small house as quickly as she could. Her long waiting bug-out bag was buried at the bottom of her closet, but it was in her hands in no time. She stuffed her phone, keys, computer and jacket in the top of the almost full bag and darted straight out the front door, ensuring twice that it was locked before she made her way to the car. She slid into the car and gunned it in an instant, never looking back.
Hands shaking on the wheel, El meandered through the city, taking odd turns here and there, sometimes at significant speed. Her eyes remained peeled on the rear view mirror for any signs of being followed. Only when she was certain that she was free of followers did she make her way to the interstate. Her knuckles were as white as the painted dashes of the road that flew past her eyes as she fled toward her father's house.
It was a longer drive than she was used too. Every minute of it had stretched out like taffy, long and paranoid, but she somehow did eventually make it. She turned off her headlights a half mile from her father's cabin and allowed the bright moonlight to direct her through the trees. No other cars appeared, much to her relief, and she turned into the driveway seemingly undetected.
She pulled the car around the back into a concealed spot that was rarely used. The lights were off in her father's house as she made her way up the porch stairs, so she made sure to make as much noise as possible in hopes of alerting her father that it was indeed her and not someone nefariously sneaking around. It seemed to work, for his bedroom light turned on right as she stepped through the door.
"It's me!" she called out, cursing to herself as she heard her voice waver. "We need to talk."
Two cups of coffee and one hour later, her father had finished his interrogation, compiling all of the evidence he felt he needed in order to get to the bottom of the most harrowing day of events they'd had in years.
Jim Hopper pushed his thumbs into his temples and took a deep breath. "Well, you're definitely staying here until we figure this out."
El nodded, her expression blank, "Should I tell people I'm sick?"
"You got big plans this weekend?" He asked with a dry sense of amusement.
Actually, yes. She did... But she could not give those details to him here…
"Work," she said instead. It wasn't like it was a lie. "People are going to wonder where I am."
Hopper nodded in understanding, and thought over her question. "No. I'm sorry kid, but you better lay low. You don't know who they've compromised."
El's jaw dropped. "I can't even tell them I'm not coming to work?"
"Let me handle your work. I'll figure something out. But the truth is anyone connected to you is a potential target. So the less they know, the better."
A fresh sense of dread spun in her stomach. She swallowed hard. "Do you really think it's bad?"
He sighed, "Can't say yet. It's too early to know. You just stay here and keep a low profile. I'll figure out the next steps, okay?"
El's eyes fell into the depths of her coffee cup as a sense of something heavy settled over her.
"Try to get some sleep, kid," he said. He took his cup to the sink and dropped it in with a heavy thud. El jumped at the sound of the porcelain hitting the metal basin.
It was then that she knew… sleep was very far off, indeed.
The first rays of morning light had begun to spill into her old bedroom by the time her eyes began to droop. Her vision blurred as soft light bled across the wood paneled ceiling above. She couldn't help but think about the countless times that she'd been in the exact spot before, with nothing to do but watch the sun rise in this exact same way. The veins of the wood panels illuminated within the light. It had always been pretty in a way, but it did not exactly conjure good memories.
She closed her eyes, trying to go to a different place. Yet, very few safe places in her mind remained.
There was one, of course. But it was bittersweet at best.
It was almost poetic in its cruelty, the journey she had taken from one morning to the next. It had begun so perfectly. Almost too perfectly… In Mike's arms. Held safe in his embrace as she woke, rested and calm. Her back had felt so warm against his chest as she'd flirted with the last moments of sleep, his breath moving in a soft rhythm that could have lulled her right back to sleep if only she'd allowed it.
From there… To here.
It felt so foolish now.
Foolish, naive… and dangerous.
The heaviness that had settled in her gut spoke in dark tones once more.
What if they knew about him?
If they did... it was all her fault.
How could she have been so selfish? How could she have allowed herself to lure Mike into her hard spun web of lies? Her life was so filled with danger that he could never be prepared for. It was so unbelievably greedy to take this sweet man's comfort and endanger him with her mess without his knowledge or consent.
Every emotion she had for him was a danger to his safety.
Mike deserved so much better than this.
Was he going to be safe?
He'd spent the night at her house mere hours before. Had someone seen him?
Was he already in trouble?
El's breath caught in her throat. Visions spun, making her stomach churn with a fresh mash of fear.
It was without delay that El's eyes closed. She didn't need any assistance to transport herself this time. Her will was strong and her target was crystal clear. She found herself in a place she'd never been. A bedroom with messy sheets, discarded socks, scattered books, and the person who she was desperately hoping to find safe and unharmed.
And he was.
His surroundings held no sign of anything out of the ordinary. He was fast asleep, coiled up in sheets that seemed to tell a story of a tossed and turned restless night of sleep. His brow was tight, as though he was having a nightmare. Instinctively she reached out, tracing the spot between his brows in hopes of erasing whatever was going on behind his eyelids.
As though he could feel her, he twitched, and his face went calm.
She stood there longer than was necessary, but she couldn't look away. So much had changed in twenty-four hours, but this feeling she had when she looked at him? That was still exactly the same. Growing, in fact... despite the fact that she was going to have to try to let it go.
What she would have given to crawl in that bed with him and bury herself into his long arms. To rest her face on his shoulder. To feel his breath tickle her neck.
For a fleeting moment it felt worth the risk.
But it wasn't.
Not because of her safety, but because of his.
The tears that had itched at her eyes all night began to well up as she returned to her body many miles away. Eyes opening slowly, heavily, El reached over to her bedside table in the early dawn light. An insurrection awaited her there. Her phone, supposed to be off, illuminated at her finger's touch. Her movements betrayed her one last time, scrolling to Mike's final texts.
It was going to be half a day before he realized that anything was off, but that time would come all the same. There was nothing she could do about that. She was sure of it. She'd spent the whole night trying to find another way. Conjuring an idea for a safe way to contact him, but… there just wasn't one. It all put him in too much danger, and she had already put him in enough.
There would be no explanation. No excuses or lies. There couldn't be. For her safety, and for his.
But she knew what that left.
Nothing.
A stand up. A cold empty retreat.
Very possibly the end of the short story of her and Mike.
With a deep shuddering breath, El held down the button until the power down option appeared. Her vision became blurry as she swiped her finger and the phone went black.
The heaviness that pressed on her chest pulled her and she closed her eyes with nothing left to do but sleep.
Mike tried not to look, but he failed… again.
Of course, nothing new greeted him.
It was the same empty screen. No answered texts. No returned calls. No confirmations.
Nothing but silence.
On a normal day, Mike would probably have been able to look past it. There were normal explanations, after all. A long day of work, maybe. One spent mostly teaching or falling through the air at catapulting speed. That was not exactly an easy place for her to check her phone.
Plus, it wasn't like she was going alone with him tonight. Max was likely with her already, and for all Mike knew they'd be waiting right at the door when he and Lucas pulled into the parking lot of the science center. Then, all would be well. Nothing more than an innocent miscommunication.
But something in Mike would not settle into that likely eventuality. Instead, a sharp memory was stuck on replay, clouding and twisting the meaning behind every little detail - The flick of her lights. The smashing of the pot as he stumbled off of the concrete lip and ran. The instant shame pouring through him that had still not receded from his gut.
He couldn't help but feel like she had seen him. That somehow, despite the pitch black dark he had been cloaked in, she'd known it was him. And now, today, she had blown him off.
It's not like he would have blamed her.
Not at all.
But still, maybe this was all just a simple misunderstanding. Maybe he'd get a second chance. A chance to act like an actual normal fucking person. Maybe he'd get a chance to shake it off and erase from his mind that he'd ever even believed an ounce of that RIDICULOUS conspiracy theory that he'd built a whole crackpot alternate reality upon.
Maybe he could just put it all behind him tonight. Get out of the car. Greet El. And go on a date with the best girl he'd met in so long.
The only girl he'd allowed himself to meet, or even really talk to in years.
The only new person he'd willingly allowed into his life since his world had shrunk so small and scary.
The girl who had opened his life up in the last few weeks. Stretched it, taken something in him and made it simply shush. The girl who didn't seem to see the guy who had struggled for years, but saw him for who he wanted to be.
And in return he'd decided that she was… He couldn't even finish the thought.
It was all so ridiculous. So Stupid.
He was done with all that.
The car slowed and Mike looked up.
His brow knitted in confusion as Lucas took a right not into the science center… but into the airfield.
He only needed to look at Lucas to get his answer.
"Max texted," He said, his eyes scanning the empty parking lot before them, "she said we needed to pick her up."
"El isn't taking her?"
Lucas simply shrugged.
Mike's stomach knotted with a new level of tension as Lucas slowed down and came to a rolling stop. The back door opened almost immediately and a flash of red hair whipped into place as Max settled into the back seat.
"Thanks for coming," she said, her voice heavy and a bit tired.
Lucas flashed a huge smile into the rear view mirror, "No problem."
"So, is El meeting us there, then?" Max asked, directing her voice to Mike as she put on her seatbelt.
"Uh - what?" He stuttered, looking back.
Max rolled her eyes, "You don't have to play coy with me. She skipped work today, and I'm sure you know something about that."
Mike's brow knitted in confusion "I - "
"Made me late, the brat," Max continued, "I waited for her for twenty minutes before I had to call a Lyft."
Mike stared at her blankly and Max's expression shifted from annoyance to confusion, "She wasn't with you?"
"No?"
"Really?" Max replied with surprise, "Shit. I thought she'd lost her mind and just played hookey with you today or something. When did you last talk to her?"
"Yesterday," he replied vaguely, "I've been trying to get a hold of her today but didn't hear back. You?"
Max's expression tightened, "At work yesterday." Immediately, she pulled out her phone and hit a few buttons. The now familiar tone of El's voicemail crackled through her phone. Her fingers began to tap intently on her thigh while she waited. "Ellie," she finally said, her tone sharp, "Okay, I thought you were an idiot when you missed work this morning and didn't fucking call in, but now I'm worried. Call me as soon as you can do so I don't pull together a search party." She clicked off her phone and, without a breath, addressed Lucas. "Take a right. We need to go check on her."
"Maybe she'll meet us there," Lucas replied, not slowing down.
"Take. A. right." Max repeated, deadpan.
"But…" Lucas sighed, "We're gonna be late. The early bird entry ends in 20 minutes."
"TAKE A RIGHT!"
"Okay!"
Lucas abandoned his original path and took the right, and step by step Max directed him toward El's house.
Mike's heartbeat was beginning to race in a way that was making him feel sick. The inkling of fear that had been following him since the night before spiked, catching his breath. He tried to keep a straight face, but he wasn't sure if he was able.
The last turn was now familiar, and he saw the very same houses he had run past in the pouring rain just a couple of days before. Her tiny home came into view, and his sense of foreboding grew heavier.
Her car was gone.
"This one's hers," Max said. Lucas pulled into the driveway.
Max leapt out of the backseat and Mike found himself following her. Together they made their way up to her front door. A tremor of dread began to ebb as Mike noticed the flower pot still lying shattered upon the ground where he had tripped the night before.
"Ellie!?" Max bellowed, banging on the door. She waited for a split second before repeating her actions again… and again.
"Her car isn't here," Mike said quietly.
"I'm aware," Max replied darkly. Though, it seemed to make her turn around to face him. "Maybe Lucas is right. Do you think she is at the thing? Did she have the information?"
Mike shook his head, "No, not unless you gave it to her."
"I didn't." Max worried her lip, knocked one last time, and sighed. "Well, let's go there and check, at least. She might have figured it out and gone ahead. She's weird like that."
"She's not weird."
"Oh, she's weird," Max replied with a splinter of humor, "It's just that you're weird too, so you don't notice."
Despite the fact that he had just been insulted, Mike was grateful for the distraction.
Teasing felt better than the tension that was coiling with him, at least. Tension that continued when they got to the science center and didn't find her there.
They didn't stay long. Within 45 minutes they were back at their house sharing the scraps of a frozen pizza from the back of the fridge, at an awkward kind of loss of what to do.
"Do you think she's okay?" Lucas asked as he paced the kitchen.
"I sure as hell hope so," Max replied, her voice tight.
"Should we call the police or something?" Lucas offered, pulling his phone from his pocket.
"No," Max said immediately, "El wouldn't like that. Not yet, at least. She's uh… she doesn't trust cops. She says the only cop she trusts is her dad."
"So, should we call the Hawkins PD, then?" Mike offered immediately, "Or should we try to call her Dad's?"
"Yeah, I was thinking that," Max said with a nod, "Calling him directly, maybe?"
Mike swiped his phone up to google it and instantly stopped. He knew what he'd find.
"He'll be unlisted."
Max threw Mike a face, "How do you know that?"
"He's uh…" a fresh wave of shame caught in his throat. "He's a cop? He probably doesn't list his private information. Does she go to his place a lot? In Hawkins?"
Max thought about the question for a second. "On and off, I guess. She doesn't vanish into thin air but she goes there a good amount, yeah."
"Okay, I might have an idea." Mike said, swiping his own phone to make a call.
"I said don't call the cops." Max warned sharply.
"I'm not. I'm calling Will's Mom."
Lucas and Max's heads both whipped to him in surprise just as Mrs. Byers voice rang clear in his ear.
"Hi, Mike." she said knowingly, "Did you still want to send those pictures?"
"Sorry, uh no." Mike said with a cringe, hoping that no one could hear her words through the phone. "Um… do you know Chief Hopper's number?"
Mrs. Byers reply was hesitant. "Mike, I really don't think - "
"It's not about that. It's… something else. It's important."
"Are you okay?" she asked.
"Yeah, yeah everything's fine."
"I - " he could almost feel the discomfort in her voice, but she was quick to relent, "I don't know if I have it anymore. I'll have to look."
"Yeah, sure. I can wait."
"Okay, just a second."
Mike heard the phone on the other end drop lightly to a table, and he sat back to wait. Lucas, on pacing opposite of him, finally caught his eye.
"Why the hell are you calling Will's mom?" he mouthed, giving it almost no voice, his eyes wide and incredulous.
"She knows El's dad." Mike said simply.
That was obviously not the answer Lucas had been expecting. "Really? How?"
"El's from Hawkins, remember?" Mike said, "It's uh... It's a long story."
"Okay, Mike?" Joyce's voice returned, and Mike's back straightened up, "Are you still there? I found something in my old Rolodex."
"Yeah, I'm here. Just - " he scrambled around, grabbing a napkin and mouthing 'pen' at Max. Max grabbed her bag instantly and plunged her hand to the bottom, fishing out a pen and handing it to Mike. "Okay, I'm ready."
"I really don't know if it's current. It was for his old house out at the end of Elm, but I heard he moved years ago."
"It's fine. I'll try it."
"Okay. 765.662.9210."
"765.662.9210"
"That's it."
"Thanks, Mrs. Byers."
"Sure. Mike, Are you sure you're - "
"I'm fine. Sorry. Gotta run. Thank you! Good night!"
Mike hung up and instantly input the numbers into his phone. It rang four times before a cranky old woman answered.
"It's past 10. This better be important."
"Hi. Uh. Is this… Chief Hopper's number?"
"No. Wrong number," she barked, and just like that the line went dead.
Mike sighed and put the phone down, immediately stymied.
Max shared his empty look. With a huff, she dialed her own phone, waited for a few seconds and dropped it from her ear. "It's still going straight to her voice mail," she said miserably.
"I'm sure she's fine," Lucas offered hopeful calm as he took a seat at the other end of the table, "Maybe her dad is sick or something?"
"Yeah, maybe. I just - " Max didn't seem calmed by the thought. "If her Dad is the chief of police then maybe it wouldn't hurt to at least call the Hawkins PD? I - " Max finished her thought by pushing some buttons on her phone. The boys watched her in silence as she found the number and dialed. In almost an instant a loud metallic voice echoed through."
"Hawkins Police Department," scratched a young man.
"Uh - hi - " Max said, "Is Chief Hopper in?"
"Can't say he is. Is there a problem?"
"Uh - we're friends of his daughter. She's… we haven't seen her in a while and are looking for her."
"You mean she's missing?"
"I - I don't know if she's missing but she didn't show up to work and she's not home. She - "
"When's the last time anyone saw her?"
"Yesterday at work." Max said without asking Mike.
"And where was work?"
"The Indianapolis municipal airfield."
"Wait," the cop said with halting coldness, "this didn't happen in Hawkins?"
"No," Max replied with rolled eyes, "I'm calling because I'm talking about Chief Hopper's daughter."
"But if this didn't happen in Hawkins we couldn't help you with this. You'd need to report this to Indianapolis."
Max's expression became annoyed, "I'm trying to talk to her dad. Because maybe he knows where she is and this is all a big misunderstanding and the cops don't need to get involved. So, if you'll just help me out like you're supposed to, that'd be great."
"Miss, calm down,"
"Calm down?" She bit back.
A sigh broke through the phone, "What's your name."
"Maxine Mayfield."
"What's your relation to Chief Hopper's daughter?"
"Co-worker and... friend?"
"Phone number?"
"463.790.5555."
"Okay, I'll let him know you called."
"Thank you," she said sternly. Her shoulders dropped as she hung up the phone. "Hawkins PD is going to get ahold of her dad."
"Well, that's something, right?" Lucas offered with an off kilter sense of chipperness in his voice.
It did not raise the spirits of the other two people in the room.
Shortly after that, Max and Lucas went off to bed, Max saying she had an early day and was too tired to go home. While she said goodnight, she clutched to her phone, surely not letting it out of her sight.
As the house grew quiet and the night set in, Mike found himself alone with his thoughts.
Something about Max's demeanor had completely altered his thoughts. She seemed worried in a way that was hard to shake. It was a worry that went far past Mike's original fears of being ghosted, being dumped, being seen for the crazy person he was.
Maybe El was truly in danger.
So, he found himself searching through the night in a different way. In the darkness of his bedroom, only by computer light, he dug in from a different angle. A morbid angle that he just needed to rule out. There was no sign in the papers or the Indianapolis police daily record that El had been in an accident or anything. No news articles from the day that matched any of the circumstances. The same could be said for her dad.
Still. Something felt so... off.
It was a while before Mike let his eyes wander to the tab tucked in the middle of a crowded stack of tabs in his browser. Back to the interview that had made him go haywire the other day.
The girl with the nosebleeds who had gone into hiding.
Was El having to do the same?
Mike rolled his eyes at himself.
There was no way.
Because none of that was real.
Disgusted at himself, and worried more than he ever expected to be over a person he'd only known for a few weeks, Mike closed the tab and banished it from his sight.
Despite his worries, the night led him to a fitful rest. For, he had now gone days without a good night's sleep. He couldn't fend it off any longer. By some miraculous reality, he awoke with the sun with some sense of being rested.
He went downstairs, rubbing his eyes to find Max at the same location she'd been at the night before. Though, she was now in one of Lucas's t-shirts and nursing a cup of coffee, all while scrolling aggressively through her phone.
"You hear anything?" Mike asked.
"Nope," she said, not looking up, "But I remembered something."
"What's that?"
"I have his information."
"You do?"
"Yeah," she said, looking back down to her phone, "She gave it to me once. I had to go pick her up at her dad's when she was having car trouble. That was like six months? A year ago? I don't know, but I'm sure I have it in here somewhere. I remembered the second I woke up," she said wearily as she continued to scroll through old texts. "God, I text too much. I have no idea how to find this."
"Did you try to search?"
"Of course I did," she said blandly.
"By area code?" he offered, "Or the town numbers?"
"Town numbers?" She asked, looking up curiously.
"I don't know what they're called," Mike admitted with a shrug, "The three numbers in the middle of the phone number. Hawkins only has two so if it's a local number it should come up. Check. 662 or 663"
Max nodded and began to type, her eyes widening immediately, "Holy shit, here we go," she mumbled to herself, "'353 Valley Pass Lane. Receptions bad, call the house phone when you're close. 765.662.2129.' Maybe that's why her phone is going to straight to voice mail?" She asked, looking up at Mike with a surge of hope, "Bad reception?"
"Maybe," Mike replied as he launched over the table with a renewed sense of energy. "Can you read that out again?" He grabbed the pen and napkin from the night before and jotted down the information as Max repeated it. The address itched with familiarity at the back of his mind but he thought nothing of it as a ringtone began to sound through Max's line.
It rang again and again, until finally a disconnect tone blared.
"No voicemail box," Max said quietly.
Mike's fresh hope sank like a stone.
"I've got to get to work," Max said with a heavy sigh as she stood up and stretched, "I'll be flying most of the day, can you try that number again in a few hours, maybe?"
"Yeah, of course."
"Cool," she said, grabbing the pen and jotting down her number on the corner of the napkin. "I'll text you if she's at work or if I hear back from her dad or the cops."
Mike tried to distract himself throughout the morning, but it was no use. With every other breath he side eyed his phone, hoping that something would have changed. A text from Max saying that El was at work, maybe. Or something directly from El that would put his mind completely at ease.
But his phone stayed maddeningly silent.
Mike tried both of her numbers at around 11am. El's phone and the home number that Max had shared with him. There was no response at either one.
At lunch time he called Max, and thankfully she answered. She had nothing to report, though. El had not arrived at work.
All around him in the house the was filled with the normal lazy Sunday flurry of roommates. Chats and video games and phone calls and jokes and cooking existed in his space, but it all felt so very far away from him. He was in a haze, a world away, and unable to connect.
Finally, at around 2pm, Will cut through to him.
"Hey, maybe you should get your mind off of this?" Will offered kindly, "We're going to go to a movie and then dinner. Want to come?"
Mike shook his head blankly, "No, I wouldn't be able to focus. I don't want to ruin your fun so you guys should just go without me."
Mike watched as Dustin grabbed his keys from the hook to drive. Will and Lucas followed, and the house fell to silence.
It was in that silence that the haze burned off and everything caught up to him.
It didn't make sense.
All of this was happening in a way that he couldn't piece together.
But the truth was, El's disappearance did need to be pieced together. Enough for him and Max to at least know that she was okay.
That was how Mike found himself calling the Hawkins PD himself.
Toe tapping against the tile of the kitchen he waited for the dispatch to connect. When it finally did, he asked, "Chief Hopper, please."
"Chief Hopper is out, can I take a message."
"Please, I need to speak with him directly."
"What's this about."
"His daughter."
"His daughter." the man spoke back, deadpan. "What about her?"
"We called last night. She's missing and we need to talk to him."
"Okay…" the person said, surprised by his words, "Give me your name and number. I'll have him call you."
"Thank you," Mike said emphatically, "Michael Wheeler. 765.662.0120."
"I'll see what I can do. Sit tight."
Mike tried to do as he was told, but his fingers snatched the now crumpled napkins with her Hawkins home phone on it and he dialed that again.
Again, nothing.
His fingers tightened against the napkin, crumpling it in a way that made his breath stop.
Hot discomfort bubbled through him as the other writing on the napkin crunched up through the break in his fingers and caught his eye.
He didn't just have a phone number.
He had an address.
He stared at it for a longer than he knew, his breath beginning to go shallow again. If he had the address, he could just… go there. An hour and a half away. With no one home to drive him.
He swallowed hard, willing himself to drop the next arising thought… but it would not budge.
His stomach twisted.
His hands grew sweaty.
Yet, before he knew it something in him moved.
Moved from the table to the door, specifically toward the set of hooks that hung above the shoes. Each hook held keys that belonged to a different roommate, matched to different cars outside. None of them were his, but it wasn't like this hadn't once been normal to stand here and take a set of keys from this hook.
In fact, it had once been the most normal thing.
Something was leading him. Overriding his fears. Pushing him despite his triggers. El could very well be in trouble, and all he could think to do was to track down her dad… by whatever means possible.
Almost in a trance, Will's keys were lifted from the hook, cold in Mike's hands, and with buzzing resolution he walked out the door.
He made his way, heavy foot by heavy foot, toward Will's car which was parked at the corner. With every step closer he got, his brain sent louder signals, begging him to stop.
But something within him wasn't listening.
Something in him was… free.
He slid into the driver's seat, hands shaking as he pulled on the seat belt and started the ignition. The car purred to life.
Launching his hand into his pocket, he fished out his phone and the napkin and clumsily typed the address into his maps app. Without so much as looking at the map it created, he set it down, hoping that the kind voice of the phone would walk him through the steps in a calm fashion. Finally, his hand clasped his fingers onto the shifter.
Was he going to do this?
Just get in this car and drive to this random address an hour and a half away?
The answer was yes.
With an unexpected burst of uncomfortable laughter, he shifted the car into drive, lurched forward, and began his first solo drive in three years.
His panic surged the second the car began to move, and he almost stopped, but something in him simply would not.
For, his reason for driving was bigger than his fear. And block by block, his hands gripped the wheel a little less tight and his breath became a little more steady. And, just like riding a bike, the experience of driving a car came back to him as the miles stretched on. It had been so normal for so long, and little threads of that normalcy peeked through between the thoughts and fears that triggered as he drove. They still poked at him like needles, begging for his attention, begging for him to stop, screaming out at every perceived threat in his peripheral vision.
But still, he soldiered on. Past his fear. To a new place that hadn't existed before a few weeks back.
And as he continued forward, the source of the change became strikingly clear.
Everything surrounding El made things a little less scary than before. And frankly, if something was wrong with her, and he could push through his own fears to help her, then by God he was going to do it.
He knew she would have done the same for him.
Step-by-step the calm even toned voice spoke from his phone, directing him down roads that were so familiar but that he hadn't seen from this angle in years. They inevitably made him reach the highway, causing a new sensation of dread to shoot through him. He sped up as needed, and tried to remember how normal this once had been, breathing through it mile by mile.
Finally, after an hour of deep breathing and straight driving, the calm voice spoke from his phone, asking him to exit. He looked up in surprise, knowing what he was about to see.
It was the back road into town.
His breath quickened in a new way, and he swallowed hard, questioning if maybe, for peace of mind, he should go the long way through town. Anything to avoid the route that had just been laid. The GPS would correct itself, after all, and he could just backtrack. And then he would not have to stare head on down the -
But that was not what he did. In fact, his actions betrayed him. He veered straight off at the eerily familiar exit, followed the directions over the bridge, and drove through the minuscule town of Gas City until he came upon the back country road that he knew all too well led to Hawkins.
Every inch felt too familiar. Too vibrant. Too filled with memories.
As the trees began to grow thick and the road became to twist, there was no denying it.
This place held nothing but fear for him.
And, just like every time he found himself here, the flashbacks began to rise.
The rain - The dark - The car skidding beyond control across the pavement - His sister's screams - The immediate careen - the unforgiving tree barreling toward him - The jolt, like a firm hand grasping around his whole body, holding him in place as the car just… stopped - The face, clearly a panicked hallucination, obscured in the rain, hand in the air as though it were holding him there, denting the roof of his car with impossible force, shining bright within the now unmoving headlight beams of his car. Frozen for a moment just beyond sense in a space he could not comprehend - Those eyes, dark and wide and so real within the high beam lights - Gone - The real world crashing in - His sister, unconscious and bleeding in the seat beside him -
Yet again, Mike tried to shake his head to separate himself from his visions.
From what he thought he had seen.
What he clearly hadn't seen…
because there was no way a person had -
"You have arrived. Your destination is on your left."
The voice snapped him out of his reverie, and the late afternoon sun bounced off of a blue mailbox that he knew all too well.
The blue mailbox that sat outside of his destination.
The blue mailbox outside of El's father's home.
His gasp was wrenching.
It rattled him, weakening his arms, dropping his jaw.
He veered off the side of the road, pulling onto the gravel in the wrong direction, and stopped fast at the very spot he had stood in confusion so many times.
Almost shaking, he exited the car.
For a moment he almost forgot what had even brought him there. Just like always, he regarded the spot that had changed his life with the same sense of searching angst.
Yet this time… This time an answer, huge and awe-striking, felt like it was flirting on the tip of his tongue.
"Mike?"
He turned slowly to a voice off in the distance, and like a snap everything... clicked.
She was walking toward him down the steps of the recessed house.
The girl he'd been searching for... here all along.
Not the girl he'd been searching for for a day.
The girl he'd been searching for for three years.
He stood frozen as everything connected in a dizzying spin. The mysteries of the last few weeks swirling in unison with a mystery years old.
It all made sense.
He could see her clearly now in his mind's eye, standing in the exact spot where his feet stood now, arm outstretched, protecting him like an angel from a horrible fate.
Words escaped him as she made her close.
"What are you doing here?" She asked in a loud whisper as she neared him. Her stance was taught, nervous, on edge. Yet, he barely noticed.
He simply walked to her in a daze and pulled her to him with an intensity that made her stumble. His face fell into her hair and his legs, wobbling like jelly, almost gave way. As her arms wrapped around his back, something in him fully gave way. A tension that he'd held for so many hundreds of days. It filtered from his body as though it had never been there at all.
"Mike, what's going on?" She asked, her voice wrought with confusion.
"You saved my life." They were the only words he could muster as he whispered into her hair. "You saved me."
"What? I what? I - "
A squealing set of tires cut off her voice. She gasped, and in a dizzying spin she wrenched him from her body in a way that made him stumble. She pushed him behind her as a police truck entered the driveway.
The truck pulled straight up to them, dust flying from its tires as it stopped. A huge man climbed out, hand on his pistol.
Mike stiffened in a new wave of shock.
"It's okay!" El called, hands out, "It's okay. I know him!"
The man he could only expect was her father pulled his gun from it's sheath despite her words.
He then directed above El's head, directly to Mike, "What do you think you're doing here?"
Mike froze, completely at a loss for what to do.
"I said I know him!" El bellowed, "It's okay!"
"Is this the Mike you wouldn't tell me anything about?" Her father barked.
"Yes!" she bellowed back, angry, "Dad, what's going on?"
"Do you have any idea who he actually is?" Her Dad yelled back.
"His name is Mike Wheeler!" El finally admitted. "Who is - Who - " Something in her voice was filling with fear on every single word, and for the life of him Mike could not understand why.
"Yeah, Mike WHEELER!" her dad cried back, "This is why you don't lie to me and you tell me last names!" He waved his pistol toward the house. "Get in the house!" he barked, making Mike jump, "Both of you. NOW!"