Hello! Back from the wedding. it was actually pretty good, I got to eat cake and sing Mr Brightside. So, onwards, Chapter Eight.

8

Even though it was a school night, two students at Chicago High were having sleepovers. The first was Mike Wheeler and Will Byers in east Chicago. The second was El Hopper and Max Mayfield, in Apartment 24B out west.

`How's your mom's foot?' Mike asked Will, before taking a drink of coke.

`She's on some pretty strong painkillers for the next couple of days.'

`How did she break it?'

Will pulled a face. `You know how Jonathon was meant to visit this weekend and she got a leg of pork for a special dinner?'

`Yeah.'

`When Jonathon said he couldn't make it Mom took the pork out of the freezer and said we may as well eat it now. Then she dropped it on her foot.'

Mike winced. `That sounds bad.'

`Yeah, I've never heard her swear that much in my life. I think I'll draw her a Get Well card or something.' Will looked a little embarrassed.

`That sounds like a good idea,' Mike said comfortingly. `Want to do it now?'

`Okay.'

Ten minutes later, Mike and Will were sat cross-legged on Mike's bed. Will's tongue poked out of his mouth slightly with concentration as he frenetically scribbled.

`Do you have any skin tones?' He asked Mike, who had a quick think.

`Er- here, use this.' Mike tossed over the orange pencil. `Just colour it really lightly.'

`Would it kill Crayola to produce proper skin colours? Mom's gonna look like a Cheeto.'

`Can I see?' Mike shuffled his way along the bed to look over Will's shoulder. On the paper was a beaming Joyce. Above her were letters saying `Get Well Soon.' Joyce looked so realistic it may as well have been a photograph. `That's amazing,' gasped Mike, wide eyed.

`Really?' Will went pink from the praise. `Thanks.' He seemed to go quite shuffley. `Um- you know El?'

`Yeah, what about her?'

`Do you like her? You know, like like her?'

Mike thought for a minute, even though he didn't really need to. He just wanted to figure out the best set of words. `Yeah,' he said quietly, and then louder. `Yeah. I like her.'

Immediately a weight lifted from his chest, leaving a blissful lightness.

For a moment, something crossed Will's face, which he quickly hid with a smile.

`Ladies and gentlemen, he finally admitted it!' Will mimed cheering as Mike grinned. `So, you going to ask her to the dance? It's on Friday, so that gives you four days.'

Anxiety immediately stabbed Mike's chest. `Wait, now? I should ask her out now?'

`Yes, because if you don't you'll chicken out again.'

Mike couldn't deny there was certainly truth in that.

`I don't want to do it with a box of chocolates,' he said finally. `That's been used too many times.' Mike's eyes fell on the origami paper that El had left him. Colours, so many colours glowed against the boring brown of his desk.

He picked an insipid pink as his practice flower. Mike strained to remember what the instructions were; fold diagonally both ways, fold from top to bottom, and then…

Collapse it into a triangle.

Collapse it?

Yeah, try it.

The rest of the instructions came easily to Mike, El's phantom voice guiding him. The tulip wasn't too bad. Not perfect, but not terrible. Next, Mike selected a fierce orange and quickly completed it. It was better.

As Will drew behind him, Mike sat at his desk until a whole bouquet of paper flowers lay in a papered freize. He gathered them up, the stems cutting into his palms.

`What are those things called?' Will asked curiously, glancing up from his art pad.

`Box tulips. It's origami.'

`Hurry up before your mom realises you're missing.' Will made shooing motions at the door and Mike smiled. He crept out of the room, light on the balls of his feet. There was one heart-stopping moment when the bottom stair creaked loudly, but luckily, no one heard.

Mike quickly pulled on his sneakers and ran out of the house, paper flowers rustling in his hand.


`I can't believe this is our last sleepover.' El blew on Max's nails.

`If you're gonna paint my nails again, I'm glad you're moving,' Max grumbled in reply, looking down at her black nails. `How long does it stay on?'

`Trust me, you'll sneeze and about half of it will come off in one go.'

Max considered this, shrugged and then let El paint the nails on her other hand. The two girls were sat on El's dark duvet cover. Because it was Tuesday, Hopper was out.

He was meant to be back by eight.

Many months of experience had taught El `back by eight' was code for any time between midnight and six in the morning. It all depended on what hell the Chicago Dogs and the Texans wreaked.

El reached for another slice of pizza, and sank her teeth into the gooey mix of tomato sauce and cheese on top. Hopper's deal was they could have as much pizza as they wanted providing they were in bed by ten o'clock.

`What do you want to do?'

Max thought for a moment. `Horror film?' She suggested hopefully. `Nightmare on Elm Street is on.'

`I put an immediate veto on anything that's gonna make me want to throw up.'

`Fine, then I put a ban on romance films. They make me want to throw up.' A glint sparked up Max's eyes. `I know. Let's play Truth or Dare. Rock, paper, scissors for who has to go first.'

For a moment, El considered the proposal, then smiled mischievously. `You're on.'

They played Rock, paper, scissors and El won.

`Okay, Truth or Dare?'

`Dare.'

El's eyes swept over her room, looking for inspiration. `I dare you to open the window and scream "I am the walrus" as loud as you can. Bonus points if a dog starts barking.'

Max marched over to the window and threw it open, and took an enormous breath.

`I AM THE WALRUS!' She hollered. The echo died away and the two girls listened intently.

Somewhere nearby, a dog began frantically yipping. Max leaned back from the window, flushed with victory.

`Truth or Dare?' She asked El.

`Truth.'

`At the end of Love Story, did a bug really fly into your eye or were you just crying?' El sighed and rolled her eyes. `You have to tell the truth,' Max reminded her gleefully.

`Fine. I was crying. In my defence, so was most of the cinema.'

Max smacked the duvet. `I knew it!' She crowed. `And I pick… Truth.'

`Okay. When are you going to tell Lucas you like him?'

All colour drained from Max's face. Then she turned pale green, and finally rounded off the chameleon look with a magnificent red. `I don't like him,' she muttered, refusing to look at El. `He's a total nerd. If we dated he'd be alternating between making out and telling me about a conspiracy theory that Chewbacca is Darth Vader's- love child, or something.'

El raised her eyebrows. `Fine. I'll let you switch to Dare.' She let the silence hang between them for a moment before breaking it. `I dare you to phone Lucas. I know you have his number.'

Max lobbed the final slice of pizza at El. `Fine, okay! I've liked him for a couple of weeks. And I'll think about dancing with him on Friday. But you know, I have a pretty good idea of what we can do now.'

Immediate suspicion twitched in El's chest. `What?' She asked warily.

`We could phone Mike.'

`No!' El made a lunge for the phone, but Max caught her leg and started tickling her foot. El giggled helplessly and Max took her chance, grabbing the phone off the receiver.

`What was his number again?' She teased, standing on the bed and holding the phone far out of El's reach. `3-1-2-'

The empty pizza box was next to El. Almost slipping over on a stray slice of pizza El whacked Max with it, and they both fell onto the duvet in a giggly mess, mock-fighting.

That was when a bullet flew through the open window and ripped apart the photograph of El and Hopper on her desk.

Glass and shreds of photograph exploded into the room and at the speed of lightning, El and Max dropped to the floor.


`El, will you go to the dance with me? How'd you like to- no, that won't work. You're the prettiest girl I've ever met- don't say that.'

Mike walked along the sidewalk, eyes fixed on the concrete, locked in his thoughts. He'd spent the last ten minutes rehearsing what he was going to say to El when he asked her. At one point, he'd come up with a fairly good speech that he only realised halfway through was the speech from When Harry Met Sally.

If El said yes, he'd be the happiest person alive.

And then he reached her street.

Mike's stomach flashed to lead and dropped straight to his shoes.

The gangs were there.

All of them, every member, all the Texans, all the Chicago Dogs. Dallas and Troy squared up to each other underneath a streetlight.

Behind them, their gang members whirled chains, gripped knives, and several even had guns.

Mike realised was a heater was.

Time slowed to treacle, but Mike's breath quickened, his mouth dried. He looked upward- and staring out of an apartment window was a young boy.

The boy's eyes were wide, like a bush baby's, all black pupil and dark iris, streaks of light across the cornea. The two locked gazes. Still in the warped, slowed time, Mike stared back at the child.

The boy covered his eyes and ducked down from the window.

And time sped up again-

And Dallas shoved Troy in the chest-
And like a balloon popping, violence suddenly exploded in the street. Gunshots cracked out, windows shattered, screams echoed off the apartment block walls.

Mike watched with horror as Harry, one of the boys in his Electrics class, whipped a Texan repeatedly with a length of chain. Bloody gashes split open his forehead and face as the Texan sank to his knees, and finally collapsed onto the street. Crimson liquid pooled beneath his face.

El.

Mike sprinted around the fighting and ran to El's apartment block, keeping his head down. The paper tulips flew out of his hands, scattering in the street amongst the violence. Mike let them go. He leapt up and pulled down the fire escape ladder, then wildly scaled it, hand over hand.

An awry bullet marked a line of blood on his ear.

Mike counted the floors and then pulled himself onto the balcony. He could see El's apartment through the window. He banged on the glass desperately with the flat of his hand.

`El!' He yelled. `It's me!'

She emerged from her bedroom, curls flying out behind her, and threw up the window. El pulled Mike inside and the two of them scrambled along the floor, keeping their heads down.

Glass sprayed over them as they crawled through the living room. El led the way to her bedroom and quickly dragged Mike under the bed. Max hid there too, the whites of her eyes as wide as golf balls.

The noise in the street surged around the tiny apartment like a tsunami wave. A throbbing chorus of metal hitting flesh, screaming, and gunshots closed in on Mike's ears. He couldn't hear anything else. To the right of him, El's hands were clamped over her ears.

Every time Mike thought it couldn't possibly get worse, or louder, or every time he thought he couldn't possibly get more scared than he already was, he was proven wrong. Terror rocketed around his body to the point Mike was certain he would vomit.

A helicopter.

El's torn blinds blew back into the room as the deafening whirring filled the street. Now Mike covered his ears and pressed his face into the carpet.

`Put down your weapons!' Someone roared through a loudhailer. `Or we will shoot!'

El risked a look up and saw a man in a helicopter, aiming down at the street with a rifle. Next to him was the man with the loudhailer. Someone had phoned the National Guard.

`Final warning!' The man yelled, veins standing out on his forehead and neck. He paused, then nodded to the man next to him.

El pressed her face into Mike's shoulder as the man with the rifle shot down at the boys again and again.

Heavy soldier's boots pounded along the street outside.

`We will use lethal force if you don't co-operate!'

A voice, Dallas's, screamed out `Kiss my arse!'. And then there was the horrible sound of a knife being plunged into a human.

A gunshot.

A chorus of rising, falling human howls.

Dallas was dead.

Silence. Solid, bleak, empty silence, apart from the steady thrum of the helicopter, and the sound of the three teenagers breathing. The carpet was rough underneath Mike's fingers.

The following events were terrifying calm. One tiny thing could snap the peace in two as soldiers handcuffed the boys, pushed their heads down into police cars, cleared the bodies.

El counted the ambulances as they arrived. Five. But they could be sharing them.

Her, Max and Mike stayed under the bed until complete silence settled over the street.

`I think they've gone,' Max whispered.

`I'll check,' El volunteered, starting to wriggle out from under the bed.

`No, I'll do it.' Mike squirmed out on his elbows, keeping his head down, just in case. Then he peered down into the street through the window.

Puddles of blood pooled in the street, dried footprints tracking in and out of them. Bulletholes knived through overturned trash cans, stray cats eating from the spilled refuse. Mike looked up to the window where the boy had been. There was no boy. There was no window- only shattered glass remained.

Everything was still, and quiet, and empty.

Mike glanced back over his shoulder, where El and Max's scared eyes watched him.

`It's safe,' he said, standing up.

`That was the scariest thing I've ever gone through,' Max said quietly. `And that includes living with my stepdad.'

Chewing her lip like there was no tomorrow, El glanced at the carpet. There was glass everywhere. Wordlessly, she began picking it up and tossing it in the trash.

Mike and Max followed her lead, sweeping glass off the floor, straightening objects. At one point, they were alone in El's room whilst she phoned Hopper to let him know she wasn't dead.

`You know, you were pretty brave, Wheeler,' Max told him as she tipped another load of glass into the bin.

`How was I brave?'

`You only climbed up that fire escape to make sure El was okay.' Max's shrewd eyes looked him up and down. `I reckon you could have run away if you wanted. But you didn't.'

Surprised at the compliment, Mike could only blink and stammer like some sort of goldfish.

`Okay, don't blow a circuit,' Max said impatiently. `I'm sure I'll go back to thinking you're a nerd of epic proportions tomorrow.'

`Er- thanks. I think.'

`No problem.' And with that, the conversation was clearly over. Mike touched his ear. The blood had clotted, leaving a raised bump. He went into the living room to see if El was done with the phone.

`Yeah, that's a good idea-' she was saying as he came in. El lifted one finger, telling Mike how long she'd be. `Okay, I'll tell them. Yes, I promise I'm safe. I love you. Bye.' El put the phone back. `Dad says you and Max shouldn't risk going back home in case the fighting starts up again. He's too busy at the station to come here so we'll be alone.'

Mike nodded. `That seems sensible. Can I use the phone?'

`Sure.'

Hopefully his mom wouldn't have seen anything on the news yet.

Unfortunately, that hope proved useless.

`Michael?' Mrs Wheeler's frantic voice came down the line, deafeningly loud. `Michael, is that you?'

`Yeah, it's me.'

Then Mrs Wheeler's voice reached such a volume Mike wouldn't have been surprised if El and Max could hear every word. He winced as she yelled down the line. `Will told me where you'd gone! Of all the irresponsible things you've ever done, this takes the cake! This is even worse than the time you burnt off poor Elaine Hartwell's eyebrows.'

Mike had the phone at arm's length by then. `I'm sorry.'

`So you should be! Well, at least you're safe.'

`Listen, El just rang Chief Hopper. He says we should stay here overnight and then go home. Is that okay?'

There was a frustrated huff from the other end of the line. Mike held his breath before the verdict came. `I suppose that's sensible. But you are grounded, Michael. No arcade, no friends, and I'm putting a ban on the phone for three days. Understand?'

`Yeah.'

`Okay. I love you.' Mike thought she had a lot of nerve saying that right after all the sanctions. Then he thought about what it would have been like if he'd died in the riot.

`I love you too. Bye.' And he hung up. `Max, wanna use the phone?' Mike hollered.

`No, Neil and Mom know where I am. Anyway, are you kidding? They'd be dissapointed to know I survived.' Max withdrew her head from around the door.

Eventually, the apartment was cleaned up. Mike was sleeping in his clothes on the sofa. El brought out a pillow and duvet from underneath Hopper's bed.

`Here,' she said shyly, holding them out. Maybe it was the prospect of him sleeping overnight. Especially seeing as El had fantasised on more than one occasion what it would be like to have Mike kiss her anywhere other than her lips. `They're a bit lumpy. Just hit them a few times.'

`Okay. Thanks.' Mike took them, holding the bundle to his chest like it was a child. `Night.'

`Night.' El walked back into her room, where her and Max were sharing the bed. Neither of them were expecting to get much sleep.


Wind whistled outside.

A tarry, black sky was spread out above Chicago. Mike stared at it through the window, unable to sleep. Dawn was still a good four or five hours away.

Mike squirmed about underneath the duvet. El hadn't been exaggerating about the lumpiness; he gave the pillow another thump but it didn't seem to help.

In the eerie, half-light, El's apartment was transformed. Every surface looked silver. Mike thought about El, only a few feet away. He imagined her standing in the kitchen, chopping the onions for their disastrous tuna rice. Or crouching next to him as he fixed the TV and radio, like a curious little cat.

And then she really was there.

Mike blinked a few times to check he wasn't still daydreaming. No. El was in the middle of the apartment, watching him with quiet eyes, arms crossed over her band T-Shirt.

`Can't sleep?' She asked, tucking her hair behind her ears.

`No.' Mike sat up on the couch. `I keep expecting something horrible to happen again.'

`Me too.' El was quiet for a second. `You know, I have a way of feeling better if something scary happens here.'

`Okay,' Mike said. `What?'

`I go onto the roof. You just feel so- above it all up there.' El shuffled her feet. `Is that stupid?'

`No.' Mike knotted his hands together in his lap. `Can we go there?'

So that was how the two of them ended up climbing the rickety fire escape trawling up the side of El's apartment building. Mike had one hand curled tightly around the cold banister, whilst his other hand was occupied with two blankets. El walked on ahead, carrying pillows. Goosebumps stood out on her arms.

They walked out onto the roof, satellites all around them. Mike revolved slowly on the spot, taking it all in. The sky didn't seem tarry anymore. It seemed deep and infinite and beautiful.

`This is the best spot,' El called over to him, setting down her armful. Mike helped make a little nest of blankets and pillows, and then quickly climbed underneath, shivering. El curled up against him.

`Cold,' she said, teeth chattering. Hesitantly, checking that she was okay with it, Mike put a warm arm around her shoulders. She relaxed into him.

Neither of them spoke for a while.

At some point, they lay down and Mike and El stared up at the night sky. Stars flickered down at them, and the moon softly glowed.

`A night flight,' El whispered, pointing up at the plane making it's way through the air.

Slowly, dawn came, the skyscrapers of Chicago outlined against the grey-blue acrylic sky. Mike and El couldn't see it.

They were curled up underneath the blankets, foreheads pressed together, fast asleep.