Chapter 3: New York's Not My Home

Well, things were spinning round me
And all my thoughts were cloudy
And I had begun to doubt all the things that were me
Been in so many places
You know I've run so many races
And looked into the empty faces of the people of the night
And something is just not right
'Cause I know that I gotta get out of here
I'm so alone
Don't you know that I gotta get out of here
'Cause, New York's not my home

El makes a discovery about Hopper's past while looking for Christmas decorations, and it prompts a conversation about their big city experiences.

On the first day of December, Hopper entered the station to find it strung with Christmas lights. He stood in the doorway, blinking stupidly up at them, for long enough that Powell called from his desk, "Alright there, Chief?"

He shook himself. "Yeah, fine," he said gruffly, in a way that he knew wasn't quite convincing, and then escaped quickly into his office and shut the door before anyone could call him on it.

He'd known Christmas was coming, of course. He'd been painfully aware of it for weeks. Somehow he'd been hoping—foolishly, he knew—that it would just never come, or that he could ignore it entirely and have that be okay. But Flo's decorating was a harsh reminder that the holiday season was happening, whether he liked it or not, and he would eventually have to do something about it.

Hopper hadn't celebrated Christmas in years; after Sara and the divorce, there wasn't any point, and the holidays had a way of making his pain feel raw and unbearable all over again. But he was raising another kid now, and part of the point of that was to give her a normal life, and normal lives included things like Christmas. And after everything the kid had been through—was still going through—she deserved to have her first real Christmas be as special as Hopper could make it.

So that night, as he watched El take their dishes from dinner to the sink, he steeled himself and said, with an ease he didn't quite feel, "So, kid, it's Christmas time."

She turned to him, confused. "Christmas is on December twenty-five," she informed him, and for emphasis she glanced up at the calendar she'd pinned to the wall a few months back.

"December twenty-fifth, yeah," Hopper corrected her. "But usually people start celebrating before that. With, you know, decorations and music and stuff like that."

If anything, that only seemed to make her more confused. "Why?"

"Because Christmas is…" A ridiculous time that companies use to sell fake love and cheer to idiots, he wanted to say, but that was too cynical, and not exactly in line with his wish to give El a happy first Christmas. "It's a special time," he decided. "And people want to make it extra special."

"Lights," said El, seeming to remember. "There were lights, on the houses. Before you found me. Was that…Christmas?"

"Yeah, kid," he said. He knew she'd never gotten holiday celebrations in the lab, that all this was new and strange to her. Still, it made his heart hurt unexpectedly more, to hear that her only experience with Christmas decorations was the strange glittering she saw on people's houses as she wandered the woods, freezing and alone. He'd been planning to introduce it to her more slowly, maybe rent a Christmas movie tomorrow and then figure out some kind of decoration later. But suddenly he couldn't stand that she'd never seen Christmas lights in a friendlier context, so before he could change his mind, he stood up and said, "Come on, I think I've got some old lights around here somewhere. You want to help me put them up?"

She immediately dropped the glass she'd been rinsing into the sink, where it clattered loudly against the other dishes. She looked delighted in a way he hadn't seen since the very beginning, when everything was still new and exciting to her.

He laughed a little in spite of himself, and beckoned for her to follow him as he went to open the hatch to the basement.

He hadn't kept much from the house in New York, mostly just sentimental things that he couldn't get rid of but hadn't wanted to put out again in Hawkins. He wasn't even sure why he still had the Christmas lights, which had no particular value. But now, as he pulled them out of the cardboard box and started unwinding them, he was glad that he had.

"Here," he said to El, handing her a strand, "help me untangle these."

But she didn't take them, and he glanced up at her. She was distracted, staring at the writing on the side of the box. "New York," she read carefully, and looked up at him. "What's that?"

"New York City," he said, setting down the lights. "It's a real big city, up north of here. I used to live there." With Sara, he almost added, but he thought she could probably guess that without his saying.

"New York City," she repeated. She considered it for a moment, and he wondered if she could even imagine what a big city was like. She'd seen them on TV, of course, but he knew from experience how different that was from actually being in one. He'd been shocked, himself, when he first moved from Hawkins. Everything was so much more than he'd ever expected. Then she said, definitively, "I don't like the city."

He smiled at her certainty. "Neither do I, but don't knock it till you try it, kid," he said. "Someday you can go see a big city for yourself. See what you think."

Usually she looked happy when he talked about the future like that. He knew how much she clung to the hope of someday living a more normal life. But now she just looked hesitant, and he could see the way her expression cycled through a few different emotions, from uncertainty to fear to determination. She took a deep breath. "I did."

"What?"

"I did see a big city."

Hopper felt his eyebrows furrowing as he looked at her. "Not on TV, kid," he said, though he was pretty sure from the way she said it that that wasn't what she meant.

She shook her head. "No, for real. I…" And then she just looked at him, as if willing him to understand without her having to say any more.

But he didn't understand, not at all. She'd been locked in a lab in Hawkins her whole life, and then gone almost immediately to being locked in a cabin in Hawkins. When in the world could she have seen a city?

And then, as they stared at each other, he realized suddenly, and felt as if his stomach had dropped to somewhere around his knees. "El," he said quietly, doing his very best to keep his voice steady. "Please tell me you don't mean what I think you mean."

Because it would make sense, wouldn't it, for her to have run off all the way to Indianapolis when she went to see her mom. The Ives weren't far from the city. It would explain the clothes, anyway, which he knew couldn't have come from her Aunt Becky, but which he hadn't pressed her about since that night in the car. A big-city escape for a small-town girl who'd been denied so much of the world. It made perfect sense. He cursed himself for not having guessed it sooner.

El was shaking her head. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I should have told you sooner. I thought you would be mad."

"Of course I'm mad, kid," he snapped, and then took a deep breath. More calmly, he tried again. "Going to find your mom was stupid and dangerous, but I can't blame you for that. But going all the way to Indianapolis? Jesus, El, did you want to get into some kind of trouble?"

"In-Indianapolis?" she said.

Hopper stared at her. "Is that…not where you went?"

She shook her head. She looked as if she very much regretted bringing it up at all.

"Well, where the hell'd you go?"

"Chicago," she whispered.

He blinked at her. "You went to Chicago?"

She nodded miserably.

There were a million questions running through his mind. "Why the hell did you go to Chicago?" Then, before she could answer: "How the hell did you get to Chicago?"

El mumbled something to her knees that he didn't quite catch.

"Speak up," he said sharply.

"I stole money," she said quietly. "From Aunt Becky. Took a bus." Then she looked up at him, and he could see tears in her eyes. "I went to see my sister."

Any decent parent would address the theft, Hopper thought, but it hardly seemed important just then. He was distracted by the last thing she had said. "Your…you went to see your sister?" Terry Ives didn't have any other children, surely. He would know, with all the digging he'd done last year.

El held out her wrist, where he knew the tattoo was, though she always kept it covered. "Eight," she said. "Her name's Kali."

"Kali."

"Aunt Becky gave me a picture. From the newspaper. Kali was missing. Just like…" She swallowed hard. "Just like me."

Hopper closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to calm the combination of fear and anger coursing through him. She'd already gone, and she'd made it back safe, so there was no use getting worked up about it now, but…it was so dangerous, what she'd done, so dangerous and so, so stupid. He took a deep breath. He'd learned his lesson, with the yelling, knew now that that was no way to deal with a traumatized telekinetic teenager no matter what she'd done, but right now he just wanted to scream, scream forever until his throat was raw and maybe break a few things. She could have died. In Chicago. She could have been found and taken again, but to a different lab, because they'd never be stupid enough to keep her in Hawkins. And then Will would have died, and the other kids, and maybe himself and Joyce too, and even if all of them had somehow pulled through Hopper would have come home after it all to an empty cabin and he would have never, ever known what had happened to her. He tried to imagine it, waiting for days, months, years, hoping that El would come home, and it never happening.

"I'm sorry," she said shakily. "I…"

He raised his head to look at her, and she trailed off when her eyes met his.

Hopper was torn between telling her how unacceptable her trip had been and how relieved he was that she had come home, but he thought he might burst into tears if he said either of those things. So instead he asked, "Did you find her?"

El nodded.

"And? You had, what, some kinda happy reunion with her? How old is she?"

"Older than me," said El. "Younger than you. She…was nice to me. I liked her."

Hopper sighed. "Kid, why didn't you tell me about her?" he asked, hating how hurt he sounded, but he couldn't help it. He'd thought they were past this, all this secrecy. He had thought she finally trusted him.

At his words, her lip started trembling, and a tear rolled down her cheek. She wiped at it with her sleeve.

There had to be more to this story, Hopper thought. El couldn't have shown up on the doorstep of some super-powered stranger, chatted for awhile, and then left again. Something else must have happened to make her so reluctant to talk about it.

But maybe they could talk about all that later. Tonight, he'd wanted to help her make her first happy Christmas memories, and instead they were sitting on the floor with her struggling not to cry and him struggling not to yell. So he decided to set the issue aside for now. Maybe it was cowardly on his part—maybe he just wanted to avoid the serious conversation he knew they'd have to have—but El clearly didn't want to talk about it right now, either. So he did his best to conjure up a smile and say, "So you're not a city girl, huh?"

She looked at him uncertainly through watery eyes, confused by his sudden change of tone. After a long pause, she shook her head.

"Yeah," said Hopper, "me neither."

El's mouth twitched with the tiniest of smiles. "You're not a city girl?" she asked slyly.

She joked so infrequently that it startled a genuine laugh out of him. He reached out to gently swat her knee. "Not a city girl," he confirmed. "Too loud. Too many people and none of them are friendly."

"Too many people," El agreed. Then her face grew serious again. "I like it here."

Hopper felt something like relief rush through him. He was so afraid that El would grow to resent him all over again, that her frustration with being cooped up would outweigh any affection she might feel toward him. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Good," said Hopper. "Guess we won't be going back to New York or Chicago any time soon, will we?"

"No."

He ruffled her hair and then picked up the strand of lights that lay on the floor next to them, forgotten. "Let's get these lights up, yeah? Can you go grab my toolbox?"

She smiled and ran to take it down from the shelf.