Max half expected to wake up. A soulmate? She had always thought she was just destined to be alone all her life. But she couldn't deny the four letters on her arm that made her smile so brightly that El noticed.
She was sleeping over at El's the night after she got her soulmate. Max's eyes kept glancing down at the cloth. Most people get antsy when they have the cloth. God knows Dustin was. They didn't want to have to hide their soulmate. But that was the way it was.
Still, when Max sat on El's bed with a smile on her face, she didn't care. She had a soulmate. Right now, that was enough. "El, I got my name yesterday. It's small and messy and in all caps, but it's there."
El started squealing. She was enthralled by the soulmate idea. Brenner had told her that she was a machine, a weapon. Weapons didn't have soulmates. He had burned her name off her the day she got it.
"That's great! Oh I'm so excited. I can't wait to meet my soulmate. I feel bad that they had to wait so long for me to learn how to write my name."
Max felt her blood churn at the idea of El being with someone else. She had hated seeing her with Mike, it was so painful. But then they broke up, presumably because Mike had a different soulmate.m
She backtracked. "Wait, when did you learn to write your name?" Max should have noticed the flag that came with El first learning to write her name at the same time that she got her mark. Hindsight's 20/20.
"Ereyesterday." Hop has recently taken up teaching her words like those. Ereyesterday means the day before yesterday. "You want to see?" Max nodded.
El dashed out of the room and returned with a piece of paper and a crayon. "Hopper says that using a crayon is easier at first because it's bigger. Plus, it's more colorful!"
Eleven slowly traced out the letters J-A-N-E. Max's eyes went wide. They were the exact same shaky, bold letters that littered her wrist. "Oh, El. It's so pretty!"
"Thank you. Hopper wanted me to learn Jane instead of Eleven because he said it's my real name. According to my birth certificate I'm Jane Hopper."
Max didn't know that she was technically a Hopper, Nd thought this was interesting. The larger part of her brain was freaking out. El is my soulmate.
What. The. Fuck.