El stood on a chair the kitchen, rummaging around in the cabinets for some garlic salt. At only five-feet-three she was ridiculously unfit to reach the top shelf, and she cursed her height as she shoved various appliances and canned goods out of the way. Everyone was home for Thanksgiving break, and Joyce was hosting a party at the Byers' household. It was the perfect opportunity to tell the Party about the baby. She didn't know when they'd all be together again; most of them were spending Thanksgiving with their families, and they had to head back to school in the following days. El pushed down the butterflies fluttering in her stomach, and though the nerves weren't nearly as bad as they were when she had to tell Hop, she wasn't quite sure how they'd react.
El located the garlic salt in the back of a cupboard and stepped down from her chair, massaging her stomach, absently. She pressed the pad of her index and middle finger over the skin below her belly button, feeling a bit of resistance. She wasn't showing. She'd spent a fair amount of time in front the mirror, smoothing her t-shirt so it lay flat against her stomach, trying to decide if you could tell. This was ridiculous, of course. It was way too early. Nevertheless, she could feel the difference. Lately, her lower abdomen felt hard and tight and sore. Especially when she laughed. Add that to the list of pregnancy symptoms she was discovering, a little at a time.
It had been two weeks since she visited Dr. Simmons. She received a call shortly after the appointment. Simmons notified her that all her tests looked good and they'd expect her back in the second week of December, giving El the green light to breathe a sigh of relief. Everything was progressing normally, and, if everything continued to go according to plan, she could expect to welcome her bundle of joy to the world in early May.
El set the garlic salt on the kitchen counter and began searching for a bowl. Joyce asked her to bring chips and dip, so she'd decided to make some guacamole. The party started at five, which gave her a little under an hour to get ready. She still needed to shower and change, and Mike told her he'd meet her a little early, so they could head over together. Hopper was driving over from the station, so she didn't count on seeing him beforehand.
El sliced the avocados and mashed them up, sprinkling garlic salt and lemon juice into the bowl, and added a spoonful of salsa. After she'd finished, she dashed up the stairs, taking them two at a time. She forwent a shower and massaged some dry shampoo into her scalp, tying her hair up into a half-decent bun. She changed out of her gym shorts and t-shirt, pulling on a soft, forest green sweater and jeans. By the time she'd finished with her makeup, she had an extra ten minutes to spare.
Ten minutes became five, and five became two, and Mike hadn't shown up. She paced in the entryway, contemplating leaving, without him, when the door opened and he stumbled over the threshold, panting.
"I'm here." He breathed.
"You're late." She said, frowning. She folded her arms.
"I know. Sorry, I got stuck in traffic." He crossed the room, seized her elbows, and pecked her cheek. "Forgive me?"
"Maybe."
He kissed her lips, soft and sweet.
"How 'bout now?"
She rolled her eyes. Nevertheless, he'd managed to tease a smile out of her.
"You're a dork, you know that?"
"Of course." He said, as if she'd just pointed out that the Earth was round.
"C'mon, we're gonna be even more late than we already are."
As soon as she walked through the Byers' front door, Dustin swept her into a bone-crushing hug.
"Hey, Jean Grey." He said. "I missed you so goddamn much!"
"I missed you too, Dustin." She said, laughing. Lucas shoved him out of the way and hugged her, too. After she'd hugged Will and Max, in turn, Steve scooped her in his arms, lifting her off her feet. She squirmed, laughing. He set her down, and she shoved him in the chest, playfully.
"I see you every day, loser."
"Since when does that mean I can't get a hug from my favorite weirdo?" He hugged her. She laughed.
"I thought Will was your favorite."
"I don't pick favorites." Steve said, quickly. "But if I had to it would most definitely absolutely no questions asked be Will, because he's the least annoying out of all of you little dipshits."
El rolled her eyes.
They made their way out of the entryway and into the living room, talking over one another. Dustin disappear into the kitchen and returned with an armful of snacks. El perched herself on the arm of the sofa, reaching for a bowl of pretzels. Max sat next to her, punching her arm, good naturedly. El smiled.
"How's school?" She asked Max.
"It's good. I mean, my classes are interesting and my professors are nice." She said, smiling. "It's good to be home. I missed the ocean." She'd grown up in Southern California, and decided to return to the west coast.
"My roommate's a dork, though." She smirked. She and Lucas were living in Los Angeles. Max was majoring in kinesiology, while Lucas was studying astronomy.
"How's Hawkins?"
"Same." El said. "Boring."
Max sighed, sympathetically.
El bit her lip. She couldn't pretend like she didn't wish she was moving away and going to college and chasing dreams, like they were. Sure, she had a good job with decent wages and a lot of time to do whatever she wanted, but she wasn't chasing anything. And all those empty hours would be filled up, once the baby was born. She couldn't pretend like she didn't envy the look in Will's eyes when he talked about his art classes at Pratt, or when Mike, in pursuit of a degree in Journalism, went on and on about the books he was reading or the writing assignments he was working on. But that just wasn't the path she was destined to take.
She and Hopper had talked it over, in those days when the boys were up to their ears in college applications and essays, and she'd told him she didn't think she was quire ready for college. She had no idea what she wanted to do, for starts. Why waste the money on classes?
Still, she felt a pang of resentment, maybe even regret, as she listened to them recount tales of late-night, dorm room shenanigans and parties and opportunities to study abroad.
It took them no time at all to fall back into that easy banter, full of jokes and good-natured teasing and more than a few Star Wars references. When Lucas and Will started betting on the number of cheese puffs Dustin could fit in his mouth, El swelled with happiness and relief. Nothing had changed. Not really. She was afraid things wouldn't ever go back to the way they were, before, but now she knew she'd been wrong to worry.
"Will, how's art school?" Lucas asked.
"Good. Great, actually. My professors are really talented. We get to experiment with all kinds of media, too. I'm taking this sculpting class, and it's probably the most interesting class I've ever taken. I'm doing 2-D stuff, too, hold on . . ." He got up, went to his room, and came back with a portfolio full of sketches. He handed it to Lucas, and everyone crowded around as he leafed through the various sketches and paintings.
They were beautiful. El's eyes traced over the lines Will had so painstakingly traced, the dashes of white pencil or ink, to bring each piece to life.
There were sketches of people, talking or standing or sitting, clothed or in the nude. Most of the subjects were strangers, to El. But some of them she recognized. There was a sketch of Joyce, cigarette in hand, smiling a rare smile. One of Jonathan, one of Mike. Some of the sketches weren't people at all. Some of the were still lifes of fruit or a tea kettle or a pair of shoes. And then there were the monsters. A whole collection of paintings and drawings that featured the stuff of nightmares. He used dark colors for these, all blacks and blues and reds. The Demogorgon, sketched with charcoal and a heavy hand, sat poised and ready to spring off the page, and chills ran up El's spine. She grabbed the paper, inspecting it, feeling the color drain from her cheeks.
"Shit." Steve muttered.
"This is unreal." She breathed. When she finally tore her eyes away from the drawing, she met Will's gaze. He looked at her, almost guiltily.
"I know it's all just bad memories, but it helps. I can't go around keeping at all inside my head. If I did that, I'd explode." He paused.
"You should've seen my professor's face, when she saw that one." Will went on, taking the sketch of the Demogorgon from El's hand, looking at it. "She kept going on and on about how imaginative I was, how she didn't think many students could come up with something like this. The thing is, I didn't just make it up. All of it's too fucking real."
"Amen." Lucas said.
After they'd stuffed themselves full of snacks, Joyce announced dinner, and they all filed into the kitchen, attempting to shove more food in their mouths. After dinner, the party went into Will's room. He put a Smiths vinyl on the turntable. El lay on the floor, in a food coma. Dustin, Lucas, and Max sat cross-legged on his bed, playing cards. Soon, though, the room got stuffy and hot, with all of them cramped into such a small space. El, who'd grown sick of listening to Dustin's complaints about losing at Rummy for the fifth time in a row, suggested they head out to Castle Byers.
They donned their coats and hats and went into the woods surrounding the Byers' house, feet crunching over frost-coated leaves. Mike slipped his hand in her own, and she squeezed it. They all filed through the door. El looked around. It seemed small.
Maybe they'd outgrown it.
They settled themselves inside, sitting or standing in a circle. A solemn silence hung over them. El thought about all the times they'd slept out here, in their sleeping bags, during warm summer nights. That time a rainstorm flooded the area and destroyed one side, and they spent the weekend making repairs. All the times each of them had sought comfort and solace within these makeshift walls.
"I'm hungry." Dustin said, breaking the silence.
"You're always hungry."
"Let's make S'mores."
"That's . . . not a bad idea." Mike said.
Lucas and Max retrieved an armful of firewood from the shed, and El and Will rummaged around in the Byers' kitchen for marshmallows and graham crackers. Mike grabbed some foldable lawn chairs from the backyard. They sat around the fire, trading banter. El watched her marshmallow turn golden brown, throwing glances at her friends. She'd have to tell them, at some point. What better time than now, when it was just the six of them?
So, she told them, keeping her eyes fixed on Mike as the words came tumbling out of her mouth. When it was said and done and out in the open, she tore her eyes away and inspected the scuffed toes of her black Chuck Taylors, instead.
Their reactions ranged from shock to a few, flat attempts at humor. Dustin shouted, "you horny little shits!" and Will stared at them with a mixture of disbelief and reproach.
"Holy fuck." Max said, and then punched Mike's shoulder. "Did you guys pay any attention in sex ed?"
"Yes." Mike retorted. "We're not that stupid." He looked at his shoes. "Sometimes condoms break. It's not a big deal." He mumbled.
"Uh, it's a really big deal!" Lucas cried, folding his arms.
"What're you gonna do?" Will asked, brows knit. He looked at El. She rubbed a hand over her stomach.
"We're keeping it."
In the end, they were supportive. They had each other's back, no matter what. When monsters came knocking, and they were staring down the barrel of the gun, they'd take a bullet for each other. This, she was certain of.
Lucas clapped Mike on the back, offering a smile.
"We're here for you guys, whatever you need."
Mike glanced at him.
"Thanks, Lucas."
"Mrs. Wheeler invited us over for Thanksgiving dinner." El told Hopper, matter-of-factly, during the drive home from the station. She sat in the passenger seat, hands knotted and resting on her stomach. She kept touching her belly, Hopper noticed. When she was sitting at her desk or lost in thought. When they watched Family Feud or Days of Our Lives reruns. And every time she did, it stirred up a storm of thoughts and fears and worries he'd rather keep shoved deep in some dark corner of his mind.
If anything, the pregnancy had bridged some of the gaps still left in the haphazard little family they'd built for themselves. It stirred up those murky waters that held truths he, himself, wasn't willing to examine, let alone admit out loud. It strengthened his resolve to support her and protect her, though he knew she was far from some fragile thing that needed babysitting. Sure, he still kept a revolver in the top drawer of his bedside table, in the event that those government bastards might march through the door and try to take his kid away. Over his dead body, he thought, and laughed a twisted sort of laugh. Sure, he still paced the floor whenever she stayed out later than the curfew they'd agreed upon, wrestling with a thousand different scenarios as they ran through his head, each one more horrible than the last. She always came home, though, and he always yelled, but they always worked it out.
Sure, they still fought. Sure, there were barriers and boundaries that both of them broke, on occasion. But the ground rule was the same: don't be stupid. And he tried. God, he tried. He recognized that she was her own person with her own life. That she needed to explore what it meant to be a socially adept, functioning member of society. That she had friends and commitments that demanded her attention. That she'd spent her whole life locked in prisons and manipulated into obedience (both of which he wasn't totally innocent) and that she needed space to breathe and a chance to make her own decisions. So he let her go. He let her make those decisions, and if she screwed up, he did his best to catch her when she fell. To hold her while she cried. To bandage those skinned knees. The pregnancy didn't change things. Maybe it meant there were more stumbles, more tears, more scrapes and bruises. But that didn't change a thing. He'd be there, for all of it.
When she suggested they attend Thanksgiving dinner at the Wheeler's, his first instinct was to refuse. Sitting at a table with Mike's parents, attempting small talk, trying to avoid the elephant in the room, was not something that capped the list of Things He Wanted To Spend His Holiday Doing. It didn't even make the top five. Bits and pieces of what Ted Wheeler had said about El and the pregnancy had reached him, and it took everything in his power not to march over there and punch the man in the face for every stupid thing he'd ever uttered, but he refrained. For her sake, he refrained.
It was important to her. He could tell she'd gotten her hopes up. That maybe a family gathering was just the thing they needed to patch things up and somehow all get along with rainbows and butterflies to boot. He didn't have the heart to tell her he couldn't see that happening in the near future. He couldn't look her in the eyes, so full of guilt and shame, already (even though she had nothing to be guilty or ashamed of, he reminded her) and tell her that Ted would probably never be okay with her decision to raise the baby. That he saw this as a burden and an embarrassment. That sometimes people just weren't willing to set aside their differences, and Ted fell somewhere in that category. She believed she could fix this, and he couldn't shatter her hopes. So, he agreed to dinner, for her sake. But not without some grumbling, and she just punched him in the shoulder, wrestling with a grin.
He would go to dinner, but he wasn't making any other promises. In truth, he didn't know if he had it in him to make it through an entire meal without introducing his fist to Ted Wheeler's nose.
On Thanksgiving, he spent the morning helping her make a sweet potato casserole, rushing to the store to buy pecans and brown sugar. It didn't turn out the way she'd hoped. She was frustrated and on the verge of tears, and Hop knew it had nothing to do with the damn casserole. He tried to reassure her, but she wasn't having it. She started loading the dishwasher, refusing to look at him.
"Leave it, El. I'll do it."
She ignored him. He caught her wrist, and she attempted to wrench it out of his grasp.
"El." He said. "Please." She looked at him, then, opening her mouth to argue with him. He watched the fight drain out of her, the exhaustion—both mental and physical—pulling at the corners of her face. She accepted defeat.
After he'd finished in the kitchen, he found her in the living room, curled up on the sofa, fast asleep. He draped a blanket over her and pressed a kiss to her forehead, wondering how they were gonna make it through these next couple months.
El knocked on the door. Once. Twice. Three times. She glanced at Hopper, shifting her weight, arms laden with the casserole she'd made. He held a bottle of wine. He caught her eye and nodded. She licked her lips, stomach sinking through the floor as muffled footsteps approached and the door swung open. Nancy stood in the doorway. A broad grin stretched over her face. She swept El into a hug.
"Hey, El." She said, drawing back. "I heard the news." Her eyes searched El's face. "Mike told me."
She touched El's arm.
"I know you're probably really scared, but you're gonna be fine. You're the strongest person I know."
El's mouth twitched. She inspected her shoes, touched.
"Thank you."
Nancy looked at Hopper.
"Hey, Chief."
"Hey, yourself."
"C'mon in." Nancy said, beckoning, and El entered. It felt weird to be invited into a house that had been a second home to her, all these years. The Wheeler household was the designated hangout. And there had been a time when she and Mike's lives were so closely intertwined, they just walked into each other's houses without knocking. El spent plenty of rainy afternoons with Mike in the basement, doing homework or playing on the Atari. And she remembered the countless hours they wasted on the living room couch, poring over a notebook full of sketches for a new D&D campaign. They'd work on it until they grew bored and watched T.V. She missed those days. So careless and infinite. Or so she thought.
In the entryway, Holly greeted her.
"Ellie!" She yelled, excitedly, and wrapped her arms around El's middle. El hugged her back, ruffling her blond hair.
"Hey, Holls!"
Holly beamed.
El followed Nancy into the kitchen, where Mrs. Wheeler was busy preparing Thanksgiving dinner. She broke into a smile as El walked in, and rushed to take the dish in her arms.
"Thank you, sweetie." She said, in a falsetto voice. El smiled.
"No worries."
"Mike's upstairs." She said. "He needs to set the table. Tell him, will you?"
"I can set the table." El offered. Mrs. Wheeler beamed.
"I put the silverware on the dining table. There are plates in the china cabinet. We've got seven." El nodded, going into the dining room. Carefully, she removed the silverware and plates from their cloth wrappings. Once, a plate slipped out of her fingers and shattered on the floor. Or would've shattered, had she not stopped the course of its fall with a flick of her consciousness, extending an invisible hand to catch it. She set it back on the table, blowing out a breath.
After she'd finished, she climbed the stairs, searching for Mike. She'd no sooner reached the landing when the lock on the door to her left clicked and Ted Wheeler emerged, flicking the light switch. She froze, when she saw him, brain kicking into overdrive as she tried to decide what to say to him. She settled for a polite hello, barely audible, and fixed her eyes on the ground. Ted uttered a short harrumph and pushed past her, starting down the stairs. El paused, wrestling with the leaden feeling in her gut. She leaned against the bannister and took a moment to gather her bearings, blinking back the tears that had begun to burn behind her eyes, threatening to make an appearance.
She found Mike in his room, lying on his bed. Music blasted out of the stereo on his dresser.
"Is my timing that flawed, our respect run so dry?"
She paused in the doorway, rapping her knuckles on the doorframe. He turned, jumping to his feet.
"Hey." He said, smiling, and opened his arms. She walked straight into them, wrapping her arms around his middle, holding fast. She inhaled his scent—a mixture of laundry detergent and rain. On the stereo, Ian Curtis sang "Love, love will tear us apart, again."
Mike ran a hand through her curls, leaning his cheek against her temple.
"What's wrong?" He whispered, against her hair. She drew away.
"Nothing." El said, with her best attempt at a smile. Mike searched her face.
"You sure?"
"Positive."
"How's Junior?" He asked, touching her stomach.
"Fine." She said.
"Cravings?"
"Oranges. Orange slices, orange juice, anything orange."
"Gas?"
"Lots. I'm bloated, like, all the time." She puffed her cheeks out, and Mike laughed. She lifted her shirt, guiding his hand to her lower abdomen, pressing his palm to her skin. She sighed, leaning her head on his shoulder, completely and utterly content. He pressed chaste kisses to her forehead. His lips moved to her mouth, and the kisses got needier, but Mrs. Wheeler interrupted them when she called from downstairs, voice piercing the air.
"Mike!"
"What?" He yelled, back.
"I need your help!"
"Coming!"
He drew away, pecking her on the cheek.
"To be continued?" He asked, sheepish. She laughed, punching his shoulder. She followed him downstairs, passing the living room, where Hop, beer in one hand, cigarette in the other, was teaching Holly how to play poker for M&Ms.
Mrs. Wheeler needed a few things from the grocery store and Mike, grateful for a chance to get out the house and out from under his parents' gaze, obliged. His mother's eyes, big and brown, which kept darting to him, only to flit away again, testing his emotional waters. And she'd let small, sad, adult sighs escape her periodically, whenever she looked at him, and he could feel the pity and the shame and the guilt burning holes into him. It had been like that since he'd dropped the bomb on them, and though he'd made haphazard amends with his mother, he still felt her disappointment as if it was a tangible thing. And his father wouldn't speak to him or look him in the eye. Mike felt himself slowly losing grasp on anything resembling sanity, trying to ignore the warring halves tearing into him like a scavenging animal. So, when the opportunity to escape the house for a few, blissful minutes presented itself, he seized it.
El accompanied him. He drove, and she sat in the passenger seat, mentally scanning the radio for a good channel. A heavy fog hung over the streets, coating the rooftops and the asphalt with a layer of ethereal white. It hadn't yet snowed, though it certainly seemed cold enough. They had a bit of rain, earlier this week, but mostly the days were drenched in a layer of moisture that walked the line between mist and frost. And it was bitterly cold. The windows of his car fogged up, as well, and the streetlights cast a circular, orange haze that reflected off the wet asphalt.
Bradley's Big Buy, thankfully, was open during the holidays. El and Mike walked hand-in-hand across the parking lot, entering through the automatic glass doors—repaired, of course, since El shattered them with her mind. El couldn't help thinking about the incident, now, after all these years. She was nearly unrecognizable, with a head full of curls that fell well past her shoulders, bright eyes and pink cheeks. Nothing like the scrawny little girl who stole Eggos and ate them cold and soggy in the woods.
Mike grabbed a can of cranberry sauce and a bag of french rolls, a carton of milk and some ingredients to make a salad and threw them into the basket he carried. El walked beside him, reading from the sticky note on which Mrs. Wheeler had scribbled a makeshift grocery list. As they walked past the bakery section with all the fresh bread and pastries, El spotted a delicious-looking pumpkin pie, which she convinced him to buy for dessert. She liked to keep a running list of all the thing she loved most, after a lifetime of such depravity that the only thing she had to appreciate was a threadbare blanket they'd given her, to keep warm in such a place that always seemed so deathly cold, and a stuffed tiger for company. So, she kept a list of all the little things she never had but cherished so dearly, now. Pumpkin pie was very high on that list, holding a place alongside warm, woolen socks and the freckles that dotted Mike's cheeks.
They stood in the checkout line, ridiculously long and full of frazzled shoppers buying last-minute Thanksgiving dinner essentials. She watched the people in line for a while, listening to the fragments of conversation bouncing through the air. The stream of mundane dialogue wasn't entirely spoken; El caught trail of thought or a spike of emotion as it passed through the void and disappeared. The woman ahead of them, dyed, orange hair tied up in a knot on the top of her head, hugging several boxes of pre-made stuffing to her chest, wondered when Jack's flight got in and if Snuffles ate his breakfast this morning and I need to call Molly . . .
El turned away, shutting off the stream of mundane thoughts that weren't her own, thoughts that enter her mindscape, drawn like iron to a magnet. She doesn't do it intentionally, it just . . . happened. She could control it no more than she could control the Earth's rotation, or the weather, or the functioning of the human digestive system. But it got overwhelming, so she tried to shut it out.
El turned, glancing at Mike, who returned her gaze, lips quirked in the beginnings of a smile.
"What?"
"Nothing. It's just, you ever just look around you and realize you're surrounded by stressed-out people and you're not stressed out, and everything is moving so fast around you, but you don't give two shits? It's kind of liberating."
"Maybe?" She offered. "I guess I'm kinda stressed . . ."
Mike sighed, sympathetically. He grabbed her elbows and turned her body toward him, planting a kiss to her crown that was so sweet and soft and innocent and still sent electricity running through her, traveling down her spinal column and crackling in her fingers and toes.
"What're you stressed about?" He asked.
She looked at him, incredulous.
"Hmm, let's see . . . maybe it's the fact that I left Hop alone with your parents and I made him promise he wouldn't say anything but I know he's pissed. But it could be that your dad won't even look at me because he thinks I'm some delusioned psycho that coerced you into starting a family or something . . . or maybe it's the fact that I'm eighteen and pregnant and I have no idea what I'm doing." Or so she wanted to say, but she knew it would crush him, so she just said,
"Oh, just the holidays, it's all a bit . . . overwhelming." And he looked at her like he knew she was sugar-coating whatever was going on inside her head, but he didn't press her.
"When do you want to have the wedding?" He asked, out of nowhere, and the question knocked the wind out of her. Because ever since they got engaged the topic hadn't really come up again, which was absurd because El replayed the scenario over and over in her head. And both of them had been so caught up in work and school and holidays and the baby that neither of them had any time to even think about the wedding.
"What?" She asked, hoarsely. Mike shrugged.
"I don't know. I just . . . we haven't really talked about it and the proposal was so sudden and I'm sorry I just kinda sprang it on you like that and I didn't even have a ring and I promise I've been saving up and I thought maybe if you'd changed your mind about getting married, we can always wait, and—"
"Mike." She said, cutting him off. "I meant what I said. I want to get married. And I don't care if the wedding is tomorrow or in five years or there's no wedding at all. I want to marry you, Mike Wheeler." She stood on her tiptoes and pecked his lips, smiling. He grinned, back.
"Okay."
"I think we should wait 'till after the baby is born, though. If we're having a wedding, I don't want to look fat in my dress." She puffed out her cheeks, then giggled. "It doesn't have to be some huge thing, either. I don't need a bunch of fancy decorations or a five-course buffet or anything."
Mike nodded.
"Okay."
"And don't worry about the ring, Mike. Are you kidding? I don't care about a stupid ring." She kissed him, again. "I don't care about any of it. As long as we're together, and the baby is healthy and doing okay, I'm the luckiest person in the world."
"Okay."
"That's it, just 'okay'?"
Mike shrugged, sheepish.
"Sorry, I guess I'm still can't believe we're getting married."
"It's weird, isn't it?"
Mike nodded. "Does Hopper know?"
El frowned.
"I may have skipped that little detail when I told him about the baby. I thought maybe it'd be best to take it one step at a time."
"Probably a good call."
It was their turn to checkout. Mike paid for their stuff, and then they were walking out the door and into the fog, once more.
At home, Mrs. Wheeler seized the grocery bags out of Mike's hands and shooed them out of the kitchen. They went into the living room. El joined Hopper on the couch, pressing a kiss to his stubbly cheek. Holly sat in front of the T.V., shoveling M&Ms into her mouth by the handful. Hop was nursing his second beer. El settled herself cross-legged, reaching for the deck of cards, on the coffee table. She challenged Mike to a round of Slapjack. After a while, Mrs. Wheeler announced dinner was ready.
Mike stood at the sink, washing dishes. He was under orders to carefully hand wash and towel dry his mother's good china. The rest of the house was dark and quiet, and only the running water from the tap accompanied the roar of his thoughts. El left about an hour ago, though not without pressing a kiss to his cheek, promising she'd call, later that night. Dinner had been exhausting. It played out exactly as he'd imagined, full of stiff remarks and formal conversation. His father was silent and stoic, and his mother's voice grew increasingly false and shrill, and for some reason he couldn't even bring himself to look at El, who sat beside him and kept trying to catch his eye, though he'd made every effort to avoid her gaze. She wanted so badly to get on his parents' good side, to win their approval, and all of it was just so messed up and none of it was her fault. He wanted to scream. He wished they were somewhere else, anywhere else. And he knew if he looked at her, at that brokenness and guilt starting to show in her face, he'd explode. He was just so angry. So he couldn't look at her. He barely touched his turkey, and after an eternity and a slice of pumpkin pie he couldn't even taste, El and Hop left. And then it was just this big, silent house.
He set down one of his mom's fancy plates, because his hands had begun to shake and he didn't want to risk breaking anything. He shut the water off and leaned against the sink, fingers gripping the edge so tightly his knuckles turned white. He stared ahead, unseeing. Numbly, he toweled off his hands and left the kitchen, climbing the stairs. His feet carried him past his room, until he was standing outside Nancy's door, at the end of the hall. He lifted his hand, preparing to knock, then thought better of it and turned on his heel. He made it halfway down the hall before her door opened and she appeared in the doorway, eyes locking on his face with an expression that said let me in. It was enough to widen the cracks, inside.
The night Will came back and El just as suddenly disappeared, he'd promised Nancy no more secrets. He'd broken that promise, of course, (they both had) but he liked to imagine things had gotten a little better. That year had been hard. Missing El, believing he was going crazy, slowly but surely, because he still saw her everywhere and he heard her and he felt her. Like a ghost. Nobody talked about her. Dustin and Lucas danced around the subject, and sometimes they'd mention her in a conversation and then abruptly fall silent, shooting him guilty, pitying looks, as if the mere mention of her name was enough to drive him to some sort of breakdown. In some ways, it was.
It always hurt to hear that name, and he didn't speak it aloud if he could help it. But sometimes he'd lie in bed, in the dark, chasing sleep. He'd lay in the dark and say her name, so that it was barely more than a whisper on his tongue, but it was there. It was real. He said her name so only the shadows could hear, and he willed her to say something, anything. He begged her to come home. Come home. Please. But there wasn't ever any answer. There weren't any blinking lights or things coming out of the wall. Just radio static and silence and an ache in his chest too big to fill.
Eventually, the silence was too much to bear, and he'd kept so much bottled inside that some kind of explosion was nothing short of inevitable. Everything came bursting out of him. And Nancy had been there to pick up the pieces. He'd cried, and she'd held him, and he thought maybe she of all people knew what it was like to lose someone.
He'd never seen death up close, but even when people died, at least you were allowed to talk about it. Nobody knew about El. He didn't even have a picture of her. And so he walked around with her memory filling up all the empty spaces in his head, until he couldn't concentrate, couldn't do his homework, couldn't actively join in conversations or plan D&D campaigns, like he used to. And he started to question if she ever really existed, because a lot of things happened that November that he simply couldn't explain. She'd shattered into a million pieces and left him, and more and more she felt like some supernatural force rather than a person. But then he'd recall the fuzzy image of her face in his mind's eye, already beginning to fade, or her voice or the way her lips felt when he'd kissed her. And the reality of her would crash back down on him. Mostly it was just her voice; it echoed through his dreams.
He told all of this to Nancy, and she held him, and he couldn't stop the tears and the lump in his throat that ached and ached. After he'd cried himself out, he felt rubbed raw but cleansed, somehow. And exhausted. And maybe it became a little easier to bear, after that. She understood. It wasn't like they became the spitting-image of perfect siblings who got along all the time. They still fought, and they still kept secrets, and they still lied, but at least he knew he had an ally, in all this. She'd lived through that week in November, and she understood Mike hadn't just lost a friend, that night, but a piece of himself, too. She'd come out of it with similar scars. And when he woke, drowning in the sheets, suffocating from nightmares that hit a little too close to home, he'd sneak down the hall and into her room, climbing into her bed, feeling safer, somehow, in the presence of his big sister. But that was years ago, and now they stood on opposite ends of the hall, sizing each other up. And then Nancy asked, "wanna go for drive?" with eyes that reached into the depths of him, asking him questions he, himself, couldn't begin to answer, and he just nodded. Because maybe a drive was exactly what he needed. She got her keys, and they snuck out the front door before their parents got a chance to ask them where they were going. Nancy drove, and Mike sat in the passenger seat, looking out the window.
"You okay?" Nancy asked. Mike nodded, avoiding her gaze.
"Yeah. It's just . . . El and the baby and Mom and Dad and, just, everything . . ." He trailed off. "She's guilty. She thinks she's some kind of burden on the family or something, like she's the reason Dad isn't talking to me. She thinks it's her fault, which, of course, it isn't."
"That's bullshit."
"I know. I tried to tell her that, but she won't listen. She's stubborn."
She looked at him.
"Mike, it's all gonna work out."
"What if it doesn't?" It came out harsher than he'd intended. He took a breath, trying to collect himself. Nancy's brow furrowed.
"Because it's you." She said, simply. "Whatever you and El have, it's not your average crush, Mike, believe me."
He scoffed. Nance looked at him, face nothing but sharp edges. She cocked a brow in a way that said I am older than you and wiser than you and you're just my dumb little brother so shut up and listen to me.
"You aren't alone. This baby is gonna have so many people looking out for it, Mike, you don't realize . . ." She touched his shoulder, again. "You're not alone." She said, voice barely rising above a whisper. "Trust me."
They got milkshakes at a twenty-four hour diner. It was nearing midnight, on Thanksgiving, and the place was almost empty. He grabbed them a seat, in the corner. He and Nancy talked about school, about her new Medical Occupations internship, part of the nursing program at NYU. They discussed Mike and El's forecasted living arrangements, which they still needed to figure out. Though Mike still had the better part of six months to work these things out, he knew that time was gonna go by fast. When the time came, he'd much rather be settled in an apartment of their own, to eliminate that extra stress. Stress was bad for the baby, bad for El, bad for everyone involved, really, and so he wanted everything to run as smoothly as possible.
"I've been looking for a part-time job, in Indianapolis." Mike said. "You know, just to cover some of the costs. Rent is expensive, and we're gonna need to buy all new baby stuff, like a crib and diapers and everything." He licked some whip cream off the end of his straw. "I think I can fit in a few shifts a week between classes. We could use the money."
Nancy nodded.
"I think that's a good idea. But I also think you should focus on your classes, Mike. Mom and Dad will help with rent. I'm sure Hopper will support you. God knows El's got him wrapped around her pinky finger." Nancy sighed. "The point is, it's still your life. Your education is important. Your dreams are important. You're gonna have to make sacrifices, but some things are worth fighting for. Don't throw everything away with both hands."
Mike opened his mouth to argue, closed it again, thinking.
It seemed impossible, to take care of a kid and support his family and still chase after his dreams. And what were his dreams, anyway? He hadn't been one to really think about the future. He'd always been invested in the present—in his friends and schoolwork and A.V. club. He remembered thinking it would be cool to be a scientist or an astronaut when he was a kid, but then he became Dungeon Master and he started writing elaborate campaigns for his friends, and the pictures in his head came to life on the board like some kind of magic. Sometimes he'd keep a little notebook and fill it with ideas and plots and character sketches, and it would keep him busy for hours. It wasn't until his Freshman-year English teacher, Mrs. Bradley, complimented one of his essays that he realized he was a pretty good writer, that maybe he could make a career out of his campaigns and his plots and stories.
All the crazy shit that happened in November of 1983 might've played a part, too. Those government bastards took everything from him and made it look like a freak accident, and the love of his life disappeared in a puff of smoke, and nobody knew the truth, and more and more he fought the urge to scream at the top of his lungs. Nobody was talking about it. Nobody knew what had happened to him, what happened to her, and nobody cared. And he thought if he could just tell somebody what happened, it might be a little easier to bear. So, he'd gone home and dug his old notebook out of the closet. He brushed the dust off the cover and eraser shavings off the pages and he picked up a pencil and wrote. He wrote about everything that had happened to them, that November. He wrote about Will's disappearance, about the rainy night they went out to look for him, about the enigma named Eleven and the tattoo stamped on her wrist and the fear in her eyes and the way his heart ached for her, even months after she'd came into his life and just as suddenly left it. He wrote about the death of Barbara Holland, about El's super powers, about the bath, the blinking lights, the government bastards, and the night his friend came back from the dead. It all came pouring out of him, and he wrote until his hand was cramped and burning and tears were streaming down his face.
If Will drew to cope with his demons, Mike wrote about them.
After it was done, he ripped the pages out of his notebook and tore them into tiny pieces, so that no one would be able to decipher the very true story that had turned his life upside down. He tossed the scraps into the waste bin by his desk, then collapsed on his bed, body shaking with sobs and the image of El's brown eyes burned into his brain.
He was good at telling stories. He always had been, even if he didn't realize. And once he started flexing this newfound muscle, the words came easy. Never in his life had he had so much to say. Even now, amidst all the chaos, outside of classes and jobs and everything else, he still made time to write. His stories were fiction, but they still hit close to home. There was still a bit of truth, there, if you knew where to look. He realized if he was going to offer the world anything, he could offer it a story. Maybe nothing he wrote would ever cut so deep as the story he scribbled in his notebook that night—an attempt to make sense of everything that had happened to him in the only way he knew how. And he was still trying to make sense of it all, so he wrote. And the best idea he'd ever had was to try and make those stories into a career of sorts. So, when he applied to college, in the section that asked for his preferred major, he chose Journalism, knowing it would be the surest way to get to a point where he could finally tell the world the truth. So, whenever Mike thought about his plans and his future and everything in between, he always imagined he'd spend a couple hours a day behind a typewriter, chipping away at the iceberg ideas in his head. And Nancy was right. He couldn't do that without finishing his four years at IU. He also knew his diploma would help him get a job that made enough money to support their little family all on his own. He just needed to figure out how to make it through the next four years.
"I'll try." Mike said. "I promise." And he would. He wasn't about to drop out of school, but El and the baby came first. Period. He was just gonna have to figure it out.
"Don't worry about Dad, either, Mike. He'll come around. Just give him time."
Mike scoffed.
"I think he made it pretty clear he wants nothing to do with me or El or the baby." Mike said, cursing under his breath. Nancy sighed, bone-deep, rubbing her temples.
"He's an idiot."
Mike nodded.
"But that doesn't mean he can't change. And if he never comes around, well, it's his loss. You gotta remember that."
Mike shook his head.
"At least Mom's somewhat on my side."
Nancy nodded.
"I'm on your side, too." She said, then smiled, ruffling his hair. "I can't wait to be the cool aunt."
Mike looked at her, a lump forming in his throat. He struggled to get words past it.
"Thanks, Nance."