"Remembering is painful, especially when what you remember is a fantasy…"
Wonder Woman: Amazonia
The RV park is a large, grassy expanse, fenced off from surrounding farmland by a wooden fence that has not been repainted in years and in some parts is close to toppling over. Apart from the caravan of motorhomes and trailers and cars from Hawkins, it is mostly empty. In the north-western corner, a woman stands at the front door of a trailer home, her hair wrapped in a towel, calling her children home for supper. A family of crows rests in a nearby row of bare-branched trees. In the distance, a freight train travelling on the track that runs alongside the east bank of the Missouri River sounds its horn.
Almost beautiful, Max thinks.
Surprising no-one but Hopper, they had made it anywhere close to Kansas City before sundown. In fact, they had barely made it past St Louis. It had all started with the Wheelers' car had broken down. Then there was the hour wasted with Hopper and Mr Wheeler staring at the smoke rising from the engine with their hands at their hips, making odd gestures and squinting and poking and prodding aimlessly at different things they found under the hood. Then there was the hour and a half spent driving into town and finding a mechanic and asking if he could help and driving back again. Then there was a half-hour of the mechanic staring at the engine with his hands at his hips and Hopper and Mr Wheeler looking anxiously at each other before finally by some miracle Max heard the engine sputtering back to life through her headphones. Then there was the endless traffic on Highway 70 and Hopper muttering profanities at other drivers and Joyce chiding his impatience.
Max stares out of the window as she pours herself a glass of water from the tap in the kitchenette. She is conscious of Eleven sitting at the door behind her, her legs dangling over the step, watching the others making fools of themselves outside. She has been conscious of her all day.
You should talk to her, she thinks. Before she thinks you hate her or something.
But she does not. She cannot. The thought of doing so makes her stomach seize up and leaves an empty feeling in her chest as her heart begins to skip and leaves her struggling to keep her eyes from welling up with tears. All of that could have been bearable if she only knew why, but whenever she would look for answers she would only be met with more questions until she would feel as if she were falling back into that void that she had been in for almost a year. And so she had settled for mostly silence and a proximity that sometimes felt agonising and the hope that Eleven would understand.
Max feels water run over her hand as the glass becomes overfilled. She tips some of it back into the sink and walks back to her seat. She feels a dull ache in her arm, where the break had been.
Eleven watches Steve and Robin standing over a pile of firewood. They are trying to start a fire – or at least, that is what Eleven thinks they are doing. It is difficult to tell and sometimes it seems like they are just dancing a strange jig. From time to time, Steve crouches down and hits a piece of metal against another and Robin looks at him as if he has lost his mind.
"Yeah, just keep hitting that thing, big boy," Robin says. "Didn't work the first hundred times so it's bound to work soon, right?"
"Hey screw you, Buckley," Steve says. He stands back up and wipes the sweat from his brow, smearing a streak of dirt across his forehead. "Wanna give me a hand, or are you just going to stand there and make fun of me?"
"Oh, I was planning on doing this for another fifteen minutes at least."
"Welp," Steve says. He tosses the fire starter to one side and shrugs his shoulders. "I guess it'll be cold soup for us, then. You can eat that stuff cold, right?"
"Yeah, I think so," Robin says. "Oh, except I heard about this one time where someone at Hawkins High ate some leftovers straight out of the fridge, like, leftover chicken or something, and he had food poisoning and he almost died. Happened in senior year, I think."
"That's great, Robin, thank you. You know, that's just what I was hoping to hear."
"That would be pretty funny, though, don't you think? Like, if we went through this whole crazy thing with killing Vecna and the Upside Down and all of Hawkins being destroyed and in the end one of us died from food poisoning because we couldn't find a way to reheat a can of cream of chicken soup?'
"Yeah, hilarious." Steve looks around, searching for Hopper. He sees him with the other parents, smoking a cigarette. "Guy who looks a lumberjack has to know how to use one of these things, right?"
As Steve walks off, Vickie pokes her head out of the window of their trailer. She watches him, dragging his feet along the grass, shaking his head, and muttering things to himself that she cannot hear but that she can guess from the way he is acting.
"You know these things have microwaves, right?" Vickie yells. Steve does not hear her, or does not acknowledge her. She turns to Robin. "He knows these things have microwaves, right?"
"Yeah," Robin says. "He knows. But he says it isn't the same, or something. Something about it not being right to reheat soup in a microwave while you're on the road."
"What does that even mean?"
"I don't know. Dudes are weird."
Robin and Vickie laugh at each other. They are wearing enormous smiles. The whiteness of their teeth stands out against the red light of the evening. Vickie flicks Robin's nose with her finger.
"There are stoves, too, although I don't know about burning propane inside. You know, I read about carbon monoxide poisoning the other day, and oh my God Robin, it's like, maybe my number three fear –".
Vickie's voice trails off as they disappear into their trailer.
My dad reckons they're – you know, like – together, Eleven remembers Mike saying. They had been crowded around a flimsy, plastic table at the centre of camp where soldiers from the army were distributing breakfast.
Aren't they just really good friends? I mean, they did band and stuff together, right? Lucas had said.
I dunno, Lucas, Dustin had said. Looks to me like they might be doing more than band together.
Mike had snorted.
Whatever it is, my dad says it's un-American, Mike had said. He's always saying stupid shit like that. Like, what does that even mean?
Nah, girls are just kinda touchy-feely with each other, you know, Lucas had said. They're weird like that. No offence, El.
Eleven had just shrugged her shoulders. Then she had returned to watching Will. He was pushing a pile of powdered scrambled eggs about on his plate with a fork.
Eleven climbs into bed, being careful not to pull the sheets away from Max. She lies on her back, staring at the ceiling. She can hear the sound of Max breathing and soon their breaths are synchronised, as if they share a pair of lungs.
For the first time since they had left the tent that morning, Eleven feels Max's eyes on her.
She turns over and sees Max's face. Her eyes are pools of still water reflecting the pale moonlight that shines through the window.
"Sorry," Eleven says. "I didn't mean to wake you."
"It's okay," Max says. "I wasn't sleeping anyway."
For a moment they lie silent, staring at each other, not sure of what to say. Eleven feels a familiar knot in her stomach. She feels her heartbeat. She feels her breathing grow shallow. Sometimes when you feel like you're gonna spin out of control, Hopper had said, just find something to count. Can be leaves on a tree, anything. Eleven counts the freckles on Max's face. One. Two. Three. Count until you're feeling like you again. You'll be alright, kid.
"Sorry I've been kind of ignoring you all day," Max says. She offers a small smile.
"It's okay," Eleven says. "It was a big day."
"Well, I'm sorry anyway."
"Max. It is okay."
Eleven remains focused on Max's freckles. It is as if she would unravel if she were to turn her attention to anything else. The freckles are an anchor, tying her to reality. And so, she counts and counts, even as she hears Max sniffle. But there are no tears that run across her cheeks.
"Do you remember," Max says. "Do you remember that time I slept over in that cabin in the woods you used to live in with Hopper? And he came barging into your room because he thought I was Mike?"
"Of course," Eleven says. "I remember you said, don't you knock, jeez."
"Oh yeah, jeez. I had forgotten about that."
"It was the first time I had heard someone say that. And now I say it to Hopper all of the time, to annoy him."
Eleven feels the words spilling from her mouth before she is able to think about them. Is this how Robin feels all of the time? she thinks. She does not like it; it is another fraying of the tethers that keep her mind from drifting off. She is relieved when Max giggles.
"You do not. God, now he's going to hate me more than he does already."
"He doesn't hate you, Max."
"What was up with him, anyway? He came in all like – like he was Rambo, or something."
"Rambo?"
"He's this – this huge, muscly guy, with a machine gun. I don't know, I saw my dad watching the movie on TV once. Do you remember the look on his face? 'Uh, uh, I'll just – I'll just uh, be leaving now.'"
Max lowers her voice to a contralto and sticks out her jaw, trying to impersonate Hopper. She laughs. Eleven laughs, too. For a moment, she is back in her room. Madonna is playing on her yellow plastic radio. She is wearing her black romper that covers her with abstract shapes of red and green and yellow and blue and white. She sees the light green wooden walls. The spiral pattern on her bed headboard. The woolly carpet that smells of dust. The murmur of the television coming through the door. Max, twirling, singing into her hairbrush.
And then Max turns away and Eleven is brought crashing back to the hard bed that makes her back ache and the trailer that smells faintly of sun-baked vinyl and gasoline and the sound of Hopper snoring.
"Do you think – do you think we'll ever get to do that again?" Max says.
"Have a sleepover?"
"No, I mean, just – I remember it felt like I could forget that there was this whole thing with the Upside Down, and –"
Max falls silent. Eleven cannot see Max's face but she knows that she is crying. She can see her shoulders begin to seize and feel the vibrations from her trembling ripple through the mattress springs.
"Max," Eleven says. "It is going to be okay. One is gone now. Remember?"
But the instant the words leave her lips Eleven knows that she has said the wrong thing. She can only watch as Max continues to tremble, her back turned to her, because she knows deep down it isn't One that scares her and she has never been scared so long as she has had people around her that have helped her forget like you did that night when she slept over and now she has no-one not Lucas not her parents not even you, not even you because you were too busy thinking about Mike and how you did not love him and how what you wanted what made you smile as you lay in bed each morning was something stupid something you could never have and because of you she has lost everything so how could she ever even begin to l -"
Eleven feels Max shift closer to her in the bed until she can feel the cool fall air replaced by the warmth radiating from her body. She feels Max tuck her head under her chin, hiding her face from her view. She feels her tears wet the skin on her neck. She feels Max's knees press lightly against her stomach as she curls up like a child.
"I'm sorry," Max says. She chokes the words out. "I don't know what's wrong with me, sometimes I just –"
"It is okay," Eleven says. "I am sorry too."
"For what?"
Eleven does not answer. Because to answer would be to admit the truth and it is a truth that she cannot bear and you cannot bear either and so you lie even though friends don't lie because sometimes the truth can be even worse.
"For what, El?"
"Just – I am sorry that you are upset," she finally says. She wraps an arm around Max and feels her pull in tighter against her. She can smell the shampoo in Max's hair and feel her pulse against her wrist. In the moonlight, her red hair seems to glow blue.
"Things will be okay," Max says. "Right, El?"
"I think so," Eleven says.
"You think so?"
"I do not know."
Then, seeing Max's brows furrow out of the corner of her eye, Eleven reconsiders.
"I hope so," she says.
