"Just more of my bad luck, I guess. And his, because he chose to love me."
Wonder Woman: Donna Troy
Eleven opens her eyes to find herself sitting cross-legged on a cushion. She is wearing a navy sweatshirt that balloons around her arms because it is two sizes too big and gray sweatpants that extend past her ankles and down to her heels. Her back sticks to the layers of varnish on the wood panels behind her and on every other side she is surrounded by translucent walls hastily constructed out of a bedsheet, a jumble of floral and abstract patterns illuminated by a dim light that glows from outside. She hears a woman's voice coming through the ceiling and a radio advertisement and the faint hiss of static. There is the faint smell of mold emanating from the carpet below her, the smell of years of persistent dampness.
She becomes conscious of someone sitting next to her. She turns her head – slowly, at first, observing the figure through her peripheral vision until she is relieved to see that it is only him again. His hair has grown long and it falls in messy locks that brush against his shoulders. He is wearing a shirt that she has not seen for years. It is a royal blue with dark stripes and thin, cream-colored checks. It is one of his favorites, she remembers.
You're back, Mike says.
Yes, Eleven says.
Eleven peers through a gap in the wall in front of her. She sees a square table, surrounded by an assortment of different chairs, some wooden and some plastic, one with a towel draped over it. On the table are plastic binders with words scrawled across them in a child's handwriting in permanent marker that has faded with time. She can see a few plastic figurines next to them but they are too small and too far away for her to trace the outline of their features with her eyes. In the corner of the room there is a sofa with more abstract patterns and mismatching cushions and above it hangs a poster of a bird overlooking a rocky landscape like the one she had seen from the window of the plane the last time she had travelled to California.
Feels like yesterday we were here, doesn't it? Mike says.
Like yesterday? Eleven says.
Like you remember it as if it had just happened. You heard me say it to you when you told me you didn't love me anymore. Do you remember?
Eleven turns her head to look at Mike. Over the years his eyebrows have grown thicker and darker and now they frame the bony ridges above his eyes and gives him a look that Eleven thinks is stern even when she knows he is happy. She studies his face – his eyes, his nose, his lips, his ears – every part of it that she can see for anything that could provide a single breadcrumb to head her down the trail of how he is feeling, but she is met with nothing.
Are you upset? Eleven says.
No, Mike says.
Why?
I don't know.
You don't know?
No, you don't know.
Eleven returns to peering out at the room outside and finds the source of the light that now flickers intermittently. It is a lamp sitting on a low table next to the sofa, with a slender blue base adorned with a pattern that makes it appear cracked all over. The voice is the ceiling has disappeared and now she can hear music. It is the same song that they had danced to together, that year in the gymnasium. In the weeks after they had broken up she thought that she could never bear to hear it again and every time it would play on the radio in the car she would cover her ears until Hopper would notice and change the station.
Maybe you've underestimated me, Mike says.
What do you mean? Eleven says.
Maybe I understand more than you think.
Understand what?
Maybe I understand why.
I don't know what you mean.
I think you do.
I don't.
Mike continues to speak because he does not hear her or perhaps he does not acknowledge her. Eleven does not turn to face him. Deep down, I think you do, he says. I think you remember what One said about how you could become stronger if only you would draw on some great sadness from your past but in the end he was wrong, him and Eight and all the others were wrong because it was not a great sadness at all and it was a time when you were happiest and you felt like the day could go on and on and on under the twinkling electric lights of the mall and the warm red sun through the bus window and when you were trapped there in the Upside Down and you heard my voice and you heard me tell you I loved you all you could see was her red hair on your shoulder on the ride home and you realized then and maybe I realized too that she is why she has always been the reason why –
I don't understand, Eleven says. She feels the music in the ceiling grow louder, the vibrations pulsing in her chest, tickling her throat as she speaks.
Maybe you don't want to understand, Mike says.
He moves to leave their makeshift tent and Eleven follows. She can see a flight of stairs leading up out of the room. At the top of the stairs there is a wooden door that the light from the lamp is not bright enough to reach.
Are you ready to go? Mike says. He rests a hand on Eleven's shoulder.
Not yet, Eleven says. Can we stay here?
Everybody's waiting for you, Mike says. You'd better get going.
A little while longer, Eleven says. It is nice here.
I know, Mike says. But you can't stay forever.
Can we wait a little while? Eleven says.
Sure, I guess, Mike says. But you have to talk to her, Jane.
It is almost dawn when Eleven awakens. Max is still asleep, her head still tucked underneath Eleven's chin. The shadow made by the window blinds against the feeble early morning light casts a striped pattern of light and dark over both of them. Eleven watches Max's chest rise and fall with each breath, the sound like the whispering of gentle ways crawling across sand. There are small specks of dust that drift aimlessly about in the air. She feels Max shift without waking, her nose brushing against her collarbone.
It is another hour before they both clamber out of bed and Eleven pretends that she has only just awoken and they make their way outside and to the Byers' trailer where Jonathan and Will are standing at the kitchenette making breakfast.
Max sits at the picnic table, listening to a song through her headphones without paying attention to the tune or the words. Some of the others have decided to drive back into St Louis to pick up more supplies. If I have to eat another one of those ready to eat meals or something that has come out of a can, Joyce had said, I'm going to scream. And so off they went, leaving everyone else scattered about the RV park. Will is sitting in the Byers' trailer, setting up another campaign. Mike and Dustin are with him. Max can hear them burst into fits of laughter, even after she turns the volume up as much as she can bear. She watches Hopper, sitting in a folding chair outside their trailer, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, trying to read a map that seems to stretch multiple feet in each direction. Some stray ash falls onto his shirt and he leaps up and tosses the map aside and brushes his chest with his hands before stomping back into the trailer without extinguishing his cigarette. Max thinks about how her clothes will smell of smoke and whether that is better or worse than the smell of plastic and tinned soup that seems to stick to her no matter how hard she scrubs.
Max feels someone tap on one of her headphones. She turns and sees Lucas standing over her, his head blocking out the sun behind him so that he appears to her as a silhouette.
"Hey," he says.
"Hey, stalker," Max says. She is unsure of whether she is playfully or to signal her annoyance.
"I thought we were past that."
"Yet here you are, stalking me."
"You were pretty easy to spot."
"I guess. So, what do you want? Don't you have a D&D campaign to be at?"
"Will's still setting it up."
Lucas sits opposite her and offers an awkward smile.
"Anyway – nice day, don't you think?" he says.
"Seriously? You came here to ask me what I think of the weather?"
"Well?"
"You're an idiot."
Max moves to put her headphones back on.
"Wait – no, Max, look. Can we talk?" Lucas says, his eyes growing wider.
"We're not getting back together, Lucas."
"No, that's not what I –"
"You dumped me, remember?"
Max feels the heat grow in her cheeks. She realizes that she is yelling, or she thinks she is. She looks around her and even though she sees no-one looking at them she lowers her voice to an agitated whisper, spitting out the words. "You remember that, right?" she says. "Because I sure don't, because I was in –"
"Look, Max – I've told you I'm sorry, okay?"
"Oh, you're sorry. That's great. We're meant to kiss or something now, right?"
"What? No, I – this isn't about our relationship or anything, I just wanted to –"
"Then what the hell do you want?" Max says. She would scream if only she could, although she is not sure why. Because truthfully, she had not been all that upset after she had finally woken up and Eleven had mustered up the courage to tell her that Lucas had moved on. If anything, it was a relief, she thinks. Because it had taken being cursed and Vecna taking you to the brink of nothingness and being brought back to life again for it to finally get through that thick skull of yours that he was never that person buried deep into your heart in the first place. And it was not because he was not handsome, or was not kind, or was not charming, or any of the other adjectives that she had lifted straight from her childhood fairytales that she would rattle off when she was in middle school in front of the mirror in her room while her mother would fiddle with her hair. When she had been trapped in the void with nothing but her thoughts it had been the vision of her that had held her back from the edge, her standing at the threshold between the light and the endless darkness with her arms outstretched, giving her something to hold onto to stop her from going over. And maybe it had always been, she thinks. But now, all she can do is sit, feeling every muscle in her body tense as she holds back her tears, barely able to speak.
"Just – have you and El talked recently?" Lucas says.
"Why?" Max says. "Were you planning on dating her just to dump her while she's in a coma too?" Sometimes, when she is feeling generous, Lucas' hackneyed explanations even begin to make some sense. We thought we had lost you, he had said, Eleven tried to reach you but she said she could not find you and it just hurt too much to keep holding onto hope for you to wake up even though we thought that day would never come. But some days all you feel like doing is telling him to take his shitty excuses and the magazines he's lifted them from and to shove them up his ass and never speak to you again.
"No – I – look, stop, Max, okay? I know, I'm an asshole. But this is important, okay?"
"Good to hear you finally admit it."
"Have you spoken to her?"
"Yeah."
"And?"
"Turns out she didn't want another spoonful of eggs this morning. Go figure, huh?" Max tilts her head, feigning a look of amazement. "You'd better go tell Mike, I'm sure he's dying to know."
"I'm being serious, Max. You should talk to her."
Max can only maintain the expression on her face and stare incredulously back at Lucas.
"Just – look, between you and me? I think – I think she's been wanting to talk to you, too," Lucas says.
"So you have been stalking me," Max says.
"What? No – it's just, she looks at you all funny."
"Like what?"
"Like – I don't know. It just kind of reminds me of –"
Lucas is interrupted by Will calling his name. Max turns her head and sees him, standing at the door of the Byers' trailer and waving. Mike and Dustin have their faces pressed up against one of the windows and when they see Max looking back at them they shrink back.
"Just – talk to her, okay?" Lucas says. And before Max can ask what he is talking about or what he means or any of the other million questions she has for him, he is gone. Max does not bother calling after him.
Nancy is pushing the shopping cart down the aisle. The shelves are a technicolor rainbow of reds and yellows and greens and blues and purples that say "Eat Me" and "Try Me, All New Blueberry Flavor!" and cartoon mascots that seem as if they could leap from the boxes. The same rainbow has spilled into the cart and now it shines brightly back at her. Cornflakes for Dad. Muesli bars and chocolate chip cookies for the road. A box of Old Cokes for Mike and the other boys.
Eleven shuffles along the linoleum floor at her side. Her shoes squeak with each step.
"Do you think they have Eggos here?" she says.
"What?" Nancy says. She has been thinking about everything and yet nothing in particular at all and in the moment her attention is caught by a box of dishwashing soap that boasts that it can wash twice the number of dishes as the average brand.
"Eggos. Do you think they have them here?" Eleven says.
"Oh," Nancy says. She glances at Eleven and finds her looking back at her with a face that seems to express concern more than anything else. "I'm sure they do. I'd be surprised if they don't have a whole freezer full of them. Let's take a look."
They meander over to the freezer aisle. It is cold, so cold that Nancy shivers even though she is wearing a sweater that minutes ago had made her feel like she might overheat. It reminds her of a place the appearance of which is now indistinct in her mind but that seems to her more like a feeling of weightlessness and blood coursing through her veins and the recoil of a shotgun thudding into her chest. At night sometimes she finds herself there and she expects to wake up screaming and her pillow soaked in cold sweat but instead there is only a hollow feeling and the dread of having to wander through endless aisles in supermarkets that are foreign to her and yet identical to every other one that she has ever known and to compare brands of dishwashing soap and cereal and oven cleaner.
"There are so many types," Eleven says, staring at the freezer shelf in front of them with the wide-eyed amazement of a child encountering an exotic animal at the zoo.
"Yup," Nancy says. "They sure do make a lot of them."
"I didn't know."
"Hopper never took you grocery shopping?"
"No. It was always too dangerous, he said – and then we never got a chance."
"Yeah, if I had the choice between Bradley's Big Buy or the Upside Down, I'd probably pick the Upside Down, too." Nancy feels herself wince at the words before she stifles it with a soft laugh.
"How about chocolate chip?" Eleven says, opening the freezer door and taking out a box.
"Grab two," Nancy says. "I've seen Mike eat."
Hopper is sitting beneath the tree in the shadows made by the leaves against the flickering red and yellow light of the campfire, holding up the map that he had been studying earlier. The other parents are squinting, struggling to see what he is pointing at. He is smoking another cigarette and from time to time clouds of smoke are sent billowing from his mouth before they dissipate into the cool night air.
"And if we leave bright and early tomorrow," Eleven hears him say, "We should be able to make it to somewhere near Cheyenne by the afternoon."
From where she is lying on the grass his lips seem to have disappeared behind his moustache so that she cannot see them move when he speaks and he looks to her almost like a puppet, given the sonorous voice of her father by some unseen ventriloquist. Max is sitting by her side, trying to read a book by the light of the fire, with some difficulty based on the rate at which Eleven hears her turn the pages. For a moment, Eleven wonders why she has not gone back inside, where she can read in the electric glow of the trailer.
"How was the supermarket?" Max says, putting her book down on the grass.
"Fine," Eleven says. "I didn't know there were so many types of Eggos."
"What kind did you get?"
"Chocolate chip."
"Cool."
Eleven tilts her head to look at Max. In the red glow of the flames her hair seems almost the same color as her skin. Behind her, Eleven can only see the tall outlines of the trees standing over them.
"What did you do while I was gone?" Eleven says.
"Not much," Max says. "Got to help Steve collect some firewood. Got a pretty bad splinter, but it was fun, I guess."
Max holds up her hand to Eleven's face for her to see. The base of her thumb is wrapped in a bandage.
"Does it hurt?" Eleven asks.
"Not really."
For a moment they sit looking at each other, both uncomfortable in the silence that lingers over them but neither person knowing what to say.
"Oh, Lucas says I need to talk to you," Max finally says.
"About what?"
"I dunno. He didn't say."
"He didn't say?"
"Nope."
"Where is he now?"
"I think he's still playing D&D."
"What did he say, Max?"
"Something about –" Max pauses. She looks away from Eleven and over at Robin and Vickie whom she sees through the window of their trailer washing dishes. "I don't know. He didn't really say anything."
Friends don't lie, Eleven wants to say. What did Lucas say? What did he say? What do you need to tell me? But the more she turns the questions over in her head the more she feels as if she is falling, because what if you are right about everything, she thinks, wouldn't it be better to live out a lie with her than it would be to face the truth without her? And soon she is standing on the crest of a great wave, knowing that if she does not paddle back out to sea she will be pulled underwater as it comes crashing down at the shoreline, and soon she will be fighting with all of her strength to find her way to the surface, not knowing which way is up and which was is down, feeling the sting of the saltwater in her eyes.
And so she settles for a giggle and for saying, "Max, we talk every day."
"Yeah, I know right?" Max says, smiling. "He was being so weird."
"Maybe he still likes you."
"He said he wasn't trying to get back together."
"Max," Eleven says. She lowers her voice, trying to sound serious, imitating the tone of voice Hopper had used that morning when he had cornered her and Mike in her bedroom. "Boyfriends lie. All the time. Remember?"
"You're right," Max says. "Maybe it's all part of some master plan the boys have drawn up. I guess we'll see."
They let the thought hang in the air before they both decide without exchanging another word that it is not worth interrogating further. Max picks her book up and brushes a few stray blades of grass from its pages and Eleven returns to watching Hopper. He has put the map away and now he is waving his hands about trying to explain something to Mr Sinclair who looks as if he is staring through Hopper while Joyce watches on, trying to hide her smile behind a mug of cocoa. She listens to the echoes of birdcalls in the distance and the crackling of the flames that occasionally send sparks shooting into the darkness like miniature fireworks.
Eventually, she senses Max give up on reading her book and shut her eyes and although Eleven cannot see her she can feel the difference.
Eleven stirs from her sleep and finds herself being carried in Hopper's arms. The fire has been extinguished and now she can see nothing but the outline of his face in the darkness and the night sky stretched out behind him, the stars glimmering like sequins on a black dress and the moon hanging idly above them. She can hear Joyce whisper good night to him before she walks off to join Will and Jonathan. The murmuring of the other parents grows fainter and eventually disappears as they too return to their trailers and there is a soft metallic rattling as doors are shut behind them.
Eleven knows that Max is walking beside them and that is enough to allow her to release a breath and let her limbs hang limp. She closes her eyes, listening to the syncopated rhythm of Max's footsteps muffled by the long grass beneath them. By the time she opens them again it is morning and Max is already awake, sitting upright next to her and looking out of the window.
