"Everything feels different. Or maybe I'm just different now."
Wonder Woman: The Adventures of Young Diana
Inside the trailer there is the lingering smell of stale potato chips and days-old sweat soaked into the faux-leather covers of the seats. Eleven rests her arm on the table and when she lifts it to scratch her head her sleeve sticks to the outline of the bottom of a can of Coke traced in evaporated soda on the surface so that she has to gently tug at it to get it free.
"Sorry," Will says.
Eleven smiles back at him. The tension of the D&D campaign that had roared to its dramatic conclusion a few nights ago still seems to hang over them. There is a familiarity about it that distracts her from the heaviness of the air that has been trapped in the trailer for days and become almost difficult to breathe.
"Mike says hi, by the way."
Will is still sporting the same haircut he had the day she had first seen him, all alone, cowering against the hollow husk of a tree in the Upside Down. With time, his face has grown more angular and now the corners of his chin and his cheeks jut out against the circle drawn by his hairline around the tips of his ears and across the middle of his forehead.
"Okay," she says.
"Just okay?"
"What?"
"Do you want me to say, like, hi back or something?"
Eleven tilts her head. Stupid, she thinks. As if viewing Will from a forty-five-degree angle would somehow enlighten her as to what she is supposed to say. Is this how things are supposed to be now? It is as if she is stuck in an endless game of telephone, forced to communicate with Mike through approximations of her own words filtered through the voices of their friends, except on the rare occasions when they would inadvertently come face to face and her own voice would leave her entirely.
In the end, all she can do is shrug. "He's not here," she says.
Will laughs. It is strange, Eleven thinks, how rarely she has seen him laugh. She can barely remember the last time she had seen him overcome by the squeaky cackle that possesses him now and sends his head tilting backwards and his body careening back into his seat and forces his eyelids shut.
"So that's it," he says. "You're just gonna not talk to him for the rest of your life?"
Eleven replays the small handful of moments since the day they had broken up when they had actually spoken to each other in her mind. We were worried about you, that's all, he had said. When she tries to remember how Mike's face had looked all that stares back at her is a ventriloquist's dummy with his likeness, emotionless and speaking to her with a disembodied voice that is not its own. If only I could find the words to say, she thinks. "I don't know. It's just kind of – awkward."
"Yeah, I guess."
"Besides, I think he doesn't want to talk to me."
"Trust me. For someone who doesn't want to talk to you, he sure asks a lot about how you're going."
A quiet descends upon them and Eleven feels a warmth begin to swell in her cheeks. Against the cool air inside the trailer, it feels as if there are a thousand tiny needles lightly pricking her skin. Will's face still carries the same inscrutable expression that Eleven has come to know like the back of her hand. The remnants of his smile linger in the upturned corners of his lips and his eyes seem to stare right through her. She can hear the jingling of the cutlery in the sink in the kitchenette and it is as if she is listening to the machinery turning in his head.
What do you mean, you don't love me, he had said. What the hell does that even mean? It is as if sitting there, surrounded by half-empty bags of chips and soda cans and plastic binders filled with hastily scribbled notes and the other ghosts of the D&D campaign, she can feel Mike next to her. The sound of the trailer tires against the uneven surface of the asphalt beneath them seems to turn into a low mumbling in her ear.
"I'm sorry," she says.
"For what?"
How about for leaving me behind when you needed me most, the voice says in a scratchy whisper. How about for throwing me away like a piece of trash when I could have helped you? How about – because she'd still be alive if you hadn't –
"I don't know," she says. "Just – you're his best friend, and –"
"Yeah, I guess he has been pretty annoying since you dumped him."
"Sorry." Does she know, Jane? Does she know you're the reason why –
"Not your fault, El. It's not like you have to be his girlfriend just because he's my best friend," Will says. "Besides, I don't even know if I'd want Mike dating my sister."
"Why?"
"I don't know. It's just kind of weird."
Eleven slinks down in her seat, the base of her spine beginning to ache. She looks up at Will and into his eyes. They are the color of the fallen leaves that line the side of the highway. He had always seemed to know what to say. Maybe that is why they call him Will the Wise, she thinks. The sound of his voice drowns out the murmurs and soon they recede into the background until they are inaudible, even in the brief pauses in their conversation when she pauses to turn his words over in his mind.
"Why did you dump him, anyway?" Will says.
"What do you mean?" Eleven says. It is a question that she has asked herself a thousand times before and now she rummages half-heartedly through her mind again, looking for a plausible explanation that she knows is not there.
"I mean – I don't know. For a while you both seemed so – happy."
"I don't know," she says to herself in a low voice.
"What?"
"I just – I don't know," Eleven says, louder this time but still unsure if she is addressing Will or herself or someone else entirely. She feels her mind begin to wander as her gaze drifts away from Will and towards the spots on the table where the sun has damaged the vinyl and it has begun to peel away and the cookie crumbs that have been left out to be collected by insects.
"Did Max – did she have anything to do with it?"
The mention of her name makes Eleven hurriedly collect her thoughts and turn her attention back to Will. "What?" she says.
"Did she like, I don't know, talk to you about it? You know, like that time at the mall, when we were in middle school?"
"No," Eleven says. In truth, she had told Mike everything she knew the day it had happened. It had been a day like the one happening outside. The sky had been covered by a mass of gray clouds, heavy with rain, looking like they might topple over and fall to the Earth and blanket them in mist at any moment. There had been gusts of wind that carried the fragments of the Upside Down billowing out of the gates at the edge of Hawkins to Maple Street where they fell on them like snowflakes as they sat on the curb. They had sat in silence, each waiting for the other to do or say something, anything. It is as if he had known what was coming all along.
"Sorry, El. I didn't mean it like an accusation or anything. I just – I know it's hard for you to talk about this stuff."
Eleven feels something boiling up inside her, bubbling up from her lungs and her stomach and crawling up her throat and for a moment she thinks she will be sick. It is some feeling that has been buried deep within her and that now, having sensed the thin shaft of light let in by the crack in the surface of her soul created by her conversation with Will, claws its way upwards, desperately trying to escape the pit in which it has been confined.
"It's okay," Eleven squeaks.
"Are you alright?" Will says.
It takes all of Eleven's energy to suppress whatever it is that seems to be tunneling through her insides. She swallows and feels her tongue stick to the inside of her mouth and the muscles in her chest squeeze tight around her windpipe, reducing her breathing to a series of shallow gasps. All she can do is nod.
"Are you sure?"
For a brief moment, Eleven ponders how she should respond. What are you even supposed to say, she thinks. The lapse in her concentration becomes a hole in the dam she has constructed in her mind and soon the weight of her emotion is too much for her to bear and it crumbles entirely, sending a torrent of words surging past her lips.
"I think – I think it was because he was the first person to take care of me, when they found me," she says. "When he hid me in his basement and when he would bring me his dinner from upstairs and when he showed me his Star Wars toys. I thought – that is what love must be like, because all I had before was – all I had before was –"
"Papa," Will says.
"Yes," Eleven says. Even hearing the name uttered under Will's breath sends a jolt running down her back that makes her entire body convulse. "And I thought – I thought I must love him because he was kind and he helped me and because when he was near me I felt like I was safe and everything would be okay, even though I knew they were still looking for me and we were in danger, and because – because for the first time in my life I felt like I was – I was more than –"
Eleven unbuttons the cuff of her shirt and rolls the sleeve halfway up her forearm to expose the tattoo on her wrist. She looks down at the stenciled numbers, still as dark and precise as the day they had been etched into her skin.
"El," Will says.
"And my name. El, short for Eleven. Like Mike, short for Michael."
"El. It's okay."
"I thought I must love him because that is what we were supposed to be doing, just like the shows on the TV when Dad would go to work or in the comic books I would read with Max when she would stay over. But I don't know – it is like – when we thought One might be winning, when everything was happening and it felt like we might all be gone – one day I just looked at him and I just – I knew."
Will reaches out across the table and takes Eleven's hand in his. She can feel the warmth of his palm and his pulse in his wrist.
"Maybe there is something wrong with me," Eleven whimpers. She sees the edges of the world around her begin to blur. "Maybe I am –"
"A monster?" Will says. He gives her hand a squeeze. "Come on, El. We all know you're the furthest thing from that."
"Then why – why did I do it? Why did I – why did I hurt him, the first person to ever actually care about me?" She rolls her sleeve back down and uses it to wipe the tears from her eyes, wheezing as she takes in great gulps of air, trying to recollect herself. "Why don't I love him, Will?"
"Have you ever thought – I don't know. You might still love him, just – not that way?"
"I don't understand."
"Like – I don't know how to explain it, really. Sometimes, when I lie in bed all I can think about is how much I wish I just had a normal life," Will says. "Where all I did all day was hang out in Mike's basement and play D&D, and none of this whole thing with the Upside Down and Vecna and Hawkins being destroyed ever happened. But then I realize – then you wouldn't be my sister, El. And I don't really know what my life would be like without you around. Mom, and Jonathan, and Hop – I mean Dad – and me. I don't think any of us know, really."
"But Mike and I – we're not –"
"Related? I don't think it really matters. I mean – sometimes there are just these people that come into your life that you become so close to that they feel like part of your family, you know? Like you would do anything for them, and you can tell them anything, everything, all of the stuff that you would never tell anyone else because you know only they would never break their promise not to tell anyone." Will's voice begins to quaver. "That's love, too, El. When they become a part of your life for so long that you can't remember how to live without them."
"Like friends?"
"Yeah. Like best friends."
Eleven watches Will squeeze his eyelids shut as if he is trying to force the tears pooling at the corners of his eyes back. Some of them escape anyway and he quickly blots them away with his sleeve. It is another thing that has remained unchanged from the day the paths of their lives had first crossed. She can still remember seeing him, hiding from the Demogorgon, terrified but doing anything he could not to cry, even though he had been all alone with no-one around to see him. When he would try to talk to Joyce through the telephone line he would spend a moment steadying himself, taking in a few deep breaths so that she would think that he was at least safe, even when all hope seemed to be lost.
"Will," she says.
"Yeah?"
"I love you too."
Eleven sees Will smile back at her and they sit, hands clasped together, feeling the words settle over them like a warm blanket. They turn to look out at the gray landscape as it passes by them, the dark silhouettes of mountains looming over the horizon. It is as if the world outside has been replaced by a pencil sketch; the trees and the grass and the other cars on the highway all rendered in black and white, drained of their color by the silvery remains of the sunlight filtering through the tall clouds that huddle together low in the sky.
"How do you know?" Eleven says. "How do you know the difference between when you love someone as a friend and – you know –"
"I don't know," Will says. "I think it just kind of happens."
"How?"
"I don't think you really get to choose. It just hits you one day. Like a bolt of lightning."
"I don't understand."
Eleven hears Will shift slightly in his seat.
"You'll know when it happens," he says. "Trust me El, you'll know."
