"Perhaps when I've sorted out my feelings some more…"

Wonder Woman, Issue 323

Eleven can hear the humming of the electric sign that hangs above them. The large, rounded letters forged from glass and neon are supposed to read "Starcourt" but they appear to her as a jumbled string of cryptic symbols, the order of which seems to change every time she looks away. Moonlight streams through the glass roof of the atrium, a pale glow that turns her skin blue and drains the color from the leaves of the plants that line the sides of the food court. The fountain has been switched off for the night and although the smell of chlorine still lingers the water has mostly receded, exposing the royal blue tiles and the pennies and dimes tossed in by passersby during the day to the air.

"We're just going to have to try everything," she hears Max say. Her voice crackles as it echoes through the barren corridors of the mall, as if it is on a tape recording being played through the loudspeakers. Eleven feels a tug on her arm and she looks over to see that Max has appeared beside her. She is wearing a top that Eleven has not seen in years; a white t-shirt with narrow bands of yellow and red and blue. Her eyes are still the color of the cornflowers that grow at the edge of Hawkins. In the light that pools in the atrium they seem to glow as if lit by embers smoldering inside her head.

"Over here," Max says.

She pulls them towards the open maw of one of the storefronts. It is a rectangular gate constructed out of red plastic that Eleven swears had been shuttered a moment ago but now looms over them, an open portal to a void of endless darkness that seems ready to swallow them whole. Eleven shakes her head and frowns. She sees Max offer her a small smile and a tilt of her head, as if to silently tell her that everything will be okay. Their arms are still interlinked and Eleven can feel the steady pulse in Max's wrist against her arm.

They creep across the threshold and the smells of the mall, of stale frying oil sitting in the deserted kitchens in the food court and the chemicals that had been used to mop the floors clean, dissipate and are replaced by the scent of new clothing and the faint suggestion of a perfume that Eleven remembers but cannot identify. They find themselves surrounded by mannequins dressed in all manner of patterns of colors. Although inside the store it is dark what little light manages to crawl beyond the entrance illuminates crimson stripes and pink and baby blue polka dots and abstract shapes of white and red and blue and green that seem to move and swirl about before Eleven's eyes. She can still hear the humming of the sign outside.

"How do I know – what I like?" Eleven hears herself say. She does not feel her lips move. She listens to the words reverberate around the empty store and by the time they bounce off the walls and return to her ears they have become distorted, as if spoken by a voice that is not hers. She feels Max untangle her arm from her own as she shuffles over to a shelf of sunglasses and takes them one at a time and tries them on in front of a mirror. She pauses and looks back at Eleven. Her eyes are hidden by the tinted lenses. Eleven sees her lips move but there is no sound. The humming of the sign outside grows louder. Soon it is as if it is emanating from the walls and from inside her own head.

The next few moments are a blur. They stumble about the store as if carried on a whirlwind and by the time Eleven's thoughts catch up with the movement of her feet she has accumulated a pile of clothes in her arms. A romper covered in abstract shapes. A cream-colored flannel shirt with blue and brown checks. A baby pink tress with a smocked bodice and puffed sleeves. A black shirt covered with what looks like splotches of fluorescent paint. A hospital gown. And then there are some things she does not recognize. She feels Max brush against her but when she looks to her side there is no-one there.

She sees a figure at the register. She is not sure if it is Max but there is something that pulls her towards it. She cannot feel her feet against the linoleum beneath her. It is as if she is swimming through molasses, each attempted lurch forward requiring all of her strength to stop her from sinking into the floor. When she draws closer she sees that it is not her after all and yet she is compelled by some unseen force to keep pushing on. The register is in the deepest recesses of the store and there is no light from outside but still she can see him, a pitch black shadow against the gloom that envelops her. A hole in the fabric of time and space itself. She can still recognize his silhouette; his sagging shoulders heavy with age propped up by the lapels of his suit and his slicked back hair cresting like a wave from his forehead. His face is masked entirely by the darkness but still Eleven thinks she can see his eyes, staring back at her.

"You shouldn't be here," he says.

The voice comes from inside Eleven's own head. She feels the floor give way beneath her. Now she is falling, the world around her collapsing and disintegrating into nothingness. The clothes that had been in her arms now tumble about in the void that has consumed her like pieces of discarded trash caught in a draft of air. She reaches out for Max but still she cannot see her. She calls out to her but she cannot hear her own voice. She is being devoured by a black hole, the entirety of her existence imploding into a singularity within which she will remain trapped forever. And then, as if by some miracle, she hears it. "El," the voice says. She can barely hear it above the humming. "El," it says again. It is Max's voice, Eleven thinks. Or perhaps hopes. "Wake up, El." She is still falling. She can still hear the humming of the sign. "El –"

"El."

Eleven awakes to see Max peering down at her. She feels as if she is suffocating and as she sits up she gasps for air.

"Are you okay?" Max says.

Outside it is still dark and Eleven can see the reflection of the lights of the Denver skyline in Max's eyes as if the cosmos is looking back at her. Her stomach feels as if it is trying to turn itself inside out and her heart thuds in her chest. She tries to force herself to smile, to tell Max that everything is okay, but all she can manage to do is to gawk at her, dumb and expressionless.

Eleven feels Max wrap her arms around her. She shivers as her pajama shirt, soaked in sweat, is pressed against her skin and for a moment she feels as if Max will squeeze the air out of her lungs but eventually she lets herself breathe and settle into the embrace, feeling the warmth of Max's fingers against her own clammy skin at the nape of her neck.

"Did you have – were you having another one of those dreams?" Max says.

Eleven feels some of her strength return to her, just enough to allow herself to nod her head up and down again and to bring her chin to rest against Max's shoulder.

"Yes," she croaks, coughing as she chokes on a droplet of spit.

"It's okay, El," Max says. "It's over now."

Eleven closes her eyes, breathing in the lingering smell of soap on Max's skin, unsure if she is still dreaming. It is only after she pinches herself on the wrist and feels a sharp jolt of pain and she opens her eyes to see that Max still there that she finally dares to believe that she has returned to consciousness. They stay intertwined for what feels like hours, until the sun begins to emerge from beneath the horizon and Max has to shield her eyes from the shafts of light that shine through the window blinds and together they return to the waking world.


The mid-afternoon sun casts an orange glow over the corridors of glass and concrete of the zoo. There are piles of dead leaves gathered in neat piles at the corners of the paths and they rustle in the breeze. The air has become cool without the sun hanging directly overhead and as Eleven and Max stroll among the dwindling weekday crowd, hanging a few feet behind the rest of the group from Hawkins, their breaths form small clouds that linger briefly before they disappear.

As they approach the polar bear exhibit, Eleven hears Steve say something to the others about the place only having been opened a few months ago. It looks that way. There is an imitation of a rocky landscape constructed out of concrete and spray-painted gray, surrounded by a moat of icy water and trapped behind panes of plexiglass that separate the human and animal worlds. It is all sparkling new, with none of the imperfections created by the passage of time and the forces of nature that rule the wilderness.

Eleven's gaze fixates on one of the polar bears. It swims about in the water, turning in circles like a dog chasing its own tail. Then it dives down until its paws touch the bottom of the pool, before it resurfaces, paddling about while its head bobs just above the surface of the water, exhaling and sending a cloud of mist billowing from its nose. It repeats the whole ritual again and again, like a dancer practicing a routine in slow-motion.

She sees a little girl toddle up to the glass and press her face against it, tracing the movement of the bear with her nose. It leaves a small trail on the otherwise clear surface. Her curly brown hair is tucked beneath a red beanie that matches the color of her flushed cheeks. She taps lightly on the glass, as if trying to communicate with the bear through some sort of code, before the two lock eyes and some feeling of wonder or amazement or something else indescribable overtakes her and leaves her mouth agape and makes her lose her balance, lasting only a fleeting moment before the bear turns away and returns to its pattern of swimming, diving and surfacing and the girl turns away and runs off to meet the waiting arms of her father.

In the empty space left by the girl Eleven can see her own reflection peering back at her. It is as if she is trapped behind the glass, looking back out at the human world in which she can only yearn to belong. Her image is hazy but still she can see the dark rings under her eyes, evidence of a night of restless sleep, and her hair, tossed by the gusts of wind that had been blowing earlier morning and now cascading down to her shoulders in messy locks. She can almost hear the bear dreaming of its home in the Arctic, away from the prying eyes that would greet it each morning and linger until they disappeared in the late afternoon, where it would run through the snow and feel its paws skate along the ice and it would be free to hunt in the sea and feel the blood and blubber on its teeth and the icy water soaking its fur and the chill of the freezing air against its bones.

It is a feeling that she cannot describe and yet feels so familiar to her. A sense of longing for a past that is not her own. It makes her uneasy and she looks over at Max, looking to find the same solace in her that she had found that morning when she had woken up a shell of herself and had to be coaxed back into the living world by the sound of her voice in her ear. In her mind she rummages through her thoughts, trying to find fragments of something sensible to say to her to catch her attention, but there is nothing there and so again she can only stare at her, watching her eyes that seem to sparkle in the afternoon light as they follow the languid movements of the bear in the water.

Eventually, almost as if she can hear her thoughts, Max turns her head to look at Eleven. "Cool, right?" she says.

"Yes," Eleven says. Her mind is still hazy and through she tries to meet Max's gaze she cannot. It is as if the world around her is slightly out of focus.

"You feeling okay?"

"What?"

"Are you okay, El?"

"I don't know."

Eleven feels Max place her hand on her shoulder. She looks up and sees Max, looking back at her with her brows furrowed, her face full of concern. It is the same expression she had seen the day they had first met – properly met – when she had walked down Cherry Lane. Yet another moment passes between them in silence, a million words left unsaid and left to hang in the air that separates them.

They hear Robin calling out to them in the distance and see the rest of the group beginning to wander off in the direction of the seal exhibit. Max yells out for them to give them a second. She looks back at Eleven with a small smile on her face. "We can stay here a bit longer if you'd like," she says.

Eleven does not know what to say. Where do I begin, she thinks. Where do I begin. There is so much to say. There has always been so much to say. In the end, all she can do is shake her head. "It's okay," she says. And so they plod on, leaving the bear to repeat the same cycle that it had since the day it had first felt the water against its paws and that it would for the remainder of its days.


The skyscrapers of the Denver skyline cast long shadows against the light of the early evening over the diamond-patterned pavement of the 16th Street Mall. With the arrival of fall the leaves of the honeylocust trees that stand in the middle of the promenade have turned a bright yellow and from time to time a flurry shakes them from the branches and sends them fluttering into the air. In the distance Max can hear a street performer strumming his guitar, the melancholic strains disappearing into the hubbub of the crowd of families walking hand in hand and children chasing each other around lampposts.

In front of them, Lucas and Mike are chatting away about the latest developments in the life of Spider-Man, the beginning of a new storyline featuring some hunter from Russia that would track down and kill animals with his bare hands and his pack of man-eating pets. They have been talking for at least half an hour. It had been barely tolerable to begin with, but over time the sound of their voices has become unbearable, their words melding together into a loud, low drone that now buzzes in her ears and makes her wish she had not left her cassette player in the trailer that morning.

"In here," Max says. She gives Eleven a tug on the arm and they disappear into one of the stores on the side of the street. Max had not even bothered to check what was inside, figuring that it could not possibly be worse than having to endure more of the boys' conversation, but now that she looks up and finds herself awash with pastel pinks and surrounded by shelves packed to the brim with porcelain figurines and teapots and china plates, some gilt with gold and others covered in delicate flower patterns that seem plucked straight out of some pastoral landscape, she begins to have second thoughts. Too late now, I guess, she thinks. She looks over to Eleven and sees her staring wide-eyed back at her.

"Sorry," Max says. "I couldn't stand listening to those two yapping for another second." She looks up, waiting for Eleven to smile back at her or giggle or anything to suggest that she is happy to be there (with her, Max dares to think) and her heart drops when initially she is met with nothing, just the same blank stare. A breathless moment passes before Max sees the corner of Eleven's lips begin to turn upwards into what she convinces herself is a smile. Max lets herself smile again, too.

"We're going to get lost," Eleven says.

"No we're not," Max says. "It's not like Steve is gonna drive off without us."

"I guess."

The air in the store is thick with the smell of potpourri and perfume and the faded memories that cling as dust to the knick-knacks on the shelves and the faded photographs hanging on the walls. It is the smell of a time that the both of them had only ever heard about in stories. Perhaps the smell of nostalgia itself.

"Do you – like this stuff?" Eleven says.

"No," Max says, doing her best to not look offended. "Sorry, I didn't even look where I was going."

"They weren't that bad."

"Oh no, El, they were."

Eleven giggles. Against the sound of the piano music playing through a radio sitting on the register it sounds almost like a melody.

"Who even buys this stuff?" Eleven says.

"I don't know," Max says. "Maybe Joyce?"

"I dunno. I don't even think Mom likes this sort of thing."

Max watches Eleven pick up one of the figurines. It is a girl, sitting on a swing hanging from the crooked trunk of a tree that is covered in vines and pink blossoms. She is wearing a frilly white dress that is lined with gold trim at the hem and adorned with windflowers of pink and white and blue. Her long, chestnut hair is tied back in a ponytail, swept to one side as if caught in a breeze that has been frozen in time.

"Pretty," she hears Eleven say.

She watches her trace the outline of the figurine with her eyes. So engrossed is Max that she barely notices when Eleven lifts her head and looks back at her and when she finally does she has to quickly avert her own eyes, finding a spot on the floor to stare at and desperately pretending that her mind had been somewhere else. She peeks up intermittently to find Eleven still peering back at her. Her eyes are like portals into another world that Max feels as if she might never know, the color of fertile earth. The feeling in her chest is maddening. It is as if all she wants to do is reach out and place her hand on her arm or do anything to bridge the chasm of the few inches of stale air that separates them. As if she is swept up in an ocean current, bearing her back and back again to unfamiliar shores. And then there is that awful thought that sends her crashing back to life. What if she's not stuck there – in that ocean with you?

She hears Eleven place the figurine back. It makes a soft clinking sound as it makes contact with the shelf underneath. "We should get going," she hears Eleven say.

Max feels her arm brush against Eleven's as they both head for the door. The fleeting moment of contact is enough to send her back out to sea and soon she is adrift again, treading water, trying to keep her head above the waves. She barely notices the chill of the air as they step outside. Like a monster emerging from the deep, an even worse thought consumes her. What if all of this is just because you're all alone?

"Max," Eleven says. "Okay?"

No, Max thinks, Not okay. In truth it had been some time since she had been anything close to okay. Since she had looked up to see Eleven standing there, holding her skateboard. Can we talk, she had said. In time she had built up walls around her, to contain that sinking feeling that would well up within her and threaten to overcome her every time she would see Eleven. First there had been Lucas, and then the dry sarcasm that she would use to deflect away anything approaching a serious thought about her feelings, and then worst of all, pretending not to care when Eleven had moved to California and all she had to remember her by were her memories of that sun-kissed summer they had spent huddled together under the covers in Hopper's cabin. Even in the hours before she had thought she might be gone forever, when she had thought she might never see her again, she had barely been able to put her thoughts into words and in the end she had left the letter an ambiguous mess for fear that Eleven might abandon her, even in death.

"Yep," Max says. She forces herself to nod. "All good."

"Are you sure?"

And now the walls have crumbled away and she is exposed to the elements, left shivering and naked, feeling the full brunt of the wind and the rain of the storm within herself. It is as if over time she had grown so used to living within her walls that she has forgotten how to even exist without them.

"Yep," Max says. "Come on, I think Steve's over there."

Max looks over at Eleven and watches the worried expression on her face slowly fade into a small smile. The glow of the street lamps and the light bulbs lighting the storefronts are reflected in her eyes and they look like stars glimmering in the night sky. They catch up to the rest of the group and slink back into their usual place, trailing just behind them. No-one seems to even realize that they had been gone. Steve is teasing Dustin about the prospect of meeting up with Suzie when they reach Utah. Mike, Lucas, Will and Erica are discussing their upcoming D&D campaign. Robin and Vickie have their noses pressed up against a shop window and are inspecting a sickly green dress with a look of horror on their faces. Eleven and Max follow them in silence, content to walk side by side and bask in each other's presence.