"What happens when I don't know what's real?"

Wonder Woman, Issue 761

"I don't know about you, kiddo, but I'm starving."

Owens takes a small plastic container from the enamel bowl sitting at the edge of the table on which he rests his elbows and around which he, Hopper, Eleven and Max are crowded like fledglings in a nest that they have outgrown. He fiddles with the foil covering, having to lick his finger before he can lift it up and off the plastic, and when he is finally able to tear it off a few drops of creamer spurt out and land on his sleeve. He dabs at it with a napkin and then empties the contents of the container into his coffee, taking a wooden stirrer from the holder and pushing it a few times through the liquid until it turns the color of sun-worn leather.

"You know what you want?" Hopper says.

Before Eleven answers she turns to Max, who looks back at her and nods, seeming to stare past her and out of the window behind them to the world outside, a vast expanse of grass the color of dull brass clinging to the steep hills that ripple out in every direction and bisected by the highway that runs across the landscape like a scar.

"Yes," Eleven says.

"Great," Owens says. He looks over his shoulder and to the entrance of the diner and, finding that the person who seated them has disappeared, raises his arm until he catches the attention of a server behind the counter who is busy polishing glassware. They spend the few moments that it takes her to shuffle over to their booth in silence, no-one wanting to begin to speak in the knowledge that soon she will be by to take their orders and that by the time they have finished they will have to start over again.

When she finally arrives with notepad in hand they rattle off a list of breakfast dishes and Eleven says waffles, please and feels something in her chest begin to stir when she does. Funny, she thinks. How life has brought her back here. It had lifted her up and out of Hawkins and to California and to a roadside diner just like the one they sit in now and just like the one they sat in in Abeline and just like the one she had wandered into out of the woods so many years ago. It has brought her circling back, like a piece of driftwood tossed onto the beach, only to be swallowed back up by the roaring waves when they crash against the shore.

"How are the RVs treating you?" she hears Owens say.

"Fine, thanks," Hopper says. "Didn't think the government just had those things lying around."

"You'd be surprised."

"Yeah? Why?"

"Come on, Jim."

"Feels a little stupid being all secretive, doesn't it, Doc? Given, you know."

"Sorry, I know you've seen a few things, but – old habits die hard, you know?" Owens takes a sip of his coffee, drawing it loudly between his pursed lips. "Besides, they have me out in the Styx here. I'd hate to see where they could put me next."

"I guess."

Eleven realizes that she has been staring out of the window when Max waves an arm in front of her face, her hand wrapped tightly around the unbuttoned cuff of her shirt to stop it from flapping about. She swivels her head around to see Max looking at her with a face full of concern that immediately dissipates into relief when she realizes that Eleven has come back down to Earth.

"So, El," Owens says. "How have you been?"

Eleven turns to face him, feeling her back ache when she shifts her weight in her seat. It is the first time in a long time that she has looked him in the eyes. She sees the curls of gray hair receding from his forehead where wrinkles run like furrows dug deep into the earth. It is almost as if in the few weeks since she had last seem him, pacing amongst the disaster relief tents at the center of Hawkins and muttering into his walkie-talkie, all of the years of running around and trying to hold the world together have finally caught up with him all at once, casting a dark shadow over his face that persists even in the fluorescent glow of the lamp that hangs directly over the table.

"Okay," Eleven says. "Thanks."

"Looking forward to settling down?"

"What?"

"You know. Getting to California. Trying to live a little."

He grins at Eleven from behind his coffee mug and she smiles back out of instinct. In truth, she has barely had time to think about what life might be like in California, save for a few idle moments in the car when visions of Lenora Hills would bubble up into her consciousness and the daydreams she had shared with Max and Robin and Vickie while they had wandered back on the trail in Wyoming.

"Yes," she says. "I guess."

There had been times in her life when she had found a rhythm to that thing she now knows as living. Stretches of weeks and months where her days had been occupied by a succession of predictable routines. Sitting by the machine in the cabin in the woods waiting for Hopper's messages to filter through in morse code, long afternoons spent dawdling at the Starcourt Mall. Even her days at Lenora Hills High. All those rituals had emerged as if by accident, without her having to put any conscious effort into creating them. Now, the thought of having to construct them from scratch seems almost too much to bear.

"Well," Owens says. "You'll like it over there, in Palomino, I think. Little seaside town. Saltwater's meant to be good for the skin, you know."

"Yes," Eleven says. "You said before."

"Oh. Look at me, repeating myself. I really am getting old, I guess." He turns to face Max, who is picking at a spot on the table where the varnish has begun to flake off. "And – Maxine. How are you?"

"Max," Max says. "No-one calls me Maxine."

"I'm sorry," Owens says, chuckling. "Max. They don't put that stuff in the dossiers."

"You have a file on me?"

"Don't worry, there's nothing interesting in it. You like skateboarding and you used to live in San Diego. That's about it," Owens says. He pauses to take another sip from his coffee before he continues, as if realizing how unsatisfying his answer is mid-gulp. "Besides, they'll have shredded all of those by now."

"Better have."

"Anyway. It'll be nice to be back in California, right? I know it's a bit further north than what you were used to."

"Yeah. I guess."

Eleven can almost feel the heat emanating from Max as she continues to glare at Owens. She is not shocked that Max is angry but it is the surprise that takes her aback. It feels almost impossible for her to imagine what life might be like without the constant scrutiny of faceless men, a life lived as a person and not a number in the log books of endless experiments. She had grown so used to it that to even exist outside the confines in which she had been kept in Hawkins had been difficult. Now she has the entire world before her, like a goldfish that had spent its entire life in a bowl, only to be tossed into the ocean and left to navigate the waves and currents.

"What are they going to do to Hawkins?" Max asks.

"Well, kiddo – I think they're calling it an earthquake. Saying the town got destroyed and the best thing they could do was to just move everyone to Indianapolis."

"An earthquake? Seriously?"

"I think they figure it's best if everyone just – I don't know. Forgets."

They pause. Such a strange idea, Eleven thinks. To just forget a place. She is not even sure she knows what that means. How could they just forget? While she was still alive? When she still had in her head all of the memories of that place, the place where she had been given her name and the place where she had discovered what it felt like to break up with her boyfriend and eat ice-cream on the town bus and the place where she had managed to peek beyond the cage of her own life. She turns to Max and Eleven can tell from the look on her face that the same thoughts are running through her head, even though she had always claimed to have hated the place.

"If it were up to me," Owens says. "They'd build a monument of all you in every city in America. But – you know how these things go. Sometimes – I guess they figure people are just better off not knowing."

"A monument?" Eleven says.

"Yeah, you know. Like a statue."

"Why?"

"You know. For saving the planet?"

For saving the planet, Eleven thinks. The words do not seem to make sense when she turns them over in her head. In her mind her world is a ruin, the wood-paneled walls collapsed in on themselves, the remnants of a roof sitting in a pile on top of them. Her world is the memory that she plays over and over again, even as she tries to will herself to sleep. Sitting at the table in the middle of camp and listening to call out the names. She could barely call it saved. She feels Max shift uneasily next to her, as if she can hear her thoughts.

"What's wrong?" Owens says.

"I don't know. Just – Hawkins. And –"

She stops mid-sentence, cutting off the flow of the words from her mouth as if plugging a leak from a pipe. It is not that she does not know what to say. She knows exactly what the words are but to say them aloud would make them true, would confirm what she had suspected all along and what she fears everyone – Hopper, Joyce, Will, Max – will one day realize and never forgive her for. And yet when she looks up at Owens and catches a fleeting glimpse of his eyes she sees that he sees that his face is overcome not by bewilderment or confusion but a knowing look.

"Look, kid," he says. "Sometimes you just have to do the best you can."

"What?" Eleven says.

"When you get to be my age," Owens says. "You're going to have all of these moments in your life where you look back and think to yourself, 'Gee, I wish I had done that differently,' or 'That was stupid, what was I thinking'. All that stuff." He pauses and takes another sip of his coffee, swirling it around in his mouth and dabbing at the corner of his lips where a drop has escaped. "God knows I have plenty. Like trusting Martin."

"Martin?"

"You knew him as Papa, I think. Anyway, the point is – sometimes you can't be too hard on yourself for just doing what you could in the moment. Otherwise, you get to my age and – it all just eats you up."

"Eats you up?"

"Yeah, you know. Like – it keeps you up at night."

The words make Eleven fall silent and she feels a hand on her shoulder. She looks to her side and sees Max, staring back at her. Her eyes the color of cornflowers. Even after Hawkins had been reduced to nothing more than a wasteland they still grew wild, overran the patches of open grass that lined the hills outside of town, wormed their way between the sheets of rusting metal in the scrapyard.

A few moments trickle by before Owens leans back in his seat and turns to Hopper and they begin the smell talk that they had started their meeting with again. Hopper tells Owens about Joyce and Owens remarks sarcastically that they should check out the nightlife that Utah has to offer. Eleven and Max can only stare at each other, neither able to find the words for the thoughts that scream like freight trains through their minds. And so they settle for saying nothing, content in the knowledge that they are sharing the same unspeakable feeling. As if all the horrors of the world might just be bearable if they stay by each other's side, just as they always had been.

The buildings of Salt Lake City sprawl endlessly out in a uniform grid framed by the jagged ridges of the mountains that loom over the city, watching over it like great stone gargoyles, their heads topped with snow that gleams in the light of the sun. Outside, the street stretches like a river, narrow and straight from the mouth of the Capitol Building that towers over the rest of the squat buildings that line the pavement, the cars meandering like fish down the asphalt. The faint smell of salt lingers in the air, having wafted over from the lake that gave the city its name and settled over it like fog.

Inside the supermarket, Max and Eleven are standing near the entrance, flicking through the magazines that sit fading in the sun on a revolving rack. It is warm, a dry heat that makes Max's cheeks flush and her mouth sticky when she moves her lips, a sort of dream-like warmth that threatens to carry her off her feet and to sleep, only to be awakened when someone walks through the door and she gratefully feels the cool breeze against her skin. Hopper strolls down the aisles with a basket with the awkwardness of someone who had spent his entire life shopping at the same store, picking up boxes from the shelves and squinting to read the text on them before setting them back down again.

Max watches Eleven's eyes seem to light up as she scans the pages of the magazine, reading the words written in fonts that seem to leap from the page. She never had gotten around to lending her those copies of Cosmo. In the end, the fate of the world had gotten in the way. Maybe it was for the best, she thinks. There is a lot that she had been through but she is still not sure she could bear the thought of having to explain what she meant to Eleven. To have to give her the talk. To have to use the phrase "the birds and the bees", only to watch her contort her face into a look of confusion. Her thoughts are interrupted by a sudden throb of guilt when she realizes why she had even offered to lend Eleven her mother's magazines and she has to quickly brush a stray lock of hair away from her face and lean down to retie her shoelaces to stow the thought away.

When she looks back up and feels the blood drain away from her head she notices that Eleven has paused on a full-page photo of a man a few years older than them. In the photograph he holds a microphone to his lips and wears a white t-shirt and a fawn-colored item of clothing – Max is not sure whether to call it a vest or a cardigan or a waistcoat or something else entirely – adorned with abstract black squiggles. His dark hair stands up in messy spikes atop his head, as if held up by static electricity.

"That's Matthew Broderick," Max says. "Ferris Bueller. Dreamy, right?"

She watches Eleven's eyes dart back and forth as she scans the page, muttering the words in the caption to herself under her breath. It is only after a few seconds pass with no noise other than the buzzing of the air conditioner that Max realizes that Eleven has not responded to her question.

"Hello? Earth to El?" Max says.

"Oh. Uh, yeah," Eleven mumbles. She looks away, her face gray against the pallid light that filters through the veil of the dirty shop window.

"That was convincing. Not your type?"

"I don't know."

The words make something in Max's chest jump and she quickly has to stifle any change in her facial expression. What does that even mean, I don't know? she thinks. Who doesn't like Matthew Broderick? She can sense another voice, faint, as if muffled by all of her other thoughts clambering on top of it, trying to reach the fore of her consciousness. You don't, it says. You don't.

"What do you mean?" Max says.

"I just – you know. The only boy I've been with is Mike, and –"

"And Hawkins isn't that big a place?"

"Yes."

"Not enough stupid boys for you to pick from?"

Eleven giggles and Max watches some of the color return to her cheeks, a pale rose that glows even in the gray light that washes over them. She could listen to the sound for hours, savoring the melody of it, drinking it all in. She is desperate to ask more questions, as if she is a detective circling around a suspect in an investigation. Like she's about to crack. The thought evokes a sort of violence that sends a quiver down her spine and makes her pause briefly, before the sound of Eleven's voice makes Max snap back to the supermarket and the heat and the sound of Hopper talking to the teenager staffing the register.

"What about you?" Eleven says.

"What?"

"Matthew – what's his name. You like him, right?"

"I mean, he's okay, I guess."

"I thought you said he was dreamy."

"I mean –" Max stutters. She sees Eleven look up at her, her pondering eyes open wide, the tip of her nose turned slightly red, the remnants of a smile lingering on her face. Now Eleven is the detective and she is left with her heart fluttering as she fumbles through her thoughts looking for a plausible alibi. "I guess a lot of people think he is," she finally says. "I don't know. I don't see it, really."

"I guess we are not most people," Eleven says.

"Nope. I guess not."

Max feels the rhythm of her heartbeat return to a regular pulse when she realizes she has gotten away with it. For now, at least, she thinks. They revert to their previous silence, Max picking up a copy of Super Teen from the rack and flicking through it, her eyes glazing over as she goes through the motion of pretending to inspect the photos within it. She feels Eleven do the same next to her, listens to the sound of her fingers running across the pages and her soft, unlabored breaths.

"Max?" Eleven says.

"Yeah?"

But before Eleven can respond Hopper appears behind them, a great, hulking figure, his arms weighed down by plastic bags full of groceries. He asks if one of them would mind helping him carry them back to the car and Eleven wordlessly acquiesces, taking a bag and inadvertently letting an orange slip out and roll across the linoleum floor when she does. Max chases after it, almost getting her legs tangled up in the process, and when she finally catches up with it she snatches it up before placing it gently back in the bag, meeting Eleven's eyes with a slight crinkling of her nose and a small but triumphant grin. And so they shuffle outside and Max feels the cool air on her face and listens to Hopper prattle on about how different everything is to the way it was in Hawkins. She tries to focus on the sound of him talking and the sound of the engines of the cars gliding down the street and the sound of her footsteps against the pavement but it is all drowned out by the voice that now roars between her ears.