"And back… back… back to… normal."
Wonder Woman: Agent of Peace, Issue 10
By the time they reach the campsite the sun is already beginning to set and the skeletons of the trees cast long shadows that reach over the patchy grass. The silhouette of the city stretches out across the horizon, the dim lights of the buildings shining like vanishing stars. The mountains loom above them; large, black masses, like the spine of a sleeping beast, blocking out the deep crimson glow of what remains of the sunlight.
Max remembers times like these. Times when she and her parents had sat along the boardwalk in San Diego, watching the sun dip below the horizon and feeling it take the warmth from the world with it. The gaps left between the wooden planks at her feet that during the day had allowed her to peek curiously down at the foaming water beneath her would turn into gaping maws that would snap at her legs and threaten to drag her down below the roiling surface of the water where she would be swallowed by the undertow. The stalls that lined the seaside would become barren husks, devoid of life, and from time to time she would feel someone or something staring at her only to turn her head and be met by featureless, empty space. And so she would tighten her grip around her mother's hand, sometimes so hard that by the time they were back in the safety of the car her fingers would leave tiny indentations in her skin.
Now those times feel like little more than faded memories inherited from a past life. It has been an eon since she has felt that kind of easy fear, a fear that had a beginning and an end and that could be soothed with little more than a timely escape into the familiar cocoons of the family car or their home or her mother's waiting arms. Dying changes things, I guess, she thinks. It was hard for it not to, hard to forget the feeling of being consumed by an emptiness that had threatened to annihilate the entirety of her existence. It made being afraid of murky water or the dark seem so childish.
"Coming?"
Max hears Eleven call out to her from across the campground. In the dim light she is only a shade, a slight frame and waving arms and a head of messy curls that are still not as long as they had been the last time she had left for California.
"I might stay out for a bit," Max calls back. She cannot make out Eleven's facial features but she can see the concern in the way she raises her shoulders and tilts her head. "Just want some fresh air, that's all."
"Okay," Eleven says.
Now it is a different kind of fear that keeps Max awake at night, that shakes her awake from her sleep in the middle of the night in a cold sweat that makes the sheets stick to her arms. It is the same fear that she had felt in there, suspended in the void with nothing but her own thoughts to pour over, until somehow Eleven had managed to pull her back into the world and the color had burst back into her life. Alone, Max thinks. The word reverberates in her chest like the deep, metallic shuddering of a gong. She watches Eleven shuffle back towards the open door of the trailer. She knows that she can call out to her or scramble to her feet and chase after her but in the moment the thought of their proximity seems almost unbearable to her, her solitude on the damp grass seeming preferable to lying in bed next to Eleven, so close that she can hear her breathing, like a bird fated to spend its days staring out at the world through the bars of a birdcage. And so she lets her mind careen through time and space, from the San Diego boardwalk to that night at the Starcourt Mall and to the campground amidst the ruins of Hawkins, and all the time back, back, back to her –
"Hey."
Her thoughts are interrupted by the sound of another disembodied voice. She swivels her head around to locate its source and it is only when she sees a familiar set of eyes looking down at her and a head of tight curls hidden beneath an unblemished baseball cap emblazoned with the word "Jazz" and an awkward, lopsided smile revealing rows of white teeth that seem to glisten in the fluorescent light that she realizes who it belongs to.
"Hey," she says.
In another time or place she might have mustered up the energy to tell Lucas to leave her alone or to find somewhere else to be or to shove it. But for now she supposes his presence might be better than nothing, grating as it is. There is at least a familiarity to it that she can latch on to, to stop her mind from wandering to those places from which she knows it is difficult for her to return.
"Okay if I sit?" he says.
"Suit yourself," Max says.
He sits cross-legged on the grass next to Max and she has to pick up her sweater and place it in her lap to stop him from sitting on the sleeve. She is not sure if he even notices but he turns and smiles at her again and for a fleeting moment she can remember how she had convinced herself to fall for him all those years ago; for the boyish naïveté in his eyes even after all that has happened, but then he looks away and she feels a sinking feeling clawing at her insides again and she scrunches up her sweater in her hand, feeling the texture of the knit press into her skin.
"How was Owens?" Lucas says, his voice squeaking.
"Fine," Max says.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
Max looks over her shoulder. Looks for Eleven even though she knows she has long since disappeared, seeing her shadow and Hopper's in the illuminated window of the trailer having a conversation that she cannot hear. She only wishes that she had called out to her now and she tries to in her head, as if she can hear her thoughts, if only she would listen. But the door of the trailer remains shut and no figure emerges to scoop her up and take her inside.
"Max," Lucas says.
"What?" Max says.
"Can we talk?"
"We're talking now."
"No – I mean, like. I don't know."
The hesitation makes the heat rise in Max's cheeks and she feels a quivering in her bones and her forehead tensing involuntarily. With some difficulty she swivels around in her seat until she is able to stare Lucas directly in the eyes.
"If you're gonna give me that stupid sob story again, you can save it for someone who cares," Max says. She hears the fluttering of a crow's wings as it leaves its perch, cawing as it flies away towards the darkness, and wonders if she had been loud enough to scare it away. She never had been able to control herself in moments like these. The thin veneer of brooding self-control had always given way too readily to an anger that would send the words rocketing out of her mouth before she would even be able to think about them.
"No, I mean – like, normal people," Lucas says.
"You think it isn't normal for someone to be pissed off when they get dumped while they're passed out in hospital?" Max says, with a harshness that she intends but knows she will someday regret.
"You know that's not what I meant."
"Whatever."
She waits for Lucas to rise to his feet and trudge away again, just as he always would, but he does not and when Max opens her mouth again to tell him to leave her alone the words do not come out. They sit in silence, listening to the sound of the frogs croaking punctuated by occasional spells of laughter from the parents gathered around the Wheelers' car with cigarettes hanging from their mouths. Max steals a glance at Lucas and sees him staring off into space.
"How's El?" he finally says.
Max is startled by the sound of his voice piercing the stillness. "What?" she says.
"How's El, I said."
"Fine."
"Just fine?"
"Yeah. I don't know. She's tired. What do you want from me?" Her cheeks feel so hot now that even in the rapidly fading light she thinks they must be bright red and wonders if Lucas can tell.
"Wait, did you –"
He looks at her with a puzzled expression on her face, his lips mouthing the shapes of his thoughts. Max squints back at him, trying to decipher what he meant to say. Inscrutability had never been Lucas' strong suit. It was the reason she had broken up with him so many times, after all. When they had just been dumb kids and he had called her to lie about not being able to go to the mall or to hang out because he was meant to be playing Dungeons or Dragons or because he had been too embarrassed to admit that his mother was forcing him to stay in his room and do his homework. She had been able to tell just by the sound of his voice, squeezing as if it were being extruded through the receiver. But now when she looks back at him it is as if she is staring at a blank wall and she is not sure if it is him or her or both of them that have changed.
"What?" Max says.
"Never mind," Lucas says.
"No, seriously – what were you going to say?"
"Nothing. Just had a brain fart, that's all."
Out of the corner of her eye Max sees Lucas smile at her. He had somehow become an enigma, like a sudden thunderstorm on a clear summer day. What does he want? she thinks. In the glow of the floodlights that shine cool and white on the campground half of his face is cast in shadow. Does he know? she thinks. Surely not. Surely not. She pushes the thought back, feeling it claw desperately at the cliff's edge of her consciousness until finally she is able to send it tumbling into the recesses of her mind. He never had been that perceptive, she supposes. Not that there's anything to perceive.
"Why are you being so weird?" Max says.
"Am I?" Lucas says.
"Yeah."
"Oh. I don't know – long day, I guess."
The answer does not satisfy Max but she wordlessly accepts it anyway, nodding absentmindedly as she stares out at the empty space in front of her. She feels Lucas shift next to her, hearing him uncross and recross his legs with a small groan. She can begin to hear her thoughts resurfacing again and so she fumbles about, trying to think of something to occupy the silence with until she eventually remembers what he and the others had spent the day doing.
"How was Suzie?" she says.
"Oh," Lucas says. "Turns out her Dad really is as crazy as Dustin said."
"Actually?"
"Yeah."
"What did you, have to tape him up or something?"
"Nope. Just snuck Dustin in through her bedroom window after he slammed the door in his face."
"Huh."
Maybe he's trying to get back together, Max thinks. Oh God. The mere thought makes her shudder and yet still she is not sure it is the worst possible explanation for his odd behavior. It is a conversation she is at least prepared for. By now she has an entire repertoire of snide remarks with which to parry his sorry attempts at reconciliation. Better than the alternative, she thinks.
"Hey, remember when we were helping Will and El move – and Dustin was there, and –" Lucas says.
"Yeah."
"Turn around. Look at what you see –"
Max lets out a chuckle. She looks up and sees Lucas pick at the grass at his feet and take a dead leaf in his hand and scrunch it up and let the flakes fall from his grasp. She feels the tension in her brow begin to dissipate and dares to let her shoulders hang loose and her arms flop into her lap.
"Oh my God, Lucas," she says. "Shut up."
"Why?"
"I think I'm starting to know how Dustin felt."
"Ouch," Lucas says. He laughs and tosses the now-barren stem of the leaf into the dirt. "Good times, though."
"Yeah," Max says. Good times, she thinks. She remembers the barren room of the Byers' house, the sun-bleached wood paneling beginning to crack, the distinctive musty smell of the carpet. There were times when she had let herself get lost in laughter, when she felt as if her life might be asymptotically returning to do some semblance of normalcy. Now remembering those times are a race against her mind. A matter of trying to find as much joy in them as she can before inevitably she remembers why they had been helping Willand Eleven move in the first place and the odd silence she had returned to; her mother staring expressionless at the TV screen and not even turning to acknowledge her when she stumbled through the front door and the foul smell of liquor. She is almost grateful when the sound of Lucas' voice shakes her from her reminiscence.
"Hey, Max?" he says.
"Yeah?"
"I'm sorry."
"Lucas –"
"I –"
Oh God, here we go, Max thinks. She braces for the old routine to start again but it never does.
"I'm not trying to get back together with you or anything," Lucas stutters. "I just thought – I just wanted to say sorry."
"About what?" Max says.
"You know. Everything."
"How about being an asshole?"
"Yeah. For being a huge asshole."
She waits for the anger to well up in her again but to her surprise she lets out a laugh. Something within her is amused by the self-pitying way that the words dribble out of his mouth and the tone of resignation in his voice.
"I guess you're okay, as far as assholes go," Max says. She does not think about whether she means it.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"I guess I'll take it."
Maybe it was always easier to just be angry at him, Max thinks. The thought of him abandoning her when she was barely clinging to life had always stoked the flames of a smoldering fury within her, even when she would recognize her own thankfulness at not having had to leave him and to bear the associated guilt. She is not sure whether there is something in her that has changed or whether it is gratitude for having someone, anyone to distract her from her racing thoughts or if it is just a delirium brought on by her own tiredness but the familiar feeling is not there. Maybe it's easier than, you know, she thinks. You know. Being angry at yourself.
Her train of thought is cut short by the sound of Lucas' mother calling him back for dinner. Lucas scrambles to his feet and stretches out an arm at Max but she does not notice until she is standing too and sees him withdraw it and fiddle with his cap as if nothing had happened. He brushes the dirt away from his jeans with his palms with an eagerness that betrays his relief at not having had to have the conversation he had intended and that reminds Max of how strange their entire encounter had been.
"Hey," Max says. "What was that thing you wanted to talk to me about?"
"Huh?"
"Don't tell me you just wanted to talk about the Neverending Story."
"Oh. Uh, yeah," Lucas says. "Just thought it was a nice memory."
"Right."
"Anyway – I'll see you tomorrow, I guess."
He turns around and begins to walk in the direction of the motorhome, dragging his heels along the slippery patches of grass as he does. Max picks her sweater up off the ground and when she bends back upright and prepares to return to the trailer she notices that Lucas has abruptly stopped and turned to look back at her.
"It's about El," he says. He is a few steps away but he does not raise his voice and Max can barely hear him but the sound of her name makes her heart race.
"What about her?" Max says.
"I don't know," Lucas stutters. "I think – I don't know. I think she likes you."
Max feels the blood drain from her face and her fingers and her legs, her entire body overcome by a chill that loosens her grip on her sweater. She lets it fall to her feet as she stands, frozen in place, her mind racing so fast that she is unable to will herself to move. What does he mean? she thinks. What does he mean? It is a question that she knows has only one answer but still she has to ask him anyway, as if she cannot trust her own judgment. And yet when she is finally able to open her mouth there is no one left to hear the disorganized jumble of words that come tumbling out and they are left to billow like a wisp of smoke into the night sky.
For what seems like hours she remains there, unable to move, until what remains of the sun finally disappears beyond the horizon and the ensuing cold makes her shiver and sends her stumbling back towards the warm glow emanating from the trailer. And yet she would happily stay out in the darkness if only she could, if she could only bear the frigid air and the flying insects that flitter like confetti under the floodlights. Alone in the void that once had been the setting of her nightmares but now feels like a shelter from an even greater fear that consumes every aspect of her being and that waits for her inside. When she finally she reaches the door she can hardly bear to cross the threshold.