"Mother, I've been through an adventure – an odyssey –"
Wonder Woman: Odyssey (Volume 2)
The house is a squat building near the end of the street with white stucco walls stained by the fine red dirt kicked up by the wind that has blown in from offshore for years. The smell of salt lingers in the air and when the rest of the world is silent there is almost the sound of the ocean and the whispering of the foaming saltwater lilting along the shoreline and the murmurs of the whitecapped waves collapsing out beyond the bay. In the front yard there is a palm tree that stands tall and slender like a nude figure with a messy tuft of drooping yellow-green hair, a bygone relic of summers past that seems out of place in the frigidness of the fall air that persists even with the sun glowing pale and golden directly overhead. There will be other things that Max will notice eventually, she thinks. Maybe a rotted floorboard on the front deck that she will know to sidestep or a quiet spot where she can sit and read when the weather is warmer or a few roof tiles that are a slightly different color to all the others. The sorts of things that you know about a place when it is your home.
All of that will take time, though. Months, maybe even years. For now Max can do nothing else except sit at the edge of the bed that she will one day unthinkingly call her own and run her hands over the polka dot sheets and look up at the avocado-green walls and the dust spilling from the edges of the ceiling fan that occasionally turns lazily in the draft coming through the gap beneath the door. Beyond the confines of the room – her room – is a labyrinth of corridors leading to other rooms filled with unfamiliar furniture and the smell that accumulates in a place when it is left unoccupied for weeks on end. Do the CIA have people that do this stuff? Max thinks. Like – interior decorators? Outside the wind rattles a tree in the yard and the shadows cast by the leaves through the window dance across the ceiling.
Max can hear Eleven unpacking her belongings in the next room. A few cardboard boxes filled with miscellaneous trinkets that she had managed to salvage from what was left of the Byers' home given some special sentimental status due to the mere fact of their survival. There is the sound of tape being torn from cardboard and the dull thud of something metallic being set down on the floorboards and faintly of Eleven humming to herself.
They had barely spoken for the remainder of the journey after they had left the beach. Max had been content to watch Eleven through her reflection in the window, seeing her eyes dart back and forth between the landscape beyond the glass and back at her own reflection, her dark brown irises full of thoughts. She had only looked away when they had finally reached the main street of Palomino, the town that for so long had been nothing more than a name but that they would now have to call their home. The sort of town, it had turned out, where a car with an out-of-state license plate would still turn heads and people would still wave good morning at each other from across the street even if they could barely remember each other's names and with pavements overgrown with weeds and lined with the same box-shaped buildings that had once stood in Hawkins, painted in once-bright colors that had long since faded in the California sun and with concrete rooves that sag as if out of weariness.
I guess it's kind of funny, Max thinks. She had spent so long thinking about everything that she had wanted to say and planned every little step that she would take to gradually unfurl the layers and layers of excuses and pretenses that she had constructed around her soul and carefully choreographed everything in her head. And in the end she had been swallowed up by a rogue wave and dragged out away from the shore before she could even scream for help or resurface for air and left to sputter unplanned words like an actress who had forgotten her lines, desperately treading water just to keep herself from sinking down into the dark depths again. Because it is easier to imagine yourself being in love than it is to actually be in love, she thinks, her thoughts like a tangled mess of fraying threads coiled together in her head. At least when you're only imagining you can kind of convince yourself that it won't work out anyway; that it doesn't really matter. Now she cannot even begin to figure out what she is meant to do or say.
Max is jolted from her musings by the sound of a soft knocking at her door. She sits up and sees Eleven standing the doorway, her hair still wind-tossed with a few stray strands standing upright and the rest cascading haphazardly down towards her shoulders. In her hands she holds what Max recognizes as a boombox, a prism of silvery plastic with a large crack running along its face like a scar and two speakers like bulging eyes. Mike had one just like it in his basement, she remembers.
"Where'd you get that?" Max says.
"I found it," Eleven says. "I mean, it was just sitting in the wardrobe when I opened it."
"Huh. Weird."
"I guess."
"You think – you think they left it there?"
Eleven shrugs.
It doesn't matter, Max thinks. I guess. "Does it work?" she says.
"I don't know," Eleven says. She gingerly places the boombox on the floor and fiddles with the buttons, tentatively at first before she seems to prod at them randomly until one of them sends the lid of the cassette tape slot swinging open. "I think we need a tape."
"Here," Max says. She slides off the bed and onto the floor and rummages through her backpack for her cassette player. When she finds it she fishes it out and pulls out the tape and hands it to Eleven. "We can use this one."
"Okay."
Eleven takes the tape and places it in the slot, backwards at first so that she has to take it out again and turn it over in her hands until she can get it to fit. When she does she shuts the lid and presses rewind and together they listen to the whine of the tape spooling until it stops with a click. When she hits play the ghostly sound of a synthesizer crackles through the speaker like a voice from the past before a drumbeat bursts through, loud, too loud at first, like an explosion that makes Max jump and sends Eleven scrambling to find the knob to turn the volume down.
When the ringing in Max's ears begins to fade she can hear a familiar rhythm, one that she feels in her chest but that she has not heard except in snippets when she would forget to fast forward the tape all the way to the next track or as muffled accents that would trickle out of the corners of the headphones when Eleven would sit listening to the tape in the car. When Max looks over at Eleven she sees her, a smile beginning to emerge across her face and her head bobbing up and down just as it always would.
"It works," Eleven says, beaming.
"Yeah." Now there is a voice calling out from the speakers like that of a phantasm. Calling to her. It doesn't hurt me, it says. Do you wanna feel how it feels? "El," Max croaks without knowing whether she has managed to make a sound or if the noise she hears is only her own voice inside her head.
"Everything okay?" Eleven says.
"Yeah," Max says. "Yeah – it's just –" Do you wanna know that it doesn't hurt me?
"What's wrong, Max?"
"Nothing – I – don't worry about it –" Do you wanna hear about the deal that I'm making? The red mist that seeps into her nostrils and fills her lungs and makes her choke. Claps of distant thunder and explosions of light in the crimson sky. The stench of decay, the stench, the stench. And the feeling of something pressing into the back and the ticking of gears and of a pendulum moving through stale air –
"Max."
– there is another voice now. The voice of what was once a man, whispering in her ear, so close that she can feel the disturbances in the air caused by the movement of his lips. "Just – it's been a while since I've heard this, I guess –"
"Oh," Eleven says. She reaches over and hits pause and the music stops so that the voices vanish and Max can once again hear the wind shaking the leaves on the tree outside her window and Hopper and Joyce's voices echoing out in the hallway. Max watches a speck of dust float through the air before it settles on the tip of Eleven's nose and when her eyes refocus on her face she can see that her smile has disappeared, replaced by a look of concern that sends a wave of cold guilt washing over her.
"No, it's okay," Max says. "Really, I'm sorry, I didn't –"
Max feels a hand on her shoulder and instinctively she leans into it and feels the warmth of Eleven's skin against her cheeks and realizes that the color and her blood has drained from her face.
"Is it because – because of –" Eleven begins to say.
"Yeah," Max says. "I mean – when we first figured out I was cursed, I guess – I guess I used to listen to the song to save me from him – but then –"
"Max. It's okay. He's gone. Remember?"
"Yeah. Yeah. I know."
"I'm sorry," Eleven eventually says after a few moments of silence. She reaches over and pops the tape out of the boombox and hands it back to Max. "Anyway – I guess we know it works now."
"Yeah," Max says. "Yeah, I guess."
Max takes the tape and clasps it in her hand without reaching for her cassette player. Not yet. She cannot bear to move away lest it risk disturbing the gentle serenity that envelops them and their embrace. Gone, she thinks. Gone. Sometimes it is as if he is still there, as if they are all back in Hawkins, as if she might wake up at any moment and find herself staring out of the window at the trailer park, watching the police cars appear from beyond the crest of the hill with their sirens blazing. But not now. Not when they are together. With her by her side it is as if she could take it all on again.
"We could always try putting something else on," Max says, shaking her head as if to empty it of her thoughts and nudging Eleven's arm with the tape. "I mean, it's a long album."
"We don't have to, Max. It's okay."
"I'd like to."
"Okay," Eleven says.
Max watches Eleven take the tape tentatively and slide it back into the boombox and hit fast-forward until the tape stops whirring with a click. She hesitates for a moment and looks at Max and it is only when she smiles back at her that she hits play and there is a different voice that filters through the speaker. A man's voice. It's in the trees – it's coming –
Max feels a tug on her arm and when she looks up she sees that Eleven has gotten to her feet, her smile like the first rays of sunshine pushing back the darkness at the break of dawn. Confused, she lets herself get pulled up too until she is spun around the room and her legs move almost involuntarily beneath her as they try to catch up to the movements of her body and when she is finally able to look up she sees Eleven giggling and the sight of it makes her giggle, too. They are dancing, she realizes. Not the sort of dancing she and Lucas had done at the Snow Ball, the sort of slow shuffle that could lull her into sleep, but whirling and spinning around in circles as if carried up in a sudden gust of emotion and the passage of time slowing until the seconds that pass between them seem to last forever and the world beyond Eleven's face and her eyes and her smile becoming nothing but a blur and laughing, laughing –
When the music dies down Max hears someone at the door and she turns around and sees Will peering in with a puzzled look on his face. "What – what are you guys doing?" he says.
"Dancing," Eleven says breathlessly. She brushes away her hair from her eyes and, as if all of a sudden realizing that she is still tangled up in Max's arms, suddenly works to free herself and leaves Max to feel the chill of the sweat on her arms beginning to evaporate and the emptiness of the few inches that now separate them.
"Uh, yeah," Max stammers. She looks up at Will and, seeing the green of his eyes still glistening back at her as if she were caught in the beam of a pair of searchlights, looks back down at the floor again. "Dancing."
"O – okay," Will says. "Well, Jonathan and I were just going to go over and see Mike. And Nancy, I guess. If you wanted to come."
Max sees Eleven shrug her shoulders. "Okay," Eleven says. The sound of the word makes something within Max sink for a reason that she cannot quite put her finger on. Then she looks up and sees Eleven smiling back at her and the light within her is illuminated again.
"Okay," Max says. "We'll be out in a minute."
In the setting sun the beach stretches long and dark across the shoreline before it disappears beneath the shadows of the towering headland in the distance. The wind has died down and now everything is shrouded in a stillness that is only broken by the sound of the waves that stumble against the sand. The sky is the color of a wildfire and the light shimmers against a few wisps of cloud that sit high and otherworldly above the horizon.
The boys are standing at the water's edge and Max watches as their ankles are periodically swallowed up by the ocean before they are regurgitated again, glistening wet and speckled with sand. Lucas cups his hands to fill them with water before he launches it at Will, who yells something back at him that disappears into the sound of the waves and kicks at the surface of the ocean and sends a silvery arc of droplets flying into the air. A little further down the beach Steve is standing at a circle of stones and a pile of dead branches. He is playing out the same familiar routine of trying to light a fire without knowing where or how to begin while Robin and Vickie stand to the side shooting quick glances of amazement at each other.
Eleven shifts in her seat as she pokes her legs out from beneath the blanket they are both wrapped up in and wriggles her toes until they are half-buried in the sand. In the soft red light the edges of her face seem almost to blur, as if she is only an illusion projected onto reality from one of Max's dreams. But then Max feels Eleven's elbow brush against her side as she leans back and there is the reassurance that she is real and California is real and everything is all real and the world is pulled momentarily back into focus.
Max's thoughts are interrupted by the sound of Eleven gasping and a shriek and the sound of splashing footsteps. She turns her head to see Mike struggling to find his balance and coming perilously close to toppling over into the water before Will manages to catch him and help him steady himself again.
"Wanna join them?" Max says. She gives Eleven a nudge and sees her smile softly back at her before she shakes her head.
"It's cold," Eleven says. She presses a clammy palm against Max's arm as if to prove her point and Max recoils at the sensation.
"It's not that bad. Besides, if Steve ever gets that fire started we can warm ourselves up."
Max looks back over at Steve and sees him frantically waving his arms and shouting something she cannot hear at Robin and Vickie who are both doubled over laughing. She feels Eleven rest her head on her shoulder and a lock of hair waving about in the air tickling her cheek and her temple pressing against the bones of her shoulders. I guess it's a big if, Max thinks. A big if. The air seems colder now and the water more frigid and the sun lower in the sky and the world beyond where they are sitting on the sand less inviting. Suddenly it is as if nothing else matters.
They are content to sit and let the silence wash over them like seafoam against the sand and to feel each other's breathing slowly synchronize with the lapping waves. In the fading red light that seeps through Max's half-shut eyelids the world becomes a place of dreams again, the outlines of things seeming to waver in and out of focus and the sound of the boys splashing about in the water and of Robin and Vickie's laughter reverberating in her ears. And just as she is about to drift off into that place the pit falls out of her stomach and she is jolted back to reality with a start that makes her sit bolt upright and sends a shiver coursing through her body. What if, she thinks. What if this morning – what if she didn't mean it?
"Are you okay?" Eleven says. She lifts her head from Max's shoulder to look at her and Max feels the absence.
"Yeah."
"Are you sure?"
"I –" Max croaks. She can see the look of concern growing in Eleven's eyes and instinctively she looks away and takes a handful of sand in one hand and slowly pours it out into the other. "Just – about this morning –"
"Oh," Eleven says. Out of the corner of her eye Max sees her turn her head to look at the sand beneath them. "I'm sorry, I didn't –"
"No, don't be sorry – I mean – look, this is going to sound really stupid, okay? But I just – I just need to know that it was real, that it all really happened the way I think it did –"
"Real?"
"I mean, God – what am I even saying?" Max pauses and takes in a sharp breath, feeling a stab of pain in her side and a restlessness overtake her. "I mean, I don't know. You haven't – changed your mind? About – you know?"
Max looks up at Eleven. Looks up into those eyes that seem to glimmer with the color of the rusty soil like dark windows into their shared past. Sees them blink open and shut before finally Eleven shakes her head, slowly at first but then more surely until Max is finally convinced that it is not all just a fantasy, that she really hasn't and her heartbeat seems not to know whether to race out of control or to come to a screeching halt entirely.
"No," Eleven says. "Have you?"
"No," Max whispers, before her voice finally catches back up to her. "No, of course not."
"Then – real."
Max smiles and feels a tear trickle into the corner of her lips, the faint taste of salt lingering on her tongue. Her entire body, her entire being invigorated by the knowledge that it is all real, that she hadn't just been imagining things. That she really had been stuck out there in the water with her the whole time. She leans over and takes Eleven's hand in hers and clasps it firmly in her own as if out of fear that the apparition before her might vanish if she were to ever let go. She feels Eleven's pulse against her own, the tap, tap, tapping like the hidden frequency of the soul of the universe. When Eleven squeezes her hand back Max is finally able to gather her thoughts again. She dries her cheeks with the back of her palm and takes in a few deep breaths, trying to stifle the overwhelming giddiness building within her, threatening to break through at any moment.
"Max," Eleven says.
"Yeah?"
"I –"
El, Max thinks. El. "What is it, El?"
"I – I –"
What is it? What is it?
"I – "
Max sees Eleven's gaze fall into the lap and in the moment it all makes sense. It is as if she can hear the words trapped behind her quivering lips, breaking through like sunlight filtering through rainclouds after a storm. As if she knows that there are words that they must say to one another but that are the same time are utterly inadequate for saying what they really mean. She reaches over and takes one of the stray locks of hair that have been swept by the wind over Eleven's eyes and brushes it back into place and gently scratches behind Eleven's ear. When she looks back up and into her eyes it is as if she is peering back long into her past, back to those moments in Hawkins when they had first spoken to each other and to the gymnasium at Hawkins Middle when she had caught a glimpse of her through the doors and to the Starcourt Mall and to the beeping of the heartrate monitor next to her hospital bed. But there are glimpses of the future, too. Some murky, unformed world, waiting for them. An infinite, featureless expanse.
"I love you too, El," Max says. She looks around and, seeing that no-one is looking in their direction, leans in and kisses Eleven on the forehead.
In the distance there is a small burst of light and the sound of Steve whooping like a modern-day Prometheus that rises above the sound of the ocean. Most of the sun has dipped below the horizon and what remains of its reflection shines against the ripples of the waves in the water and washes Eleven and Max in a sea of rosy gold. In a few moments they will sit up and brush the sand from their clothes and trace the footsteps of the boys and trudge over to the fire where they will warm their hands like so many people have done before them and so many more will after them. Perhaps one of them will pick up a piece of driftwood that bobs lazily on the surface of the water near the shoreline. Perhaps Robin will ask them where the stereo is and they will point it out and listen to whatever mixtape she has managed to concoct. But for now they sit, sheltered against the rising wind by the blanket that envelops them both. For now there is a moment that belongs to nobody else, a moment that is theirs and theirs alone.