"Hold on, kid." Filly isn't sure which kid Hopper is talking to, not until he steps in front of her. She watches as the Nancy leads the rest inside the house.
"Yes, sir?" she says, feeling nervous at being alone with the adult. He doesn't seem displeased with her.
"Filly, right?" He waits for her nod to continue. "Well, I want to ask you something. Now, I know that other little girl is from Hawkins National Laboratory. Is that where you're from?" He lights a cigarette while he waits for her, leaning on the hood of his car.
"Yes, sir." Filly wonders where he's going with this. Does he really need to know?
He takes a drag, letting out smoke when he speaks next. "Good. When did you get out?"
"352 days ago." The adult coughs on the smoke, bending at the waist.
"Jesus. You... You've been out at the junkyard all that time?"
"No, sir. The forest also." Why are they still out here? It's cold and everyone else is inside. She doesn't like the shadows in the trees, they play on her nerves. "What is Jesus?"
"I'll tell you later." Filly doesn't think he will. He knows he won't. "You got any family? Anybody we can call?"
"Dead." Filly doesn't like this discussion. She doesn't want to talk to him anymore. She turns and goes up the steps to the porch. She hears the man call after her while she opens the door.
"Hey! Get back-" She shuts the door behind her.
The air is heated, a stark contrast to the cool night outside. The house is lovely to her, all soft armchairs and warm, earthy hues. The boys and Eleven kneel on the floor by a low table. The couch is full, three people sitting in front of them.
"Filly, come on." Dustin is waving her over, so she goes to him, kneeling by Eleven. "Guys, this is Filly. She has powers, just like El, but different. We found her at the Junkyard." She assumes "El" is Eleven.
"Yeah, she can see your bones. Like Superman," Lucas chimes in. "That's Nancy and Jonathan, and this is Will's mom." He points them out as he says each name.
"Hi," she greets, not knowing what else to say to them. Everyone is looking at her.
"Hi, honey," says the older woman, making sure her voice is gentle, not wanting to startle the tiny young teen. Filly looks like she needs a good meal to her. "You can call me Joyce, okay? Jonathan is my other son." The teen boy gives a wave at his mention.
"Yes, Joyce." Filly likes the sweet ring of the woman's tone. It reminds her of better times.
Mike has been tuned out, focusing on his scribbles, but finally he lifts the sheet from the table. "Okay, so, in this example, we're the acrobat. Will and Barbara, and that monster, they're this flea." He points to each of the figures in his drawing. Filly had not known there was a monster. There hadn't been much time to chat earlier, so she supposes it's alright that they hadn't told her. "And this is the Upside Down, where Will is hiding. Mr. Clarke said the only way to get there is through a rip of time and space."
"A gate," adds Dustin quickly.
"That we tracked to Hawkins lab," Lucas continues. He lets Dustin pick it up again, however.
"With our compasses."
Filly is at least glad that she isn't alone in sending him a befuddled stare.
"Okay, so the gate has a really strong electromagnetic field and that can change the directions of a compass needle."
Filly is the only one still confused.
"Is this gate underground?" The chief had followed her in. She expected him to, but didn't see him sit in the armchair to one side.
Eleven answers him. "Yes." They lock eyes.
"Near a large water tank?"
"Yes."
"Ho-how do you know all that?" Dustin stutters out.
Mike looks down at the table. "He's seen it."
"Is there any way that you could..." Joyce begins, looking hopeful. "That you could reach Will? That you could talk to him in this-"
"The Upside Down," finishes El. Joyce repeats it under her breath. El nods.
"And my friend Barbara?" It's the first time Nancy has spoken since Filly came in. "Can you find her, too?" The nod El gives is small, but there.
The boys and El are getting set up now, but Joyce leads her from the room with a hand. Filly doesn't know where they're going, but they stop in front of a door.
"Sweetie, you want to change out of those clothes? I have some clothes in here I think will fit you."
Filly looks up at her, eyebrows raised. She hadn't expected the woman to give her anything. "Why?"
She doesn't answer Filly right away, looking shocked. "Why- You know, it's cold out there. Wouldn't want you to freeze to death, would we? Here, let's just get you something clean to wear, okay?"
Filly allows herself to be led inside, the door clicking shut behind them. It's a bedroom, but Joyce walks past the bed to another door. She opens it, letting Filly see inside. A line of clothing hangs from a bar. "Here we go." The older woman pulls out a simple black t-shirt and a pair of blue jeans, as well as some socks and a set of stained, white sneakers. "You go ahead and change, then meet us out in the kitchen." She leaves the room, but Filly stops her from closing the door just yet.
"Th-Thank... you."
She hasn't used those words in a very long time.
The mood has gone decidedly tense when Filly returns to the group.
"Where..." She has to think of what goes between the key words for a moment. "Where is El?" The boys notice her first as they stand facing where she walks. The shirt is soft and the jeans comfortable. Even her feet feel better than before.
"She's in the bathroom." Mike turns back to his seniors who sit around the table. Hop leans on the counter behind him. "Whenever she uses her powers, she gets weak." Filly understands. It's the same for her when she uses her power for too long.
"The more energy she uses, the more tired she gets."
Lucas adds, "Like, she flipped a van earlier."
"It was awesome."
"But she's drained."
"Like a bad battery."
"El is not bad." Filly is upset at the suggestion. She was the only test subject besides Eight that hadn't stared at her, hadn't been cruel to her. Then again, El had almost never spoken to her when they saw each other in the lab. Neither had Eight.
"No, that's not what we're saying. It's... I'll explain later." Filly trusts Dustin just enough to believe him. Joyce steps in, eager to get back on track.
"Well, how-how do we make her better?"
Mike is apologetic, wishing he had a better answer. "We don't. We just have to wait and try again."
"Well, how long?" His sister is more blunt with her frustration than Joyce is.
"I don't know," he confesses.
"The bath." All the kitchen inhabitants spin around to stare at the girl. El stands in the doorway behind Filly.
"What?" Joyce asks.
"I can find them. In the bath."
The bath had always terrified Filly. She thinks El must feel the same as she does not look eager about the plan.
"Is not a bath," Filly argues, knowing the word that should be used, for once. She wants to help, what else can she do now? She can't find people like El or throw things with her mind. All she knows is how to see and the things she's commited from her dictionaries. She recalls opening her dictionary to the page. What did she read when she looked up the definitions? "Isolation Tank. Isolate, to cause a person or place to be or remain alone or apart from others. Tank, a large receptacle or storage chamber."
She thought she was being helpful, but all of them just stare at her and she feels, well, isolated. Alone. But then Dustin smiles at her, and she thinks maybe that was okay. "Wow. We didn't know she could do that." Dustin's smile is one of her favorites. It speaks of true happiness, no traces of being faked. Brenner would only gave her fake smiles.
"I... can help. I had book. Books." Her face twists in concentration. It's so easy for her to recite what she read, but it isn't so easy to come up with her own words. "I read diction- I would read... the dictionary." She has to keep stopping herself to insert the right conjuntions and linking verbs, but she thinks it's coming back to her, just a little. When she recalls her books and what she read in them, she feels like she can remember other things, too. She doesn't know why she didn't do this before, didn't speak to people or make any friends. She thought she would be safer alone, but Filly really likes not being alone anymore.
Dustin had thanked her at least three times before sprinting for the phone. Filly doesn't know what it does, but he acts like he's talking to somebody. She thinks it must be the same as when Mike spoke to Hopper through the radio. Lucas had told her what is was called much later when prompted.
The group is standing behind Dustin, so she of course follows their actions. Filly waits, but she wants to check with El. The tank was a scary place for Filly. "You... are okay, um... with this? With isolation?" Filly knows how terrifying the dark can be.
"Yes." El gives her a small smile. It makes Filly think maybe she is the same. Maybe El just wants to help in whatever way she can.
Dustin grabs the attention of the room, holding out his hand and snapping his fingers. Filly has no idea what he wants, so she's relieved when Jonathan hands him a pad of paper and a pencil.
The boy with the partial skeleton sits in an empty chair and starts writing. "Okay. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. How much? Uh-huh. Yep, all right. Yeah, we'll be careful. Definitely." The pencil wriggles, Dustin never ceasing his note taking. "All right, Mr. Clarke. Yeah, I'll see you on Monday. I'll see you on Monday, Mr. Clarke. Bye." When the last word is uttered, he sets the handset down next to the pad and turns on Joyce. "Do you still have that kiddie pool we bobbed for apples in?"
"I think so, yeah." Joyce is a bit hesitant, gesturing to her oldest son for assistance. He responds in the affirmative, Dustin nodding at them.
"Good. Then we just need salt. Lots of it."
"How much is lots?" Dustin looks at the paper, calculating the answer to Hopper's query.
"1,500 pounds."
The number exasperates Nancy. "Well, where are we gonna get that much salt?"
"What is school?" Filly sits between Dustin and El in Hopper's Bronco.
"You're really opening your curiosity doors, aren't you?" Dustin says between his laughs. "It's a place you go to learn for 8 hours every weekday."
"Awesome." Her statement only creates more laughter in the truck bed. It's contagious and even Filly starts to laugh. The last time she had laughed was in 1974, before her parents lost their lives trying to save her.
Filly loves not being alone. Filly likes Dustin, Mike, Lucas, and El. She thinks maybe her time on Earth can be enjoyable now. She's even warming up to Joyce, Hopper, Jonathan, and Nancy now.
She wants to help, too, so she does. Dustin rolls the kiddie pool down the hall while she and Lucas hold the doors.
"Can I help?"
"No, I got it," he grunts, not looking away from his task. "This damn thing is just a little heavy." Filly know that, that's why she offered to help. When it's in the middle of the gymnasium, she starts to unravel the knotted rope that binds it. Dustin and Lucas grasp the pool, pulling it outwards once its undone.
"How does this even work?" Filly thought Dustin would know, she's surprised at his question.
"Try that side," responds Lucas. Filly just stand between them, holding one end of the pool upright.
Dustin moves around the pool, but the side he vacates flops over like before. "Son of a bitch!"
"Pull it back. Pull it back."
"I am!"
"One, two, three." At the end of Lucas' count, the boys pull back on the pool. Filly drops it, startled by the movement.
"Shit!"
"What do your words mean?" She probes. Dustin is constantly saying things she has never heard before.
"Which ones?" He asks.
"Bitch."
"Oh, uh... It's a female dog."
"Hm. Bitch." She tries the word on her tongue. She thinks a bitch's son must be a dog then. It seems redundant to Filly. Of course the offspring of a dog would be another dog.
Filly feels quite useless watching the boys. Even Nancy and Jonathan are helping, but not Filly. She doesn't know what to do and no one has asked anything of her. She likes being with everyone as they work, however. She kneels at the poolside, a carton of eggs in her hand, watching Dustin put in another egg.
"This is an isolation tank?"
"Not yet," Mike replies. Jonathan and Hopper bring a few more bags of salt, slitting open the ends with a small knife. "Soon, we just need some more salt." Another egg is placed in the pool, but this time it floats.
"Can I eat this?" Filly gestures to the carton. Three eggs still rest inside.
"What?" The three boys are very nearly in sync.
"No, that's a raw egg," Lucas replies, looking dubiously at the teenage girl. "You have to cook it first."
"Yeah, you can't," Dustin seconds. Filly glares at the eggs.
"Yes I can." She takes offense at the negative answer. She has eaten them raw before and she's just fine.
"No," he reiterates. "They can get you sick if you don't cook them."
"Oh." No wonder she had felt so horrible after the Robin's egg that Spring. She's hungry, but she doesn't want to get sick. Her book is tucked into the waistband of her jeans. She reasons that it's less likey to get wet if she is between it and the water. Her roughspun poncho easily conceals the lump in makes in her shirt.
Mike switches his Supercomm on, letting static fill the gym. El removes her outerwear, placing the safety goggles over her eyes. The tape that covers them makes her blind, letting Joyce lead her to the edge of the pool.
Everyone watches as she steps in, all sat or stood around the circular tub. The moment of truth comes when she lies back and floats. A few lights go out and Joyce is grabbing Filly's hand immediately. She lets her.
"Barbara?" El's words are whispered, but they seem to echo though the room. Nancy leans forward and Filly prays that her friend will be returned to her.
El's breath comes in pants, turning haggard after only a moment. The overhead lighting flickers, then cuts. "What's going on?" the taller teenage girl asks to the room.
"I don't know," says her brother, looking as worried as Filly feels.
"Is Barb okay? Is she okay?" This time she poses the question to the girl in the pool. El responds a moment after.
"Gone. Gone." Nancy covers her mouth. Filly wishes she had the words to comfort her. Filly knows loss, but not comfort. "Gone. Gone. Gone!"
The mother coos to El, giving her what Filly doesn't know how to give. "It's okay. It's okay. Hey. It's okay." Filly's hand is dropped when Joyce grasps at El's arm. The contact seems to help her calm herself. "It's okay. I got you. Don't be afraid. I'm right here with you." Joyce keeps at her assurances and Filly is glad for her presence. She thinks Joyce is similar to El and herself. She wants to help.
"Castle Byers." Filly doesn't ask but she also doesn't understand. Joyce and her son glance to each other, clear recognition in their eyes. "Will?"
The name tears a gasp from the mother's lips.
"You tell him... tell him I'm coming. Mom is coming." A beat passes. Something other than static sounds from the radio.
"Hurry."
The weak voice tugs at Filly's heart. She hasn't met him yet, but if he's anything like Mike or Dustin or Lucas, she is sure he is a good person.
Inadequate: adjective /ɪˈnæd.ə.kwət/
Not good enough or too low in quality.
Filly feels like that's what she is. She watches a mother cry for her son. She sees a boy afraid for his brother. She sees a group of friends that is missing a piece of their puzzle. She can't do anything to help. She feels like a car without wheels, or a sandwich without bread.
All she does is watch. When El shoots up, Joyce is the one to hug her and make her feel safe, not Filly. Filly can't, she doesn't know how. She misses her manuals and encyclopedias. She wants a book that tells her how to deal with this, but she only has herself and her hope.
She is not enough.
For the first time in years, hope is not enough.