Chapter 26: New Friend
"El that's right! You were with that girl from school… Max at JC Penny!"
Eleven nods. "Max is my best friend."
"That's nice. I've seen you at the school before too, you scared my friend Richie from behind the fence."
The shy girl bites her lip and nods. She knows she needs an explanation as to why she doesn't go to normal school. Hopper had told her if anyone asked her, she'd say:
"Homeschooled."
"Wow, that's cool. Nice to see you again. I like the name El. It's a cool nickname… is it short for anything? My full name is Beverly, but my friends call me Bev."
Eleven freezes in place and she bites her lip. Her mind races to find an answer. Of course, those who knew her secrets and her past knew that El was short for Eleven, her number from the lab, but there's no way that this girl from Derry would understand that. Her legal name was Jane, but how could you get "El" from that? She began thinking of names that start with e-l.
"Ella… My… my first name is Jane, but my middle name is Ella…"
"That's pretty cool," Bev nods. The redhead then takes out another cigarette and lights it up. She leans back in the grass and relieves the anxiety and anger she had through exhaling the smoke. Eleven is staring at her with wide eyes. Hopper smoked like that, Max's sister Billy smoked like that, but she'd never seen a kid her age smoke. Papa warned her against the habit, he called it disgusting and addictive.
"Want one?" Beverly offers.
Jane shakes her head and steps back. "It's bad…" is all she can utter.
"Yeah, I know they're bad for me, but sometimes I can't help but smoke one. They're good for relieving stress or when you're sad." She does not mention that her father got her addicted to them in the first place and she needed something to help take her mind off the abuse.
"Why are you sad?"
"My friends had a big fight and I was caught in the middle."
"The boys from Derry?"
"Yeah, they're all idiots and they ended up ditching me."
"Boys are jerks," El smiles. She remembers the drama she went through with Mike and how Max "counselled" her through the ups and downs of relationships. According to the boys, girls were another species and while she didn't entirely understand what that meant, she had to agree on some level.
"Tell me about it," Bev smirks. "But you seem to hang around with them a lot too."
"They're my friends… and friends don't lie."
"No, they don't, but they sure as hell can be stupid."
"Very stupid," Eleven smiles.
With some hesitation, the shy girl sits on the curb, not close to Beverly, but close enough so that they could still talk.
"They say that girls are a different species," she continues.
"Oh we are, and we mature ten times faster than they do. Something about their brains doesn't age as quickly as ours do."
"Mature?" Eleven asks, a little confused by the word.
"Grow older and wiser."
"What happened to make your friends so mad?"
"You've met Richie before right?"
El nods.
"Well basically he didn't shut up when he should have and…"
She goes on to tell this girl all about her friends and the vicious fight that they went through. It was nice to have someone who would listen to her problems and El gave her full attention the entire time. Bev never had a person of the same gender to talk to before and actually open up about her emotions and feelings. Normally, she should be able to go to her mother for these kinds of problems, but with her mom gone and being not entirely trusting her foster mom to have conversations like this, someone like El was better than nothing. While she'd only met this girl once before, she cared and wanted to help, which was comforting and reassuring. Maybe they could become friends.
"Richie is a jerk," Eleven says once Bev finishes.
"Yeah, he can be," she agrees, crushing out her cigarette. "He knows how to push everyone's buttons and he never knows when to shut up and I hope that he'll finally realize the problems it causes for everyone." She pauses. "At the same time, he is very caring, and he will make you laugh so hard you won't be able to breathe."
Jane smiles, knowing this is what Dustin did for her.
It's then that Eleven realizes she's lost track of time.
"What's the time?" she asks, nodding and Bev's watch.
"Oh, it's 4:30."
"Home," she says, getting up frantically. She'd been over at Max's house and was walking home when she saw Beverly and stopped. She knew she had to get home before Hopper did.
"Do you mind if I walk with you?" Bev asks. "I think it's better to walk with a friend than walking home alone."
"Friend? Are we friends?"
The redhead ponders the question for a second. "We can be. If you want to. I don't have a lot of girl friends and I'd like to have some, mellow out the amount of time I spend with idiot boys." If their Loser's Club friendship hasn't already imploded and ended as it seemed to be.
Eleven nods and smiles, happy to have someone that she and Max might be able to have sleepovers with in the future. It was exciting and Bev seemed to be a lot like Max, not overly girlie, tough and nice. She hoped that the three of them could all be friends.
While she knew Papa would be upset that she showed someone where they lived, Bev was not associated with the bad men, being from Derry and he couldn't stop her from having friends. She was allowed to go outside more, provided that she still be back for curfew, which was when Hopper got home at 5:30. Eleven also hated walking home alone and was glad to have someone else with her.
Bev retrieved her bike and begins walking beside Jane on their way to her house.
"So do you have any brothers and sisters El?" Beverly asks.
"One sister… but she lives far away."
And does bad things, she thinks to herself.
"That's cool. You're lucky to have a sister. I don't have any siblings either... unless you count my foster brothers, but I don't. For a long time, it was just me and my dad."
"I have a Papa too."
"What about your Mom?"
Eleven swallows. "She's sick and can't take care of me."
"Oh El that's awful I'm so sorry about that… My mom passed away when I was really young so I've never really had a mom either."
"I'm sorry too," El says.
"Yeah, it's really hard. My dad… was a very bad person and so I now live in foster care with a mom, a dad, and two brothers."
"Foster care?"
"It's basically like being unofficially adopted. When your parents can't take care of you or they're horrible people, there's a system set up that puts kids in 'safer' homes."
"I'm adopted too," Jane says. "My first Papa was very bad too. My Papa now is a good man, the best."
"You're very lucky."
The girls turn off the road and head into the woods, which surprises Bev, but she was always up for a new adventure.
"No wonder you're homeschooled, if you live so far outside of the town. The school bus couldn't find you if it tried."
"It's a quiet place and safe," Eleven answers.
"For sure."
"Where is Derry? What's it like?"
"Not much to tell. You already know there are no malls there; it's a farming town, with a history of trapping animals by the Canal as part of the fur trade. It's a place with a lot of history, but it's not that interesting. If you want the full history of Derry, you should talk to my friend Ben, he's the historian."
"Hawkins is like that too," Eleven lies, knowing that the town was far from boring or not interesting.
"Bummer, although I do like the mall, the arcade, and the pool."
The two girls continue to chat with each other as they approach Hopper's cabin. Bev is surprised that this is where El/Jane was living. It looked like something almost out of a horror movie with darkened windows and a creaky front porch. However, she doesn't want to judge them too harshly considering the apartment she and her father had lived in back in Derry also resembled a house of horrors.
"Your dad likes the great outdoors huh?"
El just nods. "Roughing it," she smiles. Something that she'd heard Nancy say a couple of times before.
She tries to open the door to allow Beverly inside when she remembers that the door's locked. Usually, she'd just open it with her mind, but with her new friend around, she couldn't do that.
"Forgot the key," the girl groans. "We'll have to wait until Papa gets home."
"That's okay," Bev shrugs. "I've got nowhere to be, we can just hang out here." She leans her bike against the wooden banister of the porch and sits on the steps, which creak under her weight.
Eleven sits opposite Bev and they continue to talk about their favourite things such as Eggos as their favourite food or The Psychedelic Furs, as their favourite band. They laugh about how much Richie and Mike look alike and talk about what they might like to do in the future.
Time flies until Hopper's police wagon pulls up next to the cabin. Beverly's eyes go wide when she sees that El's adopted father is the chief of police in town. She shifts to look as the grizzled cop approaches.
"And you are?" he asks, wondering why Eleven is with a strange girl.
"I'm Beverly Marsh," the redhead introduces herself.
"She's my new friend," Eleven explains.
"Nice to meet you," Hopper says. He wonders why the girls were hanging out on his porch instead of inside and realizes that his daughter didn't have a key to get in considering she used her telekinesis. He was proud that she'd been smart and hadn't shown her abilities to anyone who might not be able to understand and freak out.
"I guess I should get going," Beverly says, standing up to grab her bike. Her heart raced as she's a little unsure of how to navigate out of the woods and back onto the main roads.
"I can give you a ride home if you'd like," the cop offers. He unlocks the cabin door to let Jane inside.
"But, what about my bike?"
"I can just put it in the back. It will be dark soon and I don't want you wandering around these woods at night."
"Okay, thank you," Bev says. She turns to her new friend. "Thanks for today El, I hope we can hang out again."
"Definitely," the no longer shy girl says. "Bye Bev."
"Bye El."
Hopper picks up the girl's bike and puts it in the back of his police wagon while Beverly climbs into the front seat. While she was worried about what her foster parents would think about her coming home in a cop car, she was glad to have met Jane and that she'd found a new friend who would hopefully not make stupid mistakes as the boys did.
Eleven waves from the front porch as Hopper starts up the vehicle and drives off, happy for another friend and being able to feel like a normal kid. She just hoped that Max would like her too.