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“So, um,” Mike started, taking a seat at the foot of her bed. “Are we just not gonna talk about it?”
El didn’t look at him as she kept twiddling the brush with glue along the broken paper trees.
Lost in thought was one way to describe it.
“About what?”
There were a million things she wanted to talk about with him, but everything just felt so out of place. The more she thought about it, the more she felt out of place with him.
“I don’t know, just maybe, like about yesterday or… everything,” he said, silently praying that she’d let him know what was going on.
El, she hasn't been telling you everything. She's lying to you. She’s having problems here.
He was dying to know what was going on. Since when did El hold anything back? Since when was she insecure enough around him that she had to lie about her daily life in her letters and calls?
“There’s nothing to say,” she said, almost like she rehearsed the line. Or just really didn’t want to talk to him right now.
“Yeah, um, I guess I’m just a little…I guess I just don’t really understand. Why didn’t you tell me what was going on here? I mean, you know I’m not exactly Mr. Popularity back at home. I mean, you’ve seen it. I’ve been bullied my entire life. I know what it’s like.”
“No. You don’t.”
He knew what it was like to get bullied. But, even if there were people that bullied, and picked, and teased, and tormented, and shoved, and pushed, and tripped, he had a place to go to relieve himself of that torture. So he was bullied at school, and that he was right about, she did see it, but it wasn’t the same. He had friends to rely on. He had a place he fit in. He had the party. He was never truly alone. Even if he was bullied, he still had a sense of belonging.
And she had nothing but his dry letters that would always smudge wet by her overactive thoughts.
“Okay. What don’t I understand?”
Me, she thought about saying. But, she was even more hesitant now about starting the conversation she was afraid of. The one she feared was dangling over their heads.
“I am different. I do not belong,” she said sourly, as her stomach began to churn.
“You mean…in Lenora?” Mike asked, and his throat tightened, expressing the same worry that she felt blooming.
For the first time since he sat down, she turned to look at him. “Anywhere.”
He saw the swell of tears in her eyes and his heart broke. “Come on, you can’t actually believe that.”
“Everyone looks at me like…like I’m a monster,” she whispered.
“Well, they just don’t know you.”
He could’ve denied that, she told herself. He could’ve said ‘no they don’t’. But he didn’t.
The tears started to pour as she said confidently, “you think I’m a monster, too.”
“What?” He asked, shaking his head in disbelief.
Turning her body the rest of the way, she faced him fully. “Yesterday. The way that you looked at me. You-you were scared of me.
“No, that’s not…that’s not true,” he blurted, then stopped himself to collect his thoughts.
She really thinks that. She actually fucking thinks that. And he was mad. Mad at himself, while he watched her lip quiver.
“I was surprised. I…you told me that you liked it here. I came out here thinking that you had friends and you were popular and… you were so happy and excited yesterday before they showed up. I wasn’t expecting it. I was shocked that they were bullying you, first of all. Then Will told me you’ve been lying and that you had problems here. I was just in shock,” he sputtered out, struggling to get his point across because she was still crying and he wasn’t helping.
“And dinner last night? You couldn’t even look at me.”
“I…Eleven, I was in shock! This- this isn’t the same as when you broke Troy’s arm! This was in public! You have a name, you go to school, and people know who you are now. You did this, without powers that you could hide. So yeah, I wasn’t expecting you to break her nose with a freaking roller skate. That’s not something I ever thought you would do in the first place. Even if you still had your powers, you know that you're supposed to conceal them in public so you don’t get a reputation. We had that conversation like five times in your cabin alone, and I know you heard it a million more times from Hop. I think being surprised is a pretty valid answer.”
He knew that she knew she had to conceal her powers in public. Hopper and Mike both gave her numerous talks about how there were stories about her around town and why those stories alone were the very reasons she couldn’t go out in the heavily populated parts of town for a year. Troy peeing himself, breaking his arm, the grocery store glass doors, the swing set. She knew she couldn’t do that anymore. And Mike knew that she caught on when they would occasionally play with her powers and she would be discreet. And when she told him about blowing up a girl's Coca-Cola at the mall with Max, it made him laugh when she said she hid behind a trash can.
But everyone on the rink was mimicking her. The outstretched hands, the screaming. He knew they must have seen something at some point. And she had told him none of this.
He knew that his answer wasn’t good enough when the tear lines streaking her cheeks grew heavier like a broken dam.
She never told him, but she hated when he called her by her full name. Eleven, she grimaced to herself. He rarely ever called her that, and after yesterday she was extra sensitive to his choice of words.
What did you do? What did you do?
Eleven.
“I’m sorry,” he kept going. “It was so crazy it happened so fast but it doesn’t matter. I- I care for you, so much.”
Her eyes dropped. “Care,” she said, before looking back up to him as her throat started closing in on itself. “But you don’t, you don’t love me anymore?”
What? Okay, now he was definitely lost.
“Wha- who said that I didn’t?”
“You never say it,” she cried.
“I say it,” he said, with more clarity than anything else he’d said so far on this trip.
“To who? I don’t hear it. I don’t read it. You can’t even write it, Mike,” she said, standing up. “You said it one time, and it wasn’t even to me. Did-did you even mean it then? I say it to you every letter, every call, and I’ve never heard it back.”
Never heard it from anyone. Not one time does she remember anyone saying to her, I love you.
All he could do was stare at her as his eyebrows raised so high his bangs covered them.
“I know that you used to love me. You called me for a year, you put me above everyone else. And I felt loved. I felt needed and wanted.” Her breath stuttered as she inhaled deeply. “And now I can’t feel anything.”
She took the two short steps to the foot of the bed and grabbed a handful of his letters before reading them off to him. “From Mike, From Mike, From, From, From,” her breath caught in her throat as she nearly heaved. “Even the damn flowers.”
“Okay, okay, Eleven, you’re being ridiculous. You know what I think of you. You’re the most incredible person in the world. You can't let these mouth breathers ruin you. Ruin us. I mean, they’re nobodies. They’re nobodies.”
You know what I think of you, she repeated his words. Think of me. But not what you feel for me.
“I don’t want to be just incredible to you, Mike.”
I want to be loved.
“You’re a superhero.”
She paused at that. Was that what the problem was? She understood him when she had her powers, but now that she was powerless, she was nothing special. Were her powers the whole reason he liked her in the first place?
“Not anymore. And this has nothing to do with Angela or nobodies. They aren’t the ones ruining us.” She looked at him with a startling glare, as if to say, you are.
"El, you've been lying to me! This entire time I've been in the dark about what's going on. I- I don't get why you didn't just tell me what you were going through instead of lying. I mean, I thought after last summer that wouldn't ever be a problem for us," he stated, furrowing his brows.
Her lips quivered as she asked the question she feared, "are you going to break up with me for lying?"
"What?" His jaw dropped in surprise. "No. No, of course not. I'm not happy about it, but...I just don't get where this is coming from, or why you never told me. I told you about my shitty first semester. It's almost like, like you want there to be a problem between us."
“What I want is to know what I am to you. You don’t look at me like you used to. You don’t look impressed, you don’t call me pretty or beautiful. You’ve never said that you loved me. And I feel more alone now than when we were separated for 353 days.”
If he felt like he couldn’t find the right words before, they lodged even deeper in his throat at the sound of that.
He did love her. She was the only person he had ever loved to that extent. Yet, he still felt like that word didn't embody them. As if it wasn’t a big enough word. It felt so…trivial.
Everything she said made him feel like he was hit by a truck. Or struck by a plastic roller skate.
You don’t look impressed. You don’t call me pretty or beautiful. You don’t say you love me. More alone now than the three hundred and fifty-three days. He didn’t even acknowledge that part, he was too caught up on one thing in particular.
“El, I told you how cute you looked on the rink last night.”
“No. You didn’t.”
“Uh, yeah, I did. I remember because you, like, didn’t say anything and it was weird.”
That led his thoughts somewhere else.
“Christmas break,” he puzzled, frowning even deeper as he moved to stand in front of her. “I told you you looked beautiful, and then I said it again after Nancy braided your hair. You didn’t respond then either. You-you zoned out.”
Mike knew that he was bad with words, that he struggled to find anything that suited or felt right for them. For her. But he knew that he'd told her he loved her. Nearly shit himself when he said it to her the first time, and nearly shit himself again when he realized she wasn't listening, leading him to chicken out from repeating it.
Or she had heard it...and zoned out.
“El,” he said slowly, “I say it. But it’s like you’re not there. Not listening.”
Eleven, are you listening? She heard in the back of her mind and her heart lurched.
“Do you think that you’re pretty?” He asked, still working his way through the jumbled thoughts. Maybe she was just as insecure as he was. But, she didn't meet his eyes as she worked through jumbled thoughts of her own as if she was in a trance.
“Eleven?” He asked, shaking her shoulder.
She snapped out of it quicker than the snap of a rubber band, and looked up at him, “what?”
“You- you just did that thing again. Okay, this is…Uh, you’re gonna have to tell me what’s going on. This,” he said looking her up and down, “this is bigger than problems at school, and it’s bigger than us. What is going on with you?”
As she looked up at him, for a split second his hair looked blonde rather than its raven black darkness.
“I don’t know,” she shuttered, and all he could do was take her in his arms and squeeze her as they heard the doorbell ring.
“I think, um, I think maybe you're throwing up this wall to block stuff out. I know that I’m not… I know that I can be better. And I’ll work on that because you deserve so much more than me. But El,” he pulled back to look at her face and make sure she was really there.
When her eyes met his and didn’t look like they were clouded over with racing thoughts, he went on. “You are not a monster. If I have to lay you down on the edge of some cliff and tell you that like the first time I told you, I will,” he said, with the smallest upturn of the corner of his mouth. “You are not a monster. You have never been a monster. You’ve done the things that you had to, given the situations that you were in. That’s why I was so surprised yesterday, okay? What you did was a really big deal. And, and I’ll admit that it wasn’t very smart. But I don’t think any less of you for doing it.”
Her lips pursed at that, but he kissed her forehead and tightened his arms holding her. “You are incredible. And that has nothing to do with your powers. I mean, I’m pretty sure I had a crush on you before you slammed the door on Lucas and locked us all in my bedroom.”
“Or you just have a thing for helping the people who need it most,” she muttered into his shoulder.
“No, I think it’s more of a thing for pretty girls with buzz cuts,” he said, provoking the first genuine smile he’d seen on her since he arrived in Lenora Hills.
The door to her room was still cracked when they heard her name come from the foyer, breaking them apart.
“Hi, does Jane Hopper live here?”
Little did they know that everything would change before they could have a moment together like that again.