Chapter Text
Chapter one
Eleven sat on her bed and contemplated. She thought about names. She’d had many names. For a long time, she was simply Eleven, sometimes accompanied by test subject, sometimes shortened into 011. She remembered the pride she felt when she first learned to write her name. It was simple, two straight lines, and it felt good, knowing those lines were hers.
One rainy night, she stumbled into the life and jacket of a boy, a nice boy, and that same night she learnt that you can have more than one name. I’m Mike, short for Michael I guess… he said and asked her name. Tentatively, because she was unsure if she also should have more than one name, maybe it was connected to that friend thing they spoke about?, she gave him hers. And he eased her worries by giving her her second name, El. She had outgrown the clothes he’d given her, could no longer sleep in his basement, but that name was still hers, her favourite, because it was Mike’s name for her.
Lucas had called her freak. It did not sound nice at all, and she did not miss it when he stopped. On late nights, when sleep would not come and some situation she had understood was awkward but not why would be on repeat in her mind, that was how she berated herself. Freak.
For almost a year she was just kid. She was no kid anymore, and there was no one to call her kid left. Her mother never spoke to anyone, she did not know who her father was, Hopper was gone, and Mrs Byers called her sweetie or girl.
She realised that before she was born, she was Jane, to her mother, maybe even her father. For how long she did not know, maybe they decided on the name the day before she was born, and maybe she was meant to be Jane before she was conceived. Jane was also the name she had offered when her sister asked her. She did not really like Jane, it seemed she was always ripped away from those who would call her Jane. Jane was someone she would never be, not her mother's little girl in the crib nor the avenging punk rocker at her sister's side.
Still, she had a small piece of blue paper that stated that her name was Jane Hopper. Hopper had acted like it meant a lot, that piece of paper. It meant that she was someone in the eyes of the government, apparently, and that meant life, a normal life, he said. She was not sure, once she learned that the Department of Energy was a part of the government, she felt she would rather not, never, feel the eye of the government on herself again. Still, Mrs. Byers kept the little blue note stashed securely.
New girl the kids called her at school, often quiet new girl or, once, cute new girl. She was entered as El Byers, El because she chose so herself and Byers because Mrs. Byers said it would save them both a lot of explaining, so the teachers called her Miss Byers or you.
Maybe, she thought, maybe I am all those people, all those names. Maybe I am Miss Byers in class and the quiet new girl once the bell rings. Or maybe one of them is the real me, but which one? Eleven wished she had someone to discuss this with, to talk about this and other matters that plagued her mind. El missed Mike. Mike knew. And when he sometimes did not, he just smiled his soft smile and said “let’s figure it out, together”. Mike explained. Mike made her feel good, whether it was with the words that came out of his mouth or when his mouth kissed hers.
But Mike lived in Hawkins, Indiana, and the quiet Miss Byers went to high school in Detroit, because that’s where Mrs. Byers took her boys and her girl when she decided that Hawkins was no longer the place for them. El had no idea how to drive a car, and even if she had that, and a car, Hawkins was four and a half hour away. So, El missed Mike.
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Joyce Byers knew she was not a successful woman. In fact, she could with ease count ten failures for each success in her life. Her high school sweetheart went to join a war in a far off jungle rather than stay with her, and even though she managed to find Lonnie in his stead, their marriage had been a spectacular failure.
The kids that marriage had blessed her with were both outcasts. Jonathan had not brought a friend home since first grade, and even if it was every mother’s dream to be her son’s best friend, it wasn’t supposed to be because she was his only friend. Will fared little better, even if he had friends, three great friends. He was bullied, both physically and verbally, and the only subject he really excelled at was art whereas his friends were more into science and technology.
She herself really did not have any friends left, the grown-ups she used to speak to were her boss at work and the mothers of Will's friends. And those interactions never failed to remind her of her other shortcomings. She could not cook, bake or keep a tidy home, like Mrs. Wheeler could, and she could not bring home a decent pay check like Mrs. Sinclair did, or manage to engage herself in the hobbies of her son like Mrs. Henderson did. God, she even though of them as grown-ups and used Will's names for them. Come to think of it, she hadn’t really spoken to any of them since she left Hawkins.
And every morning, she pushed herself out of bed and wished she had not quit smoking. There was talk about cigarettes being bad for your health, outright killing you, but long since having realised that she could never really afford to retire, Joyce sometimes thought that a few years less might not be all bad. But smoke made Will cough, and she couldn’t really afford the damn things anyway. She settled for missing a smoke.
To top it off, there was that new feeling of having sold out cheap. When Dr. Owens had approached her and suggested that relocating from Hawkins might be a good idea, he had also been very clear about the fact that the DoE wished to keep a lid on things, all things related to the lab in Hawkins. Joyce had never seen truth as a ware to be peddled before, but she realised that this what Owens was after. Money for her silence. She had asked for what she considered a very large sum of money, the equivalent of two years’ worth of pay, and the DoE lawyers had shared a quick look, written the sum into the NDA and given it to her to sign. No attempt at negotiations, no worried looks. Just a check written out in a matter of minutes. She could not shake the feeling that she could have had ten times the amount she asked for.
Still, the money was enough to buy a house in Detroit, where houses were cheap. Detroit was a big city where no one asked questions. And it was very close to the border, just in case someone came looking for the girl she had taken in.
And she had found a great school for Will, a place where he could dedicate himself to his big passion, drawing. She could never have afforded the fees, but the school took a few students free of charge each year, chosen by the quality of their work. It was one of the proudest days of Joyce’s life when she learned that Will was one of the select few. It was a 45 minute drive to drop him off and then again pick him up, but it was an hour and a half each day she gladly spent in the car with Will. Thank God though that El could walk to school or Joyce would never be on time for work.
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Pearl Odemwingie considered the girl in front of her. Classic abuse case. But of what kind? There was something in the girl that Pearl had not seen before. Working schools in the poorer parts of Detroit, she thought she’d seen it all by now. The kids born to drug addicts, the kids born to be drug addicts, the kids born as drug addicts. The beaten ones, the neglected ones, the abused ones. Those without friends, those without family, those without a home. She’d seen them all and knew the signs. But this girl? The signs she gave off were like nothing Pearl had ever come across before. Maybe that Indian girl a few years back…?
Pearl let her thoughts on earlier cases drop and refocused on the thin sliver of a girl in front of her. El Byers. She couldn’t really place her. She found it so much easier to reach the children when she knew what their background was. But this girl. Not the beaten kind (she had tried raising her arm sharply and the girl didn’t flinch), not sexually abused (she did not shy away from touch nor give in to it too much), no signs of addiction. She seemed to expect to be watched all the time, so probably not ignored and neglected. She must have fended for herself a lot, as she expected nothing from others, but at the same time she was as far from street smart as Pearl had ever seen. A conundrum, Pearl thought.
The woman who had dropped her off the first day was obviously not her mother, but there seemed to be a connection between them, a positive one. So at least there was a home and a caring adult.
“So, Miss Byers”, Pearl said, “I thought we might discuss how your first month with us have been”.
El looked up at the woman in front of her, and did not speak. Miss Odemwingie was enormous, the largest person El had ever seen. Her presence rivalled her appearance, it was as if hundreds of pounds demanded an answer, and still El had no idea what to say. She went here every day. She sat down in class. Took as many notes as she had the time to (her hand ached from all the writing she did). Ate her sandwich for lunch. Walked back home.
“Oh just call me Miss Odie, I know that’s what all you kids do” Pearl said, mistaking the girl’s silence for being unsure of how to pronounce her name (“it’s Nigerian, not impossible” she thought, but as long as no one called her Plump Odious, like in middle school, Pearl couldn’t care less about her own name).
“I… Come here every day?” El offered, “And I take notes. And I have lunch?”
“Yes, your attendance rate is near perfect” Pearl answered. “And you pay attention in class”. It was an understatement to say the least, Pearl had never seen a student with such a work ethic. Nothing seemed to distract her from taking notes. A fist fight that broke out between two boys in the back of the classroom. The girl sitting next to her starting to puke. El Byers continued to take notes.
And there was that story she heard from Coach Bellamy about her first PE lesson. Pearl shuddered to think of PE, but it reminded her: “Oh, Coach Bellamy wishes to talk to you, can you drop by the gym after we finish here?”.
“Yes”. El responded. “About what, miss… Odie?” El asked, trying out the new name.
“Oh, I’m sure he’ll tell you when you get there. Now, your time here. As you said, you follow your lessons closely. Very good.” As the girl had not provided any grades from her former school, something Mrs Byers had not even tried to explain, Pearl had been worried at first that she was a troublemaker or a very slow learner that had failed in all subjects. She continued: “How has the social aspect of starting a new school been? Find any new friends?”
El thought about friends. Friends of the kind that jumped off a cliff for someone else’s sake, friends that went straight into the underground manifestation of a hellish dimension with little hope of ever returning, hoping that it would make your task easier. Friends that stood by you to fight monsters ten times their size, with nothing but a sling shot or some fireworks taped together. Friends that would hide you when you needed hiding, try to outrun a car with their bike to keep you safe, gave you food when you were hungry, clothes when you were cold. In short, El thought of the Party. El missed them.
“I talk to some…” El started, but was cut short by Miss Odemwingie. “Ah yes, the ‘rock’ crowd. I’ll tell you the truth, I was a bit surprised considering…” this time Miss Odemwingie cut herself short. “Anyway, it can take some time to readjust to a new environment.”
Pearl had seen the girl spend some time with the punk rock crowd, which surprised her to say the least. The girl had a clothing style that could best be described as quaint, and the punks seemed to think that clothing that was not torn was not clothing at all. Miss Byers wore light colours, pink, yellow and light blue, and the punks only black. She was quiet, they were as loud as the blatant music they listened to. Maybe the girl was attracted to the bad boy type?
Pearl shuddered, she had seen so many girls from troubled backgrounds throw themselves into the arms of boys. And they never met someone good. So even if they were not abused, they were at least used by the boys. She thought it best to address the matter. “So, anyone more than friends? There are a lot of boys in that group”.
El was shocked. “No, I have Mike!” she blurted out. Even if she did not know the word, she had seen enough soap operas to understand what the woman insinuated, and it made her furious. The mere thought of someone other than Mike being special to her sparked her anger, and Miss Odemwingie would never know that the look El shot her would have been accompanied by a very rough push of air, if El still had had the power to do so.
Thinking of Mike soon melted her anger though. Mike, her Mike. Mike who was never afraid of her, when in the eyes of others, herself even, she was a monster. Mike, who always understood her, even when she lacked the words, even when she did not understand herself. Mike, who never gave up on her, who kept calling her, thinking she was stronger than death itself. Mike, who smelled like home, whose touch was safety and whose lips were bliss.
El missed Mike.