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Lucas was the first one to snap out of it, brandishing his flashlight straight in the kid’s face, making them flinch away from the harshness of the beam. Dustin was next, stepping back, rambling on and on that he was right and they shouldn’t have come here, and were they going to kill them oh my god?!
Mike was the last to comprehend what was happening, his heart hammering in his throat. For a split second there, he’d thought that they’d done it; they’d done what Chief Hopper and his lackeys hadn’t been able to: they’d found Will and he was okay. That they could take him home and forget all about this weird day.
Though they looked around a similar age, the person in front of them was definitely not their friend Will. For one, Will had had the exact same bowl cut his entire life, and this kid had a severe buzzcut. They had no raincoat on and their yellow oversized t-shirt was completely soaked, water cascading from their terrified face. Mike blanched when he noticed they had no clothing on their legs and were barefoot. They were trembling, frozen like a rabbit in the headlights.
“Hey! Cut it out.” Mike reached over, pushing Lucas’s flashlight away from the kid. “You’re blinding her.”
“Her?” Dustin asked, scepticism evident in his voice. Mike wasn’t sure how he knew, but the closer they looked, they realised he was correct. The person in front of them was a young girl.
Mike took a step closer to the girl. “Are you lost? Do you live near here?”
The girl didn’t answer him. He thought maybe she hadn’t heard him, and repeated the question. He knew she had heard him this time from the frantic look in her eyes, yet she still didn’t answer him. She looked as though she was seconds away from making a run for it.
“Leave it, Mike. She’s clearly stupid or something. We need to go.” Lucas turned to leave, Dustin right behind him.
“What, and just leave her here?” Mike felt pretty freaked out by the whole thing too, but it felt wrong to leave someone so clearly vulnerable out in the storm. “If someone found Will out here, I wouldn’t want them leaving him in the rain.”
Lucas looked away, scolded, and began walking back towards where they ditched their bikes. Mike turned back to the girl, and gestured in the direction they need to go in.
“We’re going home now. Do you want to come with us? You can dry off and we can call your parents for you?”
He expected no answer again, starting to believe maybe she doesn’t know English, when she gave a small, timid nod. If he hadn’t been watching her so intently, he would have missed it.
Mike turned and followed Dustin and Lucas, glancing behind him ever so often to check whether the girl was following them. At one point, her bare feet slipped in the squelching mud and he managed to reach out and grasp her by the elbow just before she fell. She flinched when he touched her, and he quickly dropped her arm. Her skin was freezing.
“Here.” Mike said, shrugging off his coat and holding it out towards her, guilt crawling up his spine that he hadn’t thought to offer it before. The coat was soaked from the storm, but it was better than just the t-shirt she was wearing. She took it from him and put it over her shoulders.
When they finally found their bikes, both of his friends looked over to him, Dustin with hesitancy and Lucas with disdain.
“What exactly is your plan, Mike?” Lucas asked.
Mike picked up his bike. “You guys set off. I’ll walk with my bike and make sure she can follow us. Don’t go too far ahead and don’t get lost.”
“Are you actually crazy?” Dustin asked, incredulous. “Do you want to be the second one to go missing?
Mike shot Dustin a look. His friends were so dramatic. What exactly was this tiny, freezing, terrified girl capable of?
“If you’re walking your bike, then so am I.” Dustin grasped his bike by the handlebars and started to push. Mike looked over at Lucas, who was decidedly not looking at him but was pushing his bike all the same.
Mike turned back to the girl. She had not taken her eyes off of him, and she looked petrified. He softened his voice. “Stay close, and follow us. We are going back to my house on Maple Street. Do you know where that is?”
“I don’t exactly think the weirdo is from Hawkins, Mike.” Lucas snapped, walking ahead faster than before.
“Don’t call her a weirdo.” Mike increased his steps to catch up, always discreetly keeping one eye on the girl to make sure she was following. Dustin openly stared at her. Nobody spoke the entire walk back from Mirkwood, but the splatter of the rain filled any possible silence.
When they arrived at the Wheeler’s house, Mike let them in through the side door directly to the basement. The girl stood slightly in from the doorway, her skittish stance suggesting that she was prepared to flee at any point. Her eyes were darting around the large room, taking everything in, then looked back at Mike, like she was awaiting instruction.
Mike didn’t want to make her feel worse, so he kept his voice quiet and gentle. “Um. Do you want to sit down, maybe?”
He gestured towards the sofa and she hesitantly crept towards it, and then gingerly sat herself down in the middle. Her chest was heaving with how heavy she was breathing, and she stared down at the ground.
“Is there a number we can call? For your parents?” Mike asked.
The girl looked up at him, confused, when Dustin joined in with the questions. “Where’s your hair? Do you have cancer?”
Mike looked over at Dustin to tell him to shut up when Lucas asked “Did you run away?”
Mike tried to get the conversation back on track. “Are you in some kind of trouble?”
“Is that blood?” Lucas reached his hand out towards her, to prod her, when Mike slapped his hand back down.
“Stop it! You’re freaking her out!”
“She’s freaking me out!”
“I bet she’s deaf!” Dustin clapped his hands loudly, which made the poor girl flinch back, making herself smaller. “Not deaf.”
Mike had grown annoyed with them. They were being ridiculous, and pretty cruel. “Alright that’s enough, all right? She’s just scared and cold.”
Mike pushed past them both and grabbed his dry clothes from the wash basket, the blue sweatshirt and grey sweatpants he had worn the day before. When he turned back to give them to her, he noticed her flinching again at a clap of thunder.
He made sure to speak softly. “Here. These are clean, okay?”
The girl took the clothes from him, and she rubbed her face on them like the softness was comforting. Mike wasn’t sure if she was doing it because it felt nice, or because she was wiping away her tears. Dustin and Lucas looked at her like she was a freak, but Mike just felt sad for her.
She shrugged Mike’s coat off her shoulders, and stood up, reaching for the hem of her t-shirt at the same time.
“No, no, no!” All three boys exclaimed. Dustin and Lucas backed off, trying to get away. Mike’s first instinct was to help her, reaching out and grasping her arms to stop her from exposing herself. The other two boys had turned around, Dustin repeating oh my god oh my god oh my god to himself.
Mike’s face was on fire. He couldn’t look the girl in the eyes. Once he was sure she had dropped the bottom of her t-shirt, he let go of her arms and gestured behind him.
“See over there? That’s the bathroom. Privacy. Get it?”
The girl looked at him, eyebrows furrowed, confusion evident. Mike tried to look at her, but the embarrassed flush he felt across his neck made him look away again.
The girl reached behind her and collected his dry clothes. She made her way to the bathroom, taking in the new setting, and Mike followed behind her. He went to close the door behind her, to allow her privacy to get changed, when her hand shot out and stopped him from shutting it fully. The look on her face was different, more serious, and he found he could now not look away from her.
“You don’t want it closed?” He asked.
She stared straight at him and spoke for the first time. “No.”
“Oh, so you can speak.” Mike felt the smile appear on his lips, and he wiped it from his face straight away. It didn’t feel an appropriate time to be smiling, but he was glad to know that she could talk.
“Okay, well. How about we just keep the door…” Mike slowly closed the door, blocking the view of the bathroom from the basement, but kept it slightly ajar. “Like this?”
The girl's fingers grasped the door, making sure Mike didn’t shut it. He wasn’t going to.
“Is that better?” He asked.
“Yes.” She said, and he offered her a small smile, before walking back to where Lucas and Dustin were. They were watching him, Lucas looking even moodier than before.
“This is mental.” Dustin said as Mike rejoined them.
“At least she can talk!” Mike argued. To him, this was a good sign.
“She said ‘no’ and ‘yes.’ Your three-year-old sister says more.” Lucas spat back.
“She tried to get naked.” Dustin said this like case closed.
“Like, wrong in the head.” Lucas continued, ignoring Dustin who was now reenacting the girl’s attempt at lifting her shirt and had knocked his cap off in doing so.
“I bet she escaped from Pennhurst.”
“From where?” Mike asked, sure Lucas was now making stuff up.
“The nuthouse in Kerley County.”
“You got a lot of family there?” Dustin quipped.
Mike rolled his eyes as Lucas replied, “Bite me.”
“Seriously though.” Lucas continued. “Think about it. That would explain her shaved hair and why she’s so crazy.”
“Why she went like…” Dustin was still caught up on her lifting her shirt, not caring that Mike and Lucas were clearly ignoring him.
“She’s an escapee is the point. She’s probably a psycho.”
“Like Michael Myers.” Dustin said, and Mike was done with this conversation.
“Exactly! That’s why we never should’ve brought her here.” Lucas looked at Mike like he was an idiot.
“So you just wanted to leave her out in that storm?!” Mike asked, his voice rising.
“Yes!” Lucas bit back. “We went out to find Will, not another problem.”
“We should tell your mom.” Dustin put in.
“I second that.”
Mike couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Who’s crazy now?!”
“How is that crazy?” demanded Lucas.
“Because we were not supposed to be out tonight, remember?”
“So?”
“So, if I tell my mom and she tells your mom, and your mom…” Mike left the statement out in the open.
“Oh man.” Dustin said.
“Our houses become Alcatraz.” Lucas sighed.
“Exactly. We’ll never find Will.” Mike knew he needed to take over, to make them see reason. “All right, here’s the plan. She sleeps here tonight-”
“You’re letting a girl-”
“Just listen! In the morning, she sneaks around my house, and goes to the front door and rings the doorbell. My mom will answer and know exactly what to do. She’ll send her back to Pennhurst or wherever she came from. We’ll be totally in the clear. And tomorrow night we go back out. And this time, we find Will.”
As Lucas and Dustin collected their stuff from the basement , Mike went to check on the girl. He knocked, hesitant to open the door in case she hadn’t changed, but as the gap opened slightly, he found the girl staring at herself in the mirror.
“Hi.” Mike said. “We are going to sort everything tomorrow instead. You can sleep here tonight, in my blanket fort. It’s really comfy, I swear. I’ve fallen asleep there loads.”
The girl followed him out of the bathroom towards the blanket fort. Mike could hear his friends climbing the basement steps behind him. As she settled herself in, Mike sought out bedding for her.
“Here you go. Here’s my sleeping bag.”
She scooped up the yellow sleeping bag from him, as well as the cushion he’d found for her and assembled a makeshift bed.
Mike knelt before her and realised something. “Hey, um, I never asked you your name.”
She pulled up the sleeve of his sweatshirt to reveal a tattoo on her wrist. 011.
“Is that real?!” He asked her, incredulous, his voice rising. He reached out to touch her wrist, but she flinched away from him, which made him wince. His cheeks felt hot.
“Sorry. I’ve just never seen a kid with a tattoo before. What’s it mean? Eleven?”
The look she gave him was intense. She lifted a single finger and silently pointed to herself.
“That’s your name?”
She nodded, and looked towards the floor.
“Eleven.” Mike repeated. “Okay, um. Well, my name’s Mike. Short for Michael.”
Saying that out loud gave him an idea. He smiled at her as he suggested, “Maybe we can call you El. Short for Eleven.”
She didn’t reply straight away, but eventually nodded. Mike nodded back.
“Um, well, okay. Night, El.”
He stood up and reached for the top of the blanket fort to cover her.
“Night, Mike.” El said softly. Mike looked at her once more, then let the cover fall.
He made his way up to his bedroom and flopped straight onto his bed, exhaustion sweeping through him. It had been such a long, confusing, emotional day. He would be happy tomorrow when this whole situation was behind them and they had Will home.
As he lay there, Mike couldn’t help but think of El. He hoped she was okay down in the basement. He wasn’t sure what her deal was, but he didn’t believe Lucas was right for one second. There was no way she was some psycho.
He laid there for what felt like hours, thinking of her, and when sleep eventually sunk its teeth into him, he dreamed of her too.