Chapter Text
Dottie popped her bubblegum, rummaging through the supplies that Funshine had dumped into the backseat with her. Water bottles, tampons… she giggled when she spotted the shiny sunglasses she had scored from the gas station and placed them over her eyes. The rest of the van turned so dim that she could barely see, but she didn’t much care.
“Yo, Mickey, that was our turn!”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“Are you kidding me? The map says you needed to go left on the highway–”
“We just got off the highway, Axel.”
“The map shows that we gotta–”
“Axel, shut up and toss Kali the map.”
“Come on, she’s not gonna know any more about it than I will!”
“Give her the map, Axel,” Fun finally intervened on Mick’s behalf.
Dottie smiled as Axel grumbled and handed the roadmap to Kali in the front seat. The guy was like a yapping chihuahua–all bite, no bark. But sometimes fun to watch if you wanted a laugh.
She tuned out the bickering from the front of the car and kept looking through the junk that they had dragged along on their little road trip. She gagged at the cans of bland beans and tried to find something actually interesting. More beans, more water, a couple of takeout containers that–yup, those were very expired–some extra clothes, and–
“Why do we have eight boxes of Eggos?”
The rest of the van stopped their squabbling to look back at her. Jane, from the seat in front and to the left of Dottie, simply said, “Eggos is good food. Kali said to take good things from the… man with the broken toilet.”
“At the gas station?” Funshine clarified.
“Yes,” Jane said.
“And so you stole eight boxes of Eggos?” Axel asked, his eyes wide. Well, at least he had forgotten to be upset about the map.
Jane nodded.
Dottie laughed, leaning against the van’s ratty seats. “Well, what d’you know, we’ve got ourselves a lil’ waffle fanatic.”
“Fa…fana…” The young girl scrunched her face, trying to pronounce the word.
“Fanatic,” Fun told her. “Someone who likes something a whole lot.”
“Like Axel and his knives,” Kali explained.
“Or Dot and poker,” Mick added from behind the wheel.
“You mean ‘Dot and stealing all our money.’” Axel glared back at Dottie.
“Not my fault you all suck at it,” She said.
As Axel tried to stammer out a comeback and Fun chuckled at all of them, Dottie noticed a brown sign on the side of the road. Though the car sped past it and her sunglasses obscured her vision, she could just make out the words “Welcome to Hawkins” painted in straight white letters.
She hoped this little field trip would be more exciting than hiding from the cops had been.
. . . . .
El watched the stars flicker on across the black sky. She wasn’t sure what time they had left Chicago (she hadn’t found the clock Kali was talking about) but the world had already been turning dark when they got in the van. Now it was as though a door had been slammed, shutting them all in a tight closet with no bulbs. Except for the stars, which poked out like gentle versions of the little lights on the scientists’ boards in the lab.
It made her think of before Hopper had found her, when she’d been alone in the woods; the stars had turned on for her then, too.
She thought of his message to her on their radio. Maybe this time, she could help him. Help him and Mike and Will, and anybody else who needed it. Maybe she could prove to them that she wasn’t the same monster she had been in the Rainbow Room. That she wasn’t the same monster that had thrown Lucas across a field of broken cars.
Her sister didn’t think she was a monster anymore. So maybe her friends wouldn’t either.
A tree branch snapped back as something crashed through it. El sat up straight and pressed her face against the window’s slick glass.
The moonlight fell upon a slimy creature tearing through the forest.
“Remember, Eleven–it can’t hurt you in there.”
El felt the cold, wet skin give beneath her fingertip. She remembered a greenish face opening rows of sharp teeth in front of her.
She saw Hopper as he trudged through the woods, worried and confused.
She saw Mike, petrified, screaming about a trap.
“Stop,” She said.
“What’d ya say?” Mick asked, turning to her.
They were taking too long. It was trying to get her friends, and they were taking too long.
She had to save them.
She had to show them that she wasn’t the monster.
El brought her arms up, then slammed them down to either side of her seat.
She didn’t need to think of her mother’s cries this time. Mike and Hopper’s faces were enough.
The van halted.
“What in the–?!” Mick shouted.
El wrenched the door open.
“Jane, what is it?” Kali demanded.
El stepped out of the vehicle, looking out at the trees.
There, she heard it thudding through the forest ahead of them.
They were taking too long.
She ran toward the noise. The others screamed at her, but she went anyway. She had to save them. Her new leather jacket flapped behind her and with each stride and she had to jump over branches, but she’d spent a lot of time in these woods; she knew how to sprint through them without falling. Still, the impact of her feet on the packed dirt jolted her body and her face stung where branches cut it.
She could hear people following her, but she didn’t pay attention to their footsteps.
The forest thinned around her, and she was suddenly standing on the brown grass of a backyard.
The creature prowled with its back to her, facing a large window on the run-down house. Beneath the flaps of skin around its face, it snarled.
Then its muscles shifted, its legs tensed, and it launched itself toward the window.
El stuck her hand out, thinking of Mike’s terrified screams.
The creature whimpered from where it was suspended in the air, its limbs flailing.
The others broke through the trees behind El, gasping for breath.
“Shirley, what’re you–” Axel faltered when he noticed the hovering beast. “What in the…”
“Saving my friends,” She said, blood trickling over her upper lip. She brought her arm back, then threw it forward and shoved the creature through the window.
Glass shattered and people shouted from inside the house. Mick and Axel flinched back at the noise, but El’s shoulders relaxed.
She knew those voices.
She turned, moving around the outside of the small house. But before she could reach the front porch, Kali grabbed her shoulder.
She was spun back around to face her sister, yet Mick was the first to speak.
“What was that thing?”
El was surprised at how shaken the woman’s eyes seemed. Hadn’t they been fighting the Bad Men for a long time? Why were they so scared by the creature?
“The Bad Men try to find it,” El told her.
Kali released her arm. “You have seen these things before?”
“Almost… but different.” The ones before had been more like people, but this one was smaller, with different legs. But El knew they were from the same place: The Upside Down.
The voices beyond the broken window grew louder.
“See my friends,” El tried to explain as she returned to the porch. This time they didn’t stop her from going up the steps and sliding the lock open.
Kali and Funshine moved to stand beside her.
El pushed the door open with a tilt of her head and walked into the room.