Chapter Text
July 1989
It’s completely by chance that El finds the daycare assistant opening.
If she’s honest with herself, she wasn’t even looking for it, a job was the least of her concerns when she didn’t even know if she and Mike would have a place to live come August. And that took top priority, it had to, considering it was kind of the main reason why they decided to tie the knot so quickly in the first place.
(El thanks God every day for the marriage clause in the Northwestern University Underclassmen Rooming Policy because staying in Hawkins without Mike there was never even an option in her mind).
So there she was, looking through her fourth newspaper—praying that the Evanston Review proved to be fruitful because who knew the last three editions of The Daily Northwestern could be so useless—when she saw it.
It was the fourth listing in the third column of the “Help Wanted” section of the advertisements page, which she didn’t even know she was looking at, right above the “Apartment Listings” section where she was supposed to be looking. Right. She’s only human though and curiosity got the best of her, which might not have been a bad thing (spoiler: It wouldn’t be).
The ad was quite simple, reading:
Curiosity Corner Daycare is looking for Daycare/Preschool Assistants in the Evanston Area:
Requirements:
- High School Diploma or GED Required
- Must Enjoy Working with Kids
- Must Be Organized
- Artistic Minds Are Encouraged to Apply
Responsibilities:
- Work with small groups of children.
- Teach children about colors and shapes.
- Teach the children how to count.
- Have patience and be understanding.
Call 847-679-1738 for more information.
El mindlessly checked off each requirement as she doodled on the listing. She had just gotten her GED this May, she secretly loved when Mrs. Wheeler made her and Mike cancel a date to babysit Holly on a Friday, she cleaned the living room when she was bored, and considering the fact that she was currently using one of her sketchbooks to support the newspaper, she would say she was pretty artistic.
Whenever Mike talked about how he already had the first two novels of his writing career planned out or Will voiced his dreams of illustrating Stephen King’s next cover, or Dustin raved about the limitless possibilities that came with being a cryptozoologist, El always wondered whether she would ever find a job that she would feel qualified for or genuinely enjoy. But at this moment, as she thought about how appealing the ad sounded, it seemed like the right job had happened to find her. Maybe this was her, what was the phrase Dustin had used, life’s work?
“I need to get the phone,” El said while patting Mike’s head lightly, waking him up from his nap in her lap.
“Hmm?” Mike held on tighter to her waist to keep her in place and whined.
“The phone. I need the phone,” El couldn’t help but giggle.
“Did you find a place?” He looked up, the possibility enough to wake him.
“Not quite,” El responded, but if she was trying to seem disappointed, the small smile forming on her lips gave away her act.
Taking a leap of faith, she gave the number a call, figuring that if she couldn’t find an apartment, maybe she could at least find a job to pay for one when she eventually did, because even though Mike had already found one for himself, they both knew they wouldn’t be able to live off of his part-time RadioShack salary alone. And plus, it could never hurt to have “more information.”
Ted Wheeler was less than ecstatic with the recent change in his son’s marital status, which was made even more apparent when he took Mike’s car away as an act of protest. Karen might have been too, he was her little boy after all and she was hoping to keep him little for a little longer, but if she was, she didn't show it when she agreed to let Mike and El use her car for their weekend trip to Evanston. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t keep him from flying away from the nest forever and it was finally time to come to terms with that.
The trip was supposed to be a fun, light-hearted chance to get to know the area they’d be living in. You know, walk around Northwestern’s campus, explore the greater Chicago area, maybe even see if the Chicago pizza hype was worth it. However, the beginning of the trip turned out to be anything but the relaxing vacation they envisioned. Partly because they didn’t know where they’d be living next month, and partly because El’s job interview was scheduled for this same weekend. It was safe to say they were betting on knocking out two birds with one stone here.
Luckily, they knocked the first one out on Friday afternoon at a small brick building in Evanston with a sign reading Curiosity Corner Daycare. Bonnie, the veteran teacher leading the search for a new assistant since her last one had finally gone off to college, ended up falling in love with El during her interview. Maybe it was the life-long preschool teacher in her that made her seem so kind and bubbly (and maybe even grandma-ish, though El wouldn’t know), but Bonnie was the first adult, other than Hopper and Joyce, that she felt completely comfortable opening up to, supernatural chaos aside. Perhaps El’s short-lived high school career would’ve went better if her teachers had been as accepting and patient with her as Bonnie was.
Bonnie loved that El’s favorite childhood book was Anne of Green Gables, which was also her daughter Monica’s favorite when she was a little girl, though she’s now thirty-four and married with a son named Charlie in Connecticut. She loved that El seemed to enjoy coloring and drawing just as much as the kids at the daycare did, and she loved the stories El told her of her and Mike’s childhood romance and now marriage, which Bonnie could relate to considering she and her husband Doug had also gotten married right out of high school and were now approaching thirty-seven years together. El’s life seemed to be like a fairytale in itself to Bonnie—which couldn’t have been a more inaccurate description—and she knew that the kids would love to “be characters in her story.”
So it was a done deal and it felt right. El and Bonnie agreed that she would start the job at the end of August once summer break was over and the kids came back for the start of the school year. And as for Mike? He was beyond proud. The only real issue was that she knew she couldn’t commute from Hawkins to Evanston every day, so they had to find a place to stay and they had to find it quickly.
But first, Mike insisted that such a momentous occasion called for celebration. One that would have to start with a trip to the ice cream shop across the street because…it was only right.
“I’m really proud of you, you know? Like so proud, you’ll literally be the best preschool teacher in Illinois, in the nation, in the world—” he started.
“Preschool teaching assistant,” El corrected.
“Yeah, well, you know what I mean. That still doesn’t change how great this is,” Mike said before he suddenly stopped their victory stroll, a Vanilla ice cream cone in one hand and El’s hand, which he accidentally yanked out of excitement, in the other.
“Hey, I heard one of the scoopers saying there was a beach like ten minutes from here. What do you say we go for a walk in the sand? Toes out? To take our minds off of…things?” He didn’t want to remind her of their currently undecided living situation, but he knew that it would still be looming in her mind.
“There’s no ocean here.”
“Yeah, I know. But the beaches here connect to Lake Michigan, and I know the name sounds misleading but it’s huge. My grandpa had a house on it in Wisconsin and trust me, it might as well be an ocean.” Mike began to explain before he saw the skeptical look on El’s face.
“Come on, it will be fun, and God knows we could use fun right now,” he insisted and began playfully pulling the two of them towards the Wheeler car.
They were only two and a half miles away from some random beach in Chicago when El noticed the bright red lettering of a “FOR RENT” sign as she stared out the window of the car.
The apartment building, if you could even call it that, the sign belonged to was small, gray, and made out of brick, looking more like a house than anything. But judging by the looks of the place and its surrounding area, it had to be much cheaper than the boujee Evanston apartments from the newspapers that had made El and Mike’s budget seem laughable.
So, running out of both time and options, El decided to take another leap of faith.
She turned to Mike, who had been focused solely on the road as he drove, Smalltown Boy playing throughout the car.
“Pull over.”
(Sometimes El wonders if precognition is another one of her powers that she somehow doesn’t know about because only two weeks after her magical act of instinct, their lease is signed and they’re given two keys to Apartment 208).
It’s an uncharacteristically hot early August day in the Windy City when Mike and El finally move into their tiny one-bedroom apartment with the help of Hopper, who claimed he “needed to see wherever Wheeler was taking his daughter,” though he probably would have been better off not knowing that she would be living in some sketchy Chicago neighborhood, and the other three party members—sans Dustin who still found himself spending every summer at Camp Know Where—who “had nothing better to do.”
When move-in day was all said and done, Mike and El’s new home was finally complete, or as complete as it could possibly get for two eighteen-year-olds.
By the time everyone had gone back home, they were left with the TV and Atari from the Wheeler basement, a microwave, a mattress (Hopper was still working on building the bed frame and matching dresser), four paintings from Will to liven things up, a pull-out couch from Goodwill for the living room, which was a generous name for the space (or lack thereof) between their kitchen and bedroom, a corded phone from Joyce, with a demand that they call at least two times a week, and three frozen casseroles from Karen to cover dinner for the next week.
“It’s not a lot, at least not right now, but I think we’ll make it work. We can make this place feel like home, I know we can,” Mike spoke up later that night as the two sat across from each other and ate Karen’s famous tater tot casserole on their (not really) new couch, paper plates in each of their laps.
El stared intently at the young man in front of her, her husband, before taking his free hand into hers and curling her fingers around his own. “You’re home,” she replied simply.
With that, the two soon had matching smiles as they spent the rest of the night feeding each other pieces of casserole off of their plastic forks.
And in that moment, everything was at least good enough.