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32 hours and 48 minutes. That’s how far Hawkins was from the Byers' new home in California. By car, anyway. Eleven was much too nervous to fly, which ended up working out as Joyce was much too poor to afford it. Before they left, Jonathan had shown Eleven the map with the roads they were taking highlighted with a yellow marker. They were going to split the trip into a couple of days, probably stopping at a stingy motel at a midpoint in the southwest. The moving van rumbled steadily as Joyce kept both hands firmly on the wheel, her eyes flicking to the rearview mirror every few seconds to make sure Jonathan’s beat-up car behind them was still following.
Next to her, Eleven sat with her legs crossed, looking down at the map Jonathan showed her the night before. Her finger traced the borders of the states, all of which had funny looking names.
“Okay-Lahoma.” El whispered. Joyce shifted her glance from the rearview mirror to the girl next to her, this was the first time El had spoken since getting on the road.
“What was that, honey?”
“Okay-Lahoma, I think.. it’s in the middle..” El repeated, “I think it is where we will stop to sleep.”
“Oh,” Joyce nodded, “You mean Oklahoma?”
Eleven silently stared at her in confusion, Joyce had to stop herself from giggling. “You’re saying O.K like.. like the way we say alright or.. or- got it,” Joyce explained, “Here, O.K is- well, they’re just letters. You say them like Oak, y’know, like the tree?”
“Oak..lahoma.” El said, her head bouncing to each syllable.
“You got it.” Joyce smiled, “Don’t spend the whole drive reading that, it’ll make you sick.”
El nodded and folded the map back up, her cheeks turning a light shade of pink out of embarrassment as she turned toward the window. Her eyes traced the passing scenery, fields giving way to towns, then to more fields. There was a long pause of silence. When she had first taken Eleven under her wing, the silence drove Joyce crazy. Even if Will had his music playing as loud as he reasonably could, or if Jonathan and Nancy sat and talked in the living room, all she could hear was the sound of nothing coming from El. Joyce had tried to fill the lulls by engaging with Eleven, but was always met with a short and dry response, if given one at all. After a while, the quiet started to feel comfortable between them. It was their own special kind of silence, the kind that didn’t demand anything more unless one of them really needed it.
“I am nervous,” El finally spoke, “About.. California.”
“Yeah?” Joyce asked, her voice soft and knowing, “Nervous about what?”
El shrugged. “I don’t know if I’ll fit in.” It was a real concern, this would be her first time in school ever. She rarely interacted with other kids as it is, and now she was going to be in a building with 2,000 of them. And she can’t even pronounce Oklahoma. Everyone will know so much more than her, how will she catch up?
Joyce gave a small, sad smile. “Honey, everyone is nervous about whether or not they’ll fit in.” She reached over and patted El’s knee, keeping her left hand on the wheel, “If anything, having that fear makes you more like everybody else than anything.”
“Did you.. Like high school?” Eleven asked. Joyce chuckled at the question, cringing in a way that she hoped wasn’t obvious for El.
“Uhm,” Joyce sucked her teeth, tilting her head, “I mean, at the time I thought it was the worst thing ever, but as I got older, as I got some distance, I think I really took that time of my life for granted.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yeah.” Joyce nodded, “I wanted to grow up so fast. I drank, I smoked, I dated a guy way too old for me, got pregnant as soon as I could, I did everything in my power to seem older than I was. I never let myself.. be a teenager.” She stopped at a red light, and looked over at El, “But you won’t be like me. I think you’re going to like being able to do all the normal teenage girl things.”
El nodded, uncrossing her legs and pulling her knees to her chest. “I like to shop.”
“Yeah!” Joyce laughed, “Yeah, shopping is fun. Once you make some friends, I’ll let you go shopping all the time.”
“Did you shop with your friends?”
“My friend was Hopper,” Joyce responded, “If I took him shopping, he’d say I was torturing him.”
El laughed, pressing her sad smile against her knees. Joyce playfully poked her dimple as the light turned green, and she continued to drive. Eleven thought for a moment, looking over and searching Joyce’s face for the optimism she always seemed to carry, even when everything else was falling apart.
“When people.. Die, are they really gone forever?” she asked, the question she’d held since The Battle Of Starcourt.
Joyce, stunned at the sudden shift in conversation, didn’t answer right away. Her fingers gripped the wheel a little tighter.
“I don’t think so.” She answered quietly, “I think as long as you remember somebody, they’re still with you.”
“Even in California?” El asked, “You said we’re leaving the bad memories from Hawkins behind, what if we accidentally leave behind the good ones, too?”
Joyce bit the inner parts of her lip. Truthfully, she didn’t know how to answer that question. El could see the optimism she admired leave Joyce’s face as she searched for an answer. The silence was back, but it didn’t feel like the kind they were used to. It was an unknowing, painful silence.
“Maybe we don’t leave it behind,” Joyce said, killing the quiet that filled the van, “Maybe we just.. start over.”
“Start over?” El repeated as a question.
“Yeah, like.. a new beginning. With the good and the bad.” Joyce nodded to herself, “I mean, the bad parts are what made the good parts so good, right?”
El copied Joyce’s nod, despite not fully understanding what was being said.
“Start over.”
જ⁀➴
In the car behind them, Jonathan adjusted his rearview mirror, checking on the van ahead before glancing at Will in the passenger seat. Will sat with his head out the window, eyes closed as he let the sun beat on his face and the wind blew his hair back. The music was all the way up, allowing them both to feel each and every beat through the vibration of their seats. Will didn’t like the silence, he didn’t want to give himself the opportunity to think. He just listened to Bruce Springsteen as the force of the wind made him feel like he was flying.
“You wanna stop soon?” Jonathan asked, turning down the music, “Maybe for food? Or a bathroom break?”
Will shook his head. “Nah. I’m good.”
Jonathan just nodded, sucking in the bottom of his lip. Will moved his head toward his brother, waiting for him to turn the music back up. When it became obvious Jonathan wasn’t intending on moving, Will reached over to the dial on the car radio.
“How do you feel?” Jonathan asked another question, interrupting Will’s course of action. He sat back against the seat, hands now folded neatly in his lap.
“What?”
“How do you feel? Like, with all of this?” Jonathan repeated, lifting his hand off the wheel momentarily to gesture towards the moving van in front of him.
“With leaving Hawkins?” Will tilted his head, wiping his eyes. He didn’t know if the tears were from the wind in his eyes, or if they just never stopped coming after he gave his friends that last hug goodbye. Jonathan nodded and Will exhaled. “I don’t know. I guess I thought it would feel… different.”
“Different how?”
Will shrugged, “I thought I’d feel some sort of.. relief, like a weight off my chest.” He rolled up the window half-way, just so he could hear better, “I think I expected everything to be magically fixed once we passed the town exit.”
Jonathan gave a half-laugh. “Yeah. I thought the same thing the first time I tried to run from it.”
Will looked over, curious, “You mean when you applied to schools out of state?”
Jonathan nodded. “Yeah. I wanted to get out so bad. But now, it’s like… Our whole lives are back there, y’know? It’s freaky.”
Will turned to the window, the last tree-lined miles of Indiana beginning to fall away behind them. “Yeah. California sounds.. different.”
“Yeah, but isn’t different what you wanted?”
“I guess,” Will shrugged again, clasping his hands together, “But that doesn’t mean different isn’t hard, people freak out about what’s different all the time.”
“Well,” Jonathan looked over at Will and raised his brow, “Of all people, our family will be able to deal with the shit that freaks people out.” Will huffed a small laugh before looking up from his hands to make eye contact with Jonathan.
“Totally.”
Jonathan smiled, and ruffled Will’s hair before turning the music back up. The two loudly sang along off key, rolling down all the windows so everybody could hear. Will noticed El pop her head out the window of the van in front of them. Despite the large trailer attached to the end of the van providing a distance between the two, Will could tell Eleven was smiling. Admittedly, Will and Eleven hardly ever spoke to one another. Eleven was rarely ever allowed out of Hopper’s cabin, and even when she was with the party, Will awkwardly avoided all contact with her. Regardless of the fact that Eleven had saved Will’s life twice, Eleven was Mike’s girlfriend, and Will was Mike’s best friend. That’s all they saw each other as. But now here they were, no Mike in the middle, blowing in the wind together. Will extended his arm further out the window, waving aggressively to El. It didn’t take long for El to copy Will, entirely twisting her body so they could see her say hello.
Joyce gently pulled El back into her seat, “You’re scaring the crap out of me with that.”
El apologized through a smile, looking at the boys in the side mirror. She laughed even harder when she saw what the wind did to her hair, using her hands to flatten it back in place.
“I told them not to listen to the music that loud,” Joyce shook her head, “It’s bad for the speakers. And their ears!”
El hummed happily, shrugging, “Hopper played this song.”
“Did he?” Joyce asked. El nodded, closing her eyes and listening to Will and Jonathan’s poor rendition of Born To Run.
“He‘s making sure we don’t leave him behind,” El whispered to herself, “He’s following us.”
A sad smile appeared on Joyce’s face. Even with the music playing as loud as it was, all she was listening to was the hopeful peace and quiet that came from her daughter next to her.
જ⁀➴
Just as Eleven predicted, the Byers had stopped to spend the night in a motel in Oklahoma near the Texas Panhandle. What Eleven didn’t know, however, is what to expect when walking into a motel room. The air in the room was oddly damp, it smelled like stale cigarettes, and it only had one bed. Joyce said it was stupid to spend extra money on a bed they didn’t need, so as everybody else used the shower (keeping a pair of flip-flops on, per Joyce’s request), Jonathan set up the pull-out cot for his mom and found a comfortable spot on the floor. He didn’t mind, he almost preferred it. Jonathan is weird like that. Eleven sat on the corner of the bed , hugging her pillow as Joyce and Jonathan talked about something boring El didn’t care to listen to. Will walked out of the bathroom, kicking off the mom mandated flip-flops and putting his toothbrush back into his bag.
“Where should I sleep?” Will asked, picking up his bag and facing his family. Joyce gave him a confused look.
“Will, there’s a whole bed right there.”
“I thought El was sleeping in the bed.”
“You can’t share?”
Will was noticeably alarmed at this, tightening his grip on his bag. He looked over at Eleven with wide eyes, El just peeked at him through her pillow. Will stared at the bed. It sagged in the middle. The floral bedspread looked like it had been stolen from a grandmother's attic and never washed. He looked over to Jonathan to see if maybe he would say something to get him out of this, but he passed out on the ground as soon as he could with his limbs splayed like a crime scene chalk outline. Guess that’s why he prefers the floor.
“Mom—”
“Will.” Joyce gave her son another look, this one more intimidating, “It’s a queen sized bed, you’re both little tiny people, it’ll be fine.”
Will looked down, shyly making his way toward Eleven and putting his stuff on his side of the bed. El, while not the best at social cues, could tell Will was uncomfortable with the situation and wanted to make him feel better.
“Max and I shared a bed before.” El said. Will looked up at her, “It will be like a sleepover.” There was no malice in her voice. No awkwardness. Just… fact.
Will glanced over at his mom, who silently urged him to engage.
“Yeah, totally, a sleepover.”
Later that night, after Joyce had fallen asleep, Will and El can’t seem to find a comfortable position. They lay on opposite edges of the mattress, wrapped in their own blankets, facing away from one another. The motel light buzzed outside the window. A pipe groaned somewhere in the wall.
After a while, El whispered, “Do you miss Mike?”
Will blinked. The question sat heavy in the air between them.
He sighed. “Yeah. I do.”
It was quiet again. Will hoped El had fallen asleep.
“Can I tell you a secret?” El again whispered, Will could feel her turn her body to face him. Will thought about pretending to fall asleep, but realized how mean that would be and instead turned over. It was dark, the moon shining through the hideous motel curtains being their only source of light. The moonlight rested gently on the high points of El’s face, allowing Will to make out her expression while his eyes adjusted.
“What?” Will responded, allowing himself to get slightly curious.
“I told him I loved him before we left,” El confessed. Will raised his eyebrows, he could feel his stomach twist slightly, but ignored it.
“You did?”
El nodded in the affirmative, “He said it before, and he didn’t know I heard him, but I did.”
Will hummed, he remembered that. Mike blurted it in the middle of a fight with Max, when El wasn’t even in the room. It was extremely awkward for everyone else, but at least knowing El heard it and managed to make a romantic moment out of it made it slightly easier to think back on. Will wasn’t interested in the whole romance thing, he’s actually quite bad at talking about it. He got annoyed when Lucas or Mike would bring it up, but El wasn’t complaining about a fight or bragging about “under the shirt action” as Lucas called it, she was confiding in him. I mean, Eleven was technically his sister now, which is super weird to think about within itself, but Will also never had a sister. He’s never even had any female friends. Other than Max, of course. Even then, Max and Will only ever talked about TV and music, they never talked about things like.. this. Will took a small, silent breath in.
“Why is that a secret?” Will asked, “Isn’t that.. like a good thing?”
El turned to lay on her back, now facing the ceiling rather than the boy next to her. Will almost began to panic, fearing he had said something wrong before El answered him.
“He didn’t say it back.”
Will made an Oh shape with his mouth, and turned to lay on his back as well. The two stared at the ceiling in silence, as if they were waiting for mold spores growing from the corners to join in on the conversation. Will may have not been familiar with boyfriends, but he’s definitely familiar with Mike. He wanted to comfort Eleven, but had a hard time finding the words to describe the whirlwind that is Mike Wheeler’s thought process.
“He gets weird.. like, when he doesn’t know what to say.” Will said slowly, “I think he’s scared of saying the wrong thing, so he says nothing.”
She frowned. “He shouldn’t be scared. I’m not scary.”
“I know,” Will said. “I know you’re not.”
Silence again, but it’s a little softer now.
After a while, El turned back toward him. “You were in the Upside Down a long time. Before me.”
Will nodded, turning back toward Eleven again.
“I was there for only a couple minutes and it was very scary.” She stated, “How did you live for so long?”
He hesitated. “It.. Wasn’t really living, just surviving.”
“You didn’t die.” El said, “That’s lucky.”
“I guess it depends on your definition of luck. Sometimes it feels like I did die there.” Will swallowed, “Or that I may as well have, since I can’t seem to move on from it.”
Another pause.
“Me too.” El whispered. The two stared at each other. In that moment, Will had never felt more connected to another person. He felt as if he and El were one, and he was simply staring back at himself.
“Start over.”
Will blinked as he snapped himself back to reality, “What?”
“California will be a start over.” El tried to copy the soft, comforting tone Joyce used before in the van. Will gave her a sleepy half-smile in response.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
They didn’t speak again for a long time. But Will shifted a little closer to the center of the bed. Not touching, just enough so she’d know he was still there.
When he woke up in the morning, her hand was loosely wrapped around his wrist. He didn’t pull away.
જ⁀➴
The setting California sun was too bright.
It pressed against the windshield as Jonathan gripped the steering wheel with both hands, eyes squinting behind secondhand sunglasses. In the backseat, Will slept with his head against the window and El asleep on his shoulder. Joyce insisted all three of them go in the same car together, Jonathan guesses that seeing how El and Will interacted last night made her realize just how new this whole family situation was.
It worked out for the most part, Will and Jonathan got to show El some of their favorite CDs, they played road games, they shared stories, and Will and El got so deep into conversation that after their second stop for food, he joined her in the back instead of returning to the passenger seat. It was nice to see Will get along with someone so well, up until the 10 hour mark when the younger two in the back had abandoned Jonathan by falling asleep. Jonathan had left the radio off to let them sleep, which left him in a silence. People think of crazy things when it’s quiet, and Jonathan definitely didn’t like where his mind wandered. He was thankful when they reached Lenora Hills in the late evening.
Jonathan woke up El and Will, helping them out of the car. The three stared at their new house. It was creamy beige color that seemed to be a fresh coat of paint, and was framed with palm trees and neat bushes. It didn’t look real. It was nothing like their house in Hawkins. Although, they suppose that’s the point. The door opened and Joyce waved happily, she had gotten there about an hour or two earlier because she didn’t have to make as many stops.
“Come in, come in!” Joyce called, “Welcome to the home of healing!”
Will and Jonathan exchanged looks. El, who didn’t quite catch how horribly corny Joyce was being, took the first steps inside. Jonathan and Will follow shortly behind her.
“Whoa,” Jonathan said upon stepping inside. “It’s… bigger than I expected.”
Will wandered through the hallway, dragging his fingertips along the wallpaper. No flickering lights. No cold spots. Nothing is crawling out of the walls. It was a win in Will’s book, for sure.
Eleven explored the kitchen, touching every light switch and cupboard handle, cataloging every harmless object. She opened the refrigerator and stared inside for a long time, then quietly closed it again.
Joyce had spent the couple of hours she was alone unpacking, but there was still a lot to be done. Thankfully, the house was already furnished. Although the furniture was horribly ugly, it was nothing they couldn’t recover or hide with a pretty decorative pillow. Will and El eventually crossed paths in the midst of their explorations and noticed Jonathan had already called dibs on a room, immediately unpacking his walkman and plopping down on the bare mattress. Will realized they’d have to pick a room, and assuming Joyce got the master bedroom, there were only two left. Will cleared his throat,
“You can take the bigger room,” Will said, “I like having less space to clean, anyway.”
El nodded and gently pushed the door open wider with her finger tips, looking around her new room. Will’s room was directly next to hers, meaning they shared a wall. El noticed a tiny hole in the wall near the head of the bed. It was pretty small, only big enough to fit her thumb through, but still noticeable. She peeked through the hole, and saw Will sorting the things from his car bag into piles. She stuck her pointer finger through the wall, and began to wiggle it around.
“Will Byyeerrss…” Eleven teased Will using the same voice Joyce used when she pretended to be a witch, a story Jonathan had told her in the car. Will immediately jolted back, looking around the room for the source of the voice, only to find a curled finger sticking out of his wall.
“Did you make that hole?” Will said, climbing onto his bed and resting on his knees so he could see Eleven from the gap after she retracted her finger.
“No,” She giggled, still laughing at her witch joke, “I found it.”
Will poked his finger through, making a curious humming sound.
“I guess these walls are pretty thin.”
“We have a window into each other's rooms!” El exclaimed, Will laughed a bit.
“Perfect, now you can watch me sleep.”
“I can!” El nodded, not catching onto Will’s sarcasm. Will wiggled his finger at El before pulling it out. “And if you want to talk to me at night, you can.”
Will couldn’t help but smile. El pressed her eye against the hole.
“I see you smiling! You never smile!”
“I smile!” Will defended, El shook her head.
“Not when I can see. Your teeth are like a bunny!”
Will covered his mouth, “Don’t talk about my teeth!”
The two continued to playfully bicker, the thin walls allowing Joyce to hear the mumbles of their conversation from the kitchen as she unpacked the silverware. Once finished, she made her way towards Jonathan’s room, where he was once again lying on his stomach as flat as a pancake.
“You sleeping?” Joyce asked, she got a grunt from Jonathan in response. “I’ll take that as a no.” Joyce hummed, sitting on the edge of Jonathan’s bed.
Jonathan peeled one eye open and looked up at her with a half-grimace. "I feel like I drove across five dimensions."
Joyce chuckled softly and smoothed his hair, the way she used to when he was little. “Well, you did drive across Oklahoma. That has to count as at least two dimensions.”
Jonathan gave a tired smile, burying his face in the pillow. “I can’t believe we’re really here. It doesn’t feel real.”
“I know,” Joyce said, her voice soft and thoughtful, “It’s going to take some time to feel like home. But it will, okay? You made it here. We all made it here.” She squeezed his shoulder gently. “That’s something.”
From the hallway, they could hear a faint thump, followed by loud laughter, El and Will again. Jonathan turned his head toward the sound and smiled despite himself.
“They’re bonding,” Joyce said, standing up with a smirk. “It’s weird, but kind of sweet.”
“Yeah,” Jonathan agreed, eyes closing again, “They’re good for each other.”
Joyce paused at the door. “You’re good for them too.”
Jonathan didn’t respond, but the small upturn at the corner of his mouth said enough.
જ⁀➴
Later that night, after an unimpressive pizza dinner, the house was mostly quiet. Joyce had gone to bed with an old mystery novel she was pretending to read, and Jonathan had passed out again in the same position he'd held since they arrived.
Will sat in his room, sketchbook in his lap, back propped against the wall (the one with the hole). He hadn’t drawn much in weeks, but tonight, in this weird new place, it felt like something worth trying.
Across the wall, El was sitting cross-legged on her bed with the lamp on low, flipping through a beat-up copy of an X-Men comic Dustin gifted her. At the sight of the hole, she looked over, saw no finger, and reached for a pen. She pulled out a page from her book (one without words, it was just blank at the end, but don’t tell Dustin she ruined one of his precious copies) and scribbled on it.
Then, she folded the paper and pushed it through the hole.
Will blinked and caught the note as it slipped through. He opened it.
‘Hi. Are you still awake?’
Will stared at the note. Jesus, El’s handwriting was truly something else. He grabbed his pen and wrote on the back.
‘Yeah.’
He pushed it back through.
The exchange continued, soft and silent. Their voices traded for scribbled thoughts:
‘Do you think Mike will write me letters?’
‘I think he’ll try. But he sucks at stamps.’
‘If he doesn't write letters, does that mean he doesn’t love me?’
‘No. That just means he’s Mike.’
After a pause, another note slipped through:
‘Do you miss being normal?’
Will stared at that one a little longer before replying.
‘I don’t know if I ever was.’
He waited for a response, but none came. Instead, a little square of something else slid through the wall. Upon inspection, Will saw it was a folded tissue. Inside was a tiny pink bead from El’s bracelet. One of the stretchy ones Max had helped her make. It was worn and fraying at the edges. Will held it in his palm, feeling its smallness, its weight.
"That’s for luck," El whispered through the wall, her voice muffled. “In case you need it.”
Will placed the bead on the nightstand beside his bed and whispered back, “Thanks.”
There was a long, easy quiet. The kind Joyce had once said didn’t need to be filled unless one of them really needed it.
And from the other side of the wall, El said, “Goodnight, Will.”
Will didn’t answer right away. He looked around at his new room. The blank walls, the palm tree shadows dancing from the window, the strange hum of California night.
Then he smiled, just a little.
“Goodnight, El.”
˚➶ ｡˚