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A heavy silence brews at the Byers’ dining table. Will is sketching, or rather, pretending to sketch. He is really watching El, who has her nose pointed at a math workbook. Will swallows and looks down at his paper. On it there are a few circles and mapping lines, but he doesn’t remember what they were meant to be. He erases them.
El opens her mouth. Will darts his head, ears perking, but she simply yawns.
Whatever, this is so stupid.
Will picks up his paper and goes to his room without a word.
—
It’s been a couple of months since the Byers moved to Lenora. Will wasn’t really happy about the move, but he couldn’t say he didn’t understand his mom’s decision. Will wasn’t sure he’d ever stop having nightmares, but moving across the country did do something to ease his worries, however minimal.
In anticipation of the move, the one thing he found himself looking forward to was living with El. He knew earlier that summer he had blamed a lot of his frustrations on El, but he also knew she hadn’t done anything wrong. Quite the opposite actually. His own selfish feelings may have briefly clouded his judgement of her, but it was a petty and small thing he wanted to let go of. He thought this would happen naturally with the move and well, in some ways it had. He gets a pang of envy whenever he finds a letter addressed to El in the mail, but he doesn’t hold that against her. He’s moving on (Maybe… How is he meant to do that?).
What hasn’t gone as he’d please is his and El’s relationship. Things between them have been so… neutral. They’re nice to each other. Every once in a while one laughs at something the other said, but it’s all so surface level. They stick near each other in school because they don’t have anyone else, but they don’t really have each other either.
Will’s not sure how to talk to her, or if she even wants him to talk to her. He had been hoping they’d just naturally drift together, but now he realizes he needs to put some effort in if he wants to be closer to her. The problem is he doesn’t know what that effort should look like, because he has been trying. He asks about her classes and offers to help her with any school work. He’s given her some of his clothes. He chats with her at breakfast. It doesn’t feel like anything is changing.
Now Will fears this is how the rest of their relationship is doomed to be—two kids with a connection so deep but a relationship so superficial—all the way until graduation. And then what?
It’s only been a couple months, Will reminds himself. And this move was probably an even bigger adjustment for El than for him. Maybe there isn’t anything to do aside from continuing to talk to her and waiting.
He could wait.
—
The past few weeks things have been… different. Different between Will and El that is. So Will should be happy, right? Their relationship is finally starting to shift. But now Will thinks he should have been more specific with his wishes…
Because El will not stop pissing him off.
And this isn’t the same kind of annoyance he gets whenever she receives yet another letter from Mike, no. This is one hundred percent, pure El getting on his nerves. And Will doesn’t think of himself as a particularly irritable person.
It started with the mornings and El taking too long in the bathroom. When and why El started going to the bathroom earlier and taking twice as long, Will isn’t sure. After a week of this, Will considered getting up earlier to steal the bathroom first, but he decided that was stupid. All she was doing was getting ready for the morning. He could just ask if he could use the bathroom at the same time—all he really had to do was brush his teeth—so that their rush out the door would be a bit less haphazard.
“I don’t wanna rush you or anything, so maybe we could use the bathroom at the same time?” he had asked.
El’s face hadn’t conveyed any emotion. “Okay,” she simply said.
Will’s brows furrowed. Nope. Don’t overthink it. She said okay. He gave her a quiet “cool” and left the conversation at that.
The next morning, he gave the bathroom door a tentative knock, just a little irked she hadn’t left it open.
“Come in.”
Will opened the door. El stood at the sink counter, washing her face. He moved to stand beside her. As he pumped toothpaste onto his toothbrush, El began to fidget with her hair. Mom cut it for the first time a couple weeks ago. Her bangs, along with the rest of her hair, were cut about an inch too short, which Mom always did. Will supposed it was to buy more time until she had to do it again.
El raked her fingers through her hair, pushing the bangs in different directions, but they always fell straight down. As she did, her elbow jutted out, bumping into Will. And kept bumping into Will.
He ignored it. He was brushing his teeth. El could mess with her hair all she wanted, even if the differences were minute at best. He was brushing his teeth.
The problem was that she kept doing this every day. Will considered going back to using the bathroom after her, but he had already gone through the effort of asking, so back pedaling felt weird. And it was only two minutes of his day. El could bump into him for two minutes of the day.
But then he noticed the hair in the shower. A lot of it. It wasn’t even in one spot, like she had bothered to gather it and just forgot to toss it out. It was scattered everywhere, so it was impossible to not step on it.
Whatever. He could let that go too. Did the laboratory or Hopper’s cabin even have a shower? He didn’t want to make her feel bad.
Then there was the day he wanted to do laundry, and El beat him to it. Which wouldn’t have been a big deal but El would always forget how to work the washer and dryer, and after trying to do it on her own she would then have to ask Mom for help and it’d take way longer than it needed to. And Will wanted to have clean clothes to change into so he could take a shower. He decided to say something as El loaded her dirty clothes.
“Hey, do you want any help getting your load started?”
“No, I’m fine.”
Will hesitated. He noticed a sweater among the laundry he wasn’t too sure was machine-washable. “Are you sure? It’s just, I know you sometimes struggle-”
“I said I’m fine.”
Will startled. Was she mad at him? For offering to help?
He bit his tongue. “Okay, just thought I’d offer,” he mumbled, walking away.
An hour later El was calling Mom for help.
Will drags his hands over his face and groans. It’s eight in the morning on a Saturday. He has yet to get out of bed. He has a headache. Thinking about El hasn’t helped. He swallows his frustrations.
He remembers he had an early dinner last night—food would likely do his headache some good. But he feels a bit sick and nothing sounds particularly appetizing. Then he remembers they have just enough remaining instant oatmeal for him to have breakfast. That actually sounds quite good.
He swings his feet over his bed and walks quietly to the kitchen—he assumes from her cracked door that El is up, but Mom and Jonathan remain fast asleep. He opens the cupboard door. The oatmeal is gone.
Will furrows his brows. He stands on his tip-toes, sifting through the higher shelves because the oatmeal was definitely there last night. Then he spots the empty Quakers box sitting atop the bin.
“El!” he shouts. So much for being quiet.
A few seconds pass and El shuffles into the common area.
“Did you eat the last of the oatmeal?” There’s a venom in his voice he didn’t intend to be there. He’s not sure what he intends.
“Yeah?” El answers.
Will opens his mouth, wanting to say he was planning on eating it, but stops himself because how could El have known that? But also it was a bit of an unspoken rule that the oatmeal was mostly Will’s. Jonathan thought it was watery and gross, if Mom was low on time then she was more likely to just have a cup of coffee, and-
“Since when did you stop having Eggos for breakfast?”
El shrugs. “I didn’t stop. I just didn’t today.”
“Well-” Will struggles for words. There isn’t much to say, but he’s tired and hungry, and well, he was really looking forward to the oatmeal, okay? “I’d rather you had asked before you ate the last of it.”
“Fine,” El says, and Will supposes that’s the end of that, but then he catches her rolling her eyes at him.
“Seriously?”
El scoffs. “What?”
“I’m sorry I’m upset but do you really have to roll your eyes at me?”
El crosses her arms. “I think you were being dramatic. Joyce says we share,” El emphasizes, gesturing her hand between them. And she’s right, Mom made a point of making El feel welcome, that what’s theirs was hers. El looks to the side. “You would know. You keep stealing my shampoo.”
Will’s mouth gapes. It was about a month ago he ran out of shampoo and used a bit of El’s. But, well, he had been procrastinating on asking Mom for more and he had never really stopped using El’s.
“It- it’s just until I get more! And it’s only a little, it’s not like I have much hair.” Will pauses. He shouldn’t say anything else. “Unlike you! I mean, jeez, El. It’s like you shed over the whole shower!”
El’s eyebrows shoot up her forehead before her whole face scrunches. “You shed too!”
“What?” Will asks, confused.
El stomps toward the dining table and throws an arm toward Will’s scattered art supplies and half finished drawings. “I can never sit at this part of the table! Your art is always there!”
“You can just sit at another part of the table!”
El throws her head back and groans. “I know! I do! But it’d be nice if I could sometimes!”
“Yeah, well, it’d be nice if sometimes you didn’t take forever in the bathroom every morning!”
El frowns. “It’d be nice if you used the bathroom every morning! You get morning breath on the weekends!”
Will’s face flushes. “I- I do it later in the day!”
El gives a judgemental squint. She whispers, “Mouth breather.”
The embarrassment leaves Will. “Oh really? Is it annoying?” He steps closer and purposefully exhales. “Is this annoying you?”
El’s nose scrunches. “Yes!”
El shoves Will away, but he still has a headache so it sends a pang of pain through his head, making him shove El back on instinct. El’s mouth shrinks and her cheeks puff. Then she’s dashing toward the table and scooping Will’s things up in her arms.
“El!”
Will starts chasing after her. She's already rounded the table, but Will’s legs are longer, so he’s catching up to her, and suddenly they’re both jumping over the back of the couch and have tumbled onto the floor. Will is disoriented for a moment before he realizes he is lying on El’s stomach and tries to roll off of her, but there isn’t much space on the floor between the couch and the coffee table.
God, this reminds him of back in elementary school when he and Jonathan were bickering over TV recordings and he had somehow ended up stealing one of his vinyls—he was small and knew Jonathan would catch him, so he hid under his bed, the space just a bit too tight for Jonathan. He can’t even remember what TV shows they were arguing over—it was just a dumb sibling fight.
That’s when it hits him.
He locks eyes with El. She seems to realize it too.
They both burst out laughing.
“This is so ridiculous,” Will says between giggles.
El agrees not with words but her eyes. She sits up. “You can have your things back,” she offers, holding out the miscellaneous art supplies.
Will laughs. “Thanks.”
It’d be easy to end the conversation here. Will’s chest feels lighter having gained some new perspective on the depth of his annoyance toward El, but the air still sits heavy between them.
Will has been so scared to talk to El, really talk to her, and has avoided it in the name of not wanting to push boundaries, in giving El time to open up, but maybe that was cowardice.
Will forces the words out, “I want us to be friends and I feel like we aren’t.”
El’s lips part. She looks down and slowly nods.
“Do-” Will swallows. “Do you also want to be friends?”
El nods again, faster this time.
Will sighs. “Good.” He fidgets with the cap of a pen. “With the rest of the party… we kinda just became friends naturally, so I’ve never really had to go out of my way to make a friend before. And you know we were never popular at school so… I kinda suck at it.” Will laughs at himself.
El pulls her knees up to her chest. “Not more than me.”
Will frowns. “Well that’s not really fair-”
“Still,” El cuts him off.
There’s a beat of silence. Will wants to tell her otherwise, but he remembers when his loved ones would try to convince him he wasn’t a freak. It never made him feel better.
“Well, I guess we can practice together?” he suggests. “Or suck at it together, whichever works.”
El laughs. Her expression goes solemn as she hides behind her knees. “I thought you didn’t like me.”
“What?”
“Last summer. You never talked to me.”
Oh. Will’s not sure what to say, because friends don’t lie, so it’d be a pretty crappy start to their friendship to tell one, but he can’t really say the whole truth either.
“In the summer, before everything happened, I was the only one not dating someone, so it felt like I was being left behind,” Will begins. “And it’s stupid, but in my head it felt like you were part of the reason I didn’t get to have as much fun with my friends.” He locks eyes with her. “But I’ve never disliked you, El, okay? I’m sorry I didn’t make that clear.”
El’s eyes seem to shine a bit brighter.
Will smiles. He chuckles, “To be honest, I wasn’t sure if you liked me either.”
El shakes her head. “I like you.” She picks at a nail bed. “I’m sorry I didn’t make that clear too. I want to talk to you, but I get nervous. I know I don’t talk that good, and I want to say what I mean. And with feelings, I know there is a lot of new ones.”
Will’s brows furrow. He was following her until the last sentence. “New ones? Like, you’re feeling new feelings?”
“No, just, the feelings are complicated. Easy to not understand. New ones.”
Will stares. Then he thinks he realizes. “Oh, do you mean nuance?”
El’s face goes red. She buries her face in her hands. “See! This is what I mean! It makes me feel stupid. It is the worst in school. There are a lot of words I don’t know—if I hear them I spell them wrong, if I read them I say them wrong, or I get them wrong no matter what!”
“El, you are not stupid.” As Will says it he remembers what he had said to Mike that summer. So you can swap spit with some stupid girl? He wonders if Mike ever told El he said that, because even then that’s not what he really meant. He takes a breath and decides not to dwell on it. “This is your first ever time in school and you had to start with high school. That’s honestly evil.”
El laughs. “Thank you…”
“And, hey, if you ever hear a word, or anything really, that you don’t know, I can try to help. We could even pass notes or come up with a secret code or something.”
El giggles. “Stacey and Jenny got in trouble yesterday for passing a note.”
Ah, true. “Okay, then we don’t have to do that. But still.”
El nods. She hugs herself. “I… I want to be family.”
Something catches in Will’s chest. “Me too.”
They smile at each other. They still have a lot more time to spend together and conversations to have, but for the first time Will feels assured that things between the two of them are changing, and for the better.
—
Dear Mike,
Will and I fought this week, but it was a good thing. Will says it was a ‘sibling fight.’ It brought us closer. We are going to try to annoy each other less, but we realize it is normal to annoy each other a little. We are becoming family.
We want to spend more time together. Winter break is soon and we are going to take turns picking movies to watch together. I don’t know that many movies, so I am letting Will pick first. We are going to watch The Goonies. I am excited! Will says that you like that movie a lot and I should tell you about it after I watch it. I hope I like it too!
We feel silly it took us so long to talk to each other. But it is the now that is important.
I wish we could go to Hawkins for Winter break. I hope we get to see each other soon. I miss you.
Love,
El