Chapter Text
El notices. Despite what Mike may think (if he even thinks at all), she notices.
She notices the letters signed with From and not Love. She notices how he never holds her close unless he almost loses her. She notices the way he only says he loves her when he’s afraid of her. She wonders if Mike even knows he’s doing it. If he recognizes the fear that permeates his interactions with her. Does he kiss her so roughly to wash away her monstrosity? Does he rarely come up for air cause he can pretend she’s some normal girl if he doesn’t have to see her face? Most of all, El questions if Mike knows about her letters to Dustin. How she writes to his best friend, spilling her heart out with promises to keep it secret. Would he be mad at the betrayal, or relieved he’s not intertwined with a monster anymore?
With every letter signed with love to Dustin an invisible knot loosens in her chest. He tells her about the new inventions, Hellfire, movies, anything and everything he wants. She responds in kind, spilling about her acclimating to California, to the mean girls and roller rinks, and the way Joyce cuts her bangs over the kitchen sink. She sends pictures of herself with her new hair, and he sends back photos of him learning guitar with Eddie. On the slow nights with Joyce’s job, El goes to dial in the Wheeler’s number, but punches in the Henderson’s instead. She tries, seriously, she tries to call Mike but she feels this sinking despair every time she hears the dial tone. Why fawn over the boy who won’t tell her “I love you” when the kindest boy she’s ever met is right there?
El keeps these calls and letters secret, hidden far from prying eyes. She hides Dustin’s responses with her dad’s goodbye letter, deep in a shoebox under her bed. Whenever Will asks who she’s talking to, she says Mike. Will never wants to talk to Mike anymore, not with him never calling or writing to Will. In the beginning he used to ask if he could talk to Mike, but she kept declining. She met his declining desire to talk to Mike with some sick intertwining sense of pleasure and guilt. Mike should’ve written to Will, and he should’ve told her that he loved her. But the pang of despair in her brother’s eyes always sends guilt swirling through her gut. She’s hurting him, she knows this, but she’s too far gone in her own despair. Her dad is dead, she’s thousands of miles away from the only people who actually know her, and she’s having to learn to adjust to a society she was never meant to be in. El was only ever meant to be 011, the super—soldier and government weapon, not El or Jane Hopper. The only sense of normalcy she gets is her talks with Dustin. He makes her feel real in a way Mike, or Dad, or anyone besides Max could. And El doesn’t love Max, at least, not in the way she loves Dustin or the way she’s supposed to love Mike.
Worst of all, El knows Dustin doesn’t realize her actual feelings for him. She made sure of it, the guilt of being in love with her boyfriend’s best friend eating her alive. She tells him she signs each letter to everyone with Love, that she talks to him this much because he’s the only one who writes back as much as she does. But that’s not true, and she knows it. She writes to Mike fairly often, Max even more so than Mike, and rarely anything to Lucas (she’s mad at him still for hurting her best friend), and nothing to anyone else. She signs Love to Mike cause she has to, Max with friendly love, and From to Lucas. No one else gets the special cursive “Love, Jane” she gives to Dustin. No one else gets the volume of letters and the mistakes she makes.
Every night she debates never speaking to Dustin again, to just write to Mike and Max. To actually call her boyfriend and let her brother speak to his dearest friend. But then she sees the From’s on every hollow letter Mike sends, and Dustin’s care in every sentence. Suddenly, she doesn’t feel so bad.