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Arlene Carter considers herself a relatively well-adjusted person. This is by her standards, which are possibly a dip lower than everybody else’s, but having spent a good five years as a parole officer, and then another fifteen as a psychotherapist, she’s seen and heard a lot of situations that reek of far more insecurity than she’s ever had to deal with. She doesn’t judge, necessarily—she herself has experienced far too much unpleasantry in her own life to wrinkle her nose at someone else’s—but she sometimes catches herself comparing her own struggles to those of her clients. Certainly she is no longer surprised by much. 

That’s all to say, when Michael Wheeler walks into her counseling office on a Thursday afternoon in June, she’s not struck by any particular peculiarities. He looks, to her, like an average middle-aged man. At fifty-five years old, his hair is turning dusty gray at the temples. He walks sort of hunched over, or crumpled, as though he’s trying to appear unbothered, but doing so by hiding the parts of him that care. It’s not an unusual posture, Arlene recalls. 

Overall, there’s nothing unusual about Michael Wheeler. Not at first glance. 

Not when going through his intake forms, either. He’s married, apparently, with two children—both high school age now—and he comes from a small town in Indiana. She’s not sure where, but she’s sure she’s heard of Hawkins before. Like hearing the name of a no-longer-relevant celebrity whom you can’t recall anything about. 

She’s not even sure what he’s here for. Most middle-aged men willing to see a therapist have gaping, obvious problems. And they’re usually only there because their wife made them go. 

She knows enough after fifteen years to put some things together. He listed his relationship with his family as strained on his intake form. His parents, he stated, are divorced. It doesn’t take a genius, she thinks, to determine that he’s probably one of the many victims of marrying into an empty American dream.

“Michael?” She greets him, holding out a hand. 

He shakes her hand, not meeting her eyes. She studies him, trying to get a firmer foothold. There are lots and lots of tired lines etched in his face. His glasses obscure his eyes for the most part, but she thinks she sees something injured in them. Something pained. 

Not unusual for a therapist’s office. 

“You can call me Mike,” he replies. “Only my mom calls me Michael, and now she mostly calls me Ted because she has dementia and she can’t remember who I am.”

Ted, Arlene recalls, is Mike’s father’s name. She files this information away for later. “Please, sit down.”

Mike takes an awkward seat, perched on the very edge of the dark orange sofa in the corner. Arlene sits across from him in her wicker chair. 

“So, Mike, how are you feeling today?”

“Uh. Fine.” Mike’s leg bounces up and down. He fiddles with a loose string on the sleeve of his yellow and blue plaid shirt. He frowns. “Wait. I’m supposed to tell you the truth, right?”

Arlene smiles. “It helps if you’re honest, yeah. Despite what they say, we therapists are not mind readers.”

“Right. Okay, then. I’m…not great, actually. My dad started ranting about a bunch of stupid shit last Sunday when we went to dinner with him, and my wife started arguing, and then she got mad at me afterwards because I didn’t take her side.”

Definitely family issues, Arlene thinks. “That’s difficult. Did you agree with your dad, about what he was saying?”

“No, not at all! He was talking about how women have become too independent, and men have become too—” he puts air quotes around the word, “—‘gay,’ and it was just so stupid. I don’t know, I should have said something, but it’s not like that would’ve done anything but escalate it.”

Arlene asks, gently, “Maybe it would have shown your wife that you supported her?”

Mike looks defensive for a minute, but his expression quickly slackens. He has the demeanor of a man who has begun to let himself be dragged silently through life, however upsetting it may be. “I guess, yeah. I should have said something.”

“Did you make amends with your wife, afterwards?” 

His wife, she recalls, is named Evelyn. She wonders whether there’s something behind his refusal to say her name, or if it’s just too awkward to insert it at this point in the conversation. 

He shrugs. “I guess so. We talked about it. She’ll probably forget about it by next week, anyway. I said I was sorry, but I apologize a lot. I don’t think it means much to anyone anymore.”

“Do you mean it?”

“Huh?”

“When you apologize. Do you think you mean what you’re saying, even if you say it often?”

“Well, yeah,” he waves a hand at the air, like he’s swatting away the question. “Obviously. I’m kind of a shitty person. I thought maybe therapy would help or something, but I think deep down, I’m just selfish and useless. I don’t know if you can really help me with that.”

Arlene inhales, studying Mike Wheeler for several seconds. He looks—above all—exhausted. His posture is hunched, his eyes are downcast and baggy, his fingers clench and unclench the fabric of his pants. His glasses have slid down to the very tip of his nose, but he doesn’t seem to have the energy to push them back to his eyes. 

Arlene imagines, not for the first time, how different her job would be if society were kinder. If things weren’t the way that they were. She wondered if she would even have much of a job at all. 

“Do you want me to help you?” She asks. 

Mike huffs. “I don’t know. I don’t know if you can.”

“Will you allow me to try?”

Mike swallows. It’s a heavy, noticeable gesture. “Knock yourself out.”

Arlene smiles. “Okay, sure. Can you tell me why you decided to come and see me?”

“Uh. Like. Why I wanted to see you specifically, or why I wanted to see a therapist?”

Curiosity paves her thoughts. “Both, if you’re comfortable sharing.”

“Uh, okay. So, last week, I woke up, right? And I just…didn’t get up. I was laying in bed—my wife had already left to take the girls to school—and I just…I couldn’t make myself get up. I knew I had to shower, and get dressed, and go to work—well, I work from home, but I had to get up for it—and, you know, eat, and stuff. But I couldn’t. Nothing I thought of could get me out of bed. I just lay there for a few hours, I think, and then eventually I fell back asleep. My wife got home at four and woke me up. She was really mad at me—with good reason, you know—because I was supposed to pick up the girls and take them to soccer practice. I got out of bed then, when she was yelling at me, but before that it was…impossible.”

“That’s scary,” Arlene says, again wondering about the use of my wife and the girls rather than their names. “Were you just tired? Or were you overwhelmed by everything you had to do?”

Mike shakes his head. “I was…just…nothing. Nothing had a point. I lay there, trying to come up with one good reason for me to exist in the world, and there wasn’t any.”

“Is that something you feel often?”

“I mean, kind of? That was the only time it’s prevented me from getting up.”

“Does it make it difficult for you to get up?”

“Yeah, I guess so. But, I mean, last week…that was the worst. I wanted to just…stop existing. And I couldn’t move. So I decided I should probably see someone.”

Arlene nods. “A lot of people probably wouldn’t come to that conclusion.”

“Yeah,” Mike frowns. Doesn’t elaborate. It’s not quite baffling—Arlene’s seen far too much to be baffled—but it’s definitely out of the ordinary. A fifty-five year old man deciding to go to therapy for his mental health. As far as Arlene can tell, his wife has nothing to do with this. 

In fact—

“My wife doesn’t even know I’m here,” Mike adds. “She probably thinks I’m at the bar or something.”

“Do you drink often?” Arlene had read his intake forms, which informed her that Mike had little to no alcohol consumption. But fifty-five year old men are rarely honest the first time, if ever. 

“No,” Mike replies, looking at his hands. “Actually, I go there to get away from…everything. Not to drink. Just to…act like an adult, I guess. Kids are lucky. If they want to escape something they can go play pretend. If I want to play pretend, I have to go to the bar to do it.”

“You’re an author,” Arlene recalls. “You write fiction, yeah? Is that an escape, of sorts? Can you—as you say—play pretend with the stories you write?”

Mike shakes his head, eyes trained on his lap. His glasses teeter on his nose. “No. I can’t…I’ve been so awful about writing lately. Everything I write is just…depressing. Nobody wants to read that shit, and I don’t even want to write it. But writing happy endings just feels goddamn stupid.”

“Okay,” Arlene replies. She makes a note to try and read some of Mike’s published works. “So, your wife thinks you’re at the bar. Do you go to the bar often, to escape?”

“More, lately. I don’t go for that long. It’s just…our house is so cramped. I mean, it’s big, but it feels like hell if I’m there for too long, and I’m just…Jesus, I’m a miserable asshole. I’m just like my father.”

“You said your father was the one saying sexist and homophobic things at the dinner table?”

Mike gives a half-shrug, as though to say what of it? “Yeah.”

“Would you ever say those things? Or believe them?”

Mike blanches. “Of course not.”

“Well, then, you can’t be just like your father.”

“I’m as good as,” Mike shakes his head. “I hate my wife, barely tolerate my kids, and I sit at home all day doing jack shit. Sounds a lot like Ted Wheeler to me.”

The suburban American dream is something Arlene is intimately familiar with, as well as the countless lives it’s ruined. There’s something deeply sinister, she feels, about plasticky perfection being marketed to miserable people. About plastered-on happiness that needs to be repainted every ten business days. She’s never been able to shake the feeling that every smiling suburban couple is, inevitably, a pair of victims, fallen prey to one of the biggest lies America has to offer: normalcy.

Mike Wheeler, she thinks, is no exception. 

“Do you really hate your wife?”

Mike dispels a breath of air. “No. I don’t think so, at least. I don’t hate her. She’s…actually a much better person than I am. Although that bar’s on the goddamn floor, to be clear. She’s…lovely. My daughters, too. They deserve…fuck, they deserve anything better than me.“

Arlene asks, “Do you think you can give them that? Do you think you can improve, for them?”

“Fuck, no,” Mike shakes his head. “Look, I’m here so I don’t wake up one day and decide it’s not worth the effort to keep breathing. I’m under no delusions about my inevitable inadequacy as a father and husband.” He blanches at the last words. “Jesus, I’m such an idiot. I’ve ruined three people’s lives at the expense of my own shitty one.”

“Have you talked to your wife about any of this?”

Mike stares. “No, what would I possibly say? That I actually can’t stand her, or the life we’ve made, and that I only ever married her in the first place because I thought marriage was what I had to do?”

There it is, thinks Arlene. Society strikes again. 

“Maybe if you spoke with her, you’d be able to understand each other better. You said your relationship with her was strained. Is it possible she already notices your disinterest in your family, and resents you for it?”

“Yeah, it’s definitely possible,” Mike says, bitterly. “I don’t see how bringing it up would make a difference, though. It’s not like we can divorce. It wouldn’t make sense to. We have a nice house, and Jane and Edie would be devastated for no reason. Plus, my dad would have even more reason to hate the both of us, and while I’m fine with my goddamn father telling me I’m a failure, I really don’t want him calling her a lazy whore, which he’s done before anyway.”

Arlene privately thinks that Mike seems absolutely nothing like his father. She wants to ask about his mother, but recalls the bit about her having dementia and decides to save it for a later topic. 

“Okay,” she says, instead. “So, you don’t want to talk to her about it. Do you have any friends outside of your family? People you do feel comfortable around?”

Mike looks pained. “Not…not since high school, honestly.”

Mike Wheeler is a fifty-five year old man, who reasonably graduated high school thirty-seven years ago. He resents his family, and he’s sitting across from a therapist he booked himself, utter hopelessness settled in his expression. 

Arlene wants, with every fiber of her being, to lift that mask of despair.

“I mean, I’m friends with some of them on Facebook,” Mike amends, as though to make Arlene feel better. “I actually—well, I went to my friend Lucas’s wedding a few years ago. Or—wait, that was a while ago, actually. Ten years? Fifteen? I don’t remember. I…” He pauses, counting on his fingers, a devastatingly concentrated look on his face. After several seconds, he gives up. “Jesus, I don’t know. When we were kids, we all thought we were total losers. Nerds and all that, you know. Who knew I’d grow up to be a real loser?”

“Is there anyone you work with whom you’re friendly with?”

Mike sighs. “No. Writing is lonely, and my publisher kind of hates me right now. I haven’t finished anything in…Jesus, I don’t know. Long enough that he’s stopped emailing.”

Arlene ponders the passage of time, and how it seems to affect the most vulnerable the hardest. It’s a story she’s heard a hundred times. A day passes, and then another, and then it’s been a year, and two, and a century. 

Where did the time go?

Well, that’s the answer. It went. It went, and it kept going, and everyone continued to wait for it even as it was miles ahead. 

Mike continues, “High school’s weird, right? It’s like…never again will I be surrounded by the same people every day. The people I like. The people I lo—” He cuts himself off abruptly, expression suddenly stony. “I think everyone else…somehow, they knew how to grow up. They knew what they wanted, what they liked, how they wanted their lives to go. And I just…stayed where I was. Because they had all these future plans, right, but I never had any because when I thought of the future, it was just them, and games in my basement, and…everything I loved. Everything we never got enough of.”

“It’s hard to move on,” Arlene supplies. “Especially if you feel like things are being left unfinished.”

“Exactly,” Mike looks heartbroken for a second, like she’s finally pulled off his mask, but underneath is simply all the reasons for his hurt. “I—I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t come up with anything I wanted more than to just…be a kid again. To just have everything be simple and fun and all in one place.”

“Are you sure your friends didn’t feel the same?”

Mike’s expression hurts to look at. It’s like he’s unwrenching unwilling memories from a vault deep inside him. “I…I thought, at one point, that my best friend—Will—might feel the same. That he wanted to…to play games for the rest of our lives, too. He said so, once. Said that’s what he wanted. But I think it was just a joke, you know. Like what you say when you know you really won’t end up playing games forever, or getting together once a month, or keeping in touch. But I really…I thought maybe he meant it. I thought…Jesus, I don’t know. I don’t think I ever really grew up properly, anyway.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

Mike’s eyes are a bit glossy. Not enough that he doesn’t blink it all away, but it’s still there. “Graduation. He went straight to California after that, and eventually my family moved here to Dallas, and I—I wanted to write, but he never did, and I assumed he would, if he cared at all, and then it was too late to do anything because it had been so long.”

Mike looks broken. His hands swipe desperately at his eyes underneath his glasses. 

“He got married. I saw, on Facebook. I’m not friends with him—that would be weird—but he—he got married.”

“You sound upset about that.”

Mike shrugs. “I don’t know him anymore, really. It doesn’t matter. I mean, I thought, maybe, you know, that he would invite me, since we were best friends for like fourteen years, but whatever. It’s not like we are anymore.”

He swallows. There’s something else he wants to say. Arlene can tell, the way his mouth stays open, tongue darting out to wet his lips as though he wants to speak, but can’t force the words from his throat. 

He finally says, “Uh. You asked, also. Why I chose you, specifically.”

Arlene files away this Will in her mind, switching gears. “Yes?”

“It’s because you…well, you’re…you have a wife, right?”

Arlene’s eyes widen, realization washing over her. “Right.”

“And you…well, I just…” he trails off. 

“I’m safe, if you need to talk about anything…similar to that.” She doesn’t say queer or gay, because those words scare people. It’s strange how much they do—they’re just descriptions—but that’s society’s fault again, she supposes. 

Mike looks very pale. “No, it’s not—I mean, not me, you know. It’s…my friend. Will? He married a man.”

Arlene strings together this mush of information, taking in Mike Wheeler with new eyes. Things are—slowly—piecing themselves together. She doesn’t say this, though. 

She says, “I see. Was that…hard for you to think about?”

Mike shakes his head, rapidly. “No! No, no, he told us all he was…you know…when we were in high school. It’s fine. It was fine. I just…I wanted to make sure you weren’t…that you wouldn’t be anything like the people that used to bully him.”

“Right,” she nods, this Will person suddenly feeling like a much more major character than she’d initially realized. “That makes sense.”

Mike nods, looking highly relieved.

Arlene glances at the clock. “We’re almost out of time for today, but do you feel like booking another session with me?”

Mike hesitates. 

She says, “It’s okay if not. I want you to get something out of this. If you hate me, just tell me to peace out.”

Mike frowns. “I don’t hate you. But what if it doesn’t work?”

The thing about therapy, Arlene has realized, is that it doesn’t work. It relaxes. It evens out. It soothes. It mends. 

To Mike, she says, “Do you think that if you talked some more about what’s giving you problems, that that might help you?”

Mike ends up agreeing to a second session. 

—

“You know what’s stupid?” Is the first thing Mike Wheeler says upon entering her office the next session. 

She raises her eyebrows, tracking his stiff movements to sitting down on the sofa. He sits only marginally more comfortably than last time, movements flighty, like he might jump up and abandon ship at any time. Or, at least, he’s given himself the option to do so. 

He continues, “Shakespeare. That’s what’s stupid. I mean, how come he gets to write the most depressing shit known to man, and everyone calls him, what, a visionary or some shit? But when I write about tragedy and bad endings, it’s just a shitty story. It’s not fair.”

“Do you enjoy Shakespeare?” 

Mike scoffs. “Does anyone actually enjoy Shakespeare?” 

Arlene laughs. “My English teachers in high school sung his praises quite highly, if I remember correctly.”

Does she remember correctly? It’s been a long time since she was in high school. How is it possible, she wonders, to still feel like she graduated yesterday, and yet remember hardly anything at all?

Mike says, “English teachers love depressing shit. I dropped out of my creative writing major because of that, actually.”

“Oh?”

Mike shrugs. “Didn’t really matter, in the end. I still ended up writing books.” He frowns. “Crazy how some people go to college for that and still don’t ever get published.”

“Do you want to write happier endings? Or do you just want people to like your sad endings?”

Mike sighs, frustration breaking through. “I just want to be happier. Like, in general.”

“What would make you happier? Have you thought about it?”

Mike huffs out a hollow laugh. “Isn’t that a question.”

Arlene waits. 

After a pause, he says, “I think I’m just…destined to be unhappy. I don’t think there was ever a chance for me, honestly. My parents were stuck in a loveless marriage, wasting away with wine and television. It was only inevitable that I would follow their lead.” Another lifeless chuckle. “Wheeler family tradition, I guess.”

“You have two sisters, correct?” 

Mike looks surprised she remembers. “Yeah.”

“Have they followed this…tradition, as well?”

“No,” Mike huffs. “They both got out. Neither of them are Wheelers anymore, though, either. Both of them married artsy dudes who pissed off our parents and got the hell out of the Wheeler curse.”

“And you?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I am the curse. I passed it on like a goddamn disease. My girls, though, they won’t. They’re smarter than me.” Mike gives Arlene a grim smile. “I just wish I could tell my wife I love her.”

“Do you?”

Mike looks conflicted. He avoids Arlene’s eyes with determination. “I…don’t know. Maybe, once, as a friend. Never the way I was supposed to. But that’s…that’s just part of the curse.”

“Do you think,” Arlene starts, “that ascribing your entire bulk of problems to a curse might simply be preventing you from addressing any of the real issues?”

Mike looks taken aback for just a second. A half-startled laugh makes its way from his mouth. He says, “Yeah, probably.”

Arlene nods. “Do you want to tell me more about your family? How do you get along with them?”

“Well, like I said, my mom has dementia now. And my dad thinks anyone who expresses opinions that aren’t his own is the scum of America. It’s funny, actually, because I married my wife so he’d stop nagging me, and now all he does is grumble about her.” Mike pauses. “I wish my mom was still…herself. She was okay, when I used to talk to her. She didn’t think like my dad. She loved us, I know that.”

“Do you still see her often?”

“Yeah, she’s at a facility near our house. I see her at least once a week, but it’s not the same. She doesn’t…she doesn’t know me.”

Mike’s voice sounds dangerously close to cracking, and Arlene doesn’t press him. She waits, to make sure he’s done talking. He blinks back tears. 

She asks, “What about your sisters? Do you get along with them?”

“I mean, I guess so. They both live awhile away. Holly’s in California, and Nancy’s in Maine. I’m…here. Our whole family moved to Dallas after…well, in 1990, and I just never left. I’m the only one of us who sees Dad regularly.”

“Is that an unwanted obligation for you?”

Mike shrugs. “I…I don’t know. I mean, he’s my dad. I’m supposed to want to talk to him. It’d be rude if I didn’t, anyway. I’ve already screwed up enough people’s lives.”

“Have you ever talked to your dad about how you feel about the things that he says?”

“Are you kidding? He’d be all, this is an inappropriate discussion, Michael, and then he’d stop talking to me. He prefers Fox News to confrontation.” Mike pauses. “Anyway, I kind of owe my parents respect and shit, since they almost both died when I was a kid.”

This is news. The bulk of the trauma Arlene had read about in Mike’s intake form had to do with his strained family life. She tries not to look too eager, but leans forward with interest regardless. 

“Do you want to talk about that?”

Mike looks away, throat bobbing uncomfortably. “Honestly, I don’t know if I’m allowed to. Government confidentiality or some shit. I don’t want to put you in danger.”

This, of course, only piques Arlene’s curiosity, but she tries to remain calm. Mind racing, she tries to remember what she’s heard about Hawkins, Indiana. Why had it sounded so familiar?

“Basically, we—that is, me and my friends and some other people—were trying to…save the world, essentially. And it ended up with my parents getting…attacked. They were in the hospital for a while after that, and then my mom, she ended up saving us in the end. And Holly got kidnapped, too.”

Arlene’s mind whirs. She’s had people, before, who use stories to cope. Who tell her tales of magic and saving the world and such to deal with the tragic realities of their lives. 

This…this doesn’t feel like that. 

“Your sister,” she confirms, and Mike nods. 

“Yeah. She’s fine now, obviously. We saved her. My parents, too. Well, except my mom has dementia, but that’s not because of…what happened. They all recovered. Only Holly was having these awful nightmares after, and she had to go to a lot of therapy and then my parents sent her to a facility to help her with her trauma because they didn’t know how to help her. She still sees somebody, I think. But, I mean, she’s alive. So. It’s all fine. Seriously. It’s not like any of it happened to me.”

“It seems like it had quite an effect on you, though,” Arlene points out, softly.

Mike shakes his head roughly. “No. I mean, yeah, a little, but it didn’t happen to me. I don’t really have the right to be…upset about it, or anything.”

“Who decides that?”

“Huh?”

“Who decides you don’t have the right to be affected by the near death of your parents, or the abduction of your sister?”

Mike shrugs, awkwardly scratching the back of his neck. “I don’t know. I mean, I should’ve been more careful in the first place, right? It’s almost my fault everything happened. I should have…prevented it. Or at least warned them. My sister…the day before she was kidnapped, she told me about this guy who was…stalking her. And I…I disregarded it. Told her she would be fine. Next thing I know, my parents are in the hospital and she’s been taken by the same guy I told her she was just imagining.”

“Was Holly ever upset at you about this?”

“What? No. Of course not. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t my fault. I should have…” Mike presses his lips together, swallowing hard. His glasses are fogging up at the edges. “I should have done something.”

“Blaming yourself won’t change the past.”

“I guess not. But I’m still shitty now, so what does that count for?”

“Your life’s not over yet, Mike. You can still change. You can still be a better person, even in small ways.”

“What, like, recycle more?”

Arlene laughs. “Sure, that. Or you can stick up for your wife at dinner. Or tell your daughters you love them. Or whatever else you regret not doing. You’re not dead, Mike. You don’t have to have all of these regrets.”

Mike swallows. “What…what if…”

Arlene waits. 

“What if there are things I needed to do—things I needed to say—that I can’t, now? Things I lost the chance to say? Things that…eat at me?”

Arlene tilts her head. “There are always things that can’t be changed. But if it helps, you could say them out loud, to yourself. Or to me. I’d always listen.”

“What if someone else needed to hear them, though? Someone I…can’t talk to now?”

“Well,” Arlene says, wishing there were magic words. Wishing she could simply charm the sorrow off of Mike’s face. “Sometimes we don’t get to tell people the things we wish we had. And that…hurts. A lot. But it’s not something we can dwell on forever, or it’ll eat us alive. I have a feeling there are things like that that have been preventing you from living.”

Mike looks devastated. Arlene wonders if the curse he’d mentioned was really just a plethora of unspoken words. 

When Mike gets up at the end of their session, hunched and grim, Arlene observes him closely. As he walks out the door, she decides she was entirely wrong when she met him. There’s definitely an unusual aspect to Michael Wheeler. And in terms of his problems, she suspects that an unhappy suburban American marriage is only the tip of the iceberg. 

—

“My girlfriend died,” Mike greets Arlene with, settling down on the sofa across from her almost immediately. 

She opens her mouth to respond, but he cuts her off immediately. 

“I mean, a long time ago. In, like, high school. Well, actually, I guess she technically died first when I was middle school, but she wasn’t actually dead, even though we all thought she was, and then she showed up again in, like, eighth grade and then she killed herself eighteen months before graduation. Uh. Not because she was depressed or anything, she just…had to. But I saw her die, both times.”

There’s a very long, staticky pause. Arlene eyes Mike, waiting for some sort of signal that he’s finished talking. 

He clears his throat awkwardly. “I, uh. Though you should know that. If you care.”

Arlene says, “Do you still think about her often?”

Mike looks away, eyes red. “Uh. Yeah, I guess. I mean, not—not in a girlfriend way, really, more like…I mean, I loved her, right? But not romantically. I don’t think. And I was…fuck, I was a shitbag boyfriend to her. I was a real dick, up until the end. And the worst part is, she really thought I loved her like that. She really…God, she never got any of the beautiful things she deserved, and it’s probably…I mean, it’s definitely my fault. It’s all my fault.”

“You blame yourself for a lot of things,” Arlene observes. She’s wondered, often, if there is a maximum amount of tragedy the human body can bear. She’s come to the conclusion, time and time again, that the answer is no. There are so many people roaming the world, limbs dragged down by immeasurable sorrow, somehow still functioning. It’s incredible. 

It’s awful. 

Arlene watches Mike swipe at his eyes underneath his glasses.

“I guess that’s because I cause a lot of shitty things.”

“Your girlfriend made her own choices, yes?”

Mike shrugs. “She…she was always surrounded by people who told her what to do. What to wear. Who to fight. Who she was. She never got to figure it out for herself, I don’t think. And, I mean, I was one of those people. I thought I was…protecting her, but I think I was just smothering her.”

“And you think that made her miserable?”

“I think it was a happy lie.” Mike grimaces. “We had this rule. Me and my friends. Friends don’t lie. It was the first thing I told her about us, when I met her. But I was a goddamn hypocrite. She thought…she thought I was someone I wasn’t. The whole time, she thought I was better than I really was. And I never corrected her. I just…couldn’t bear the idea of losing her again, so I just…kept lying. Until she died, thinking I was someone I wasn’t. Thinking I loved her in a way that I didn’t.”

“It sounds like she found comfort in you.”

“In a lie,” Mike spits. “She never…she never got to live, really. She was taken from her mom when she was born and raised in a…uh, like a cult, basically, by this awful man she called Papa. He trained her to…to do awful things, things she said made her feel like a monster. And then we found her—my friends and I—and we used her for what we wanted. And then she…she died for us. Or, we thought she did. Turns out she didn’t, and the chief of police adopted her and was hiding her from the government. I tried to beat him up when I found out, I was so mad. But then she got kidnapped by that Papa man again, and he hurt her, and me and my friend rescued her. I thought it was a good thing, you know, but then she ended up dying to save us all in the end anyway. So, yeah. She pretty much spent her life doing everything for everyone and being controlled. She didn’t even get to have a favorite color.”

Arlene is silent for a minute, processing. The more Mike speaks, the more adamant he gets, like he knows she won’t believe him but he has to say it anyway. He has a frantic look in his eyes now, like he’s realized he’s said too much. 

“That’s a lot,” Arlene observes. 

“Yeah, no shit.” Mike huffs. “Look, I know you don’t believe me—”

“I believe you, Mike,” she says. After fifteen years, there’s not a lot she doesn’t believe. She’s burning with questions, but it’s not her place to ask. Mike will tell her when he’s ready. “It sounds like your girlfriend—”

“Her name was El,” Mike interrupts, voice strained. 

Arlene nods. “El. It sounds like El was an incredibly strong person.”

“She shouldn’t have had to be,” Mike says, heat inching into his voice. “She was a kid. And I…I let her down. I screwed her over.”

“You were a kid as well, weren’t you?”

“Yeah,” Mike mutters. “A fucked-up, asshole kid. It’s not an excuse. Not when all of my friends were nowhere near as shitty as I was.”

“Sometimes we don’t need an excuse,” Arlene says. “Sometimes we just need to understand how things were, and how they are. And what can be done about them now. You can’t change what happened when you were a kid.”

“I could have,” Mike says, voice hard. “I could have done something. Anything. Instead I just…let it all happen.”

“Is this something that haunts you often?”

Mike snorts. “I don’t know. Probably. I try not to think about it, honestly. But yeah, if I had to pinpoint where a lot of my problems came from, it’d probably start somewhere around there. That and—”

He stops, paling. Arlene doesn’t press him, just stays quiet. 

After a minute, in the smallest voice possible, he says, “My best friend died, too.”

Arlene feels her eyebrows furrow, the sadness in her gut sinking even lower. Mike’s eyes are undeniably glossy, and he shoves his glasses back p his nose in a frantic motion, as if to hide his expression from the world. 

“Was that…recent?”

Mike shakes his head, silently, swallowing a few times before croaking out, “He—he’s fine now. It’s not how it sounds.”

Arlene frowns. Mike Wheeler certainly contains multitudes. She wants to peel back the corners of his memories, understand what’s going on in his head. 

A whole lot of pain, she thinks. 

“It was in middle school. He was…he was biking home from my house. I should have…made him stay, or biked with him. I shouldn’t have let him go home alone. I shouldn’t have. But he…he got…lost. In the woods. And he was missing for days, and then…and then I saw them drag his body out of the water. I saw his body, and he was dead. And El—that was when my friends and I found her—she’d told us she could find him. And I’d had all this hope, and then I…I saw him, like that, cold and dead and pale, and I yelled at El for giving me hope, and she ran away, and Lucas and Dustin—my friends—tried to calm me down, but I…I don’t remember much else. Just him…dead. And then…I don’t know.”

God. Arlene sits there, taking it in. The man in front of her is nothing short of broken, she thinks. From the way he drags a hand across his face to swipe away the endless streams of tears to the way his other hand clenches the sofa underneath him. 

“It was awful. It—until I had hope again, I didn’t even…I didn’t breathe, I don’t think. It was later, after El came back—she saved me when I jumped off a cliff to save Dustin from some bullies—that I heard his voice on my walkie-talkie and got some hope back.”

Arlene frowns. “You jumped off of a cliff?”

“Uh,” Mike shrugs, waving away the question. “Yeah? I mean, it wasn’t…some bullies caught us, and they threatened to cut out Dustin’s baby teeth if I didn’t jump, so I kind of had to. I probably would have died if El hadn’t saved me, but I didn’t even think twice, honestly. Will was dead, so…yeah.”

Will. The married friend on Facebook. The gay one. 

“You stated on your intake forms that you’ve never attempted to take your own life,” she says. 

Mike looks confused for a moment. Then, “Huh? Oh, you mean the cliff? Seriously, I was just trying to save Dustin. I didn’t—I wouldn’t have—”

“Your friend’s death didn’t have anything to do with you jumping?”

“I—I mean, I don’t know. Maybe I wouldn’t have done it so…easily, if it weren’t for…everything, but that doesn’t mean I’m suicidal. I mean, come on, if I were suicidal I would have killed myself by now. It’d probably be doing everyone a favor, honestly.”

“How do you think your daughters would feel, if you died?” Arlene asks, watching the immediate shame flood Mike’s face. “What about your sisters?”

“I—I mean. I was joking. Obviously. I’m not going to…to kill myself. That’s too much work, really. And even if it was for the greater good, I’m probably not selfless enough to do it.” He spots Arlene’s expression. “Sorry. Another joke.”

“No apologies necessary,” she says. “So. You’ve never been suicidal.”

She’s learned that it’s best not to argue with clients on this matter. Her own observations, however, will stay locked in her mind. 

“No. I mean, I was sad, obviously. Am sad. But it’s not like any of this happened to me. And Will was okay, in the end. We saved him, and he was alive and everything. And then he…he moved to California. He came back, for a little while, and then he moved away again after graduation, for good. And that time it was entirely my fault, for losing him.” Mike frowns, angrily. “I was such an idiot. I got him back, only to ignore him for my girlfriend, and then because I didn’t know how to repair our relationship. I lost him. It’s my fault. It was my fault he almost died, and it was my fault we stopped being friends. And now I don’t…I don’t even know anything about him anymore. He was my best friend.”

“Have you spoken to him, since high school?”

Mike shrugs. “He wrote, a few times. I never knew what to write back. And I kept thinking, since everything awful all seemed to happen around me, anyway, that it would be better for him if I just…got out of his life. But now when I remember him, all I remember is that cold, dead body and how I thought he was dead, and how we had a funeral, and how if he died now I wouldn’t even deserve to cry at his funeral.”

“What do you think would happen, if you tried reaching out to him?”

Mike scoffs. “I couldn’t do that. I’m just…I’m just the douchebag who hurt him too many times as a kid. I’m nobody to him anymore, and hell, I don’t deserve to be. It’d be fucking selfish to insert myself into his life. I’d be, like, some unwanted weirdo at a family dinner.”

“It sounds like you meant a lot to each other, though. When you were kids. Do you really think he’d be upset if you reached out?”

Mike shook his head. “No. No, he wouldn’t be upset. He’d be fucking nice about it. He’d say, oh, hey, Mike, how are you? and we should hang out sometime, like I didn’t screw him over for seven goddamn years. Like I didn’t ghost him for forty. I can’t deal with that. I can’t.”

“Okay,” Arlene says. “Do you want to tell me more, about when you were kids?”

Mike swallows. Nods. 

A story pours out of him, about a boy. About monsters and girlfriends and night terrors. About whispering are you okay in dark movie theaters. About friends protecting each other, fighting for each other, loving each other. Leaving each other. 

When the time is finally up, Arlene is close to tears herself.

“Has this helped, at all? To talk about it?”

Mike—face blotchy and tearstained—nods. Whispers, “Yeah. Thank you.”

As he leaves, she ponders it all. Asks herself if she believes it all. Monsters, and saving the world? Villains and heroes? Powers and magic?

Somehow, talking to Mike—eyes locked in some distant past he can’t seem to escape—it doesn’t seem so unbelievable. 

Maybe he’s just an excellent storyteller. He writes fiction, she recalls. But this…this is more than fiction. This is a man who’s been cracked in half. This is the truth, whether or not it’s real. 

She finds herself looking forward to the next session. 

—

He doesn’t say anything, at first, during the next session. Instead, he reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a crumpled piece of paper before sitting down. 

“I made a list,” he says. 

“Oh?”

“I thought it might be helpful, if I remembered everything terrible that’s happened in my life, all at once. So I don’t have to keep bringing things up and hitting you with new problems.”

“That’s very thoughtful,” Arlene smiles, and Mike gives her a flat look. 

He looks down at his list, and Arlene tenses. So far, she’s learned that his girlfriend died twice, his best friend died once and then came back only to leave again, and that both his parents nearly died while his sister was kidnapped. She’s not sure how much worse it can get. Of course, she’s learned that it’s best not to challenge the universe on that particular topic. 

“Uh. So, my sister’s best friend died, right after Will disappeared. I didn’t really know her, but my sister was pretty freaked out about it. I think she still gets nightmares about it. She called me once, in the middle of the night, just  wanting to talk. She didn’t mention Barb, but I think that’s what woke her up. We kind of…don’t talk about the bad things, when we talk. It’s an unspoken agreement.”

Arlene breathes out. “Do you and your sisters talk often?”

“It…depends. There are certain times of the year that we’ll all be…thinking about things. We’ll call each other more around then, talk about nothing.” Mike looks back down at his list. “Uh. Also, Will—my best friend—his mom’s boyfriend died the year after he disappeared. Things were…really bad, then, and Will was in the hospital, and we were all there, and the…the monsters that had taken Will were possessing him and they saw where we were and they came and attacked us. His mom’s boyfriend’s name was Bob, and he…he got—well, we all watched him get mauled, basically. I didn’t—I didn’t see it very well, but…I was there. When it happened.”

Mike eyes her like he’s daring her to contradict him. She doesn’t. Everything about his tone is so damaged that she can’t imagine he’s telling her anything other than a truthful memory. 

“Also, El’s adoptive dad—he ended up dating Will’s mom, later—got killed. Well, we thought he did, but actually he was kidnapped by Russians and taken to Siberia. Which…I don’t want to say it’s worse, because he came home, eventually, but…anyway, I don’t know. It’s fine. It’s not like I saw him die or anything, but El was devastated—I mean, her dad died, so, yeah—and then he came back only for her to die, and then he became Will’s dad, which was weird, but not, like, traumatizing or anything—fuck.”

Mike cuts himself off, looking disgusted with himself. “I’m such a fucking whiner. It’s not like any of this happened to me, you know? I don’t even know why I’m bringing this up.”

“You have a lot of trauma,” Arlene says. “Have you ever been formally diagnosed with PTSD?”

“Are you kidding? A doctor would have to hear and believe all of this for that. I bet you don’t even believe it.”

“I do,” Arlene says, instantly. 

Mike eyes her, warily. “Yeah, right. I know it’s crazy. I feel crazy. I don’t even know if I’m allowed to tell you all of this, to be honest. The government might be on my ass next week. I hope I haven’t compromised you. I’m sorry if I have.”

“Trust me, Mike, I can deal with that. Anything you tell me is confidential.”

“Okay. Well, if I’m on the subject, anyway, I guess I’ll tell you about my friend, Max. She was in a coma for eighteen months—attacked by the same monsters who hurt everyone else—and before that her stepbrother died in front of us. He saved all of our lives, except he was trying to murder us before that. Only, I think he was possessed. But even before that, he was a complete asshole. I—don’t know if I’m allowed to say that about a dead guy who saved my life, but it’s true. He was racist to Lucas and he was abusive to Max, and she kind of shut down after he died. I think she blamed herself, which is fucked up, because it obviously had nothing to do with her. That was when Will and El left, too, so the group was down to just me, Lucas and Dustin, except Lucas sort of left us for the basketball team, and he was really torn up about Max.” 

Mike pauses. Then, “We joined a DnD club at school, which helped keep my mind off of…everything shitty. But then shit hit the fan again, and the guy leading our club got falsely accused of murder, and then he died. I wasn’t there when it happened, so I feel shitty about that, too. Dustin sort of…broke down after that, and then we all had to save the world again. Only, it was mostly Will and El who did the saving, and the rest of us just ran around, useless. Me, most of all. Jesus. Anyway.”

Mike stops talking, winded. He’s staring at his lap, face flooded with turmoil. “That’s, uh. That’s my story. Basically.”

“Wow,” Arlene says, still trying to catch up with all he’s told her. She was dead wrong, she knows now, when she assumed that Mike Wheeler was an average, depressed middle-aged dad. “That’s…a lot. Are all of these things you remember often? Say, every day?”

Mike shakes his head. “Not really. I mean, yeah, sometimes. It’s…a lot to think about, really, and I try not to. But, like, I just thought it might be good to tell it all to you in case you were wondering why I’m so fucked up.” He lets out a humorless snort. “It’s not like any of it happened to me, really. Just everyone around me. Which is probably worse, since it means I didn’t do anything to stop any of it.”

Arlene eyes him. “You said your friend Max blamed herself for her brother’s—”

“Stepbrother,” Mike corrects. 

“Right. She blamed herself for his death. You said you thought that was fucked up. Do you think it’s possible you, also, don’t need to blame yourself for all of these terrible things?”

“I—I mean, they’re not all my fault, I know that,” Mike says. “But looking back—and even when I was there—I always knew I wasn’t doing everything I could. I was never helpful enough, or honest enough, or even just nice enough. A part of me thinks maybe I would have been less guilty if I’d just been a better person, you know? But I wasn’t. And, like, even if it wasn’t totally my fault that Will disappeared, or El died, I was still shitty to both of them. I still made Will cry, and I still lied to El until she died. So, like. It’s not like I can even cover my tracks with good intentions. Just selfish ones.”

“And what were those intentions?” Arlene asks. 

Mike looks taken aback for a moment. His face pales a bit, eyes descending into the past again. “I…honestly, I don’t really know. I didn’t know. I just…I wanted to be normal, and I wanted to protect the people I lo—cared about. I wanted to do all of that, but mostly I couldn’t figure out how to do all of it at the same time. So I ended up hurting everyone. I was so wrapped up in how to make everything seem okay that I forgot to actually try to make it be okay. If that makes sense.”

Arlene nods. “It makes perfect sense. Do you mind elaborating on that? What sort of actions do you regret so much?”

Mike swallows, visibly. He averts his eyes, staring intently at the bookshelf on the wall beside him. “Uh. I guess I could. It was a while ago.”

Something tells Arlene that time has had no impact on how well Mike remembers his actions as a teenager. She doesn’t point this out. 

He starts, “I…I was a lot nicer in middle school, I think. Definitely in elementary school. I was—” he looks down at his lap, tears forming. “—my friend, one time—my best friend—he told me I was the heart of the party. I…I wanted to believe it, at the time, but it wasn’t…it wasn’t true anymore, when he told me that. I had been, at one point. When he disappeared, I gathered us all together, took in El, tried to find him. And then when we did get him back, I protected him. I stayed with him, all the time. No matter what. I was a better person then. That me…he was the heart, I think.”

Mike pauses, voice a bit choked. He continues, “Then, after El came back…you know, after we’d thought she died…I was so happy she was back. But I also…I also felt like I had to prove that I was, like…normal or something. It was right after I realized that—fuck. After I realized I wouldn’t ever be normal. So when I got her back, I sort of just…took it and ran. My personality became El’s boyfriend, and my friends thought I was insufferable—and, honestly, so did I—but I had to. And it was confusing, because I did like El. Just…not like that. And I was relieved to have her back, so I told myself if I just pretended I was in love with her for long enough, that maybe I would be. That maybe I could still be normal. But…I wasn’t. And I used her, I kept using her, and God, she died thinking we were something we never were. And that’s my fault. That’s where it all started, I think. Me, trying to be normal. And I just…I used her and hurt her until she died.”

Arlene takes in the sight of Mike’s tear-streaked face before her. 

“If you could see her now,” she says. “If you could speak to her, if she were still alive. Would you tell her?”

Mike eyes her for a sharp several seconds. His expression falls, and he croaks out, “I—I don’t even know. I don’t know if I could.”

“Did you worry it would hurt her, to tell her the truth?”

“That’s what I told myself,” Mike replies. “But…I don’t—I don’t know. Maybe I just didn’t want to lose the façade of normalcy I had. Either way, I lied to her. Either way, it was wrong.”

“You say,” Arlene starts, cautiously, “that you realized you wouldn’t ever be normal. Are you able to…work me through what made you believe that?”

A flash of panic stabs at Mike’s eyes. “Not—not yet. Please.”

She nods. “That’s okay.”

“And—and that was just…the start,” Mike says. “My best friend, Will. I hurt him, too. I made him believe he was…childish for wanting to play games. I yelled at him when he called me out for what I was doing to El. His dad used to call him slurs, and say all of this awful stuff about him. And I—I got to wrapped up in pretending I didn’t care about anyone that I yelled the same kind of thing at him. It wasn’t even about him, it was about me. But I made him cry, and I tried to apologize, but then the monsters got in the way, and then he was off to California, and I—I don’t think we were ever fully honest with each other again.”

“Did you mean any of the things you said to him?”

“Of course not! I—I mean, I think—-maybe—I meant them about me. Because I’d been so focused on growing up and acting normal, and Will was so adamant that we didn’t have to do that, and really all I wanted was to agree with him, but I couldn’t. So I yelled at him that we all had to grow up and get girlfriends and stop playing games, but what I really meant to do was yell it at myself. But it doesn’t matter, because I still hurt him, and I still never really apologized or told him I didn’t mean it. He…he thought I didn’t care. He thought I abandoned him, which I guess I did.”

Mike huffs, eyes puffy. “You want to know the worst part?”

“What’s that?” 

“After he left, after I yelled at him for wanting to play DnD…Lucas, Dustin and I went and joined a DnD club in high school.”

“Was Will upset about that?”

Mike gives her a broken look. “I don’t even know if he knew. He never mentioned it. I mean, he must have, since he heard about Eddie and all, but he didn’t say anything. He acted like he didn’t care, but I know he must have, because he was always so…I hate to say sensitive, because people used it to make fun of him when he was a kid. But he was sensitive, in a good way. He cared, so much, about things. He was so empathetic, in a way that I just…wasn’t. At least, I forgot how to be.”

Mike sighs, raw and tortured. “I didn’t even mean to join Hellfire, but Eddie recruited us, and…it was nice, to have something to distract me. Only, like I said, Eddie was accused of murder and then died while I was in California, so…not exactly a happy ending.”

“It’s no wonder you have difficulty writing happy endings, Mike.”

He gives her a mirthless smile, head dropping to look at his feet. “Yup.”

As he leaves the office that day, Arlene tries to picture him happy. The only image she manages to conjure up is a much younger Mike. A child, even. A child next to a boy he calls his best friend. Will. 

It’s heartbreaking. 

—

“I hate Chappell Roan,” Mike announces at the beginning of their next session. 

Arlene allows an amused smile to curl at her mouth. Her own wife absolutely loves Chappell Roan, and consequently, their car has had Pink Pony Club on repeat as of late. “Oh?”

“My daughter, Edie—the older one—has been playing goddamn Chappell Roan in the car every day on the way to soccer practice. It’s making me insane.”

“You’re not a pop guy?” 

Mike grimaces. “It’s not that. It’s just…all her songs are so…the lyrics are just…I don’t like them, okay?”

“Okay,” Arlene agrees. “I suppose she does reference explicit content quite a bit. Is that an issue for you?”

Mike goes bit red. “Not…not really. I didn’t…think about that.” He brightens. “Maybe I can ban Edie from listening to it because of that.”

“Do you really want to stop your high schooler from listening to music she loves?” 

Mike frowns. “No, not really. I’d just prefer if she didn’t listen to it around me. Both her and Jane seem to think it’s hilarious how much I hate it, though, so I guess it’s my fault for reacting. At this point, they might just be playing Good Luck, Babe over and over again to make me upset.”

“Is there something about that song that brings up…anything?” Arlene doesn’t make any suggestions. Despite her own suspicions, she’d prefer Mike come to his own conclusions, rather than run out of her office in a panic. 

“No,” Mike says, too quickly. His face is a bit flushed. “It doesn’t even matter. I don’t know why I brought that up. It’s better than Maisie Peters, I guess. If I’d had to listen to Lost the Breakup one more time I would have probably smashed the Bluetooth player.”

Arlene hasn’t ever heard of Maisie Peters, but she makes a mental note to do some sleuthing later. She’s fairly confident what she’ll find. 

“How do you get along with your daughters, normally?” 

Mike shrugs. “I don’t know. Like I said, I’m like my dad. Distant. Oblivious. A fucking…asshole. It’s a miracle they like me, honestly.”

“Do they seem to like you?” 

“I think they wish I liked them more.”

“Do you want to?”

“To like them more? I guess. It’s hard to be a good dad when you realize you shouldn’t have been one at all.”

“Was there ever a point where you did want kids?” 

“I…don’t know. It was just the thing, you know? The thing everyone has to do. I never wanted kids. I avoided it for as long as I could. Like I said last time, though, I was obsessed with appearing normal. With being the guy who people didn’t think twice about.” Mike chuckles, no mirth to it. “Guess I succeeded. I’m just like my dad.”

“Do you think the fact that your daughters play music to annoy you might just be them trying to gain your attention?”

“That makes sense,” Mike says. A long pause punctuates his words as something clears in his expression. Finally, he says, “Maybe I should try more. To care about them.”

“When you spend a long time training yourself not to care, it can be hard to convince yourself to be present again,” Arlene offers. 

Mike nods. “Yeah. Yeah, I think so.”

“And your wife?” 

“What about her?”

“How does she feel about you, do you think? Is there anything you could do to repair your relationship with her?”

“Yeah, there is,” Mike says, voice rough. “But I’d have to apologize to her, and ask for a divorce. I don’t want to…to make things worse. My dad always said that quitters never win, and winners never quit.”

“Do you think you’re winning right now?”

Mike laughs, and this time there’s an edge of ironic humor in it. “I guess not.”

“I’ve heard that phrase before,” Arlene notes. “I don’t think it’s particularly helpful for when you’re in a bad situation. Sometimes, when you realize that staying on the path you’re on is never going to work, quitting might be the better option. And I wouldn’t call it quitting, anyway. You’re really just choosing a better path.”

“What, like quitting drugs?” 

Arlene smiles, a bit melancholy. “I guess so, yeah. Although referring to your wife as a drug might not be the best way to start the conversation.”

Mike shakes his head. “It’s normalcy that’s the drug.”

Arlene nods. “That it is.”

—

“I think Will got divorced,” Mike says the next time they meet. 

Arlene raises her eyebrows. “And what about you?”

Mike looks taken aback. “Oh. Uh. I’m…working on it. I talked to Evelyn, and she said she agrees we’re not working. I thought she’d be mad, but I think she was mostly relieved. We still have to tell Jane and Edie, which is going to be awful, but I…I think it’s for the best.”

Arlene notes that this is the first time he’s used his wife’s name. Interesting. 

“That’s good to hear. So. Will?”

Mike suddenly won’t meet her eyes. “I—I saw it on Facebook. He said he’s single. It doesn’t matter, I was just…thinking about it, before I came in here.”

“I see,” Arlene says. “You said you weren’t planning on reaching out to him. Has that changed?” 

Mike shakes his head, rapidly. “No! No. I just…was thinking about him. Doesn’t matter. Anyway. Uh. What were we talking about?”

“What is it that you want to talk about?”

There’s a pause. Then, “Will lied to me.”

Arlene frowns. “Hmm?”

“Back when…high school. When I went to visit them, in California, and everything went to shit. We were riding around with his brother and his brother’s really stoned friend, trying to find El. And he…he gave me this painting.”

Arlene nods, encouraging him to go on. 

“It was a scene from a DnD campaign, with the whole party. It was gorgeous, seriously. It was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen. And he…he told me it was from El. That she’d…commissioned it. And, like, in hindsight, I should have called bullshit immediately, but I was so wrapped up in myself I didn’t even notice. I mean, El didn’t even play DnD. But anyway, he told me all this…nice stuff about me. He told me how I was the heart, and how El needed me, but it…it was all a lie. I realized it, later, looking at the painting. El had even told me, in a letter, that she didn’t know what he was painting. I don’t know why I was so stupid, but I just…I didn’t expect Will to lie to me. He never lied to me.”

“That sounds painful, to have your trust broken like that.”

“Some part of me thinks it was a test or something,” Mike says. “Like, if I had immediately called his lie out, I would have passed. We would still be friends. But I didn’t, and it was so obvious that it feels…it feels like it’s my fault.”

Some people, Arlene thinks, refuse to take responsibility for anything. Mike Wheeler, on the other hand, would blame himself if the human race was wiped out by an asteroid. I should have done something, he’d probably say. 

“You never spoke to Will about any of this?”

Mike shakes his head. “There wasn’t time. After El died, and I realized about the painting…it didn’t seem relevant. It seemed like I’d just be calling attention to what an idiot I was. To how severed our friendship had become, and how little I even knew about El. So I didn’t say anything, and then we graduated, and I never…never spoke to him again. My fault.”

“You can’t blame yourself for everything,” Arlene says. 

“I definitely can,” Mike says, bitterly. “You know, everything in California was my fault, too? I told you Will was lying to me, but El was lying to me in her letters before we got there. She told me she had friends, and it turns out they were all just a bunch of bullies. They attacked her at the roller rink, and I tried to make it stop, but I was mostly useless. And then El retaliated by smacking one of them with a roller skate, which—I mean, it was violent, but they were being violent to her—and I…I stood there. I did nothing. I said something like what’s wrong with you, and she’d already been feeling like shit—and then she got taken and traumatized by that awful man she called Papa. But I started it. I was supposed to support her, and all I did was make her feel like a monster. I called her a superhero, too, like that was supposed to be helpful, when all she really wanted was to be normal. Like me. But I didn’t let her.”

“Do you really believe all of that could have been changed by your actions?” 

Mike sighs. “No. But I could have made it better.”

“I’m sure that’s true for everyone,” Arlene says. “Do you think those bullies feel as bad as you do right now?”

Mike snorts. “No. I doubt that goddamn Angela even remembers El.”

“Then aren’t you already one step ahead?”

“Maybe.” Mike looks unconvinced. “I only said I love you to El one time. And it was because Will told me to.”

“Did she say she loved you?”

“All the time. She was so upset with me, in California, because I couldn’t say it. She wrote it in her letters to me. Love, El is what she wrote. And I wrote from, Mike like a coward. And then she confronted me about it, and I just gave her a billion fucking excuses instead of telling her I loved her. And then I eventually said it, and it was only because I thought she was going to die, and Will was yelling at me that I was the heart.” Mike swallows, hard. His eyes are red. “I couldn’t even tell her I loved her when she died. She said it to me. She told me I was the only one who understood her, and she kissed me, and she said she loved me, and I—I was just there. I said nothing. I didn’t tell her I loved her before she died.”

“It can be hard to express emotions sometimes. Especially when you’ve spent a long time trying to repress them.”

“I should have been able to.”

“You didn’t, though,” Arlene says, smiling sadly. “Do you think you can forgive yourself? In order to move on?” 

“I’m an asshole,” Mike says. “I’ve been trying to be less of one, with my wife. With my daughters. But I still am. And sometimes I think…why should I forgive myself when I’ve barely changed?” 

“Change is gradual.”

“I wish it wasn’t.”

“You don’t have to forgive yourself. But you might find it helps you more than you think it will, to come to terms with things you can’t change.”

“There was a group of kids I was protecting, when the monsters attacked. I had to stop them from getting taken. I told them I could help them. I told them to stay behind me.” Mike’s eyes are distant, watery. “They all got taken, in the end.”

“You did your best, Mike.”

“I couldn’t save El, when she died. I couldn’t stop it.” 

“It’s not your fault.”

Mike’s eyes are running now, his face red and torn apart. “Will,” he says, voice cracking. “I couldn’t save Will from being taken. I couldn’t stop him from dying. I couldn’t stop him from leaving. I…I let him go. I let him go.” 

“You can’t change what happened, Mike. You can only change what you do now.” Arlene eyes his expression as it fills with grief and resolution. “It sounds like you’ve watched a lot of terrible things happen to you. Sometimes the best thing we can do is anything at all. Even if it won’t change the past.”

Mike’s eyes fill with fresh tears. He nods, slowly. 

Stands up. 

Leaves her office. 

—

She doesn’t see him again. 

She finds herself wondering about him. Looking him up on Facebook, from time to time. She even goes so far as to look up Will from Hawkins, Indiana on Facebook. Her searches are mostly fruitless, although she finds a single blank profile of a Mike Wheeler who’s friends with a few familiar names. Max, Dustin, Lucas. There’s no Will on there, though. 

She resolves not to think about it. Not to worry whether she helped Mike out at all, or if she only made things worse. She wonders about his wife, and his kids. She finds herself pondering, at inopportune times, whether she should have tried to stop him from leaving. 

She comes to the sad conclusion that she’ll never know. 

—

Three years later, she’s out with her wife at a fondue restaurant. She’s managed to almost completely wipe Mike Wheeler and his sad story from her mind at this point. 

Until her phone dings. 

She usually doesn’t check her phone during dinner—especially not during date night—but she gets this feeling. This tug in her gut, that it’s important. She reaches into her bag, pulls out her cellphone. 

There’s a new text, from an unknown number. She opens it up and comes face to face with an image of a smiling Mike Wheeler. It seems impossible, given the last time she saw him, but it’s right there. A grin taking over his face, as happy as she’s ever seen on anyone. 

His head is resting on someone else’s shoulder. The man next to him is grinning broadly as well, eyes sparkling with joy, and maybe a hint of tears. The two of them aren’t fully looking at the camera, like they forgot it was there. Their arms are wrapped around each other in a way that appears casual, but is really anything but. Mike’s hand in particular grasps at the other man’s shoulder like his life depends on it. 

The text that follows reads, sorry to bother you, but I wanted to thank you. This is me and my husband, Will. We’re very grateful for all of your help. 

Arlene feels her throat close up with unshed tears. 

“Arlene?” Her wife jolts her back to the present.

“Sorry,” she says, and looks up from her phone, hastily stuffing it back in her bag. She wonders, for a moment, how Mike Wheeler possibly got her phone number. Then she thinks of monsters and heroes and villains and decides not to worry about it. “Just a…message from a client.”

Her wife wrinkles her nose. “Aren’t you off duty for tonight?”

“Of course,” Arlene smiles. “It was a client from a long time ago. He wanted to thank me. I guess I…helped him more than I thought I did.”

“Right,” her wife says, skeptically. “Well, if you’re done, why don’t we enjoy our dinner?”

“Yeah, absolutely.” She reaches for a fondue fork, and in an instant, it dawns on her. “Wait a minute. Vickie?”

Her wife meets her eyes. “Yes?”

“You’re originally from Hawkins, aren’t you? Hawkins, Indiana?”

Vickie nods, hesitantly. Arlene wants to slap herself across the forehead. She doesn’t know how she didn’t connect it, but she thinks it has something to do with the fact that Vickie never talks about life before Dallas. 

“You don’t…talk about it much.”

“Yeah, it’s kind of…weird. There are things I don’t think I’m allowed to tell you, honestly. I know it sounds crazy, but—”

“I believe you,” Arlene says. “I believe all of it. I promise. If you ever want to talk about it, I’m right here.”

Vickie takes a bite of cheese-encased bread, chewing thoughtfully. She blinks a few times, contemplating. “Okay. Well. If you really want to know.”

Arlene lets herself sink into an unbelievable story of monsters and heroes.