Archive of Our Own

"You're kidding, right? Tell me you're kidding."

Steve's worn out, stretched thin smile suggests he is not, in fact, kidding. He shrugs bashfully, which probably works on other girls, but does nothing for Max. "Foot traffic's down. If the people aren't coming to us, we've gotta go to them."

Max crosses her arms. "I don't even have my license yet. I can't drive a car, let alone an ice cream truck." Her lack of a license is a sore spot; she ought to have it by now, but she keeps failing on the parallel parking part.

"No, but Will can."

If Max's unearned driver's license is a sore spot, Will's newly minted, government issued one is an open wound. He's smugly offered to drive her to work a few times, and Max keeps declining. She'd rather walk.

Will is Max's coworker, and aside from the license thing, there's really nothing all that objectionable about him. The problem with Will is that he doesn't like Max, and Max has a strict policy of disliking anyone who dislikes her. Will would probably like Max more if he weren't also best friends with Max's on-again, off-again boyfriend Lucas.

At present, Lucas and Max are decidedly off, maybe permanently this time (but she says that every time), which means that she and Will have been getting along better. But that doesn't make them friends, and it sure as hell doesn't mean she wants to drive around in an ice cream truck with him.

"Can't you and Robin do it?" Max asks. Robin and Steve are the co-managers of Scoops Ahoy, although Max suspects that Robin's really the one calling the shots, while Steve is merely a spokesperson, a pretty face for the social media pages. How either of them landed this gig in the first place is a mystery to Max, but not an enticing enough mystery to investigate.

"We have to be onsite," Steve explains. "Robin does all the inventory, budgeting…you know, the numbers stuff."

"Okay, but what about you and Will? Doesn't sound like you're doing anything important here."

Steve puts his palms together and brings them to his face, pressing his fingers to his mouth. "Max," he says, holding out the X in a hiss. "You're awful at customer service. People do another loop when they see you and come back later, hoping you'll be gone."

Max knows she's bad at customer service. That's why she's always getting scheduled with Will to begin with. His exceptional people skills almost cancel out her abysmal ones. But sometimes Will steps out for a break, and she has noticed business is usually slow when that happens. "And how, exactly, is putting me in a truck on a hot summer day gonna make my sparkling personality better?"

"Nobody cares who the ice cream man—person, sorry—is. They're hot, they hear the music, they see the truck, they buy the ice cream. In here—" Steve gestures broadly at the food court. "—you're competing with twenty other food options. But out there?" He points towards the sliding glass doors at the end of the food court. "Out there you're the oasis in the desert. You get me?"

Max would rather get fired. But she needs the money, and the reference, and if she can't even get a good reference from Steve Harrington, former heartthrob of Hawkins High and certified dumbass, she's screwed. "Yeah, I get you. Fine. Do I get paid more?"

"No."

Figures.

Their first day in the truck is the hottest day of the summer so far. It's ice cold in the truck, but every time they open the window, they're hit with a blast of Indiana's signature humidity. Max feels like she's dunking her head in a bowl of soup.

Will cuts the music as they roll into a park equipped with—thank God—a bathhouse. "Be right back," Max says as she opens the door and submerges herself in the soupy air, moving as fast as she can, hoping she won't pee her pants. Will calls after her, probably because there's already a line forming, but she ignores him. She assumes he would rather deal with a line of customers on his own than share two square feet of elbow room with someone who's drenched in piss.

Max glances in the warped, foggy mirror as she washes hands. She grimaces at her appearance. Her nose is bright red from a sunburn, and her hair is a frizzy mess. She digs around in her pocket and finds a hair tie, puts her stupid little sailor cap on the sink, and scrapes her hair up into a ponytail. The frizzy, curly baby hairs at her temple stand out more now, but at least her hair isn't sticking to her neck.

Back at the truck, Will is tending to a mob. Max hops back in, washes her hands again in the cramped on-board sink, and goes to help him. He takes orders while she scoops. The time passes in a blur, and finally the line dies down.

"Have I mentioned that I hate this?" Max says.

"A few times." Will wipes sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. "It's not like I'm having fun, either."

Max sits down in the driver's seat and drums her fingers on the wheel. "Is this thing fun to drive, at least?"

Will's mouth turns up in a half smile. "A little."

The conversation stalls, and Max relishes in the time to relax. They've served more ice cream in a few hours today than they usually do in a few days at the mall. She hates to admit it, but Steve was probably right about this being a good idea.

"Customers," Will says. Max hauls herself to her feet and joins him at the window. A boy and a girl around the same age as them approach, hand in hand. The girl has chin-length brown hair with curls that seem to have miraculously survived the humidity, an upturned nose, and cheeks that are pink from the heat but not red. She's wearing a sleeveless white sundress dotted with tiny sunflowers. Either she's just stepped outside, or she's immune to the sun, because her skin is milky white, unburdened by tan lines or freckles. She looks like a Disney princess, and Max is surprised she doesn't have a bird on one shoulder and a mouse on the other. She also looks vaguely familiar, but Max can't figure out why.

The boy's hair is darker than the girl's and he's wearing a dorky visor. Who wears visors?

"Welcome to Scoops To Go, Scoops Ahoy's mobile adventure," Will recites. He and Max flipped a coin this morning and he lost, so he has to say it every time. "What can we scoop for you today?"

The boy lets go of the girl's hand and taps his chin with his finger. The girl latches onto his arm. Max wonders if she's under some kind of curse where she has to be touching him at all times. Blink twice if you're cursed, she thinks. The girl does not blink twice. "Hmm," says the boy, in a pantomine of deep thought that Max finds extremely grating. "For me, a double scoop of chocolate in a cup, and for the lady, one scoop of strawberry, one scoop of vanilla. Vanilla on the bottom, sprinkles on top, in a waffle cone."

The girl smiles wide and squeezes his arm. "You remembered!"

Max could memorize that ice cream order in her sleep. She ducks her head so that nobody will see her roll her eyes, and gets to scooping.

Will makes small talk while Max scoops. "What are you guys up to today?"

"It's our third date," the boy boasts. "El's new in town, so I'm giving her a tour of all the best spots."

Will's customer service voice slips, revealing a snide tone. "Oh, yeah, lots to see here in Indiana. Have you shown her the cornfields?"

Max sets the cup down and gets to work on the cone. She applies the sprinkles carefully, making sure to coat the ice cream. When she's done, she shoves Will aside and leans through the window, handing the girl her ice cream first. "One scoop of strawberry, one scoop of vanilla, vanilla on the bottom, sprinkles on top, and of course, a waffle cone." The girl smiles as she takes the ice cream and her fingers brush Max's. Max picks up the cup and turns to the boy. "Here's yours," she says flatly. Because she scooped it first, it's already melting a little bit, dripping down the sides.

"Uh, can I get a napkin?"

Will pulls out a wad of napkins and hands them over. "Have a good day! Be careful with the chocolate. It stains."

"Oh, okay. Thanks," the boy says. He links his arm with the girl's, and they wander off.

Will and Max turn to each other and say, simultaneously, "What the hell was that?"

Max points at Will. "Jinx. You owe me a soda."

"You were the one acting weird. What'd I do?"

"'Be careful with the chocolate,'" Max quotes, in her best impression of Will. "Everyone knows chocolate stains. Nobody needs a reminder."

"Okay, well, why did you rattle off her order like a line cook at a greasy diner?"

Max shrugs. "I don't know. I guess to show her it's not special that her boyfriend can remember the kind of ice cream she likes. He seemed way too proud of himself for that."

"He seemed fine to me. She seemed kind of ditzy, anyway."

"Ditzy? Really? Sorry a girl didn't get to demonstrate her intelligence in a two-second ice cream order interaction."

"Just because you didn't like having a boyfriend doesn't mean every girl needs to be rescued from hers."

Will always manages to bring the conversation back to Max and Lucas. Max sidesteps the bait. "How come we don't know them, anyway?" Max is used to recognizing most of their teenage customers. She hates it, but she's used to it.

"They're probably from the next town over." Will looks at his watch and holds it up so Max can see. "Good news. Our shift's almost over. Ready to head back?"

Max throws herself into the passenger seat and buckles her seatbelt. "I was ready hours ago."

They drive a different route the next day, but somehow, they run into the same couple from the day before. Not literallyrun into, of course. The last thing Max needs on her resume is an ice cream truck manslaughter.

Max lost the coin flip today, so she has to do the stupid spiel. "Welcome to Scoops To Go, Scoops Ahoy's mobile adventure. How can we help you?"

The boy grins and points at Max and Will like they're his favorite monkeys at the zoo. "Hey, it's you guys again!"

"Yeah, this is our job. What do you want?" (This is the kind of charismatic sparkle that got Max condemned to this ice cream truck.)

"One scoop of chocolate, one scoop of vanilla for me." He turns to his girlfriend and asks, "What do you want today?"

"Same as yesterday?" Max asks before she can answer. "One vanilla, one strawberry, sprinkles, waffle cone?"

"Actually," the girl says, precisely enunciating every syllable in the word, "Today I would like to try the chocolate chip cookie dough."

"Ah. She speaks!" Max says, for some reason.

The girl—El, her name is El, Max remembers now—tips her head to the side inquisitively. She has an otherworldliness to her that Max can't quite pin down. She really does seem like she stepped out of a fairy tale and into ruburbia (Max's personal portmanteau of 'rural' and 'suburbia', patent pending). "I would still like the waffle cone and the sprinkles."

"Coming right up." As she says it, Will puts the boy's order in her hand. That was fast. Max hands it out to him. "Here."

After he takes it, Max leans on her elbows and looks at the girl. "Still doing your big tour today?"

"Just hanging out," the boy says.

Max wants to glare at him but focuses on El. "Where did you move here from?"

El looks nervously at her boyfriend, which seems weird. Does she really need his permission to answer this question? "Pennsylvania."

"Oh, nice. I'm from California."

Will says, unnecessarily, "Order up!" and shoves Max out of the way to pass El's ice cream through the window. "Have a scooper day!"

The boy, who probably has a name, says, "Yeah, you too," and El gives Will and Max a shy wave.

When they're out of earshot, Max says, "Something about them is weird."

She expects Will to tell her she's the weird one, but he doesn't. "Yeah."

"It's like she's his hostage, or something."

"Eh, I don't know about that, but they're definitely weird. None of our business, though."

"Yeah, I guess you're right." Max leans on the counter and rests her chin in her hands. No customers in sight. She looks back at Will. "Whipped cream eating contest before we head to the next stop?"

Will smirks and reaches for a can of whipped cream, shaking it vigorously. "You're on."

They don't see El and her boyfriend the next day, but the day after that, they encounter them again. Max is beginning to wonder if she's accidentally stepped into a horror movie, and if that's why something about El seems both familiar and off—maybe she's a stalker, or a murderer, or a ghost, or something.

El orders for both of them this time, and Max finally learns the boy's name. Mike. Boring. Snore. Whatever. She asks for gummy worms on her ice cream, and Max has to tell her with some reluctance that they don't have gummy worms. She wishes they did. That sounds awesome.

After they leave, Will says, "We've gotta break them up."

Max pauses her task of shoveling ice cream into her mouth. What? She forgot to bring lunch. "Huh?" She wipes her mouth. "I mean, I'm on board, but why?"

"They're not good for each other."

"You don't even know them."

"I was right that you and Lucas weren't good for each other."

Max rolls her eyes. Will's editorializing a bit. What he actually said, forever ago, was that Lucas was too good for Max. "Lucas and I are different. We're not annoying."

Will leans against the freezer and gives her an appraising, doubtful look. "So, are you in?"

"Sure, whatever. We might not even see them again."

"We will."

"If you say so. What's your big plan?"

"Oh. I haven't gotten that far yet. I thought we could brainstorm together."

Max grabs the whiteboard that has their list of flavors written on it and erases it with her sleeve. She finds a dry erase marker and uncaps it with her teeth, spitting the cap into her palm. She puts the marker to the board, hoping an idea will write itself, but her hand doesn't move.

"Any ideas at all," Will says encouragingly. "There are no bad ideas."

"You go first."

"Okay. Uh, we could—"

Max interrupts him with a snap of her fingers. "I've got it. He always orders chocolate or vanilla, right? Maybe he has a nut allergy, maybe some pistachio 'accidentally' gets mixed in, he thinks she tried to poison her, they break up."

Will's eyes widen and he takes a step backwards, away from her. "Max, we can't just poison someone. What if he died?"

Max waves away his concern. "We drive an ice cream truck. We could get him to the hospital, easy."

"This thing maxes out at ten miles per hour."

"Whatever. You're the one who said there's no bad ideas."

"Well, I was wrong. You found one. And it doesn't even make any sense. They always order together. He would know we were the ones who served the wrong thing."

"So we separate them, get her to order on her own—"

"And he probably doesn't have a nut allergy."

"Fine." Max pauses to think. "Here's another one. We buy a cheap ring from a pawn shop, we slip it onto the spoon, we make her think he's proposing to her."

"They're our age."

"Exactly. Proposing in high school is crazy. She'll have to break up with him."

"What if she doesn't? She seems kind of…I don't know. I'm getting a sheltered, homeschool vibe from her. She might think it's romantic."

"Yeah, but he's not actually proposing. If she says yes, he'll get freaked out, he'll break up with her. You have to admit, it's not terrible."

Will tips his head to the right and the left as if he's weighing the options. "Not as terrible as murder, but not much better."

"You come up with a plan, then."

Will chews on his bottom lip and holds out his hand, beckoning for the marker. Max gives it to him. First, he writes Poison and then crosses it out. Next, he writes Fake proposal and puts a question mark next to it. He chews on the end of the marker and taps his fingers on the whiteboard. "What if…okay, here's one. Hear me out." He writes: Stalking.

"Oh, come on. I can't suggest a fake engagement ring, but you can suggest stalking?"

"I said hear me out."

Max throws up her hands in resignation. "I'm listening."

"There's only so much we can do from the truck."

"Agreed."

"If we know where they're gonna be, we can be there too, and we can spy on them, see what they're actually like, and then we can use that intel to break them up. We can follow them, or ask them questions about where they're going, or—"

"Or—" Max says, taking her phone from her pocket as an idea takes form. She taps the screen until she finds what she's looking for and turns it to face Will. "We do our stalking like normal people. Look who tagged us in his Instagram story."

Will peers at the screen, which displays a selfie from @mikewheelies captioned: ice cream from @scoopsahoy with the bestest girlfriend ever @el_ives.

Max turns her phone back and navigates to Mike's profile. "Public profile. Posts constantly and tags everything." She goes back to the picture from today and clicks on @el_ives. While El's profile is public, she only has three posts, all of them recent, as if the account is either new or freshly scrubbed. Max feels an odd, hollow disappointment. She doesn't notice she's frowning until Will speaks again.

"What's wrong?"

"Huh?" Max rips her attention away from her phone. "Oh, nothing. This guy is just, like, so annoying that it kind of bums me out."

"Everybody seems annoying on Instagram. Okay, so, back to the plan. We have a way to find them. And we have Tuesday and Wednesday off."

"Are you assuming that I want to hang out on the two days I'm not required to hang out with you?"

"Oh come on, like you have anything better to do. You'll get bored and you'll go crawling back to Lucas."

"Actually, I was thinking about hanging out at the pool."

Will turns back to the whiteboard and absentmindedly doodles some spirals and stars. "You hate the pool. You hate chlorine and you hate wearing sunscreen and you hate getting sunburns."

"How do you know that?"

"Lucas," Will scoffs. "He tells me all kinds of stuff about you that I don't care about."

"Why do you hate me and Lucas so much?"

Will frowns at the whiteboard and folds his arms across his chest. "Because he can do better."

"Better like who?"

"Just—better."

Max doesn't answer right away, in case he elaborates. He doesn't. "Well, I think we're done for good now, so would you mind dropping your grudge against me?"

Will moves to the front of the truck and sits down in the driver's seat, facing the windshield. When he speaks, his voice is bitter. "So long as Lucas still thinks there's a chance, you're not done."

This is news to Max. "He still thinks there's a chance?"

Will sighs and starts the ignition. "He always does. Come on, we're late for our next stop."

That night, Max does her usual routine of putting her phone away before bed so she can read, getting bored of reading, and taking her phone out again. Instead of aimlessly scrolling like she does most nights, she opens Instagram and goes back to El's profile. She examines the three posts:

Most recently, El posted a picture of her and Mike together. They're outside somewhere, sitting on a picnic blanket. The sun is setting behind them. El is wearing the dress she was wearing the first day Max and Will encountered her. Mike is kissing her cheek. It looks like a wet, slobbery kiss. Max doesn't get how El is smiling through it. Caption: sunset with you 🌅

The next post is from the same day, but earlier. It's a picture of El by herself in front of a field of sunflowers. Caption: twinning 🌻

The third and final post is a picture of a squirrel holding an acorn, wearing an expression like it just got arrested for grand larceny. The caption? nutty 🥜

El's spare, laconic brand of posting does nothing to demystify her. Max stares at the sunflower picture for a little too long, until something clicks in her brain. She closes Instagram and opens Youtube. She quickly finds what she's looking for, copies the link, and almost sends it to Will, but stops herself. She and Will don't have a texting relationship. She can tell him tomorrow.

Instead, she watches the video, then another one, then another one. They keep playing, one bleeding into the next, and suddenly Max is twelve years old again, staying up too late with the blue light from her phone doing unspeakable damage to her circadian rhythm.

When she does finally fall asleep, a video is still playing. The girl on the screen, the girl wearing El's face, holds up a collectible toy and says, "Enter the code sweetbabyjane at checkout to get ten percent off your first purchase."

Max is at the pool, and Will was right: she hates it. It's too loud, too crowded, too hot. She's self-conscious about her bathing suit, which somehow feels both too modest and too revealing. She attempts to lie down on a chaise lounge and immediately feels like a raw piece of bacon on a hot griddle.

It feels like she just arrived, but Max is already ready to leave. Accepting defeat, she takes herself back to the old bathhouse to collect her things. There's a new, much nicer bathhouse at the pool, but everyone uses it, and Max would rather face the decades-old mold and thriving rat colony of the old bathhouse than change out of a swimsuit in front of every girl, woman, and child in Hawkins.

She's dressed and attempting to coax her chlorine-coated hair into a braid when a figure emerges from the shadows. Max startles and nearly loses her balance on the slippery floor. "What the fuck?" she says, out loud, only half-intentionally.

The figure is not a stranger. Max knows the girl approaching her, the girl with waist-length blonde hair, the girl wearing a long-sleeved pink dress. Jane. Her name is Jane. Something seems wrong; Max's brain feels foggy. Maybe it's the mold. Jane says, "Hi. Ice cream girl."

Max looks over each shoulder as if there might be some other ice cream girl in this deserted bathhouse. She presses a finger to her chest. "Me?" Jane nods. "How long have you been standing there? Were you watching me?"

"It seemed rude to talk to you while you were naked. I waited."

"That's worse. You don't see how that's worse?"

Jane doesn't answer the question. She paces over to Max and stands uncomfortably close to her. "I need your help."

"Huh?"

She doesn't get an answer; instead, Jane grabs her by the wrist and hauls her out of the women's locker room. She drags Max into the old sauna, which was already creepy and haunted to begin with, and that was before there was a guy bleeding out on the floor.

Max looks at the guy, looks up at Jane. Back at the guy. Back at Jane. In the strange, burnt out light of the sauna, she seems to flicker. "Is he dead? Did you kill somebody?"

With the air of a boy raising his hand to say, Um, actually, Jane says, "Not on purpose."

Max is pretty sure she's freaking out, or at least she should be, but she feels eerily calm. Her hands are shaking a little. She balls them into fists, and she starts thinking about how to dispose of a body, and she remembers that this bathhouse was demolished two years ago.

She also remembers that Jane is not Jane anymore. Her name is El now, and she has short brown hair, and she wears sundresses.

In the brief moment between realizing that she is dreaming and waking up, Max asks, "Why?"

Jane bares her teeth and says, "He recognized me."

"I figured out why she looks familiar," Max announces when Will picks her up in the truck.

"Who?"

"El. Hold on." She takes out her phone and opens the Youtube video. "Watch this."

"I'm driving. Can't you just tell me?"

"Do you know Sweet Baby Jane?"

"What? Like the James Taylor album?"

"No. What? God, why are all your pop culture references from, like, the 1980s?"

"That album was released in 1970."

"Okay, boomer. Anyway, she was a kidfluencer."

Will's eyes briefly leave the road as he glances at Max. "A what?"

Max sighs somewhat theatrically. "You know, kids whose parents recorded every moment of their lives and posted them online, and then used them to promote toys and shit. Except in her case, her dad was like, a child psychologist, and he used her to demonstrate some of his theories on childhood development and parenting and stuff. Eventually she starting doing unboxing videos and that kind of thing, and then he'd post separate videos analyzing her behavior."

"Sounds creepy. Why do you know so much about this?"

"I watched some of her videos. You didn't?" Max does not tell him that some means all, or that she was a little bit obsessed with her, at one point. That she pretended they were friends, or that she had conversations with her. She also does not tell him that she rewatched nearly all of the videos last night, or that she dreamed about her.

"No. Why does this matter?"

"Because she escaped all of that only to end up trapped in a relationship with a loser boy who posts pictures of her every day and orders ice cream for her and doesn't leave her alone."

"Is this still about Jane? El? Whatever her name is?"

"Yeah. Who else would it be about? At least I have a reason for wanting to break them up. You just think they're annoying."

"So do you."

"Let's agree to agree and move on. Anyway, I don't think we should stalk her. She's probably on the run or something."

Will nods. "I did have one other idea."

In reply, Max raises her eyebrows.

"This would maybe involve stalking him, but we could leave her out of it."

"I'm listening."

"I could seduce him."

Max's eyes pop out of her head, cartoon-style. "What?"

"I could seduce him. And you could message her and tell her that her boyfriend's cheating on her."

"You're gay?"

"Yeah?"

"Since when?"

"Since—what? Didn't you know?"

"No. Why would I know that? We're not friends."

"I figured Lucas would tell you."

"Lucas knows?"

"He's my best friend."

"So—okay. Why would you seduce him? Why not me? We know he likes girls. He has a girlfriend."

"I got a vibe."

"Okay…" Max chews on her lip, thinking. "Wait, is this why you want to break them up? Because you think he's cute?"

"Isn't that why you want to break them up?"

"Ew, no. He's not—no."

"No, I mean, because you think she's cute?"

"What?"

"You were looking at her with like, hearts in your eyes."

"No, I wasn't."

"Okay, sure. You're bisexual, though."

Yet again, Max says, "What? No. Why would you think that?"

"Because of your—" Will gestures vaguely at Max. "Everything."

"Because of my everything? What does that mean?" Several gears turn in Max's head at once. She jams up the one about Will assuming she's bisexual and focuses on the one about Will being gay. "So, if you're gay…" Something clicks into place. "Do you have a thing for Lucas? Is that why you hate me?"

Will drags a hand down his face as if he's trying to scrub away his expression. He's not successful; the corner of his mouth turns up, betraying a smile. "I don't—hate you."

"Not an answer to the question I asked." Max takes a step closer to Will. "I asked: Do. You. Have. A thing. For Lucas?"

The other corner of Will's mouth twitches. "No."

"You totally do."

"Okay, maybe—"

"Definitely—"

"Maybe I, at one time—"

"Currently—"

"Had a tiny—"

"Huge—"

"Itty bitty crush on Lucas."

Max grins. "Does he know?"

"Of course not."

"Do you want me to tell him?"

Will looks stricken, but in a way that makes Max think he likes being teased about this. "No."

"I could put in a good word."

"It wouldn't matter." The bantering tone in Will's voice turns somber. "He's hung up on you. He always will be."

"Maybe, maybe not. I hope not."

Will shrugs one shoulder noncommittally and doesn't say anything.

Max feels kind of bad now, both for bringing it up and for holding Lucas's affection, even though she can't help how he feels about her. "So, tell me more about your plan. How're you going to seduce him?"

"I'm not. You're right, it's a dumb idea. We probably won't even see them again."

Max says, "Yeah, probably," but she's thinking: I hope we do.

On Wednesday, instead of having the day off, and instead of stalking teenagers with Will, Max gets called into the mall. According to Steve, Robin is sick with food poisoning and Will turned down the shift. "I was your second choice?" Max asks.

"Well, no—I called a couple other people first. Sorry."

This makes more sense. "Don't be. I don't want to be your first choice. Or second." She doesn't want to work today, but she could use the money. "I'll come in."

Outside, the air is even thicker than usual, and Max briefly considers asking her step-brother Billy to drive her, but then she remembers that she likes being alive. Waking Billy up to ask for a ride will compromise her plans of surviving through the day. She takes her skateboard instead. On the way, she gets a text from Will, and she carries her skateboard under her arm while she reads it.

they're at the mall

I thought we weren't stalking them

I got bored

you turned down a shift?

and went to the mall anyway?

what's wrong with you

the doctors don't know but they think it's terminal

Max smiles at her phone, catches herself, rolls her eyes, and slips her phone back into her pocket.

Once she's at the mall, she changes into her uniform in a tiny bathroom stall, trying desperately not to drop her hat into the toilet—though she'd like to—and heads to the food court. She finds Steve looking uncharacteristically flustered, tending to an eleven AM rush of families with young children. Slipping behind the register, she brushes a smattering of sprinkles from the countertop and says, "Is this a man overboard or an SOS?"

"What?" Steve asks. He's elbow-deep in a tub of chocolate ice cream. It's smeared on his arm and nose, and Max feels just a little bad for him.

"Nautical joke," Max says. "Never mind."

The crowd eventually dies down as people remember that it's lunchtime and flock to other areas of the food court. Steve announces that he's going to take a break and disappears into the back. Max looks to her left, her right, and behind her, and upon finding that she's really alone, takes out her phone. She goes back to El's Instagram profile. There's a new photo, posted this morning—a selfie against the backdrop of a sunrise. Caption: the perks of being an insomniac 😴🌅

Max wonders if El is referencing The Perks of Being a Wallflower or just happened to pick up the turn of phrase elsewhere. Either way, she's endeared. She's still looking at the photo when she happens to glance up and comes face to face with El. Startled, she drops her phone. It lands on the ground, which isn't great, but it's better than having El see that she's snooping on her selfies. She scoops it up and slips it in her pocket, accidentally slamming her head on the counter in the process.

"Are you okay?" El asks in the pitying voice with which one might address a toddler who has fallen for the fourth time in ten minutes.

Max rubs her head, winces. "Yeah, I'm fine. So, uh, do you want ice cream?" She gestures at the array of flavors.

"No. I want you."

"What?"

"Are you busy?"

Max looks around again. "I mean, in terms of customers, no, but in terms of this is my job and I have to stay here, yeah. I'm busy."

"When will you be not busy?"

"Like, four? Why?"

"I need your help."

The Jane from her dream superimposes herself over the El standing in front of her, both of them saying they need her help. "With what?"

"Breaking up with my boyfriend."

Max reaches for the Back in 15 Minutes sign and slams it on the counter. "Say no more."

"I thought you had to stay here?"

"Some things," Max says, with all the gravity she can muster, "are more important than ice cream." The way out of here is through the back, which is where Steve is, so Max launches herself over the counter. She intends for it to look cool, but she's pretty sure she just looks like an idiot. Since she's already made a fool of herself, she also grabs El's hand and drags her along as she begins to run through the mall.

When they're a safe distance from the food court, Max slows down and lets go of El's hand. Her palm is sweaty and she's not sure which of them is the culprit. While discreetly wiping her hand on her pants, she says, "So…you want to break up with Mike?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

El sighs. "He's very nice, but he is just…"

"Not right for you?"

El looks at her gratefully. "Yes. Not right for me."

"One more question."

"Okay."

"Why did you ask me for help? I mean, I'm always happy to help a girl dump her boyfriend, but you don't know me."

"Because, well…will you be offended if I say no offense?"

Max shrugs. "Depends on what you say after."

"You seem a little mean."

Once, when Max was getting back together with Lucas for the second or third time, Lucas told her that Will said she was mean. And Lucas said: He's not wrong, but you're mean in, like, a hot way. Max almost asks El if she thinks she's regular mean or hot mean, but stops herself just in time. She hears Will almost as clearly as if he were beside her, saying: You're bisexual, though.

She doesn't know why it's never occurred to her to consider this. Even in Hawkins, which isn't exactly the capital of progressive social politics, there have always been a handful of gay couples, a smattering of kids at school who are out and vocal about it, and nobody gives them any trouble. Max remembers learning at a young age that some kids have two moms or two dads, and wondering why on earth her parents chose each other when there were unlimited other options for them. She has always been aware of queer people, but in the manner that one is aware there are kangaroos in Australia: good for them and good for the world's biodiversity, but not at all applicable to her.

"Mean in a good way, though, I think," El continues. "It is possible to be too nice." She tucks her hair behind one ear, then the other. She really is very pretty, and not in the way of most pretty girls, the kind of pretty that makes Max feel a dull envy followed by mild disdain. She's pretty like a painting, as if Max might reach out to touch her and feel only oil on canvas.

"Did somebody tell you that? That it's possible to be too nice?"

"So will you help me?" El asks, instead of answering Max's question.

"Yeah, sure. I can be mean for you. Or help you be mean, whatever."

"I don't want to hurt his feelings. I just want to not date him."

"Yeah, so, it's kind of not really possible to break up with somebody and not hurt their feelings," Max tells her. "If you're too nice about it he won't even realize you're breaking up with him."

"Oh." El turns and folds her arms on the railing that separates the second floor of the mall from the fall leading down to the first. Last year a kid broke both legs when he jumped over the railing on a dare. "I have not ever needed to break up with someone."

"Have you been broken up with?" Max asks, moving to stand beside her, even though she already knows the answer.

"No. He is my first boyfriend. But we have been together for a year."

Max tries and fails to do some mental math. "The first time you came to get ice cream, he said it was your third date."

"We met online," El explains. She does not elaborate.

"Okay, so…you like, moved here? For him?" Even knowing what she knows about El's past—which is getting increasingly difficult not to mention—Max can't quite fit together the pieces of her story.

"He helped me," El says. "I was in a…difficult situation. He helped me leave." She turns her head and fixes Max with an intense gaze. Her voice takes on a darker quality when she says, "And I am fairly certain that you know what I am talking about."

Feeling like phytoplankton under a microscope, Max wriggles away an inch or two, putting space between herself and El. She doesn't look at El when she says, "I didn't think I should mention it."

"It's okay." The darkness is gone; did Max imagine it?

El pushes away from the railing and starts walking. She sets a brisk pace. A step behind her, Max says, "I don't think most people would recognize you, if you're worried about that. I was a little obsessed with you—is that weird? No, I mean, I know it's weird—is it weird that I just told you? I can go, if you want. I can go lock myself in the walk-in and freeze to death. There's worse ways to go than surrounded by tubs of ice cream, right?"

El makes an abrupt turn into a store and Max's nose is assaulted by a hundred scents layered on top of one another. Bath and Body Works is the second-worst store El could have taken her to; the worst would have been Victoria's Secret. El smiles politely at the employee who rattles off details about a sale before descending deeper into the store. She pauses at a display of candles and removes the lid from one called Oceanside Lavender. Sniffs it and says, more to the candle than to Max, "Obsessed with me. What does that mean?" She extends the candle and Max sniffs it. It smells like the bathroom in her dad's timeshare beach house.

"That's nice. Um. I sort of pretended you were my friend. Like, on the playground and stuff. Some kids have imaginary friends. I had you. Like I said. Weird. And sad. Weird and sad."

El sets the candle down and wanders to a display of lotions, squeezes a dime-sized amount from a sample bottle and smears it onto her forearm. "I was not allowed to have friends." She looks up at Max, smiles at her like she's found something unexpectedly precious at a yard sale. "It is nice to know I had one anyway."

They spend another fifteen minutes or so in the store, covering their skin with body mists and lotions that don't go together. Steve must be calling and texting by now, but Max's phone is on silent, and she doesn't bother checking it. Maybe he'll beg Will to come in, since she ditched. Thinking of Will prompts Max to ask El, "Where's Mike now?"

"Oh, he is around somewhere," El says, twisting a paper towel around her fingers. She is hogging the sink, trying every tester bottle of foaming hand soap. A disgruntled woman hovers nearby, holding a single bottle in her hand. She makes eye contact with Max. Max shrugs and does not tell El to get out of the way. "He wanted to go to GameStop and I said I would meet up with him later."

"I'm pretty sure that store is a front for something," Max says. "I heard a rumor that if you ask to trade in a Nintendo DS, they'll give you a jewel case with drugs inside."

"What?"

"Never mind. Do you want to break up with him today?"

"Not today."

"Okay. Well, in that case, we should probably get out of here before he comes looking for you or my boss comes looking for me."

El gives her a single sharp nod. "Where will we go?"

Max opens her mouth to tell her they can go to her house, then remembers that Billy is home. She doesn't like to inflict Billy upon unsuspecting strangers, although probably he'd be a perfect gentleman to a girl as pretty as El. Which might be worse. "Do you have a house?"

El frowns, gnaws on her bottom lip. "I live," she says, with the world-weariness of a much older person, "in Mike's basement."

They go to Max's house. Walk through the mall, walk through the sticky humidity and steaming asphalt, and Max does not ask follow-up questions about El's living arrangement. Doesn't ask how a sixteen-year-old girl moves herself from Pennsylvania to Indiana, without a car, to live in her internet boyfriend's basement, without a plan for what comes next. It would be cruel to ask, she thinks, and the how of it doesn't really matter so much. What matters is that Max has agreed to help her. So that's what she's going to do, even if helping has become a lot more complicated than coaching El through a breakup.

Sitting on Max's bed, eating popsicles—mango for Max, strawberry for El. "You can't break up with him until you have somewhere else to live," Max tells her. "You don't want to end up out on the street because he kicks you out."

"I don't think—"

"And I'd offer to let you stay here, but that's not really a permanent solution, and my stepdad will have a fit about feeding extra mouths if you stay for more than like, a couple days." Max has never had a sleepover before, but she knows her stepfather, and he's not a 'the more the merrier' kind of guy. A couple of days is probably too generous; Max would be lucky to get away with a single night.

El takes a bite of her popsicle. Watching her makes Max's teeth hurt. "Money," she says. "If I have money, can I find a place to live?"

"Uh, I mean, probably not? At least not anything official, like renting an apartment. I think you have to be eighteen. I guess it might work differently if you're emancipated, but you aren't, are you?"

"No."

"Money's a good place to start, though. Hey, if I get fired, maybe you can have my job."

El perks up. "In the ice cream truck?"

"Yeah, or at the main store."

"I want to work in the ice cream truck."

"Okay, sure. I'll see what I can do. And look, I'll talk to my mom. See what I can figure out. Can you stay with Mike for a few more days?"

"Stay with him like dating or like living in his house?"

"Both?"

El bites off the last bit of her popsicle and slides the stick back into the plastic wrapper. "Yes. I think so. Max?"

"Yeah?"

El leans forward and sets her hands firmly on Max's shoulders. A brief wave of panic crashes over Max as she anticipates El kissing her; disappointment follows when she doesn't. She only squeezes Max's shoulders and says, "Thank you."

Max fabricates a story about a sudden, gushing period that has Steve fumbling for an apology and promising to buy tampons for the work bathroom. She also convinces him to hire El and pay her under the table, no paperwork needed. "She just escaped her abusive family," Max tells him. "They've got her birth certificate and everything." This part isn't even a lie. Steve says he could use more help at the shop, and that there isn't really space for three in the truck, but Max manages to spin up a story about how it's safer for El to be mobile than stuck in one location. Steve relents, still ashamed and malleable over the tampon thing, and two days after Max agrees to help El, she's scheduled to join Max and Will in the truck.

Lying to Steve is one thing; lying to Will is another. On the day that El came to Max's house, Will texted her:

got intel on mike and girlfriend

Max didn't reply, and Will didn't double text. Feeling weirdly anxious, she finally types out a response.

I got El a job with us she'll be there tomorrow I'll explain later

Will responds almost immediately.

let me guess: you're very gallantly trying to help her make some money so she doesn't have to live with Mike anymore?

he told you about that? no wonder she wants to break up with him

he's telling strangers her life story

to be fair you also told me her life story so maybe you and your high horse should trot back into the stable

she wants to break up with him??

don't start packing your bags yet

what's that supposed to mean

you know bc you have a crush on him so if she moves out you can move in

don't make me explain my jokes that's how they lose their funny

that one didn't have much funny to lose

fuck you

see you tomorrow

The addition of El to their team proves beneficial for everyone—Max, Will, El, and the throngs of ice cream-hungry people they serve each day. Max is relieved of all customer face-time, relegated to scooping, which she's actually quite good at. Often, when Will or El hands over an order, the customer comments on how pretty it is. Will sometimes thanks them, taking credit for Max's work, but El always chirps, Max made it!

The main benefit for Will is that he has someone to talk to besides Max; the main benefit for El is that she's making a little money. They all work well together, though, and Max thinks they're maybe approximating something close to friendship. El softens Max's rougher edges, tips her head to the side and furrows her eyebrows when Max says something a little too mean.

She still hasn't broken up with Mike. She says the timing isn't right, she says it's not so bad, it's just boring. She says she will do it after she moves out. Max is well-versed in making excuses for staying with your boyfriend who you don't like all that much, but after two weeks of excuses, she's fed up. She talks to her mom, makes up some flimsy lie about getting extra credit in social studies for hosting an exchange student. Her mom talks to Neil, somehow gets him to agree, and Max tells El she can move in, under the condition that she has to fake a British accent. Max coaches El through telling Mike that she's moving out, and she follows her advice, reports back that Mike expressed relief, saying that it was getting hard to continue hiding her in his basement.

So El moves in with Max, and Max reflects on the bizarre turn this summer has taken, and they serve ice cream together, and El doesn't break up with Mike, and it's all more or less fine—until Max sees El roll up her sleeves and braid her own hair and is unable to ignore the voice in her head that says, I want her.

One day in late June, they drop El off at Mike's house, and it's just the two of them in the truck. After a few minutes of silence, Max works up the courage to ask Will, "So if I was, hypothetically, bisexual"—here she glances over at him to gauge his response, but his expression is schooled into unreadable placidity—"would it be tacky to ask out a girl I'm helping to break up with her boyfriend?"

Will drums his fingers on the steering wheel, takes his time answering. "Not as tacky—and tactless, which I think might be the word you actually want—as asking out a girl who's living with you until she can find her own place to live. You're also leaving out the part where you were already plotting to break up her relationship via poisoning, and the part where you were obsessed with her when she was a child Youtuber."

"So you think it's a bad idea."

"I didn't say that."

Max waits a beat to see if he adds anything else. He doesn't. "I'm legitimately asking for your advice, Will."

At the sound of his name, Will's hands slip on the wheel, and the truck goes a little askew. He gets it back on track before saying, "I thought this was hypothetical."

She wants to say Do I really use your name so infrequently that hearing it makes you swerve into traffic. She says, "I think I actually like her," and waits for an I told you so that doesn't come.

"My mom's boyfriend's daughter died a couple years ago," Will says, scratching his neck where the collar of his shirt meets skin. "He's been talking about wanting to adopt a teenager. My mom offered me up and he said 'I'm serious, Joyce,' so—I don't know. I could ask."

"Isn't your mom's boyfriend a cop?"

"Police chief."

"Cops ask questions."

"Yeah," Will concedes, "but I don't see Hopper shipping her back off to her dad. If anything, he'd probably investigate him."

Max still does not have the full picture of what happened with El's dad, why exactly she fled, why she changed her name and moved in with a boy she only knew from The Sims 4 forums. Despite living together, Max and El have not had conversations deeper than Are you done in the bathroom now and Do you mind if I put some music on. Every time Max almost asks El for more details—about her past, about her relationship with Mike, about anything—she stops herself. Tells herself she's being nosy, invasive.

"Okay. You can ask him. Thanks."

"Yeah, sure, no problem."

"Can I ask you something?"

"Mhm."

"Are you doing this to help her or to help me?"

"Her, of course." Will side-eyes her. "Mostly."

"Mostly?"

"And to help me, because I'm tired of watching you try to flirt with her."

"I haven't been flirting with her."

"Yeah, like I said, trying."

"When are you going to tell Lucas about your crush on him?"

"Never. Don't make this about me."

Max reaches out to pat Will's shoulder as he slows in front of Max's house. "I would never," she swears, "make something about you if I didn't think it was important."

She hops out of the truck and darts into the house before Will can say something snide, or worse—sentimental.

Fourth of July, picnic blanket littered with crumbs and poked through with sharp, dry grass. Max, legs outstretched and hands behind her, El hugging her legs with chin propped on knees. She wanted to see the fireworks. Max doesn't care for them—doesn't care for anything that could spark a wildfire or any holiday that pretends like the American dream is anything but an imperialist lie—but El wanted to see them, so. Here they are. Sunset has passed but it's still dusky grey out, not quite dark enough for the show to begin. El, in one of her many sundresses, is the brightest point in Max's vision.

"Hey," Max begins, buying time while she musters up the confidence to finish her sentence, "can I ask you something? You don't have to answer."

"You can ask," El says, turning her head to look at Max, resting her cheek on her knees.

"Why did you change your name? Or, I mean, I guess I know why you changed it. But why El?"

"You know how Mike and I met."

Online, a forum for The Sims, where El was posting weekly updates of something called a Legacy Challenge, a story following generations of characters. Inspired by her, Mike started his own, reached out to her for advice on cheat codes. "Yeah?"

El lifts her head and tips her face to the sky, searching for fireworks that aren't there yet. "The founder of my legacy challenge was named El," she says. "El Ives. My challenge rules stated that my founder had to have a randomly generated name. I did not come up with it on my own. It was Mike's idea to use it for myself. I told him I needed a new name, and he said—" She pauses, collects the memory. "He said that if she built a life from nothing, I could too."

Some of the sentiment is lost on Max, who prefers her video games with guns, gore, and/or quests, but she still feels vaguely guilty for all the bad things she's said about Mike in her attempts to coach El into breaking up with him. "Was he right?"

"I think so," El says, and then, "I broke up with him."

"What? When?"

"Today."

"Today? But you didn't—"

"Tell you? No. I was not planning to do it. I was with him, and I felt like I could not go on not saying it. So I told him I am grateful, and I am sorry, but I do not love him."

"Oh." That's all Max has to say—oh. Her many breakups with Lucas were venomous things, designed to hurt, and so she has been coaching El to do the same. But El never needed her. She found a way to do it kindly, and even in kindness managed to be more firm, more final.

Darkness falls and fireworks bloom in the sky, crackling and hissing to the oohs and aahs of the assembled crowd. Max thinks about dry grass and stray sparks, wildfires and destruction. El, apparently unphased by the thunderous sound, watches rapturously and bumps her shoulder against Max's. "Thank you," she says, in the silence between bursts of fireworks.

Max is still thinking about El and Mike's civil breakup. She can't believe that just a couple of weeks ago, she thought the way to break them up was poisoning or a fake proposal. "For what? I didn't even help you."

"You got me a job and let me live with you," El reminds her.

"Oh, yeah. Right. But it's not a big deal, I mean, I didn't help you escape your dad, or give you a new name, or—"

El gently clamps her hand over Max's mouth. "You talk too much."

Max tries to talk, to defend herself, which only affirms El's point.

"You talk too much," El repeats, "and I can never tell if you think you are better than everyone else or worse. I think it is a little bit of both, and you cannot decide if you like yourself or not." She gently removes her hand but keeps her thumb near Max's lower lip. "But I like you."

"You do?"

Another firework goes off, but Max barely hears it, and she certainly doesn't see it, because that's when El kisses her. Soft lips, one hand holding her chin in place, the other resting loosely on Max's knee. Brief but true, no frills, a kiss that says what it means: I like you.

"Was that okay?" El asks. "I forgot to ask for permission."

"I'm an 'ask for forgiveness, not permission' kind of girl," Max says. Realizing she hasn't answered El's question, she clarifies: "Yes. It was okay."

"Good." El rests her head on Max's shoulder. "Will told me to do it."

"What?"

"Will told me to kiss you. He said you wanted me to but would never say. Was he right?"

Max sighs. "Probably. You talk to Will?"

"We text." A pause. "You sound frustrated."

"More like embarrassed."

"He only told me because I asked."

"Asked what?"

"If he thought you wanted to kiss me. Because I wanted to kiss you. He said yes." Again, she asks, "Was he right?"

Tomorrow, maybe, Max will tell her everything. She'll confess that she and Will were plotting to break up her relationship, that they stalked them on Instagram, that Max briefly wanted to poison Mike. Tomorrow she'll yell at Will for telling El about her crush; tomorrow she'll call Lucas up and tell him that Will likes him. Or maybe she won't. Maybe she'll get him back some other way, like sneaking up on him and dropping a scoop of ice cream down the back of his shirt.

For now, Max is content to leave it be, to sit and watch the fireworks. She finds El's hand, folds their fingers together, and says, "Don't believe everything Will says, okay? But yeah, he was right this time—I did want to. Kiss you, I mean. I still do."

"Good," El says, and kisses her again.

"Where is Will, anyway? He said he was going to meet us here, didn't he?"

"He is here." El smiles. "But not with us."

"Don't tell me he's here with Mike."

"No. The other boy. The one who was yours."

"Lucas?"

"Lucas," El affirms. "Will said that if I promised to kiss you tonight, he would invite Lucas out and tell him how he feels. So I promised, and he did."

Max scrambles to her feet and pulls El up with her. Without asking where they're going, El bundles up the picnic blanket and carries it under her arm. They weave through the crowd, struggling to see in the dark, pausing with every firework to look for Will and Lucas.

When they do find them, they're sitting how Max and El were—close together, shoulders touching, Will's head tipped against Lucas's shoulder. Max has the urge to sneak up behind them and say Boo, but she resists. It's too sweet of a moment to ruin with a dumb prank.

A cool breeze whips up and Lucas puts his arm around Will. El unfurls the blanket and wraps it around herself like a cape. Looks at Max, extends one arm in a welcoming gesture. Max moves closer and lets El wrap them up together. She's happy, she thinks and it's not only because El kissed her, or because Will got what he wanted too.

As the last of the fireworks shatter in the sky, the thought that is foremost in Max's mind—the thought that is making her happiest—is one she would never admit, not to anyone.

Maybe, she thinks, now Will and I can be friends.