Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

oh, oh, stick it down your throat

The foundations were pure, like an angel’s first breath. Eleven had been so excited to go to a real school. She had heard of colleges and universities from Dr. Brenner and she had snuck through the halls of Hawkins Middle School when she was in hiding so she could see Mike, but her issues regarding being wanted by the government and her delayed skills due to living in a laboratory her entire life prevented her from doing so. Originally, when her waiting period was up in November, she planned to attend Hawkins High School, but after the Starcourt Mall incident, Owens had moved them out to Lenora Hills, California, a small town where the government wouldn’t track them.

Immediately, when she walked into the doors of Lenora Hills High School the week after Halloween, she was shell-shocked. The number of children that confidently strode the halls in neon colors with short-shorts and laughed obnoxiously loud with their friends was very different for Eleven, who was dressed in one of Will’s navy flannels and long white pants and had no friends to laugh loudly at. Nonetheless, she was excited to begin her school day. To her, this was a big step in her journey to figure out who she was without her superpowers, something that was inaccessible to her back in Hawkins.

Her first period was history with Mrs. Gracey, one of the two classes she had with Will. She and Will were the first ones in the classroom. Eleven had a good feeling about her teacher. With curled brown hair and pearls around her neck, she gave a warm smile to the two of them.

“Names?” Mrs. Gracey asked and Eleven recited the answer she had anxiously prepared for the past week.

“Jane. Jane Hopper.”

“And you?” Mrs. Gracey questioned, pointing to Will.

“William Byers, but I go by Will,” he answered and silently, the two entered the classroom.

She cautiously followed Will through the empty rows of desks yet to be filled with students, and hopefully, friends. They stopped in the middle of the desks and El chose the seat to the left of Will. Carefully, she placed her backpack on the back of the seat just like Will and sat down, more children beginning to filter into the classroom. The kids did not know Eleven and she did not know them. But that would soon change.

As El surveyed the classroom’s many posters about the world and history, something she couldn’t wait to learn all about, all of the other children were curious as to what their teacher was reading. She was holding a big red folder in the shade of a firetruck in front of her face, HOPPER– IEP written in black Sharpie on the front of it. Inside of it was an IEP form for “Jane Hopper.” Joyce had to sit down with the school for what seemed like forever to make the IEP and even longer for the school system to accept it. In the end, Jane was registered as having an unknown intellectual disability and a speech impairment, both falsely diagnosed by Owens so there was credit behind the claims. There were no present accommodations in place, but Joyce was sure that that would change soon when El had been in school for a bit and they could see where she struggled.

Will, however, could hear the students gossiping about Eleven. They had never seen an IEP folder in their life and their whispers were not complimentary.

“Who is Hopper?”

“What’s an IEP?”

“An IEP is for a dummy so they can graduate, shithead.”

At that last comment, Will’s stomach sank. If this was how El was going to be received on the first day of school before they even knew her face, this year was going to be hell for her. Thankfully, the shrill bell rang, startling Eleven for a second, and as she corrected herself so she appeared more normal, Mrs. Gracey put away the folder and began teaching the class about Reconstruction from the Civil War. Eleven tried her best to take notes but became quickly overwhelmed by the overload of information. Eleven had learned about the Civil War from Jonathan but using it in practice was deemed too difficult by the poor girl. By the end of the class, her handwriting was messy and shaky, the paper had a ton of pink marks from her eraser, and she had copied from Will more times than she could count. This was going to be a struggle.

Unbeknownst to Eleven, someone had been watching her the whole time. Angela was subtly preying on her, silently interrogating her every move. To her, Jane was not like the rest of the kids in the class. Her clothes were a sad attempt to look fashionable, her nails were bitten down to the quick and not polished like the rest of the girls, and her mannerisms were even weirder. She seemed like a kindergartener unsure of what to do (which, in some ways was true), always looking at the boy next to her for guidance on everything from spelling to where to write her damn name on the test. When Angela could get a glance at her writing, it was nearly illegible and it seemed like the spelling of an eight-year-old. She quickly concluded she was the mysterious HOPPER with the red folder. 

Throughout the rest of the day, Angela was able to determine three things. The first was that her name was Jane and her last name was indeed Hopper. The second was that the boy that she constantly looked to for help during lessons was her stepbrother. And the last thing she learned was that Jane was a perfect target.

The next day, an exhausted and overwhelmed Eleven stumbled into the classroom. She had stayed up all night writing paragraphs about her summer and doing algebra problems she struggled to understand, not being able to fall asleep until two in the morning. When she arrived at her desk, there was a bright yellow Post-it note. She picked it up and read the words printed on it. Jane is a retard. Eleven had no idea what the last word meant and as she took out a pencil and paper, determined to make fewer mistakes than yesterday, she turned to Will, who was sketching on an art pad.

“Will?” El asked, holding the sticky note delicately in her palm as if it were a flower she had picked from a garden.

“What’s up?” Will asked back, looking up from his sketchpad, twiddling with the yellow pencil.

“What does this mean?” El questioned, pointing to the final word in the sentence.

As Will read the sticky note, his heart dropped. It had only been one day of high school and Eleven was getting bullied. Will knew what it was like to be bullied like this in middle school. People would often call him faggot or zombie boy, and after a while, Will had gotten desensitized. But seeing Eleven, someone who had grown to become a sister to him, be bullied somehow made it worse.

“Don’t worry about it. Can I have that?” Will asked and El shook her head, her face falling.

“It’s something bad, isn’t it?” El muttered, casting her eyes downward and Will slowly nodded.

“It’s just someone being mean. You should tell Mrs. Gracey,” Will encouraged but El quickly shook her head, not wanting to cause a scene.

Even though Eleven didn’t know what the word meant, it still stung like when she used to get electrocuted in the lab. As her body stung with adrenaline, she glanced around the room for a potential culprit. Her eyes soon landed on Angela, who was staring at her, along with her posse of friends. When they locked eyes, Angela let out a loud laugh, and El’s lip quivered. She buried her face in her arms and stifled her cries as the bell rang. Will decided that even though Eleven was adamant about learning on her own, he would take notes for her, even if it was just for today.

When she got home, Jonathan’s car making squeaking sounds all the way to their house, Eleven marched to the bookshelf containing the Britannica encyclopedias Joyce intended to sell, finding the L-Z index section and snatching it off of the shelf. She sat at the dining table with Will where they often began their homework until dinner and flipped through the letters until she got to the R section. She scanned through the section, flipping many pages until she landed on retard, which could be found in book twelve, page three hundred and one.

Quickly swapping books, El opened the book to page three-hundred and one. “The word retard is often used as a derogatory term for someone whose brain is plagued with intellectual disabilities and developmental disorders to the point where they struggle to function like the average human. It is often used to make fun of the human and pick at their shortcomings.”

“El, you should tell someone about this if it's bothering you this much,” Will pleaded but once again, Eleven shook her head, pushing the book aside and beginning to work on her history homework.

Inside, the word stuck to her like paste. It stuck to her brain, it stuck to her stomach, it stuck to her heart. It stuck to her throat. While she began to write in messy handwriting and grammar a paragraph on why Reconstruction was either  a failure or a success, she made up a plan in her mind on how to lessen her “shortcomings.” And it would have to come right from the source herself.

Chapter Text

i’m watching from the bathroom

“Are you sure you’re going to be okay, today?” Will asked as they separated from Jonathan, walking across the courtyard of their humongous campus, children seeming to occupy every nook and cranny as they waited for the warning bell to ring throughout the school with their skateboards and sodas.

“Will, I’m going to be fine. I’ll just… talk to her at lunch. I’m sure she’ll apologize,” Eleven told her brother, and although Will seemed unconvinced, he nodded anyway.

Deep down, Will knew this was going to go only one way: Eleven was going to get ridiculed for confronting Angela and the bullying cycle would continue, each cycle getting slightly more horrific until it ended with somebody getting hurt. At least, that’s what seemed to happen in Lenora Hills High School. But Eleven was determined to carve her own path in high school and if she thought this was going to solve the situation, she might as well learn on her own. After all, Will knew he could most likely stop Angela before it got too bad.

When Eleven got to first period, she made an effort to smile at Angela, something Joyce often did to customers at Melvald’s General Store whenever she went to visit her in the months between the Starcout Mall incident and moving to California. Surprisingly, Angela smiled back with what Eleven calculated as a genuine smile, but the snickers she received from her posse told her otherwise. Still, it was a good try in Eleven’s books and she pulled out her Reconstruction paragraph that she made Jonathan proofread a million times to make sure it didn’t look bad.

Eleven couldn’t stop thinking about what she was going to say to Angela during the lunch block. She knew she wanted to bring Angela to a more private area. Whenever Mike and Eleven had serious talks, like the one when he had to explain sexual assault and consent, it always took place in more private areas and used quieter tones so that nobody would be privy to their conversation. But El was still unsure of what to tell Angela that would both be effective and get her on a good note with the popular girl.

During first period, Eleven could already see a positive change in her comprehension of history, being able to remember a lot more dates and understand the impacts of each event that they covered. To her, history was a domino effect: one event caused another, which caused another, and so on, which made it easier to remember. She knew she was still playing catch-up with her classmates, which she most likely would be until junior or senior year, but to her, it felt encouraging.

The rest of the periods, however, seemed to drag by. Art class was the easiest class for El physically since all she had to do was put in the effort and get a good grade. However, working with clay, which was voted on by the class, was deemed to be a sensory nightmare for Eleven. Working with the clay itself wasn’t difficult, the score, slip, stick, and smooth method proving to be effective, but the dry residue it left on her hands left her with uncomfortable chills racking through her body and tears always threatening to fall if she couldn’t wash them every fifteen minutes. Not to mention the bright fluorescent lights that seemed to shine extra bright in art class– it wasn’t going great in that class.

Thankfully, after art class, there was only math class and English class. Math class was the easiest for Eleven, so after she completed the easy algebra worksheet a substitute had provided, she let herself daydream. She wished she was back in Hawkins with Max, Mike, Lucas, and Dustin. She got to talk to Mike a lot on Cerebro, and occasionally from Lucas and Dustin, After the first initial call when they moved, however, Max had not been heard from since. Eleven wondered what she was doing right now. She was most likely in algebra class struggling with the numbers, her hair in two braids like she enjoyed wearing it during school hours. Max was exceptionally bad at math, so she probably distracted herself by talking to Lucas about some movie they planned to see together at the theatre.

“Excuse me?” somebody suddenly asked, snapping Eleven out of her trance.

Eleven followed the noise to the girl who was sitting next to her in a pink shirt and rainbow skirt. She believed her name was Tamara. She gave a small smile. Did Tamara want to be her friend?
“Can you stop tapping your pencil on the desk? I can’t concentrate,” Tamara asked, and Eleven’s foolish smile dropped, and quickly nodded.

“Sorry,” she whispered, putting away her pencil.

Tamara gave a dry smile to Eleven before continuing to define variables and algebraic expressions. Eleven felt very embarrassed, but Tamara wasn’t part of Angela’s group, so it didn’t seem like a big deal. The rest of math class was without incident, and surprisingly, even though Angela sat directly behind her in English class, went without incident as well. As soon as the lunch bell hit, Eleven, though nervous, was confident in her plan.

First, she went to her locker and grabbed her E.T. lunchbox, a parting gift from Dustin. Since Eleven had certain issues with textures and tastes, Joyce packed her lunch. Eleven felt bad for using up resources, still feeling like she didn’t belong in the Byers’ household, but Joyce assured her it wasn’t a big deal at all, especially since she was making more money in the encyclopedia trade anyway.

When she got to lunch, she surprisingly didn’t see Angela with her posse. There was Jake, Angela’s boyfriend, Stacy, and Chad, but no Angela. Deciding there would be no confrontation today, she decided to go to her lunch table. Will had more success finding a few friends, the artsy kids enveloping him with a sense of community. Eleven didn’t want to impose on Will or his friends, so she settled for an empty table towards the back of the cafeteria that was yet to be filled with patrons.

She began eating her peanut butter and jelly sandwich in silence, waiting for some brave souls to sit next to her, trying to extend olive branches to the new girl. Nonetheless, nobody dared to speak to her or even sit next to her. It was like there was a bubble around her that nobody was willing to pop. She had never felt so lonely, even in the lab. At least there were people there that pretended to care about her. She knew that if she were back in Hawkins right now, she wouldn’t be so isolated from the world. El wished to go there very much that day.

It didn’t take long for her to finish her lunch, so she was left sitting there for twenty minutes, alone. She tried to think of something to pass the time, like what Mike was doing, or if any of them had died in their Dungeons and Dragons campaign that they were doing with this new club after school called Hellfire. But those ideas proved fruitless, El becoming even sadder thinking about what could have been. 

Instead, she decided to go on a walk. Walks around the neighborhood always made her feel better when she was struggling with a question on homework, she found. It allowed her mind to think through the problem while she also got to admire the Lenora Hills landscape. It was barren and dusty, a spring flower not in sight, but it was still pretty to Eleven. She got up from the lunch table, slung her backpack over her shoulders, and decided to head for a lap around the air-conditioned school, the outside environment too hot and dry for her.

She left the cafeteria silently and turned right, heading down the ninth-grade hallway. It was close enough to her fifth period, health class, that when the bell rang throughout the school, she wouldn’t be late. It was weird hearing the silence of the hallways. She could hear the hum of the air conditioning, which annoyed her quite a bit. In fact, after a few minutes, it got under her skin so much she decided to decompress in the bathroom.

Normally, in the bathroom, there were no noises during class periods. People didn’t enjoy going to the bathroom during class periods for whatever reason, so they were always empty and a great place for Eleven to calm down when the school day proved too hard for her. But when Eleven made her way to the bathroom, she was surprised to see a person in the stall.

As Eleven sat down near the sinks, she was surprised to see that there was a person in the bathroom. Even odder, they weren’t sitting on the toilet, but they were kneeling in front of the toilet. Originally, Eleven decided to mind her business, just watching from the bathroom sinks, but when she heard horrific sounds like coughing, sputtering, and what Eleven assumed to be throwing up, she grew concerned. Was the girl in the stall sick?

“Are you okay?” Eleven asked softly and all of the sounds that were produced by the girl stopped in their tracks.

“Uh– I’m fine. Just… leave me alone, please,” the girl pleaded from the stall, her voice sounding oddly clear, and El, knowing how desperate that girl must be, silently left the bathroom.

That girl stayed in her mind for the rest of the day. She tried to spot the brown Converse that she was wearing throughout the halls and in her classroom, but to no avail, she couldn’t find the shoes anywhere. For whatever reason, that girl ate inside of her like, creating a weird dark vortex inside of her chest. Eleven didn’t think that girl was just sick. If you were sick, you went to the nurse’s office.

Eventually, once she and Will were done with their homework, which seemed to take a shorter and shorter amount of time each day, they decided to watch a movie. Jonathan was hanging out at the pizza shop with his new friend Argyle and Joyce was out grocery shopping, so they got to pick out the movie just the two of them. They decided on The Goonies, a movie that was very similar to their real-life experiences. They had microwaved popcorn and begun the movie, enjoying the alone time they had. About halfway through, though, El couldn’t help herself. She had to ask Will what that girl was doing in the bathroom.

“Will?” Eleven asked, still staring at the movie on the television. “I saw something at the school today.”

Will was used to these questions from Eleven. He never minded them; he wanted her to understand the world just as much as he did. “What did you see?”
“There was a girl in the bathroom… and she was throwing up,” El said, and Will let out a small hum, feeling bad for the girl in the bathroom stall.

“She must have been sick. I hope she feels better,” Will stated. “Why do you bring it up?”

El shifted and looked away from the TV screen to Will, who paused the show and looked at her. “Because– she didn’t sound like she was throwing up because she was sick. Her voice was too… clear. It didn’t sound…”

“Stuffy?” Will finished and El nodded.

Will thought for a moment. He didn’t feel keen on describing bulimia to El, since she was quite an impressionable girl. He remembered Eleven had told him the story of when he saw Hopper smoking cigarettes, so she tried to smoke a cigarette and burned her thumb pretty badly. If he looked at her thumb closely, he could see a patch of discolored skin on the tip of her thumb.

“Oh, well, I guess she just thought the food she ate was bad,” Will lied and El, satisfied with the answer, turned back to the television as Will turned on The Goonies.

Chapter Text

making sure i don’t choke, choke

For the next week, things seemed to cool down a bit. Eleven and Will were both adjusting to their new life, still keeping in touch with their friends back in Hawkins via their Cerebro. Will had slowly found his crowd, joining the art club after school and becoming friends with some of the kids in their art class. Eleven had tried to hang out with them, and while they were accepting, they just seemed too… peculiar for Eleven, so while they certainly were allies, they weren’t her friends.

Eleven herself was slowly getting better at understanding what to do in her classes. English was the worst, the words on the paper spilling and mixing together. Joyce had already written down bigger text print books for Eleven when their next IEP meeting occurred. Algebra, while not easy, wasn’t insufferable, the numbers calculating in her head much quicker than words did. She had managed to make one friend (if you could call it that). It was Tamara, the girl next to her in math class. They traded gum, Tamara giving Eleven a cherry 7&UP stick in exchange for Eleven’s Dr. Pepper stick. However, other than trading gum and smiles in the hallway, she didn’t talk to her.

The only thing that didn’t seem to cool down much was Angela. After a few days, Eleven had become a public target. Not much had happened itself, only spitballs when Mrs. Gracey wasn’t looking that stuck to Eleven’s cheek in a way that made her feel gross for just existing. It didn’t help that she would need to lick her finger and press it to her other cheek so that each side felt symmetrical. The white paper ball all coagulated with someone else’s saliva was disgusting, but at the end of the day, harmless.

Will had felt horrible that all of this was happening to Eleven and offered everything from convincing Joyce that she was sick so she could have a day off to reporting all of this to the counselor, but Eleven was stubborn. She could handle all of this on her own. None of this bullying was worse than the lab. Maybe it was a little more embarrassing since there were witnesses that didn’t sign NDAs watching, but nothing truly traumatizing.

No, the first thing that truly made Eleven realize she did not belong in the school was the week after she had started at Lenora Hills. The day had started as usual. Eleven was too optimistic about the school day for her good, they hopped into Jonathan’s car which was on the verge of death, and they went into Mrs. Gracey’s classroom. There, Eleven would get pelted with a spitball while giggles erupted around her and the daily lessons would begin. Art class even was better, since the clay had hardened in the kiln and they got to glaze their projects instead of working with the sticky and dry material.

It wasn’t until lunch that the first incident happened. Walking out of her English class, she was quickly trampled by her classmates, forcing herself to the back of the line so she wouldn’t get hurt. Her foot had been hurting a bit from what Joyce chalked up to “a random ache,” so she decided to go at a slightly slower pace. In between that and having to get her lunch, she was one of the last to claim a seat in the cafeteria. Unbeknownst to her, that seat would never be filled.

She did not see Angela’s posse hiding in the shadows of the dimly lit hallway when she first approached it, something that maintenance had failed to fix.  And as she was walking through the dark corridor, she did not notice the menacing glares and the silent countdown that had happened behind her back. But Eleven couldn’t ignore when she was pinned against the wall by Chad.

Immediately, Eleven’s panic system kicked in. She immediately began kicking her legs and flailing around, but Chad was too strong. Her shoulders were pinned to the brick wall that had been lazily painted tan. When Eleven craned her neck, she could see Jake, Angela, and Stacey all crowding around her.

“You think you’re really funny, don't you, Jane?” Chad asked Eleven, his disgusting eyes staring straight into her innocent eyes.

“Why are you doing this?” Eleven pleaded, her ankles giving a weak kick against the wall as if it would make Chad let go, her eyes brimming with tears for what seemed like the millionth time this week.

“Aww, are you a little crybaby? Go ahead, cry,” Angela teased, her voice and her following giggle menacing as Chad moved his hands to her neck.

Eleven tried to pry his rough hands away from her throat, trying to make sure she didn’t choke. But Chad was just so much stronger than her, especially since she didn’t have her superpowers. So as Eleven’s breath began to get restricted, she tried to ask once again, “Why?”

Even though the message came out shaky as Chad squeezed her entire neck, her throat seizing, Stacey seemed to understand what Eleven wanted to know.

“Well, Jane, you see, you’re different than the rest of us here at Lenora Hills. Not only do you reign from country bumpkin Indiana instead of Lenora Hills, but the red folder that all of our teachers have, well– it makes you a dummy. And dummies, see, they don’t always understand the social rules in a school system. You catch my drift?” Stacey asked, her tone cold and calculating, and El nodded desperately, adrenaline filling her lungs in a last attempt for air to no avail.

“So, since we’re such charitable students that only wish to do good in this community, we’ve taken it upon ourselves to teach you a very valuable lesson about Lenora Hills High School: don’t try to climb up the ladder. If you mess with the wrong person, trust me, you will be dragged out of your house, tied up somewhere in the desert, and left to starve. People don’t care if you’re a retard or not. And we wouldn’t want that, would we, Jane?”

Eleven shook her head, although her attempt was lazy, to say the least since her vision began to blur. Chad was keeping up his fierce grip on her throat, continuing to block off her airway. In the back of her mind, Eleven knew she wouldn’t die. That would lead to an arrest for the four of them. But she felt so helpless, she might as well die at this point.

“Chad, let go of her,” Angela ordered, her voice much more playful instead of stern.

Angela’s voice was fuzzy at best as Eleven began to succumb to asphyxiation, Chad held Eleven there for a second longer before dropping her to the ground. Eleven hit the tile, scraping her knee, but she didn’t care. Oxygen returned to her lungs and as her ears began to ring, she desperately tried to replenish her lungs. With her vision almost clear, she looked up at the four teenagers who surrounded her, all casting vengeful glances down at her.

“Come on, Jake. You have the flattest shoes,” Stacey urged and Eleven couldn’t figure out what they were going to do next before she received a blow to her stomach that made her feel sick. 

“We just have to kick the dummy out of her! Then maybe she won’t be such a bitch,” Chad cheered and Eleven lay there in horrible pain as Jake’s sneakers slammed into her chest and stomach over and over again.

Eleven was a superhero. She saved the world three times. And this was what she was reduced to? A punching bag for four freshmen who had nothing better to do? Anger filled her body, wanting to take revenge and beat up the four of them so bad they were unrecognizable, but before she could get up, Jake would stop on her again. The beating seemed to last forever, the pain turning to an overall numbness over her body as she was kicked everywhere from her ribs to her legs. She didn’t scream or cry. She just stayed there, waiting for Jake to have enough.

Thankfully, it wasn’t too long until Jake grew bored with his little ragdoll. With one final blow to her chest, Jake removed his foot and leaned down to meet Eleven’s eyes. “This is your warning. You better be careful from now on, got it?”

Eleven nodded vigorously and with a push of her shoulders back onto the linoleum tile, the gang of bullies left her eyesight. After a moment, she sat up, pain spreading everywhere around her chest. She was certain there were bruises on her neck and they felt like ovals, like they were fingertips. She tried to take deep breaths, but all of the abuse to her chest prevented her to do so.

It wasn’t long until she tasted blood in her mouth and she realized she had a bloody nose. Eleven tried to hold in her tears as the final bit of numbness subsided, full pain spreading throughout her body. All she wanted was for Hopper to pick her up and cradle her in his arms before beating up the four of them. But that wasn’t possible. Hopper was dead. The next best shot was Will or Jonathan, and when she forced herself to crane her neck to the double doors leading outside, she saw Jonathan and Argyle, his new friend with long black hair, sitting on a lunch table.

She pulled herself against the wall, the pain in her chest centralizing to the center, causing her to groan quietly. Surprisingly, her legs worked fine. Blood was now dripping onto her clothes and she was breathing so fast, she could feel her heart threatening to explode. But she made herself take one step after another, the pain only increasing. By the time she got to the doot, the blood had pooled around her collarbones, the drip turning more into a stream that flowed from her nose down her chin.

With a last bit of effort, she pushed open the crimson double doors to the outside. It was blazing hot and she squinted at the bright sun. After taking a moment to adjust, she stumbled to Jonathan and Argyle’s table.

“What if the future is the past, and– and we’re just living in a simulation of the future so it doesn’t become the past again?” Argyle pondered, not noticing the beaten girl inches away from their table.

Jonathan shook his head. “How the hell do you think of these things, man?”

“Jonathan,” El gasped, her lungs deciding to fail her as she collapsed onto the table they were sitting at.

“Oh my God, El– Jane! What the hell happened?” Jonathan asked, Argyle shooting up from the table in shock with an “Oh, damn!”

“I– They hurt me,” Eleven croaked out, gripping her chest.

“Who hurt you?” Jonathan asked and Eleven couldn’t speak anymore, tears falling out of her eyes.

Turning into the responsible older brother figure, he helped Eleven up and took a napkin from the table to help clean up the blood that was still coming out of her nose. “Argyle, help me get her to the nurse.”

“Who is this little lady?” Argyle questioned, propping Eleven up on the other side.

“My stepsister, Jane. Jane, this is Argyle,” Jonathan introduced, the new name still unfamiliar as they walked to another set of double doors across the courtyard that was closer to the nurse’s office.

With a cough, Eleven managed to whisper, “They choked me. And… he stomped on my chest. Oh, God, I can’t breathe.”

“Do you think you broke a rib?” Jonathan asked and El shook her head, not feeling anything broken in her chest. “Try to breathe for me, okay? Try to get your lungs to open up.”

They walked in silence the rest of the way to the nurse's office. It hurt too much to talk, but with some ice on her chest and her neck from the nurse, she could begin to breathe normally. The nurse claimed she had never seen an attack so brutal on a kid in her entire life. As she sit on the uncomfortable blue cot waiting for Joyce to pick her up, Jonathan and Argyle being ushered out by the nurse, her chest burning and her neck throbbing, she stared in the mirror.

What stared back in the mirror was not the powerful Eleven that had saved the world. The strong Eleven that had withstood the countless beatings from Dr. Brenner and his men without any complaints. No, what stared back at her was a weak, pathetic, broken little girl.

It was at that moment she realized she didn’t belong. She didn’t belong anywhere.

Chapter Text

from the words you spoke

As much as Eleven had begged the nurse to not disturb Joyce, who was busy working, the nurse had claimed, “In situations where you have serious bodily injury, we are required to contact a parent or guardian and send the student home for the rest of the day.”

It didn’t take much work for Joyce to peel into the parking lot of the high school. From the moment she saw Joyce storm into the nurse’s office, her hands balled into fists, Eleven could tell she was furious, causing her to have a sinking feeling in her stomach. From the way she roughly scratched the sign-out paper to the harsh nature of the way she scribbled her signature, Eleven could tell she was mad at her. Every bone in her body wished she hadn’t disturbed Jonathan.

However, the minute she made eye contact with Eleven, who was now able to sit up, the pain in her chest shrinking from a horrible throbbing to an annoying hum, Joyce’s face softened. “Hey, sweetie. Let’s get you home, okay?”

As they walked to the main exit door, Joyce gripping her shoulder tightly, Eleven still felt guilty. Even if Joyce had a telemarketing job that allowed her to have flexible hours, Hopper had taught her that if he didn’t work, he didn’t make money, and then there would be no electricity or any food in the fridge. The worst part was that, unlike Hopper, Joyce didn’t have a legal obligation to keep El. She was not a part of the Byers family. So the second she got in the car, the seatbelt staying unbuckled as it hurt her chest too much, she immediately began frantically apologizing.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Please, I’m sorry,” she repeated over and over again, on the verge of tears, each syllable making her throat burn.

“Sweetie, don’t apologize. Don’t ever apologize for stuff like this. It’s not your fault that those children decided to… be so cruel,” Joyce assured. “We can pull you out for the rest of the year if you want to. It’s not worth having a normal school experience if you’re getting… attacked.”

El shook her head. “No. I will stay. I have to learn how to… acclimate.”
Acclimate had been one of the first words Jonathan had taught Eleven. It was a fancy word for adjusting. El had to learn how to adjust to having a normal life, no matter how hard it was. Joyce sighed, more disappointed in herself, and began driving back to their house. Eleven sat in silence the entire time, desperately wanting to curl up in bed and get some sleep, something that her brain had been depriving her of ever since they moved to Lenora Hills. Joyce didn’t blame her as she beelined for her bedroom, put some ice packs on her chest and throat, offering her tea whenever she felt good enough to drink something.

Eleven turned to her side and closed her eyes, trying her best to get to sleep. But the horrible Lenora Hills world she seemed trapped in taunted her, the heat and the dry air preventing her from escaping the world for even just an hour. All she wanted to do was run back to Hawkins where the air was clean, the friends were plentiful, and the boyfriends weren’t huge dicks with even huger egos. But like she had said to Joyce, she knew she had to acclimate.

So, she began to think of what she could have done that would have led to the attack. Maybe she needed too much help and annoyed the other classmates with her constant questions. Maybe she had accidentally seemed too closed off. Maybe she had smiled too much. All El could know was that she must have done something wrong.

Eleven knew that she didn’t understand the nuances of conversation and body language (which to her were the words they didn’t speak.) When she was living with Hopper, she would constantly misinterpret Hopper’s odd grunts and grumbles and go running to the corner of her room, hiding under a blanket and rocking back and forth, waiting for her punishment for making him mad. It took her a month and a half and constant explanations to understand that Hopper was never mad at her and that even if he was, physical violence was never going to happen.

But clearly, the rules were different here in Lenora Hills. If El messed up, she didn’t have the security blanket of an understanding support system. She didn’t get an explanation of what she did wrong or a chance to try again. Instead, she got beaten up because she crossed a line she didn’t understand. And as she kept thinking of ways she had messed up in the past three weeks, song long-deserved sleep had finally fallen upon her.

Thankfully, there was a half-day the next day that Joyce allowed Eleven to skip. Eleven didn’t remember much of that day, though. When she wasn’t asleep, Joyce was giving her painkillers for the lingering pain that just stayed in her chest cavity and on her throat. The only times she remembered feeling this bad was when Papa had isolated her for five days straight when she didn’t perform a dangerous stunt in front of important scientists. She was weak and achy and she felt like she was going to die, much like what she was feeling now,

It didn’t make it better that Eleven had gotten a phone call from Mike, or more, Mike’s mother. He had contracted the flu, something that was known to spread around Hawkins around the late fall and early winter, and he couldn’t come out to Lenora Hills for Thanksgiving Break. When Eleven heard Karen deliver the news on the other end of the phone, all she did was silently hang up the phone without a word and stagger upstairs before balling up on her bed, disappointment and sadness washing over her like tidal waves.

Life was not supposed to be this hard. She was supposed to live in a cabin with her dad, go to school in Hawkins, adapt just fine, and make friends. What was not supposed to happen was the move to California, her dad’s death, a brutal beating, and making more enemies than mere acquaintances. El felt hopeless. If this life was what she was destined to live, why was she even here anymore? She felt like a waste of space on that Earth. 

She wanted nothing else than to shrink. People wouldn’t mind her if she shrunk. But the worst part was that she couldn’t just disappear off the face of the Earth suddenly, because this life had given her good things. It had given her Joyce, Will, Jonathan, Max, Dustin, and Lucas. But, oh, the world had also given her Mike, and she couldn’t just shrink away from Mike, her beloved boyfriend. No, she had to shrink in a much slower way. In a way that Mike wouldn’t notice.

El just had to figure out how.

Chapter Text

when you’re screaming at the mirror

After hours of brainstorming, Eleven had concocted a list of everything that could have caused the attack in the back of her English notebook. It felt good to be able to write in bullet points instead of sentences like her English teacher made her despite her IEP. What didn’t feel good to Eleven was how long she was able to make her list, so much that it traveled to the cardboard on the back of the notebook, only concealed by the other side of the notebook.

The first thing she was able to come up with was the fact that she didn’t wear makeup. Joyce always wore a little bit of eyeshadow and lipstick, two words that Eleven had learned from Max. When Max was still doing okay after her stepbrother’s death, Eleven had gotten her makeup done by Max. It was smudgy and you could see Max’s finger marks all over her blush, but Eleven loved it. And now that everybody around her seemed to have full faces of makeup on, she had decided she wanted to try as well.

Joyce had taken her to the local drugstore and picked out the basics for her: eyeshadow, some brown eyeliner, a light blush, and some lip gloss. Eleven decided she wanted to make sure it looked perfect before she wore it to school since she didn’t want to get laughed at any more than she probably would when she couldn’t run as fast in gym class from her chest injury. (She could run very far, though. A skill from being a lab rat her entire life.)

So with a magazine in one hand and her makeup products, she stood in front of her mirror for what felt like hours. The eyeshadow was a no-go for Eleven. It was too powdery and the weird dust that formed under her eyes made her look like she had eyebags, something that she knew nobody liked. The eyeliner had been a bit shaky, but El had managed to even do the under-eye part that all of the girls on the beauty magazine covers had, even if it turned out a little thicker than El would have liked. The blush made her look awfully sunburnt from the center of her cheek up to the temple. It was way too warm for Eleven’s undertones, looking more red than pink. The lipgloss was fine at first; El loved the shimmery shine it had and the warm pink tone it gave to her lips, but once it dried, the shimmer didn’t shine anymore and it was dry and crackly. Overall, it was a semi-successful attempt and when Joyce saw it, all she commented on was the blush, and how they would have to try a lighter shade next time. Eleven still felt beautiful with it on, and it felt weird to see her normal self when she took it off.

The next thing she wrote down was ignorance. In the dictionary, ignorant meant willfully uneducated. Eleven wasn’t willfully uneducated, she was just uneducated. So uneducated in fact, that she couldn’t think of another word to describe how dumb she was. Maybe if El was smarter in school and didn’t spend ten minutes trying to answer an English question about a passage she had spent an additional five minutes reading, Angela would like her better, or at least enough that she wouldn’t attack her.

Then it was her social skills. Everybody around her was able to talk with the most casual tone El had ever heard and laugh at all the jokes that people made. Whenever El tried to contribute something to a conversation, which was rare, it was strangely blunt, direct, and too literal for anybody’s taste. And she never truly laughed at anybody’s jokes, only giggling a second too late and a second too long when she saw other people laughing at a jumble of words that she didn’t understand. She sometimes felt bad for people who immigrated to this country speaking no English, because if she grew up around English and could barely form three sentences without stuttering, how did they ever learn how to speak English?

After those three obvious things, the list became little grievances she had about her skillset. These included not knowing how to ride a bike without the baby wheels on the back of the bike, not knowing how to do a cartwheel, not knowing how to bake a cake like Joyce had done for Jonathan’s eighteenth birthday a couple of weeks ago, not knowing how to fold a fitted sheet (although Joyce had grumbled about how it was impossible even for her), and not knowing how to sew a button. Thankfully, for those things, she knew that with some help and some of Joyce’s encyclopedias, she could learn how to do all of those things.

Then it came to the things that she knew would be harder to change. For example, her tattoo had been the bane of her existence. California was hot and dry, which made Eleven sweat a lot. But unless she was intending to be stuck in the house all day, she couldn’t wear short sleeves because her tattoo, which was proudly stamped on her wrist, would be visible to the public. She wished she could cover it with something more permanent or cut it out of her skin. But when she had done the research, she realized how far tattoos sunk into her skin and that removing it would be impossible.

Once she had written down her wrist on the back of her notebook, she had begun to get curious about other parts of her body. Taking her notebook, she went to the bathroom and began examining parts of her body. She started with her face. The only thing she could really point out was her chubby cheeks. Joyce had the same chubby cheeks, but on her, it made El look fat, something she knew nobody liked.

Then it was her shoulders. Her shoulders were broad and muscular, most likely from the intense physical training in her youth. But in all of the magazines El had perused in grocery stores and Max’s bedroom, all of the models had petite figures with slim shoulders. And if El wanted to shrink, she knew she would have to fit in with the rest of the high schoolers.
El had continued writing stuff down and by the end, she had surprisingly run out of room. Her cheeks, her shoulders, her lips, her nose, her arms, her elbows, her wrist (again,) her stomach, her hips, her thighs (she hated those the most out of all of her body parts,) her knees, her ankles, and her feet.

By the end of the session, El wanted to scream at the mirror. She wanted to punch it into nothing but shards of reflective glass and watch it scatter across the bathroom floor. She wanted to destroy it, kill it, maim it, all because it showed her the truth, a truth that nobody had dared to inform her about before.

Her entire body was hideous.

Chapter Text

now you’re sitting in the cafeteria

Today had been hell for El. For starters, she hadn’t finished her history project even though it was due, so she had to stay after school to get credit. Will had offered to help her on the project over the weekend she had on World War II, but El was determined to do it on her own. To her credit, she only had the conclusion paragraph to write, but that would take fifteen minutes for her to complete and nearly an hour to make it satisfactory. At least Will had art club today, so Jonathan wouldn’t have to go out of his way to pick her up.

The school day had dragged on, each passing minute feeling like an eternity as El had sat at her desk, desperately trying to focus on the teacher’s monotonous lecture. Recently, El had been struggling with her concentration. Everything in the room seemed to distract her, from the way Tamara had chewed her gum to the way the clock had ticked. Not to mention how loud her classmates were becoming.

December had also come around, which meant the school had decided to become a nightmare for her. Everybody was cheery and loud, gabbing about their fancy vacation plans. Their loud volume made it hard for El to get through the day without having to take a break in the hallway. Plus, the sweaters that Joyce had lovingly bought for her itched in a way that she hadn’t experienced before. It felt like pins and needles on her skin and it was nothing compared to the sweaters Hopper had bought her when she first moved into their cabin.

“El, if you don’t like the sweaters you don’t have to wear them, sweetie,” Joyce had told her when she first tried on the sweaters. “I can see that it makes your skin itch.”

But El already felt guilty that Joyce had bought the sweaters for her. Even though they had tried their best to make her feel at home, she still felt like a nuisance. She didn’t belong in their family and she knew it. So she forced herself to smile and nod at Joyce. “I love them. Thank you.”

The only good thing that the sweaters provided was comfort and security. Hopper’s sweaters were always a little too small for Eleven, showcasing all of Eleven’s hideous body parts. These sweaters were meant to be oversized, so instead of stopping at her belly button, they went down to her waist. As much as it was torture to wear the sweaters, they made her seem skinny. And she liked that.

So now she was sitting in the cafeteria, her E.T. lunchbox staring menacingly at her. Once again, she was alone at the lunch table, Will electing to sit with his new art friends. El didn’t resent him for that fact. Being his step-sister already made him already unpopular, so if he made friends, who was she to not let him sit with them? Besides, today was a day that El appreciated the isolation. It allowed her to follow her plan to the T. Today she wasn’t going to eat her lunch.

When she realized how ugly she was, El quickly began doing research. And she quickly stumbled upon the magazines that graced the doctor’s office that she had gone to for her annual checkup the other day. The diet advice in those magazines had been plentiful, and even though each magazine seemed to contradict the other, there was one thing they all agreed on: eat fewer calories. El didn’t know what a calorie was when she had first read the magazine, but she quickly asked the doctor when her checkup had commenced.

“A calorie is a unit of energy that a food has,” the doctor explained. “And each food has a different amount of calories. The more calories you eat, the more weight you gain. The fewer calories you eat, the more weight you lose.”

After her doctor's checkup, her plan was pretty solid. She would just eat less. She knew that it had to be gradual. If she stopped eating altogether, Joyce would think she was sick. So El decided that the best course of action would be to remove lunch first. But damn, she didn’t realize how hard it would be.

Her stomach growled as she stared at her E.T. lunchbox. Inside, she knew what was in it. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a fruit cup, carrot sticks, and her favorite chocolate pudding that Dustin had introduced her to. Each item in that bag was a sin. It was a temptation. And every time that El wanted to give in to the temptation coursing through her body, she looked behind her.

Right behind her was Angela. As much as she hated Angela and her cronies, all she wanted to be was her. She wanted to have friends, know how to read and write proficiently, and most of all: be pretty. Her smile illuminated a room, her laugh was infectious, and her body was perfect. So every time she wanted to take a lick of her chocolate pudding or a nibble of her carrot stick, she glanced at her. Angela had the power to put her in her place without even talking to her.

Sure, there were seconds when her common sense broke through. If she didn’t eat, she would get hungry, and then her grades would get bad. If she got too hungry, she would throw up from nausea. And then Joyce would take her to the hospital, the one place she loathed with her whole heart. But every time her conscience peeked through the curtains, she forced it out of her head. Every time, her resolve grew stronger. When that time came to eat even less, she would figure it out.

By the end of lunch, her stomach was gnawing, begging for her to take a bite of her lunch. But she ignored her body. Joyce always said people needed to make sacrifices to make people happy. And this was just a sacrifice El would have to make for her happiness.

And when the bell rang, it all went down the trash…

Chapter Text

shoving clementines and orange bacteria

Finally, it was the weekend. It had been another hard week for El at school. Angela had tried to beat her up again with her posse for embarrassing her during English class. Calling out that Angela was not very nice ruined her reputation, even if everybody in her classes still worshiped the grass she laid on. 

Thankfully, as El was forcefully pressed into the same wall she had been smashed into the month before, her math teacher managed to grab her just before the first blow landed on her. El had felt relieved at first, grateful to escape Angela’s strong grasp. That was until she realized she was being pulled into an IEP meeting.

The IEP meeting had been more than intimidating. All of her teachers sat around a large wooden table with pens and notepads in front of them. They stared at her ominously, as if she had done something bad. The man who she recognized as a principal was there at the head of the table, tapping his blue pen against the desk rhythmically. El’s stomach sank as she recognized one other person: Joyce. She seemed equally nervous and worse, El knew she was pulled out of her telemarketing job for this meeting.

“Sit down, Jane,” the principal had stated, gesturing to a seat next to Joyce.

El’s heartbeat quickened and her knees almost buckled as she trembled her way to the seat next to Joyce. El was no stranger to meetings with the school. While bullying was most often shrugged off, when she got so brutally beaten up she almost had to go to the hospital, they’d been having these meetings more often.

“We don’t know if grade-level classes are for her just yet. You mentioned she had been the victim of non-certified homeschooling?” the principal had stated and El had kept her head focused on her feet swinging on the floor.

“Yes, but-” Joyce had tried to explain before getting interrupted.

“Well, the only class she’s passing is P.E. Ms. Byers, your stepdaughter is failing every single class so far. We want to do another placement test. If she passes, no problem. If not, we’re either going to put her in remedial classes or we’re going to offer for her to be homeschooled– properly this time and she can do another placement test in August,” the principal had announced. “Jane, do you have anything to say?”

El had finally looked up from her feet. Everybody’s stares were so intense and unnatural that she looked back down to the floor before saying with a broken voice as tears welled up in her eyes, “I try… so hard. I try.”

Joyce had put a hand on her shoulder and El fought the urge to burst into tears and cry into her shirt. But instead, she was given a packet and left isolated in the room. In her messy handwriting, she went through every question very carefully. If she didn’t pass, then she wouldn’t be allowed to attend her normal classes. She didn’t know what remedial meant, but whatever it meant, it was bad. It meant more bullying. By the end of the test, Mrs. Gracey took the paper, and the rest of the teachers and Joyce came back into the room. Joyce and El waited anxiously, By the end of the day, they had come to a decision: remedial classes. She had managed to ace math, but nothing else.

El went to bed that night in tears. She had tried so hard to acclimate and she failed. She had tried so hard to make friends and failed. And now she had tried to go to school and failed. The school had rearranged her schedule so she was taking remedial classes for everything except for math. At the end of the school year, El was supposed to come back at the end of the year and take final exams. Then in August, another placement test to see if she wasn’t dumb anymore. She felt like a failure. She was failing not only herself, but Hopper, Joyce, and Mike. She didn’t want to think about what she was going to tell Mike. Maybe she would stretch the truth for a bit, just until she didn’t feel ashamed anymore.

The worst part wasn’t that she failed everybody in her life with how dumb she was. The worst part was that she was letting them win. Brenner, Angela, Hawkins Lab as a whole– they were all winning by keeping her out of school. Brenner had been the one to make all of her skills delayed, the lab kept her locked in like a prisoner, and Angela had made her feel so… stupid. And dumb. And fat. So it was safe to say the weekend was a nice reprise.

When she woke up on Saturday, for a moment everything was perfect. The mid-December California chill made the house feel like spring in Hawkins. The sun peeked out through the curtains. El could smell the familiar smells of coffee and cigarettes.

And then… everything came back up. So after a mere minute of waking up, she sobbed into her pillow for perhaps the third time in twelve hours. She always sobbed into her pillow so she didn’t have to alarm anybody else in the house. One time she had forgotten when she was grieving the loss of Hopper and Joyce had stayed up all night trying to calm her down. She refused to be more of a burden than she already was turning out to be.

After about ten minutes, her head stung just enough for El to calm down. Her nose was stuffy and for the next half an hour she couldn’t breathe through her nose. She hated not breathing through her nose. It felt so much worse than breathing through her mouth even though oxygen was still getting into her lungs. It just felt too constricting. As she tried to pinch her nose and expel all of the blocky stuff that Joyce called “mucus,” she heard a knock on the door,

“El,” Will called out from behind the door, “Breakfast’s ready! Do you wanna come down?”

“I… will be there… soon,” El choked out, trying her best to make a comprehensive sentence, her stuffy voice making it clear she was crying.

She heard Will’s footsteps go back to the kitchen and after a moment, she managed to glance at herself in the mirror. First, she noticed her chubby cheeks, her nose, and her lips– all imperfect and horrid. And then she noticed that her eyes weren’t pink from crying again and her face looked presentable enough to go eat breakfast. She knew she shouldn’t eat breakfast and skip like she did for lunch now. After all, she told Will she’d eat breakfast. And friends don’t lie… at least on important things. So she forced herself to get up from her bed and amble to the kitchen table.

On the kitchen table were eight textbooks the school had sent home with El on Friday. They ranged from kindergarten to ninth grade, and the textbooks were thicker than Argyle’s skull. Jonathan was already at the table, seeming very out of it, a slight skunkiness wafting off of him. Noticing her discomfort, he took the textbooks and put them on the table.

“How did everybody sleep?” Joyce asked, passing out plates of eggs and toast, El’s with a plain Eggo waffle instead with her toast, a small bit of egg on the side for something Joyce called “exposure.”

Everybody mumbled an answer as they delved into their breakfasts, Joyce passing around orange juice before she sat down. El always felt bad that she didn’t like scrambled eggs and Joyce had to make her something different. When she first tried them, the mushy and smooth yet bumpy and hard texture of the eggs physically pained her. But Joyce or Jonathan– whoever ended up making breakfast that day– put so much love and care into making her food that she tried her absolute best to appease them. But her slight grimaces and winces whenever the eggs slid down her throat didn’t go unnoticed. One day El was given a waffle instead of a scrambled egg by Jonathan, and soon she didn’t have to eat scrambled eggs anymore.

“So, does anybody have any plans for the weekend?” Joyce asked, passing Will the salt.

“One of my friends invited me over to their house. I was just gonna bike there,” Will revealed and El felt a small pang of jealousy that Will had friends close enough to be invited over.

“Is this Ben or Danny?” Joyce asked.

“Ben,” Will answered and El immediately knew who he was talking about.

Ben was in her science class, or now ex-science class. He was quiet and had a style similar to Dustin. He always had a cap on and the weirdest graphic tees imaginable. The last one was a gray t-shirt with a possum wearing sunglasses and text that read, “Live Weird; Fake Your Death.”

“Argyle and I were going to play golf at the old junkyard,” Jonathan answered, seeming slightly dazed.

Joyce simply nodded. Jonathan was old enough that Joyce didn’t need to ask questions. “El, any plans?”

El stopped chewing her waffle, “I was going to start my textbooks.”

Joyce smiled. At the end of the day, El knew she had to read and memorize those thick books to be part of the normal kids' next year. “Well, I can help you study. Saturdays and Sundays are pretty easy for telemarketers.”

El gave a small smile back and continued eating her breakfast. Eating had become increasingly difficult for her mentally. She continued to skip lunch every day except Friday (because Fridays were special, she told herself,) and she could tell she was losing a bit of weight. The gap between her legs was marginally smaller and her pants were becoming looser around her waist. But she wanted the results to come faster.

While Will, Jonathan, and Joyce talked excitedly, she shoved the clementine-colored orange bacteria in her mouth, the liquid dripping onto her chin. She wanted to join in, but she always ruined conversations with her slow verbal cadence and off questions. So now she kept quiet to herself, either silently thinking to herself or trying to pick up on new words that the three said. Currently, she was thinking about what her plan would be after breakfast.

The rest of the breakfast went all too slowly and all too quickly as well, and by the time nine o’clock hit, almost everybody was doing what they planned. Will and Jonathan were out of the house and Joyce was making calls. El, however, was not working on her textbook. There was no pencil in her mouth as she stumbled over the question in her head. No, she was pacing in the bathroom anxiously.

Her hand was tapping on the back of her neck as her growing hair was long enough to be pulled into a ponytail. Her stomach twisted in turn as she momentarily stared in the mirror before blinking her eyes and turning away, ashamed. She knew that her plan was going to cross a line. She could always eat her lunch at the lunch table and she could always start trying to love the parts of herself she now loathed (which had quickly become every part of her body,) but what she was going to do could never be taken back. But some… otherworldly voice told her she had to do this.

El locked the door. She had to do this manually instead of with her powers, which scared her. Her powers could hold the door locked the entire time. Now all it took was a key for someone to discover what she was about to do. She contemplated for a moment whether to do it in the sink, toilet, or tub, but she decided that the toilet was the easiest. She could get rid of the evidence in moments.

She kneeled in front of the toilet and gripped the seat so tightly that her knuckles turned white and then red. She thought of Mike. She used to think he would tell El that she was enough and she didn’t have to do this. But he didn’t even love her anymore. He never wrote it. In some sick and twisted way, maybe if she did this, Mike would start loving her again. Maybe if she did this, she could feel loved.

She also thought of Angela. In some convoluted way, Angela had started all of this for her. She had been the one to make her think she wasn’t enough to the point where she needed to fix it. She had been the one to prove she was dumb and deserved to be hated by the world. She was the one to make El finally believe she was a monster.

With all of those negative thoughts swirling in her head, El finally decided to take the plunge. Taking her shaky right hand, she forced four of her fingers into her mouth, her thumb lazily staying on her cheek. She pushed them back until she felt her gag reflex, her chest lurching forward instinctively. El immediately coughed, her body trying to rid herself of the intrusion. But El preserved, continuing to hit her gag reflex by pressing her fingers upwards, her body moving forward every time. Her body screamed at her to stop, but El pressed on.

And then the inevitable happened. Something more than saliva coated her hand. Removing it quickly, her body triggered the contents in her stomach to expel itself. Her lungs and throat quickly became inflamed, the nerves in the roof of her mouth stinging as she puked up her breakfast. El coughed even more and she prayed Joyce couldn’t hear her as she repeated the steps, each time making her stomach cramp up and feel like she was dying.

But she wasn’t dying. She was making herself prettier.

When she opened her eyes, she was immediately disgusted with what was in the toilet bowl. On top of the water was an orange-like color, akin to the orange juice she had shoved down her throat at breakfast. It was revolting, and El flushed the toilet as soon as she could. Her hand was coated in both saliva and her breakfast, and she quickly stood up to wash it.

Oddly enough, El didn’t feel as guilty as she thought she would have felt. No, in a weird way, she felt even better than she felt before. She felt… whole. But she couldn’t dwell on this satisfaction for much longer. She needed to get a move on. Drinking some water to quell the burning, she sprayed some of the perfume Joyce had gotten her in her mouth, puckering her mouth when she tasted the bitterness of the perfume. Walking out to the living room, Joyce was finishing up a call.

“Alright, thank you so much, Mr. Zimmerman. You should receive your encyclopedia in about two to three weeks. Bye-bye,” Joyce stated into the phone at her desk, scribbling something down onto a sheet.

El awkwardly walked up to her and cleared her throat. This was the moment of truth. “I am ready to start lessons.”
And thankfully, Joyce merely turned to her and smiled. “Alright, honey. Pick out a textbook and we’ll start going through it.”
El had managed to pull it off. She managed to find a new way to get skinnier.

Chapter Text

down your throat a dozen times a year, yeah

El remembered the rest of the day after she threw up vividly. She remembered the way the pencil shavings dusted on the table, attempting a history question that Joyce said she got wrong for the fourth time. Joyce had offered to give El clues, but El refused, clearly showing her stubbornness and strong will. She remembered reading over the text one more time, deciphering a potential answer, and finally got the nod and smile from Joyce.

She remembered the way that lunch actually was eaten. It was a ham and cheese sandwich with some Doritos chips, something El recently learned had a lot of fat and was bad for weight loss. But since it was just Joyce and El for the day, she forced herself to eat every single greasy bite of the food. It made her feel even more sick to her stomach as the food slid down her stomach. All she could think of was how bad she was being by eating the lunch Bad. Bad. 

El managed to evade her feelings for the rest of the afternoon. She managed to chew through a substantial part of her textbook, only stopping once she got a minor headache that Joyce told her was her body’s signal to “slow down,” and to take it easy for the rest of the day. And while she ended up watching Back to the Future and pretending to fall asleep on the couch so she could avoid dinner, her mind was still racing with guilt.

What she had failed to think of when she first thought of her plan was how she would feel afterward. Physically, she had felt fine. Surprisingly, her stomach had only hurt for the first ten minutes, settling comfortably as El had begun to work. But emotionally, she had become a wreck.

At first, she had felt insane amounts of guilt. The waves of guilt made her feel like she was sicker than when she had thrown up. Her hands had started sweating when she was shakily answering questions. Her voice cracked every time Joyce asked her to explain a passage or one of her questions that, according to Joyce, “wasn’t wrong, but needed more explanation.”

Then, she felt angry with herself. Joyce, somebody who had taken her in without complaint or resentment, had lovingly cooked her breakfast and her horrible, yet correct, thoughts had forced her to throw it all up into the sick orange color that still made her feel nauseous every time she thought of it. She felt angry with Mike and Angela too, especially Angela. If Angela hadn’t picked on her and if Mike truly, truly loved her, then maybe she would feel the need to throw up her meals.

But then she felt guilty again. How dare she blame Angela and Mike? Angela may be mean, but above all else, she was a human. Angela still gave her a pencil and didn’t bully her for it that one day in English class. Angela still had given her some candy corn during Halloween. Angela was flawed, but El could tell she wasn’t a horrible person. Angela wasn’t a monster like she was.

And Mike… Mike had loved her at one point. Maybe he still loved her, even though his letters never said it. Mike still was her boyfriend who called her every day on the radio in case the mere chance she was still alive for 353 days was true. Who gave her a house to live in during her first week in the outside world and had given her Eggos. Who gave her a reason to both throw up and eat at the same time– it was a very convoluted relationship she had right now with Mike.

Over the next couple of days, El didn’t throw up out of pure guilt for her crime. She had managed to stuff down breakfast, dinner, and even one of the lunches Joyce had packed. Remedial classes weren’t as bad as she had previously thought. She was much quicker to catch on than she had in her normal classes and was beginning to grow more confident than she previously had. She still had art class with Will and was even taking geometry, the tenth-grade level of math.

Angela was still a bitch, though. Once learning she was in the remedial classes, Angela and her little posse had become relentless. In the hallways, whenever they saw the girl with her head down, just trying to quietly navigate the crowd to make it to her next class on time, she would call her names, especially the slur she learned at the beginning of the school. She tripped her constantly, El’s knees displaying scars and bruises from the rough tile floor.

All of this cruel bullying soon stoked the fire and gave El a reason to resume her vomiting habits. It became routine. Every morning, she would scarf down her breakfast as fast as she could. She learned to drink as much liquid as possible to make it come up smoother. She learned to chew her waffles and bacon very well so that the sharp edges didn’t pierce her esophagus when she stuck her fingers down her throat. If somebody was nearby, she would turn on the sink so her sounds were muffled just enough. If she had to do it at school, she did it in the first period when nobody would be in the bathroom. Angela, who almost always was in the hallway skipping class, always looked at her suspiciously, but strangely it looked more out of concern than mean-spirited.

El always hated the burning feeling in her body that lasted for an hour after every time she did it. It consumed her and it made it harder to focus in school. The lack of substance for her stomach to chew on was always making her stomach cramp in weird ways that made her want to curl up and die more than she wanted to. Her head was always a little hazy between lunch and dinner time, which was cured with some of Joyce’s Advil, which El had managed to steal. El was lucky that Joyce was having a migraine attack around this time, too, so she kept buying Advil.

Surprisingly, nobody seemed to notice. Will had started becoming a recluse in his room and Jonathan started getting high more. El noticed the skunky smell was permeating his bedroom, and he was always more mellow than usual whenever he smoked these little sticks he told her never to smoke. They didn’t look like cigarettes, but El just assumed they were California-style cigarettes. She guessed Jonathan was old enough to do so.

But over a week, two weeks before winter break was set to occur, her body adapted to the changes and started conserving energy. Instead of her energy spiking mid-third period, it was a consistently sluggish feeling. El was able to concentrate better, though, so she wasn’t too upset by the new changes. Plus, she swore her arm flab was shrinking a bit as well.

They were also all set to go to Hawkins for Christmas, something that El had never truly experienced. Hopper had tried to make a nice Christmas the month after Will got unpossessed, but he admitted that it was better when there was family she could celebrate with. But something always had to get in the way of seeing Mike. Will had an anxiety attack right before Joyce went to the travel agency about the trip, and as a family decided that everything was still too fresh to go back to Hawkins. 

El didn’t resent Will for feeling that way. Hawkins always seemed to bring bad luck to the Byers and El, whether it be Will getting kidnapped or El being held captive. Every time they had driven by the defunct lab, which El swore always had a light flickering on in the night, the traumatizing flashbacks always hurt her. And that mall was always going to be the place where she lost the first father figure that treated her right. Hawkins was just cursed for her.

This whole world seemed cursed for her.

Chapter Text

for another round of your bulimia

Health class had always been awkward for El. It was a semester-long class they had to take either in the first or second semester. If you didn’t have health class, you had gym. El had had gym class at the beginning of the year, but the school had decided that she needed to switch classes for whatever reason. Now instead of running the mile, something that was comfortable and easy for her to do, she was learning about things that made her feel icky.

She didn’t know what her shoulders were until she was thirteen. It had descended into a conversation between her and Hopper about what the different parts of her body were, from her tongue to her ankles. She still sometimes struggled to remember what her quads were from her calves. So to learn about diseases and illnesses and all these other scary things made her feel sick, especially the sex ed unit.

Joyce had talked to her about periods and sex before, both of them coming up on the long road trip from Hawkins to Lenora Hills. The period talk proved futile because one look into El’s records revealed she had a hysterectomy before she escaped from the lab. It explained the scar on her belly that always made her self-conscious wearing crop tops. It affected Joyce much more than it did El– El never thought she could be a good parent anyways.

But the sex ed talk was interesting, and not in a good way. Mike had already explained sexual assault and consent, but hearing about what sex was made El uncomfortable. She had never experienced the feelings that Joyce painfully described towards Mike, especially the needy feeling Joyce had talked about. Sure, she had felt attraction and romance, but never a need to go farther than kissing.

During the whole conversation, El laughed uncomfortably. She had found a new coping mechanism– laughing at the uncomfortable. When something awkward happened in the house, or El caught Jonathan smoking smelly plants with Argyle, she laughed. In public, she got weird stares for laughing at awkward things, but it made that unbearable crawling in her chest dissipate. Unfortunately, she had forgotten to leave that coping mechanism at the school door during the sex ed unit.

It had been a week-long event where she went into one room with the gym teacher with all of the other girls while the boys went outside and played something called kickball. El sat in the back of the gym, watching the projector flashing horrifying images of all of the private parts she no longer had. As the girls grimaced and tried their best to get through the lesson without crying out in horror, El laughed. The teacher didn’t like her coping strategy that much. She got sent out of the class for the rest of the week and did a packet on plant reproduction for the rest of the week.

But finally, the week had turned anew, and they were on a new topic.

Eating disorders.

Sitting in the back of the classroom, El was excited, in a way, for this topic. When she learned that they would be learning about the topic, she eagerly looked it up in the collection of their encyclopedias. “Eating disorder; Abnormal eating patterns, including anorexia nervosa, bulimia, compulsive overeating, and pica (appetite for nonfood substances). These disorders, which usually have a psychological component, may lead to underweight, obesity, or malnutrition.

When El read the word underweight, she was intrigued. She desperately wanted to be underweight. For once, the information in this class might deem useful. With a pen and paper, something she never took out for this class, she began to watch the presentation with key interest.

“Eating disorders have recently become an issue in our society, but it's a growing trend, especially in adolescents. With the increasing pressure to conform to beauty standards in popular culture, it is not uncommon to feel like your body may not feel adequate compared to the models you see in magazines or television. Today we will be looking at the three types of eating disorders currently present in medical journals right now,” the teacher, Mr. Satterfield, introduced and El was already stupefied by his elaborate use of words.

While El was scrambling to write and comprehend his words, he continued. “The first disorder is anorexia nervosa. It is categorized as a refusal to maintain a minimally normal body weight, an intense fear of gaining weight, and a distorted body image. Often, an anorectic will eat very little or nothing at all. Some of the physical complications can include electrolyte imbalances, heart problems, and osteoporosis.”

El quickly wrote down the words Mr. Satterfield was writing down. She would look them up in the Britannica after school. She recognized some of the symptoms in herself. Even if she didn’t know how much weight she was gaining or losing on a particular day, she knew that gaining weight made you fat– something she was horrified of becoming. But she still ate.

“The next eating disorder is entitled bulimia. It’s only been recognized for a few years, so not much is known about it. The symptoms of bulimia include binge eating followed by vomiting, excessive exercise, or fasting. Some of the medical side effects can be electrolyte imbalances, dental problems, stomach issues, and dehydration,” Mr. Satterfield continued and El’s heart jumped to her throat.

That was it. What she was trying to do actually had a name. El highlighted all of the information under bulimia with a neon yellow marker, underlining the words she didn’t understand. This would have to be her topic of study for the night. It definitely overshadowed Fahrenheit 451, a book that was incredibly exhausting to read. El wasn’t sure what her studying would uncover, but one thing was certain in her head: no matter what she would learn, she would apply it.

Even if it killed her.

Chapter Text

you turn oranges to orange juice

El had never had a winter break. Sure, in 1984, Hopper and her celebrated Christmas in their cabin. It was the best day El had had in a while. He had brought in a small evergreen tree from somewhere in the woods and placed it in a corner of the living room. He read her stories relating to Santa Claus, a magical man who would bring presents if you left out cookies and a glass of milk for him. That Christmas morning, she had gotten some of Hopper’s flannels tailored to her body so she didn’t swim in them, and she got a radio and a telephone so she could communicate with Mike whenever she wanted… It was perfect, especially eating cookies and drinking hot chocolate by the fireplace.

But of course, now it was in the past. Instead of a prickly evergreen tree, it was a fake plastic tree that was even more prickly and had a red skirt placed under it, the green needles falling on it. The cherry wooden walls were replaced with dingy yellow walls. The bedtime stories turned into El frantically trying to understand Fahrenheit 451 and finish her worksheet, the paper stained with frustrated tears. The cookies and milk were replaced with nothing left out with Santa Claus. The presents turned into boxes El couldn’t open until the morning of Christmas, not even one. And a happy girl with a father turned into a sad girl who hated herself.

El remembered Will explaining to her what a “real” Christmas was at the dinner table the week before winter break. She remembered eating Joyce’s risotto sparingly, her fork spreading the kernels around. Not because she was trying to lose weight, but because Joyce had burned it.

“It’s like the most magical night. We watch a bunch of Christmas movies like How the Grinch Stole Christmas and then in the morning, we eat pancakes and stay in our pajamas all day. And then Mom makes this big meal with chicken, potatoes, and cornbread… It's so good!” Will explained animatedly as he too tried to not eat the risotto.

El had faked a smile before excusing herself to go to bed early, her mind racing. For the past month, she had been able to control her food intake carefully. Everything was predictable– the same. Christmas seemed very not normal with a lot of unpredictable food that sounded fattening. She had to come up with a plan so she didn’t get any bigger. After a few minutes, she came up with an airtight plan.

Breakfast and lunch were the easiest. She threw up breakfast increasingly often, about two times a week. So what if she threw up every day until Christmas? To make sure her teacher, a nice man that seemed to take pity on El enough to give her extra time on homework named Mr. Jones wouldn't get suspicious of how she had to use the bathroom every day, she would wake up early some days to eat breakfast and throw up before she had to go to school.

Lunch was self-explanatory. It got easier to stare at her lunch without eating a bite of it every day. Will sometimes sat with her in silence, but more often than not he sat with his art friends. The isolation was beginning to become enjoyable, too. It meant that nobody noticed her. She was shrinking, disappearing into the meaningless sea of high school students.

Dinner was the toughest. Of course, she could always throw it up during her allotted shower time, but it seemed like it would rub her throat raw, throwing up twice a day. Maybe she would do what she did whenever she thought she was gaining weight– cut up her food so small it looked like she ate more than one or two bites. It was the perfect plan and El was committed to making sure it wouldn’t fail.

The morning after that fateful dinner, she started her plan. Breakfast was cereal for the day which El learned was the easiest to throw up out of all of the things the Byers’ ate for breakfast. With extra milk, the cereal, which was Frosted Flakes, became all but soup. El ate the cereal with vigor, her stomach both begging for food and her brain begging for it to be thrown up. She did both– vomiting up her breakfast just before she had to head to school. El noticed on the car ride that morning that her stomach didn’t cramp up as much as it did.

School this week was much worse than it normally was. It wasn’t because of Angela, somehow, but because of midterms. Midterms were a foreign concept to both El and Will, but it required hours of studying everything that they had learned throughout the semester. El, Will, and Jonathan would study for hours at the dining table, textbooks, and previous worksheets messily splayed about as if they were working on the next atomic bomb.

Surprisingly, El felt confident in her midterms, but that was only because she was doing middle school-level material. Each midterm took hours and because she had the IEP, she got extra time to work on her midterms. She rarely needed the extra time, only in her English and history classes where words were plentiful. Her science and geometry midterms were finished quickly.

What was the most exciting about midterm week, however, was the shortened lunch block. Instead of thirty minutes, El only got twenty. That was ten fewer minutes that she had to stare at her lunchbox agonizingly, half of her brain wanting to cave in and eat while the other half forced her to know better. It was ten fewer minutes inside of the school that had shown her nothing but pain.

As the midterm week came to an end, El was barely able to walk out of the school. Her stomach ached for the evening meal three hours before it would be set on the table, her throat burned with acid from this morning’s breakfast, and worst of all, her brain was causing her chest to constrict with anxiety about winter break.

How would she ever survive Christmas?

Chapter Text

into there, then spit it out of you

Fortunately, El didn’t have to think very long about how she would survive Christmas, because that following Wednesday, Christmas had begun. For the last ten days, El had refrained from eating as much as possible. She skipped lunch religiously and threw up nearly every meal that entered her system. There was one exception– the time Will made dinner on Sunday. She felt too guilty to throw it up, guiltier than her brain made her feel throughout that sleepless night.

Throughout winter break, which had begun on Saturday, El had started to get into the habit of waking herself up whenever she wanted, her body choosing when it was okay to rise. It was a nice change of pace, sleeping in until lunchtime and feeling somewhat adequately rested for the first time in what felt like years, But this day, El was woken up by a very excited Will.

“El!” Will screamed as he opened her door without warning, widening the three-inch gap El religiously kept in between the door and the wall. “El, wake up! It’s Christmas.”
El’s first instinct was to throw the throw pillow that Joyce had gotten her from the thrift market at Will. But after craning her neck and opening her crusty eyes, she saw the pure joy in Will’s face. Will hadn’t looked this happy in years. Who was she to ruin his excitement? So, like every day, she put on a fake smile and got out of bed as if it wasn’t one of the hardest decisions she had to make.

“Merry Christmas,” El groaned as she threw off the fluffy blanket and stood up, dizziness threatening to topple her over right as her feet planted the ground, her toes curling in the carpet to avoid passing out.

Bracing herself with a hand on her bed as her brain pulsed with blood just to stay awake, Will was already running down the hallway. “Come on! There’s presents under the tree.”

Once her heart stopped beating so fast, she began to walk forward. Each step made her gain confidence that she would not pass out and by the time she reached the big plastic tree in the middle of the living room, she was no longer dizzy. At the bottom of the trees were presents wrapped in what Joyce called “gift paper.” It was wrapped around the boxes perfectly, each corner pinched and each piece of wrapping paper pristine. El remembered Joyce helping her wrap the presents she got for Will and Jonathan, but then she eyed the messy present in the corner. That was the one she wrapped for Joyce.

“Merry Christmas, guys!” Joyce exclaimed as she walked out of the kitchen, her hair up as if she were making breakfast.

El’s stomach turned as she smelled the eggs and ham sizzling on the stove, but she quickly forced the anxious chill down her spine to stop. She had barely eaten for a week; she deserved to enjoy a nice meal with the Byers.

“El, come on. We should open our presents,” Will eagerly exclaimed, tugging El to the ground towards the presents.

Jonathan was already on the couch, red rings around his eyes. He drank water as if he was stuck in a desert, never seeming to drink enough. Everybody chose to ignore him and began to open their presents. El quickly realized they had gotten her more presents than she thought they would give her, almost the same amount as Will’s. Guilt overtook her– she wasn’t even biologically theirs, so why should they give her presents?

Over the course of half an hour, with Joyce leaving the celebrations occasionally to check on the breakfast, the presents were slowly unwrapped, gift paper littering the floor. Will had gotten some games for his Atari, some clothes, and a boatload of art supplies. Jonathan got some things for his camera, which he solemnly used nowadays. The kids didn’t quite know what to get Joyce with their limited allowance, so they bought her some socks and some coffee mugs.

Everybody around El was laughing and smiling and exchanging jokes, but there was no joy in this activity for her. She had gotten a painting, some bracelet-making kit from Joyce, and a stuffed bear from Jonathan– more than what she felt she deserved. She sat on the floor, numb, waiting anxiously for the breakfast to be cooked.

When it was ready, El was horrified at the concoction on the plate– ham, pancakes, and a biscuit. El felt surges of panic run through her body as she forced herself to eat the biscuit, the only thing that didn’t look greasy enough to kill her. Each bite made her want to crawl into a hole and die, but it also felt good in some way. Like she didn’t want to stop eating. Like there was no end in sight. In the end, she even ate a second serving of pancakes– just because she could.

Throughout the rest of the day, Christmas seemed like a slightly more festive yet normal winter break day. Joyce spent the day slaving over the big Christmas dinner she made annually, Will played the new games of Atari, Jonathan isolated himself in his room as he blared music, and El worked on her textbooks, taking a thirty-minute break midday to talk to Mike on the Cerebro. As ashamed as she was to be in remedial classes, at least she was learning without much difficulty. They were even planning to move her into normal classes the next year with the progress she was making.

But then dinner came. Will had told her at that fateful dinner a week ago what Joye made to celebrate Christmas, but when she crawled out of her room and walked into the dining room, her heart nearly stopped. Roast chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans, cornbread, rolls, and brownies decorated with red and green sprinkles. Her brain immediately became a battlefield as she sat down– how in the world was she going to eat this much food?

“It looks so good, Mom,” Will exclaimed as he sat down next to El, and Jonathan, who looked tired beyond belief, nodded in agreement.

“Thanks, guys. I hope the chicken isn’t too dry,” Joyce sheepishly commented and El remembered the other month when Joyce tried to make chicken– it had the texture of sandpaper.

Once Joyce sat down, Jonathan and Will dug into the meal, passing around bowls and plates. Somehow, El ended up with food on her plate, too. A serving of everything. Her brain was on fire, running a thousand miles a minute. She stared at the plate like it was poison.  She was supposed to disappear. This wasn’t how you disappear… eating all of this food…

“El? How is dinner?” Jonathan suddenly asked, pulling El out of his spiral.

“It… looks good,” El sighed nervously, her hands nearly shaking as she carefully took a bite of the green beans.

Immediately, a burst of flavor hit her. Joyce had seasoned them to the point where they barely tasted like green beans and instead tasted… delicious. She took another bite. And another. And another. With each bite, her brain began to open up to the idea of food. By the time she was done with the green beans, her brain had managed to flip a new switch in her brain. One more bite… one more bite… one more bite…

By the time she finished her first serving, she was already going in for her second serving. Screw trying to disappear… It tastes so good. After days of starving herself and making herself throw up, this dinner was like heaven. She even took a third brownie. El felt happy and content with the dinner. Joyce had cooked it perfectly, a rarity for her, and it was the perfect Christmas night.

Or so El thought.

Once dinner was done and the dishes were put away, the Byers sat on the couch and the carpet covering the living room. Surrounded by the small box television, they watched How The Grinch Stole Christmas just like Will predicted last week. The movie was a tradition in their household, and for a moment, it felt like the good old days back at Hawkins, before all of the Upside Down stuff went down.

Not El, though. She was in the bathroom. Her brain had finally caught up with the food resting uncomfortably in her stomach, and guilt overcame her. It was so intense she couldn’t bear to be in the living room with the Byers– she didn’t deserve to. No, she deserved to do what she was doing right now. Throwing up in the toilet, undoing her mistakes. 

Her stupid, stupid mistakes…

Chapter Text

your body is imperfectly perfect

When El first moved to Lenora Hills, her room had been barren. The walls had been a dull peachy color with a dusty window and a rickety bed frame. Over a few months, she had slowly amassed a collection of trinkets that made her room feel more than an empty space. A little container for the limited amount of jewelry she owned, wrinkly pillows and blankets in all shapes and colors on her blankets, and even some yellow curtains that added a pop of color the room desperately needed. But whatever El did, it still never felt like her room, just a room that she was staying in until something better came along.

The new year itself had been horrible, along with the winter break. El was constantly drained and tired from throwing up. Her eyes were beginning to fade to red from the strain of vomiting now two to three times a day without fail. Her face was swollen and her teeth were turning a putrid yellow. Not to mention that school was starting back up again was a nightmare.

All in all, El’s attempt to live a normal life had completely gone to shit. So on an unusually boring and serene Saturday, El had planned to sit in her room all day, avoiding as much food as she could until the dead of night, where she knew she would eventually cave and eat everything in the fridge before throwing it up as quietly as she could. Up until noon, the plan had been a success, feigning tiredness.

Will knew better, though. He had been through these issues before with depression. In the months after he got rescued from the Upside Down, he missed several days of school by staying in his room and pretending that he was either sleeping or sick. The only reason he stayed afloat was because of his weekly Dungeons & Dragons meetings. El didn’t have anybody to go to play Dungeons & Dragons, though. Hell, she didn’t even have a single friend.

So, at noon he knocked on El’s door. “El? Can I come in?”

Will heard a muffled grumble of approval through the three-inch gap in the door and allowed himself to enter. Will surveyed the bedroom loosely. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary except for the exhausted El lying in her bed. There were dark circles under her eyes and her hair was tangled and nearly matted from tossing and turning.

“Come on. We’re going to the store. I need a mirror for my anatomy study for art class. You need one too,” Will stated, trying to mimic how Joyce and Jonathan had broken him out of his depression spiral.

“I don’t wanna go,” El groaned under the blankets.

“Fine. Then I’ll make sure you get the most ugliest, stupidest, gross-looking mirror that the store has,” Will teased, and finally, El rose from the bed and stumbled toward Will.

“I need to change.”

Ten minutes later, El was dressed, albeit shabbily, and Will and her began the walk to the local department store. El admitted it was nice to feel the cool winter air on her face. The sun beat down on her as well, creating an interesting contrast. In Hawkins, winter had snow falling– inches worth of snow– and temperatures so cold that El would need to bundle up in multiple layers just to stay warm. Here, El still felt cold, but there was no snow. There was just arid sand and dry and brittle grass. It was all so different. It was too different.

Will had fifteen dollars clutched in his hand– three bills with Abraham Lincoln’s face painted on them–  just enough to get two full-sized mirrors. They wouldn’t be good quality by any means, but enough for Will and El to get good enough grades on their art projects. When they entered the store, the blast of chilly air hit them by surprise. El stepped back before she noticed all of the people around her stare at the two of them. From that point on, she kept her head down and let Will guide the two of them to the home improvement section of the department store.

The department store had its home improvement section at the back of the store. It didn’t take much time to find mirrors– they were nearly impossible to miss. Long sheets of reflective silver glass were waiting for them. Some of them had gold rims, some of them had funky shapes, and some were just plain boring. Will and El walked up to them with two drastically different moods. Will was curious to see how the mirrors distorted his body and how it would alter his anatomy studies. But El was far, far from curious. No, El was horrified by what she saw.

El didn’t see herself in that mirror. She didn’t see the beautiful young woman she was slowly turning into, shaded by the large gray hoodie she had hidden her body with. She saw a horrible monster with pimples making her face look like she was an ogre. Her oily hair from the lack of showering disgusted her. Her stomach, her hips, her thighs, while conveniently masked under her baggy outfit could still be seen, and by God, they were hideous. El wasn’t shrinking at all.

The hateful realization hit El like a truck, and she didn’t hesitate to fold her face into her hoodie, trying to conceal the tears that burst after mere seconds of staring at herself. She was hideous, too hideous for this world. When would she ever be pretty?

“El? El, what’s wrong?” Will asked after a few moments, hearing the muffled sniffles from his… sister?

“Stop,” El murmured through her sleeve. “Stop looking at me.”

“I–” Will stammered, beyond himself with confusion. “What do you mean?”

“I said stop looking at me!” El sobbed again, backing herself against a random wall and sliding down it dramatically until her feet were curled underneath her, her knees to her chest.

“El, I don’t know what’s going on. Can you help me understand, please?” Will asked, trying to mimic what Joyce and Jonathan frequently did for him during his panic attacks.

“You wouldn’t understand,” El cried, picking her head up for a break of air. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Maybe I can try?” Will suggested, knowing that El had gone through so much abuse that he would never truly understand.

“It’s the mirrors,” El eventually admitted. “I– I just want to go home, Will. Just let me go home.”

“Okay, we’ll go home. Just… just let me find someone that can call Jonathan to pick us up,” Will agreed, leaving El to her own devices so he could find help.

As Will searched desperately for a staff member who could direct him to a phone, he couldn’t help but feel hopeless. Is this how people felt when he was having an attack? What was setting her off? Would she ever tell him? What could he possibly do?

Chapter Text

everyone wants what the other one’s working

Angela liked magazines. Whenever they crossed each other in the hall, one of her friends would tear a corner of the thin book, wad it up, chew it, and spit it right onto her cheek. When she encountered her in the hallway toward the bathroom, ready to criticize herself in the mirror again, there was a magazine in her hand. Max also owned magazines. Sometimes, she would send them in the mail, cutting out the pictures of Ralph Macchio. The magazines looked identical to the cheap and flimsy pamphlets on the ends of grocery store lines. With flashy pictures and fuzzy colors, they were meant to entice the tired grocery shoppers as they checked out, their willpower diminished.

The scheme worked for Joyce. One night, once she and Will had finished buying groceries for the week, filled with rice and pasta and brownies and frozen pizzas, Joyce had given El a magazine. A magazine of her very own.

“I saw this and I thought you may want to look through it. I know the kids around here, they like to do those sorts of things,” Joyce explained.

El smiled. “Thank you.”

 She took the magazine back to her room, no new mirror hanging on the wall like Will had planned last week. She set the magazine on the bed and scrunched up her fingers in disgust. She hadn’t expected the faux plastic texture. It made her body feel icky. She rubbed her hands on her jeans, trying to get the feeling off of her hands. Her jeans were starting to feel looser, and her thighs and stomach beginning to shrink. El focused on the sensation of the gap between the denim and her skin to ground herself.

Once she managed to get the feeling out of her body, she tentatively picked up the magazine, more prepared than the last time. The feeling of the book was uncomfortable at first but it soon melted into her hands. El took a look at the cover and saw a man in a leather jacket. Along the side were words in bold yellow text– The Life & Death of the Boy Next Door. All El knew was that this man did not live next door. An elderly man and woman lived next door with their grandkids. Occasionally, Will would babysit them for some extra cash.

Turning the page, El was immediately entranced by all of the colors. There were beautiful landscapes, products with language that seemed like gibberish to her, and paragraphs that were barely discernible. For once, the yellow text made it difficult to read and not the words– which were easy enough for El to understand.

As she flipped through the pages, she noticed two trends. The first was all of the diets they advertised that seemed torturous. Want to lose weight? Eat nothing but cabbage soup three times a day. Want to shed some pounds? Eat half a grapefruit to start your day! El’s plan seemed to be a lot more sustainable, even if it never seemed to be working.

The second trend she noticed was all of the pretty girls in the magazine. Phoebe Cates, Cindy Crawford, Olivia Newton-John– they were all so skinny. They were all so tanned with their sun-kissed skin, perfectly straight hair that fell to their shoulders or beyond, and beautiful faces that radiated perfection. In contrast, El had horrible skin with a breakout on her chin, frizzy and brittle hair that barely touched her shoulders, and pale skin from the fear of going outside.

She wanted to look at them.

She wanted to be them.

In an instant, she left the magazine half-open and creased in awkward places as she threw the magazine on the bed and rushed out of the bedroom. She fought the black hexagons fading into her vision and dizzying nausea in her stomach as she ventured into the kitchen, quietly opening the junk drawer. Next to her was Joyce, making phone calls to meet her quota for the month. She was too invested in her sales pitch to notice El grabbing a pair of red scissors and one of the glue sticks, and slipping out of the kitchen and back to her bedroom.

Now back in the comfort of her space, she scouted her room for a space. All that was left was a little posterboard Argyle had given to her when he went dumpster diving randomly. A little washing and soap made it smell like flowers instead of expired tomatoes and garbage. It was the perfect spot.

With the magazine in one hand and scissors in the other, she began to cut out the images of the pretty girls. The sound against the smooth plastic-paper was satisfying as she snipped away. There were annoying magazine scraps littering her bed, causing her to pause every five minutes to pick every single one of them out of her blanket. 

A pile on her bed began forming with all of the models, piling up higher and higher as El continued to cut, rip, and snip. Heather Locklear, Elle MacPherson, Kim Basinger– all of their faces and slender bodies were stacked on each other, their faces all staring at El and screaming the same message. You’re not beautiful enough for Mike. You’re not skinny enough for Angela. Just disappear already.

After about an hour, the magazine was torn up to shreds. El didn’t feel guilty at all for ruining Joyce’s gift– something beautiful had been created out of it. And Joyce honored Will and Jonathan’s creativity, so why wouldn’t she honor hers? The scissors lay on her bed and the magazine lay in her trashcan as she took the cut-up people and faced the posterboard. With her glue stick, she pasted them on the poster board as if it were a school project. Slowly, the drab white rectangle turned into an inspiring work of art. Every time El would doubt her mission, her goal, she would look at the models and remember why she wanted to do this: to disappear.

Chapter Text

no orange juice

The cafeteria was no longer a place of fear for El. The cafeteria was where she blended in, cast into the shadows with all of the loners and losers who didn’t dare fraternize with the weird girl. She got to sit, alone, at a table and think. Sometimes, Jonathan and Argyle would be visible in the distance and she would stare at them. It was lonely, but she had found a sad comfort in the loneliness.

She would sit on the green plastic bench, her arms folded on top of each other. Her head rested comfortably in the crook of her elbow, her cheek pressed against her pale skin. Her eyes darted around curiously, taking in either the trees or the beige tiles in between the fluorescent lights. If her neck got strained or tired, she would switch to the other elbow, taking in old patterns that seemed so, so new.

El often pondered about how good and how bad life was becoming for her. Today was one of those days. Three years ago, she had been in a lab, a living test experiment. She would wake up to dry toast and a glass of orange juice with soupy eggs. She had a father, a Papa, with white hair and suits. She often remembered that she was never destined for this life– one with the sun, one with other people who didn’t know that Indiana existed, one with friends her age, one with knowledge. She was born to fight the Soviets. She was meant to die either in captivity or in the Soviet Union. She was not meant to live a normal life. She was meant to disappear.

Sometimes, she would catch snippets of laughter from Angela. She knew who she was laughing at. Looking at her and confronting her would make it worse. Instead, she tried her best to tune it out. If she were outside, the chirping California birds would cover it up. If she was inside, the overwhelming chatter of kids who just couldn’t. seem. to. keep. their. mouths. shut. would do the job.

Her life had become dull. Drab and lifeless. Nowhere near the life Hopper promised her. The life he promised her in the letter. The life she promised herself. But nothing ever seemed to go El’s way anyway. It was a good day when she didn’t get spit-balled or punched in the hallway, let alone get a good grade on the test or make a new friend. Life had become monotonous, drab, and somewhat tortuous.

It had been another day. Another day at school. Another day of throwing up breakfast, the wheat toast cutting her throat to the point where her saliva was tinged red. Another day in remedial classes that made her feel like a failure, the rapid improvement was lost to El’s mind. Another day of facing Angela and her goons in the hall. Another day of getting spitballed and jabbed in the arms where the bruises would be hidden. Another day of hiding her tattoo– forced on her by her first father– with a blue hair tie that her second father– her real father– got her—another day of skipping lunch in the cafeteria.

Her E.T. lunchbox sat in front of her, El’s face purposely cast to the sky to avoid looking at the lunchbox. Her stomach growled for a desperate bite of lunch. A bit of fuel for the rest of the day. But she wouldn’t let it. Eventually, her stomach would get used to it. Her body was good at adapting to tough situations. It adapted to the lab. It adapted to the woods, to Mike’s house, to the cabin, to the mall– why couldn’t it adapt to hunger?

El’s eyes peeled away from the sky for just a moment to stare at her lunchbox. She had done so well– fourteen lunches that she had thrown away in the trash without care, barely a smidgen of guilt. She couldn’t give up now. But her stomach growled. Her mind yelled two conflicting messages at her. Eat, El. Your body needs food. Joyce made you this food. Don’t eat, El. Your body is too big to disappear. Just another day. You can do it.

She closed her eyes for a moment and took a breath. It was just one lunch. How much weight would she gain? Two-tenths of a pound? Two pounds? Twenty? So much that she would blow up to the size of the whole school. No. She couldn’t risk it. She couldn’t risk losing all the progress she made. But just this once. Maybe this one time… El quickly opened the latch and stared at the food, the temptation truly too good to resist.

El was about to reach for her ham and cheese sandwich when she suddenly heard, “Jane?”

She whipped her head to see Jonathan, disheveled and with his friend Argyle. “Jonathan?”

“Hey! I didn’t realize you sat out here, How’s your day been going?” Jonathan asked, inviting himself to sit down across from her, Argyle sitting right next to him.

El forced a smile. “Great.”

Jonathan smiled back, an awkward chuckle exhaling out of his mouth. For a moment there was silence until Jonathan peered into the lunchbox. “Have you eaten anything yet?”

El froze, her heart beating fast as she struggled to find an excuse. “I–”

“Do you not feel well? Do you want me to call Mom?” Jonathan asked, his calm nature now turning to a brotherly concern.

“Man, getting sick sucks,” Argyle commented, seeming very dazed and out of it.

El nodded before her brain could come up with a plan. “I don’t feel good.”

Jonathan closed her lunch box and stood up. “I’ll take you to the nurse. Mom should be on our lunch break by now. She can pick you up.”

Once again, El was moving against her will. She quietly followed Jonathan to the nurse’s office, her feet shuffling unwillingly all the way there. Her face paled so much that she might as well have been sick. What was she doing? She didn’t eat lunch because she wanted to disappear, not because she was sick. Why couldn’t she just tell Jonathan she felt better and wanted to go to the rest of her classes?

Before she knew it, she was in the nurse’s office, lying on one of the beds. Joyce was already on her way.

Chapter Text

oh, oh, i believe you chose

El’s only respite was the weekend. It was normal to sleep in and waste the entire day. Her homework would sit on her desk, either shabbily completed or completely neglected. That was tomorrow’s problem, according to Will, who had the luxury of knowing the answers to the questions they asked them. They made El scratch her head and cry her eyes out half the time, spending hours flipping through the Britannica’s to decode the question.

The weekends meant being sneakier than normal. It meant waiting for Jonathan to get picked up by Argyle and for Will to get lost in his painting so she could vomit up her breakfast. It meant locking the bathroom extra tightly before examining her body for anything to critique. It meant popping breath mints like they were candy so that they wouldn’t smell the thrown-up food on her breath.

The weekends meant being forced to hang out with her pseudo-family that El was convinced hated her. Joyce always tried to push El to hang out with them. The other night, she had taken El to a roller rink for her work called Rink-o-Mania. Surprisingly, she had gotten the hang of it pretty quickly and wanted to go back, but she knew Angela always lurked around there.

The weekends meant smelling Jonathan’s musky room whenever she passed by. She had caught him smoking smelly plants in his room with a bong, the water nearly spilling on the carpet. Jonathan made sure she didn’t tell anybody, especially Joyce, and assured her they were safe. She still told Mike in the next letter she sent to him.

The weekends meant finally opening the letters Mike wrote her. Sometimes there would be none, often there would be one, and rarely there would be two. She would run to her room as fast as she could and tear open the letters. Sometimes she saw Will looking longingly behind her as if he wished for letters too. El didn’t quite understand why– it wasn’t like there was much information that was appealing to them. Biology is hard– Max got a Walkman– Lucas is on the basketball team– all meaningless stuff that was always signed with a “From, Mike” instead of a “Love, Mike.”

The weekends meant reading the letters and seeing the little bits of love dispersed throughout the text but never fully being able to grasp it. El looked in the mirror and begged her body to shrink and disappear so she wouldn’t be so unlovable to Mike. She looked in the mirror and begged for it to show a smaller version that could get through school without being noticed. Hiding under blankets would have to do the trick.

The weekends meant Will, ever the observant one, always tried to reach out to El. Sometimes they would walk to the store, avoiding the mirrors. Sometimes they would watch movies. Sometimes they would do nothing at all, Will quietly painting while El sat there as his assistant, handing him supplies whenever he needed them.

This weekend, Will wanted to try something different. There was a recent shop that opened up in town that sold ice cream. It came around after Christmas and stayed until Labor Day, the unrelenting California heat soothed by a sweet and chilly treat, even in January.

When Will first proposed the idea to El on Friday night, she was taken aback. Ice cream had sugar and fat certainly, two things that did not mix with losing weight. She wanted to say no with all of her heart but somehow she ended up saying yes. She couldn’t even tell if Will was happy or not– his expression was too vague.

She tried to sleep in that day, trying to avoid it all with a disturbed circadian rhythm. Maybe Will would get so engrossed in his newest piece of artwork that he would forget his plan. But alas, Will eagerly knocked on her door at ten o’clock.
“El, are you ready to go?”

With a grumble, she got the nerve to answer; “Give me ten minutes.”

After dressing up in some shabby sweatsuit she found in the thrift store and putting her hair up in a ponytail, she was ready to go. There were dark circles under her eyes, the puffiness accentuated by the decreased swelling in her face. She hadn’t thrown up in around twelve hours and it showed.

Popping a breath mint, they walked down the street quietly. There wasn’t much room for conversation– they basically lived the same life, according to Will. Will was aware of the bullying but not to the extent that El lived it. Occasionally, El would point out a bird flying through the cold winter air with the same excitement as if she saw a dinosaur. They always amazed El, no matter how many days she spent in freedom.

The ice cream stand wasn’t a storefront but a small shack near the store. Inside were industrial coolers filled with ice cream. A handwritten sign hung by a rusty nail with the flavors, swaying near the window. As they neared the store, El’s mind tried to work out which flavor would be best to buy.

It wasn’t about calories– El never truly cared about those– but about what flavor would taste the best coming back up the pipe. Vanilla seemed too basic. Max had shown her all of the wonderful options when she forced her to try strawberry ice cream. Chocolate burned her throat. Butter pecan reminded her too much of Hopper. Cookies and cream had too many chunks. Pistachio seemed like a nightmare just from the name alone. She had never tried mango ice cream but knew it probably wouldn’t taste that great. These decisions used to be so easy for her. They were decisions that people made every day. Now they seemed impossible.

Suddenly, Will tapped her on the shoulder. Without even noticing it, Will had ordered and the acne-ridden teenager was waiting for her to answer with what flavor she wanted.

“I’ll… take a small cotton candy. Please.”

Chapter Text

to blow it on the reading carpet

As part of being on the remedial track at Lenora Hills, her ultimate goal was to be able to complete on-level classes without much difficulty, with designated periods that were dedicated to tutoring. It was a system that El had grown accustomed to, and even if she hated being outcast from the rest of the kids, she could feel herself learning more and more each day, her brain beginning to develop just enough for the administration to give her a test.

This wasn’t her first “benchmark” test that she had completed. Every other Tuesday, she would have to stay after school and complete a test regarding English, math, science, and history. She bombed it every time, the only successful grade being math, which she would ace easily. Slowly, the numbers for science and English had begun creeping up, but the ones from history seemed to climb much faster. From 28% to 42%. 42% to 53%.  53% to 55%. And finally, a 55% to 72%, two percent over the minimum score needed to test out of remedial history.

When she heard the news the day after she took the test, she could have cried out of joy. She would be rejoining her old history class. She would get to sit next to Will and she would get to walk with him to the first period. She would prove to the others that she was smarter now, able to answer confidently and ace the tests. She wouldn’t rely on the Britannica anymore, but her brain. She was ready.

As a reward, she allowed herself to eat breakfast and not throw it up before class began. Her stomach was confused and it twisted and turned through the car ride to school, which was now a ride in Argyle’s Surfer Boy Pizza van. Jonathan’s clunky car had finally broken down and laid dormant in the driveway. It was a sore spot in the beautiful town of Lenora Hills, the dusty rust and oil dripping onto the pavement a clear contrast to the pruned bushes and carefully strung-up Christmas lights.

All through the car ride, she tried to ignore her upset stomach and focused on the positive. She was one step closer to being a normal teenager. Instead of being in three remedial classes, she was only in two. Maybe she would get to begin a foreign language like Will did next year– maybe she could take Spanish or even French. Now that she was finally progressing, the possibilities were endless.

What she had forgotten about was Angela, sitting one row and one column away from her in history class. She forgot the way Angela smacked her gum against her teeth, the chewing sounds reverberating in El’s brain. She forgot the spitballs she endured in class, let alone the hallway. More importantly, she forgot she still had an IEP– the firetruck red folder that sent a message to the other kids: she does not belong.

All eyes were on her when she sat down, everybody whispering just loud enough for El and Will to hear. “Oh my God, the freak’s back!” “I thought she was too dumb to learn history.” “I thought she was too dumb to learn, period.” The person who stared at her the most was Angela, her saccharine smile too similar to Dr. Brenner’s for El’s taste. Quietly, she sat down, keeping her head held high.

When the lesson began, they were just beginning to start World War I. El had some background from remedial history, so the lesson wasn’t too bad. It was difficult to understand what Mrs. Gracey was talking about with the Allied Powers, and all of these outdated terms for countries El didn’t know existed, but she managed to understand most of it without taking hundreds of sloppy and illegible notes. It was encouraging to her to see that she could follow along.

“Now, who can remind me what ship caused tension between Germany, Britain, and the United States? It was one the reasons that the US got involved with World War I,” Mrs. Gracey asked.

El knew this. The majority of the passengers had died when the ship entered British waters that Germany had a hold on. Somebody had shot the ship down, yet nobody could tell if it was intentional or not. But what was the name of the ship? Slowly, she raised her hand noncommittally, raised to just her elbow. Ms. Gracey saw it, though, and a grand smile appeared on her face. “Jane.”

“Uh–” El froze, all of the information suddenly leaving her head, any memory of any ship floating away.

“Well?” Mrs. Gracey prompted, encouraging El to answer, discouraging snickers floating around the room.

Another moment. The idea floated like debris in the open sea, the answer on the tip of her tongue. “I–”

“Oh, look! The weirdo is still dumb. Thank God!” Angela exclaimed before she erupted into meaningless laughter that made El retract into herself, beyond embarrassed. Everybody erupted into laughter as well, except for Will. He kept his eyes straight ahead.

“Angela, that is enough!” Mrs. Gracey snipped, cutting off Angela’s laugh. “All of you, that is enough! Jane, do you have an answer?”

El barely managed to mutter out, “I remember that it starts with an L.”

Mrs. Gracey gave a small smile. It wasn’t warm and inviting, but it wasn’t cold and off-putting. “Good. Can anybody help Jane out?”
Angela valiantly raised her hand and without waiting for Mrs. Gracey to call on her, she answered. “I think Jane was trying to say the RMS Lusitania.”

Mrs. Gracey pursed her lips into a straight line and with great difficulty she murmured, “Good.”
As Mrs. Gracey turned to the chalkboard, writing down the name of the ship, Angela turned to face Jane with that same sick smile. “Better luck next time.”

Jane closed her eyes and took a deep breath, the humiliation washing over her. She blew it, like always.

Chapter Text

that’s what happens when you’re starvin’

El’s stomach wanted to kill her. There was no other explanation. She had thrown up before she had gone to school like she normally did, the cereal and milk making a disgusting scene in the toilet. After popping a breath mint in her mouth, she rushed out the door with Will, her backpack barely on her back by the time she got into the pizza van. It was going to be a normal day, with El preparing herself mentally for the torture she was about to endure as the van merged onto the highway, sticking out like a yellow sore thumb, the same song playing on repeat.

The van always smelled like the smelly plants Jonathan liked to smoke as of late, and as the grungy van squeaked and rattled as El’s stomach began to turn. It wasn’t uncommon for her stomach to be upset after she threw up, the acid reflux in her stomach becoming agitated. But this time it seemed slightly more intense. It felt like her stomach was trying to collapse on itself, and while she was able to keep a straight face, the pain grew more and more intense as they ventured to school. It felt like whenever Dr. Brenner used the minimum shock collar level on her, painful enough for her to admit when she had done something wrong.

When they got to school, the stomach pain didn’t stop. El assumed it would go away by the time the first period of school was over. It was always the most stressful period of school, having to deal with Angela. Stomach pain was a symptom of anxiety– Joyce and Will had both told her so– this had to be anxiety. Her stomach ebbed and flowed in pain rather than staying constant. As she sat down in class, she tried to keep her face from contorting into a grimace.

Will was oblivious to the growing discomfort from his chair. Surely, he had to notice the pale skin, the yellow fingertips, the growing calluses on the knuckles, but El was surprised with how much she could get away with around the Byers. She hesitated to reach out to him about the stomach ache. Will didn’t need to deal with little problems like this. She could handle it on her own.

Unfortunately, by the time first period ended, the stomach pain had only gotten worse. What was once around a three on El’s pain scale jumped to a six– barely manageable. If it got any worse, then El would have to leave school. El didn’t want to leave. She was already so far behind and she was only beginning to function on the same level in history class, answering an occasional question correctly when her brain would cooperate. All she wanted to do was fit in with others, even if it meant bearing a horrible stomach ache.

No part of her health class had described intense stomach pain as a symptom of bulimia, but El didn’t know what other thing could cause the level of pain she was experiencing. Maybe she had upset her stomach to the point it rejected all food. Something about that idea made her so anxious she wanted to throw up, so she pushed the idea down deep in her brain. She wasn’t so bulimic she was hurting herself seriously, she was just sick. Every kid got sick…

Her body had broken out in a cold sweat by the time lunch came around. She was in so much pain that her eyes were almost permanently scrunched in a grimace and her back was lurched forward. The crests and troughs had evened out to a constant level of pain. The thought of eating made her feel even more nauseous, but the thought of not eating made her feel bad as well. She didn’t care what she had to do, she just wanted the pain to stop.

El hid in the bathroom for the entirety of lunch, not even bothering to grab her lunchbox. She sat on the floor, desperately trying to throw up whatever horrible thing was making her hurt this badly. All that came up was acid and mucus, her body running out of things to throw up. The attempt backfired horribly, her stomach pain jolting up to a nine and staying there for the rest of the day.

By then, walking was painful for her. She ran on autopilot for the last two periods of the day, not even bothering to try and learn. Her brain only focused on the excruciating pain, her hands clamped around her stomach in a pathetic attempt to soothe the pain. It felt like the pain would never end. She regretted taking for granted every moment in her life when she didn’t feel sick.

When she got back home from school, she wanted to die. Staggering to her room she clutched her stomach and collapsed on her bed, curling into the fetal position and breaking out into pained sobs. She heard muffled voices outside of her door as she shut it, leaving her traditional three-inch gap.

“Do you know what’s wrong, Mom?” Will asked.

“Did she feel bad at school?” Joyce questioned.

“She didn’t say anything.”

It took a few more minutes before anybody had the nerve to knock on the door. El whimpered, signaling them to come in. She couldn’t bear speaking– she didn’t have the energy. She saw the blurred image of Joyce walking in and El could tell by her nervous gait she was concerned.

“Hey, honey. How are you feeling?” Joyce asked, sitting on the bed and rubbing her arm.

“Hurts. Stomach,” El groaned, letting out another choked cry.

“Has it been feeling bad for a long time?”

“Since… this morning.”

Joyce hummed out a confused sound. “Why don’t you take some Tums? It’s a medicine I use whenever I eat tomatoes. It makes my stomach hurt.”

El nodded desperately. Anything to ease the pain. Joyce left and returned with a blue bottle of colorful tablets. El unfurled slightly and was handed three. They felt like the pills she took in the lab, but they were much prettier.

“Chew them up. You should feel better soon. Let me know if you need anything, sweetie,” Joyce told her, exiting the room for good this time.

As she took the pills, a sudden wave of fear overtook her. What if Joyce figured it all out? What if she saw the puffy face? The yellow fingernails? Joyce had gotten too close for El’s comfort. She couldn’t let her help her that way again unless El wanted her secret to be revealed.

The next day, El went to the convenience store and bought her bottle of Tums, stashing them in her backpack. They would be her key to stopping the symptoms of what she was doing to be revealed. She had to eliminate the bad to get to the good.

Chapter Text

please say that you won’t continue

When El walked into history class with Will, there was a circle around Angela’s desk, excited chatter accompanying the crowded children. El slowly strolled to her desk, absent-mindedly setting her backpack on her chair. She wanted to know why they were all crowding around her. Was she hurt?

“El–” Will said as El continued toward the crowd, warning her. El didn’t pay attention, however, and managed to slide in to see what all of the hullabaloo was about.

“Where did you get those done?”

“I can’t believe your mom let you have those! My mom won’t even let me wear anything other than clear!”

“I’m so jealous!”

As El squeezed in, she saw that Angela wasn’t hurting. She was sitting in her chair like she always did, wearing the same trendy clothes she always wore. She was holding up a hand and on the tips of her fingers was an acrylic nail set. The nails extended about an inch off of her finger and El glanced at her own fingernails– bitten down to the quick from anxiety. Angela’s nails were colored burgundy and black, half of the nail in each color.

El slid out before anybody could make fun of her for trying to appear “cool” and sat down next to Will. “She got her nails colored.”

“You mean painted?”

El shrugged. She was never good at remembering the difference between those types of words.

“They were dark red. And black. And they were pretty,” El sighed, cradling her chin in her hands as she stared at the green board ahead of her.

She remembered the one time Hopper tried to do her nails for the Snowball. He had bought a light pink and a blue to match her dress. The goal was to do alternating colors on each fingernail. It ended up being a disaster, with nail polish covering every surface of the house as Hopper’s fat fingers got the polish everywhere but the nail. It took Joyce and tons of rubbing alcohol to clean both El and the house up.

“I’m sure Mom has some nail polish hidden away somewhere…” Will told her, causing El to look at him. “You know, if you wanted to paint your nails.”

El’s eyes sparkled with excitement. “You should paint your nails, too.”

Instantly, Will’s face went red and he looked at his hands anxiously. El glanced down at the paper Mrs. Gracey had put on her desk, a worksheet about the Industrial Revolution. El didn’t understand why he was so anxious. Hopper had painted his nails before. To be fair, he wiped them off with a cotton ball before he went to work, much to the dismay of El who loved his pink and blue nails. Maybe boys didn’t paint their nails, another social standard El had failed to understand.

“I think Mom has a clear polish around somewhere. But you tell anybody and you’re dead,” Will warned and El grinned, excited to paint his nails.

The rest of the day, El couldn’t concentrate. She glanced at her fingernails constantly, white marks under the nail bed. Joyce had told her they were because the nail was trying to repair itself from her biting habit. She always enjoyed the look of them when they grew, the white top extending just past the fingertip as her nails began to heal from the stress, but it never took too long until her anxiety would subconsciously bring her teeth to the nail, biting it off and repeating the cycle.  With all of the new influences surrounding her in magazines and Lenora Hills and Angela, she was more than willing to put paint on her nails to make herself blend in more.

When they got home, El didn’t waste time raiding through the various closets throughout the house. There were towels, an ironing board, two vacuums that made El want to cry whenever Joyce or Jonathan used them, and finally on the bottom shelf a bin of nail polish. The jars clinked together as El lifted the bin by its handles, the cloth sagging under the combined weight of the colors.

“Will, I found them!” El exclaimed, Will resigning himself to the living room while El went on her manhunt.

“Bring them over. And get some paper towels and the rubbing alcohol under the sink,” Will shouted back.

El didn’t waste time, grabbing the roll of paper towels and rubbing alcohol as Joyce was distracted with her sales pitch. Setting all of the supplies down, she didn’t hesitate to find a color that she liked. The pinks seemed too bright. The nudes seemed too ugly. The clear shade was meant for Will. Finally, a shade toward the bottom attracted her attention– a ruby red that gleamed when she put it up to the light.

Smiling, she handed it to Will. “This one. Please.”

Will gave a tense smile before shaking the bottle. Guiding El’s hand down to the paper towel, he opened the cap and dipped the brush into the jar, a glob of red polish bonding itself to the fibers. With his interest in painting, the strokes on her nails were artistic and even, covering the nails perfectly.

As Will bent down to examine the skin, making sure he didn’t paint any part of it, he noticed the sick yellow tinge on the tips of her fingers. Glancing at the rest of her unpainted fingernails, he realized they had the same putrid acid tone to them. Below them were small scabs on her knuckles, jutting out just enough that they were noticeable under closer inspection. Looking up at El he finally realized how bloodshot her eyes were, as if they had been under a mountain of pressure and popped. How in the world did this happen to her?

“What’s wrong?” El asked, examining the tacky nails Will had painted. “Are they bad?”

Will shook his head, jumping out of the trance with a look of concern. “No… it’s just that… never mind. Other hand. Keep that one flat and don’t touch anything.”

Chapter Text

ordering oranges off the menu

Breakfast on the weekends was El’s least favorite meal. It was a stark reminder that everybody was home and relaxed for at least a day. Nobody was rushing to go to school where she could slip into the bathroom and throw up. There was no school for her to puke in. All eyes were on her, at least metaphorically. If there was ever a meal where she couldn’t find a way to throw up, it was Saturday breakfast.

With January slowly turning into February, the icky feeling of Lenora Hills during the winter barely started to wean off. The “cold” that everybody in California freaked out about, which was more like an average spring day in Hawkins, was starting to go away, just enough for the kids at school to stop complaining. It also allowed for a more active outdoor life, El watching out of her window and seeing the little children dare to go out and play. She wished she could join them but she knew she was too old. She had missed her window to play outside by about five years.

Staring through her window, she idly rested her chin on her hand. A searing pain went through her jaw that caused her to jerk back, gasping in surprise. She tried to rub the area, but any touch quickly became torture. Her whole jaw became inflamed within seconds, causing El’s ears to ring. Was this another side effect? El hoped not. She would hate to endure this pain for more than an hour, let alone for the rest of her life.

Right as the pain began to subside, albeit only by about ten percent, Will called her for breakfast. By “called,”  he stood by her doorway and rapped on the door frame, something that had become a bit of a tradition over the time they had spent together. El forced herself to get up and walk to the dining table, her entire face growing red. Any type of movement caused her such pain that she didn’t greet anybody at the table. She merely took her unofficially assigned seat, Jonathan passing her a plate of waffles and bacon– two things that El loved that tasted disgusting when it came back up. She took it anyway, grateful that they fed her in the first place.

El smothered a bit of syrup on the waffles so that they didn’t taste bland. She knew that sugar wasn’t good for weight loss, but with the sugar-free syrup El had been begging Joyce to get she felt less guilty for using it. Joyce hadn’t seemed to mind. She hadn’t even asked when it appeared on the grocery list. Without the abundance of sugar, the syrup tasted less sugary and had lost a bit of its original appeal to El, but the sticky texture was needed for her to fully enjoy the waffles. The crunchiness and the dryness of plain waffles sent her against the wall with sensory issues.

El listened to the Byer’s weekend plans. They were typical– Jonathan was going golfing with Argyle at the impounded car dump, Will was going to an art show at the local community college, and Joyce was going to work on a few more sales so she could work toward a week off to spend with Jonathan and Will. Joyce had included her in the conversation but El had disregarded it, the feeling of taking up too much space overwhelming her again.

She stared at her plate, the waffles beginning to grow soggy. Conflicting thoughts raced through her head. If she didn’t eat, they would grow suspicious. If she ate, not only would her jaw hurt but she would be taking up more space than losing space. El considered for a second before concluding she could throw it up later, cutting a piece of the waffle and hesitantly putting it to her mouth.

The minute she tried to chew the waffle, her fork hit the plate as she brought her hands to cup her jaw. She could feel the Byers’ eyes on her as she scrunched up her eyes, her nerves firing off in too many directions for her to concentrate on anything but the pain.

“What’s wrong?” Jonathan asked, his voice still gruff from waking up early.

“My jaw hurts.”

When she opened her eyes, the feeling of stares turned into a real manifestation, everybody looking at her as if she were an alien. A monster.

“Did you hurt it last night?” Jonathan questioned, leaning in closer.

El shook her head. Jonathan leaned back in his chair, his eyes intensely fixated on El’s face. He hadn’t realized how puffy it was and how swollen it had become. El agonizingly swallowed the small bite of waffle she took and stood up. “I’m going to get some pain medication.”

Everybody ate their breakfasts silently as El raced to the medicine cabinet. She tried to suppress her groans of pain, tears forming in her eyes. She felt like she had to throw up, not just because she felt guilty. Pain shot through her nervous system as if it were trying to kill her.

Grabbing the closest bottle of Advil, she popped two of them, not even bothering to attempt to gulp down some water. She let out a muffled scream as the swallowing mechanism inflamed her entire chest, not daring to open her mouth. She could hear the concerned whispers from her pseudo-family, hearing Jonathan’s footsteps come toward the bathroom. Trying to act as normal as possible, she confronted him in the hallway. He seemed concerned, his eyebrows furrowed in an upward direction.

“Do you know what’s wrong with your jaw?” Jonathan asked, trying to bend down to take a look. “It’s really swollen. El, we need to go to a doctor.”

El vehemently shook her head. Joyce had promised they never had to go to the doctor unless it was for yearly checkups and emergencies. She had felt worse pain at the hands of Dr. Brenner. “I am fine. This isn’t an emergency. Joyce said that I didn’t have to go unless it was an emergency.”

Jonathan sharply inhaled. “If it doesn’t get better by tomorrow, Mom’s going to make it an emergency, okay?”

El nodded, watching Jonathan leave. She turned back to the medicine cabinet, popping two more pills. She was not going to let a small problem force her to the hospital.

Chapter Text

stuffin’ up your mouth like t-t-tissue

El used to love Valentine’s Day. Mike had painted it as the one day of the year when people openly confessed their love to one another. Last year, Mike had shown up at her house with a bouquet of flowers and a stuffed koala. El remembered the intense butterflies in her stomach as she kissed him on the lips much to the disdain of Hopper before letting him inside, where they watched Ghostbusters until El fell asleep. It had been a perfect night for her. Unfortunately, she didn’t expect another monster to tear through Hawkins, her father to be killed in the battle, and for her to be separated from Mike by multiple states.

She had gotten a card and another letter from Mike in the mail. It had a small present in it, a charm bracelet with a few charms already clipped onto it. There was a waffle with a pat of butter, a dark blue, translucent, miniature Dungeons and Dragon die, and a small glass bottle with a Coca-Cola logo. It made El elated at first to get a present. It showed that Mike truly cared for her. But none of the charms truly resonated with her. She wasn’t a big Dungeons and Dragons fan or a soda fan. Those were Mike’s interests. Did Mike truly know her?

Nobody believed that El had a boyfriend “back in Indiana.” Will told her that people often tried to be cool by pretending they had a boyfriend or a girlfriend and to make up for the lie they claimed that said boyfriend/girlfriend lived in another school or state. El had given up trying to convince people that Mike was real– it just seemed to give them more leverage to bully her. Seeing everybody at school flaunt their boyfriends and girlfriends with their sloppy kisses in hallways, excessive hand-holding, and makeouts during lunch, and gigantic presents that were clearly meant to be showy rather than meaningful made El want to give up on life. Why could everybody be so happy except her?

A countdown was always posted in her remedial English class, the one class she never seemed to be close to testing out of. Someone had drawn hearts on the chalkboard, full of shading and complexity. The heart in the middle had the number of days until Valentine’s Day decreasing gradually. Every day it closer filled El with dread.

The actual Valentine’s Day had been nothing short of cruel. El had held in her emotions for the beginning of the day, throwing up the heart-shaped waffles Joyce had bought before she went to school. She thought she would make it through the day, But then Candygrams were passed out in first period, little notes that expressed love and affection between peers, friends, and lovers alike. Not only did Angela get ten, the most in her history class by a mile, she had only gotten one. When she looked at the print on the back, it said, “You really thought someone loved you?”

Beside her, she heard cackling. Looking up from her note, she saw Angela doubled over in her seat, laughing. All of the color drained from El’s face. She tried her best to focus on whatever Mrs. Gracey was writing on the board, but her heart pounded with humiliation, her hands shaking with embarrassment. Nobody loves me.

She could see Will trying to get her attention out of the corner of her eye, but she ignored it. Tears filled the rim of her eyes and she looked up at the lights, trying to keep them down. If she cried, they would laugh harder. They would win. Crumpling up the heart-shaped piece of paper, it felt like her heart had been ripped in two. Nobody loves me.

El’s day was ruined before it had even begun. Angela always had a habit of doing that to her. Throughout the day, she could feel the low amount of energy she had depleted. Her stomach and ribs ached with pain, her heart beating with stress. Her head throbbed and she found herself unable to concentrate. She couldn’t stop thinking about the sentence they had written: “You really thought someone loved you?” Nobody loves me .

When she got home, she locked herself in her room and dug through her things like a feral animal. She furiously dug for anything that Mike had sent her- letters, pictures, presents– anything that reminded her that she was loved by him. El ignored her homework, the necessity of it slipping by her as she sat on her bed, reading the letters Mike had written to her. She remembered when Will would have to read them to her, El looking over his shoulder. Now she could read it on her own. The letters were filled with nothing but disappointment. Mike cared for her, Mike thought about her, Mike missed her, but he never loved her. The word never appeared once in the letters. Even at the bottom, he always signed them as, “From, Mike.” Nobody loves me .

Dinner was spaghetti and meatballs, something that El despised throwing up. She could almost taste the acidity of the tomatoes coming back up, gagging on her own thoughts. She didn’t speak at all as they ate, everybody skirting around her as if she was a bomb ready to explode. It was only more confirmation that she was only a waste of space. Nobody loves me .

El couldn’t make herself throw up that night. It had become almost an instinct to her, her body no longer needing excessive force. But she had stopped caring, at least for the night. Nobody loved her, nobody cared for her… she had nobody. While staring at her ceiling, hearing all of her roommates get ready for bed, she impulsively decided to get some ice cream from the fridge.  I’ve had a hard day. I deserve to enjoy something today.

They only had mint chocolate chip, a flavor that Will claimed tasted like toothpaste. To El, it was a luxurious minty dessert, one that she couldn’t get enough of. Grabbing a spoon and the container, she dug the spoon and scooped a chunk of the ice cream. Nobody loves me. Nobody loves me.

El’s feelings were immediately suppressed by the ice cream, finding comfort in the food. She didn’t feel as guilty as she thought she would. El ate another spoonful. Nobody loves me . And another. Nobody loves me . And another. Nobody loves me. She couldn’t stop, her thoughts racing so fast it was a blur in her head.

Nobody loves me. I should stop. Nobody loves me. But I can’t. Nobody loves me—one more bite. Nobody loves me. Nobody loves me. Nobody loves me. Nobody loves me. Nobody loves me. Nobody loves me. Nobody loves me. Nobody loves me. Nobody loves me. Nobody loves me. Nobody loves me. Nobody loves me. Nobody loves me. Nobody loves me. Nobody loves me. Nobody loves me.

It didn’t take long until she finished the entire ice cream gallon. Her stomach ached, her hands shaking. She felt a cold chill run down her spine. What have I done? What have I done? I’ve ruined everything. El went into survival mode, terrified of what Joyce would say if she learned she had wasted resources. She was more of a burden. She had ruined it all. She dug through the trash can, setting the ice cream container right in the middle of the trash can. Layering the trash back on, her nose scrunched with the stinky smell of rotting garbage.

El had made a mistake. She needed to fix it. She had eaten too much. She had ruined her entire mission. Kneeling in front of the toilet, she could feel nausea overtake her. Nobody loves me .

Chapter Text

the way you look is not an issue

El glanced at the clock on the wall, each second ticking by as slowly as it could. It was five o’clock, the thin red line pointing to the two-mark. Five o’clock plus ten seconds. Mike was ten seconds late. Turning her attention to the phone by her side, propped up by a spare Britannica dictionary, El stared at it, waiting for it to start ringing. She just wanted to get this phone conversation over with. Fifteen minutes was all she needed to keep Mike satisfied. Any second now… any second now… any–

Ring! Ring! Ring! Without a second to lose, El picked it up and held it to her ear. “Hello?”

“El? It’s Mike. How was your day?”

El forced herself to put on a happy tone. She neglected to tell Mike that Angela had dumped tater tots on her head at lunch and her boyfriend had slammed her into the lockers after nearly making her faceplant. “It was good. Got an A on my science test.”

That was a lie. She had scrapped by with a C minus. Friends don’t lie . 

“How was your day?”

“It was alright. Lucas is still doing that basketball thing. God, he’s turning into such a jerk. He’s not even showing up for the Hellfire meetings anymore! And Nancy stressed out about Emerson– oh, tell Jonathan that she committed– and now Mom and Dad are worried about Holly. They think she needs braces. On top of that, my history teacher’s become a huge dick. We have a research paper due at the end of spring break.”

This was how the conversations usually went. Mike complained and El listened. El didn’t mind that much. Mike never wanted to hear about her complaints when he was doing so well in high school. It seemed unfair to him.

“How is Max?” El asked.

Mike sighed. “Still crabby and pushy. More of a jerk than Lucas is. She’s always wearing headphones now… the Walkman that her mom got her from Christmas. There’s a rumor that she’s smoking cigarettes with Greg Pearson, but that’s such bullshit. Max would never smoke.”

“Cigarettes? Like Joyce?”

“Yeah, but it’s all bullshit. Forget about it. How’s school going? Straight As still, right?”

El didn’t even remember when she started lying to Mike. It was wrong, morally wrong, not just in the sense of the Party’s motto. It was getting difficult to keep track of it. “Yup. Even in English.”

“How was your time with Stacey and Angela?”

El was caught off-guard, remembering the tater tot attack at lunch. “W-What?”

“You told me last week that you guys went to the roller rink for a party. How was it?”

El swallowed. It wasn’t a complete lie. Sometimes, Angela and Stacey were nice to her. They gave her pencils and spelled stuff out for her when Will had a cold. They made fun of her for it, but they still helped her. “Oh. It was nice. I like the style they have.”

“All neon? My mom’s been going crazy for that trend, too. She even got a perm to look like those jazzercise girls.”

El bit her tongue and looked at the clock. Ten more minutes. “Oh.”

“Yeah, it’s kind of dumb. Anyway, how’s Will doing?”

El glanced at Will, who stared at her with obvious jealousy. Mike had called Will three times ever since they had moved to Lenora Hills. “Will is okay. He is painting a lot.”

“Cool.” Mike cleared his throat before continuing. “I have a surprise for you.”

“A surprise?” El repeated.

“Yeah. I talked to my parents, and they’re letting me come to California for spring break! I can’t believe they let me go. Isn’t it exciting?”

El’s mouth dropped open while chills went through her body. Immediately, she looked at her stomach, the fat folding as she sat in the chair. Mike’s going to hate the way I look.

“El?” Mike exclaimed over the phone. “Are you still there?”

“Um… I am,” El stammered. “You’re coming.”

“Yeah. I’ll try to get some new tubular clothes. I don’t think Indiana’s fashion sense is the same as California’s.”

El could tell it was an attempt at a joke. She laughed feebly. “I am… excited.”

“Yeah?”

“I have to go now. I’m sorry that it is shorter. Do you want to talk to Will?” El abruptly said, the overwhelming anxiety taking over my body.

Mike groaned under his breath. “Yeah, sure. I– I’ll see you soon.”

El hummed. “See you soon. Will.”

As Will approached the phone, El walked as fast as she could without causing Will to think something was wrong. Beelining it to the bathroom, she stared at herself. Mike would hate her. The frumpy clothes. The ratty bangs. The chubby face. The scarred gums and knuckles. The stained fingernails, the nail polish scraped off by her teeth, and acid whenever she threw up. The double chin that happened when she ducked her chin too close to her neck. Her shoulders. Her fat stomach. Her horrible thighs. Angela’s words kept coming back to her– “You really thought someone loved you?”

If El wanted Mike to love her, actually love her, then she would have to do something drastic in the next few weeks before spring break. She already threw up every meal she ate and exercised as much as she could. She was at a loss for what she could do. Racking her brain, every idea she came up with had flaws. Not eating meals would become suspicious. She already slept through weekend breakfast enough, let alone sleeping through dinners. Laxatives hadn’t worked… El had learned this the hard way.

Maybe… maybe if she just ate ice… ice for breakfast… tell her family that she wasn’t feeling well and then make it a habit… it could work… orange juice on Saturdays only…. maybe Sundays if she was satisfied with the outcome.

Ice. Ice was going to make Mike love El again. She was sure of it.

Chapter Text

you turn oranges to orange juice

El drank a ton of water every day. It was the only liquid served to her at the lab, unless it was her birthday, when she was given watered-down apple juice. She drank it at Hopper’s house, though she had occasionally enjoyed hot chocolate and a sip of his coffee. In Lenora Hills, she had been introduced to orange juice, Will’s favorite. She drank it only when served, for the pulpy texture made her teeth sticky to the point of discomfort. Whenever she had her own option, she drank water. How was eating ice for breakfast any more different than drinking water?
El knew it would be difficult to get the Byers to not think anything was wrong with her. They ate three meals a day, with snacks in between, no ice to be seen unless it was in soda or water if it was a really hot day. They had already had to grow accustomed to El’s sparse eating and small bites, something El could tell bothered Joyce from the start. She always encouraged her to eat more or to take bigger bites. El would always politely tell her she was fine, the voice inside her head yelling at Joyce to shut up. Ice was going to send Joyce, who had always been kind and understanding, into a panic.

El had procrastinated on the diet out of anxiety. One small misstep or overcalculation could unravel all of her horrible secrets. She wouldn’t convert to the ice diet until the week before spring break, starting on Monday and lasting until  Mike arrived. Then he would be happy to see her so skinny, and she would feel loved again. The world would be balanced once again.

When Monday rolled around, El had almost forgotten about her plan. She had sprung out of bed, only to have her head buzz and groan to the point where she sat on her bed until the feeling calmed down. She immediately grew cold, shuddering back into the blankets while she went through her to-do list. School… homework… another benchmark test to prepare for… the ice diet. El’s brain immediately flooded with her plans once again, the alibi she had conjured up last night coming back to her.

Slowly getting ready for bed, she applied the mascara Joyce had gifted her when she heard Mike was coming for spring break and waited until Will called her to breakfast. She was anxious, staring at the door, waiting for Will’s knuckles to beat against the door. Every moment felt like agony, her stomach turning. He ended up thirty seconds late, only giving one sharp knock. “El, breakfast!”

El went into performance mode, groaning and mumbling from her bed, shivering under the covers. She didn’t need to pretend to shiver, but she did need to play up how sick she felt. Will slowly opened the door, widening the gap from the standard three inches to a full two feet. “El, are you okay? Are you sick?”

El grumbled, “I don’t feel good. But I have the math test. I’ll be down in a minute.”
From what El could see from her bed, Will looked concerned. He stared at her for too long, his eyes staring at her body under the blankets. El’s heart beat quicker and quicker. Had he figured it out? After a moment, however, he turned to head to the kitchen. El breathed out a sigh of relief, slowly rising to head to the kitchen herself. It was longer than normal to her, every footstep riddled with worry. Her stomach sank when she saw a plate of buttered toast waiting for her, the bacon and orange juice held to the side.

“Hey, honey. Will told me you weren’t feeling well. I gave you some toast, but if you can’t stomach it, no worries,” Joyce said, her motherly tone almost causing El to abandon her plan and eat the toast just to appease her.

No. You cannot abandon your plan. Think of how disappointed Mike’s going to be when he sees how disgusting you are. Think of how happy you’ll be when you finally disappear. Think of what Angela did to you. “You really thought somebody loved you?”

El swallowed thickly, her throat burning. “No– no, thank you. I’m going to have some ice.”

“Are you sure, honey? I can make you something else really quick. Maybe some fruit, at least. I don’t know if ice is going to give you enough energy for school,” Joyce protested as El grabbed a plastic cup from the counter.

El averted her eyes away from Joyce, reaching into the freezer and pulling out an ice cube tray. “No, thank you. I don’t have any appetite today.”

Sitting down at the table, she shakily popped an ice cube in her mouth. It rattled inside of her cheek, melting as El moved it from cheek to cheek to prevent ice burns. It was cold enough to shock El into becoming awake, soothing her sore throat and settling down her swollen cheeks. Will stared at her with confusion before going to enjoy his breakfast. Jonathan and Joyce sat down soon after, leaving El to chew her ice in peace.

 The entire breakfast was stressful. They didn’t ask El any questions, nor did El talk to them. She only observed, hazily listening to Jonathan’s anxiousness about acceptance letters and the newest art project Will was starting. Joyce gave her one too many glances for comfort, though she hesitated to say anything. El prayed it would stay that way. If Joyce spoke up, no matter how concerned she was, it would ruin the entire plan. Thankfully, the minute breakfast was over, Argyle honked his horn outside.

Grabbing her backpack, she zoomed past everybody before they could ask her anything, practically racing to the pizza van patiently parked outside. She was relieved by the time she got in Argyle’s pizza van. El had managed to pull it off. Only four more days to go.

Chapter Text

into there, and spit it out of you

The night before Mike came to California, El lay in bed, tears streaming down her face. She gripped her stuffed animal– the one Hopper had bought her. She took a deep inhale of the fuzz, still smelling Hopper’s cigarettes. Each time she smelled it, a desperate attempt to remember him, it grew fainter and fainter, the memories of Hopper slowly fading. She sniffled, her nose blocked with mucus, her head pounding. Her body shivered under the blankets, trying to make El warm despite the nutrition she had deprived herself of. She had just finished her last dinner of ice, the acidic taste of acid reflux coming up again and again. She ran a finger against her yellow teeth and her sweaty hair, the tears falling harder and harder.

The ice diet had been a success. El had finally noticed her stomach beginning to shrink in the tiniest way. Her hips and thighs were still chubby and El able to pinch the disgusting fat when she tried hard enough. She had been stuck in a cloudy haze, her head pounding for the past three days. Her body was screaming for food while her brain screamed at her body. With her homework haphazardly lying on her desk, a reminder that the only two classes she had tested out of remedial were history and now science (only by ½ a point. The school was so desperate to let her catch up that they let her rejoin her old science class. The adjustment had been rough.) What a failure.

She suddenly heard a knock on the door. El turned over at the noise. The three-inch gap showed a shaggy haircut, red lipstick visible. Joyce. “Sweetie, can I come in?”

El grumbled, coughing painfully. Her throat felt like it was being ripped in half. “Come in.”

Joyce walked in, the door swinging open. El could tell she was worried by the way her eyebrows curved upward and the slight pout in her lips. Her eyes showed genuine concern. It broke El’s heart to have someone care for her. Joyce needs to stop caring about me. I’m fine. 

“Hey, sweetie. How are you feeling?”

Joyce placed a hand on her shoulder, her hand vibrating from El’s tremors. El could feel the hand sharply drawing back. “Honey, are you cold? Do you have a fever?”

El shook her head. “I am just not feeling great. I will be better tomorrow.”
Joyce was quiet, rubbing El’s back. For a moment, there was a tense air between the two. Joyce had questions she didn’t want to ask and El had answers she didn’t want to say. She relished in Joyce’s touch for a moment, allowing the guilt of enjoying such a loving caress to wash over her.

“Sweetie, you haven’t been feeling well this entire week. Are you sure that you want Mike to fly over? He doesn’t have to if you’re ill.”
El shook her head vehemently. “I will be fine tomorrow.”

“El, honey, is there anything you want to tell me? Jonathan says he heard you throwing up the other week after dinner. Are you sure you’re not sick?”

El froze under the blankets, the shivering stopping instantly. She tried to date back what day this could have occurred, but the mental calendar unable to specify a certain date. Jonathan had been so reclusive to the point where El only saw him on the ride to and from school. He was barely showing up at the dinner table, and if he was, it was always with Argyle. Argyle and Jonathan smoked smelly plants outside afterward– when could Jonathan have heard her?

“I think I had the flu,” El said, the lie flowing out of her before she could even think. “People were getting sick at school. I must have gotten it.”

El could sense Joyce’s hesitation as she sat down on the mattress, the filling rising next to her as she sank. “Do you want me to make you some soup? You’ve had my chicken noodle soup before and I remember you liked it.”

El remembered the taste of the soup vividly. She had been starving herself for a day before that, her stomach constantly cramping. She had gone too quickly, her body not used to the method. Joyce had sat her down at the kitchen table after the boys had gone to bed and made her the soup. The two had sat down at the kitchen table, quietly eating the soup. El could tell Joyce had wanted her to talk, but El couldn’t bring herself to do so. Instead, they had eaten the soup in silence.

The salty broth, the soft carrots, and the slippery pasta had been a dreamy combination. Back then, her face hadn’t swelled up to the size of an elephant. Her teeth hadn’t become a sick shade of acidic yellow and the guilt that was balled up inside was small enough that she didn’t throw it up at midnight like she would have done months later.

“I will be fine. Thank you, though. I need to rest before Mike comes,” El groaned, shuffling in her bed until she was curled up into a ball, sniffling as she wiped away the tears that hadn’t already fallen onto her stuffed animal.

El could sense the hesitation in Joyce’s voice. “Are you sure you don’t need anything, sweetie?”

El shook her head again. By the slow sound of footsteps leaving her room, El could tell Joyce wasn’t convinced by her story. Joyce’s footsteps stopped by the door, El having half the mind to turn to face her. El waited silently, controlling her tears as best as she could until the footsteps receded down the hall back to the kitchen.

El tried to breathe through her nostrils to no avail, burying her face into the stuffed animal again. She tried to think of Mike, her mind flashing through the pictures he had sent her of him, her friends, and all of their adventures. They had done just fine without El and Will. Maybe they didn’t need her at all. Why was Mike even coming?

Chapter Text

your body is imperfectly imperfect

El sat in the airport terminal, the plastic dark teal seats digging into her thighs as her leg bounced up and down, eyes fixated on the gate opening. She had tried to dress in her best outfit– one of the dresses she and Max had bought during their shopping spree layered with one of Will’s old beige flannel shirts. She had tried to be brave and wear the dress without something under it, but her jiggly arms and the little pocket of fat in her armpit whenever she held her hands by her side deterred her. Will sat beside her, carrying a rolled-up painting he had been working on for weeks. His leg bounced similarly, though El could tell he was a lot more excited than she was.

El had tried to be excited the whole day. She had forced herself to eat half of her breakfast, only for the thoughts to overtake her and punish her by spending twenty minutes in the airport bathroom throwing it up. Her body ached in pain, constantly shivering despite the sweltering California heat. She wanted to give up on her body from the moment she had woken up, stomach cramps lingering and acid reflux so bad that her throat felt like it was being ripped in two. Still, she forced herself to put on a smile that grew bigger when she saw a familiar face in the crowd. Mike.

He had drawn the sunglasses from his pocket much earlier than he had expected, the sun quickly growing too intense for his eyes from the moment he had stepped off the plane. He tried to imitate the California vibes he had seen in magazines, donning a loose open mustard button-up shirt and even a bucket hat he impulsively had gotten at the airport store. Stepping into the gate, his eyes darted around the terminal trying to find El. It wasn’t until he heard a voice speak up in the crowd that he locked eyes on her.

“Mike!”

Following the voice, he was quickly led to his girlfriend. Chills ran through his body– excited chills– as he came within inches of her for the first time in six months. Mike went in for a hug, the first touch they had exchanged in what felt like forever, but El quickly went for a kiss. Mike drew back in surprise before playing along, keeping the kiss brief.

“I’m so happy to see you,” she whispered, gripping Mike’s waist tightly.

Mike chuckled as he wrapped his arms around her back. He had forgotten how affectionate El was. Spreading his palm around her back, he felt bumps. He furrowed his eyebrows, trying to keep his reaction discreet. Thinking back to all of the hugs they had shared back when they lived only twenty minutes away from each other, he had never felt her spine, not even when she was malnourished in the lab.

Pulling away too quickly than he wanted, he scanned her body as he went to give Will one of those side hugs that Mike hated to give. She was so… skinny. Her face, while still rosy and not void of any color, was gaunt, cheekbones sticking out and eyes sunken in. He could see the faintest outline of her ribs through the fabric of both layers.

“El…” he murmured under his breath, too quiet for anybody else to hear him. He was almost scared by her appearance. The El that had left Hawkins was not the same El that stood before him, not in any way, shape, or form.

The smile El wore nearly faded off but it picked up within seconds, El quickly grabbed Mike’s free hand, the other containing his luggage, and dragged him to the main airport. As much as El wanted to lead the way, within seconds it seemed that she had grown too weak to carry herself up, leaning on Mike’s shoulder the whole time that they walked through the small airport. 

“You’re going to love it here. Jonathan said that he’s going to take us to the roller rink tomorrow but today he said that you would be tired,” El exclaimed, her energy waning with each step.
Mike struggled to catch up with her line of thinking, only noticing her bony her wrists had become, the arm not feeling much thicker from the small amount he felt. “Yeah… yeah, I guess I am a little. Why don’t we go home for the day, you know? Maybe you can show me around town.”

El nodded confidently. “We don’t have a big town center, but there’s a store and a movie theater and a pizza place.”

Mike looked down at the white tile for a moment, watching it turn to dark gray as they entered the parking lot. He couldn’t wait any longer to ask someone.  “El, why don’t you go on ahead? I’ll be there in a moment.”

El’s smile turned to confusion, her eyes looking more desperate than Mike had ever seen them before. “Why?”

“I just need to talk to Will for a second. I’ll be there in a sec.”

To soothe El’s nerves, he kissed her on the cheekbone– he shouldn’t be feeling her cheekbone – and off she went with Jonathan and their new friend Argyle to the “stinky pizza van” Will had told him over the phone. As he laid back with Will, who was carrying a long tan pole, he felt a polarizing shiver. They hadn’t talked very much, Mike was too obsessed with El to spend more than ten minutes on the phone with him. Mike wanted to shoot himself in the foot. He had let the friendship grow too strained.

“Hey,” Will murmured, shoving his free hand in his pocket.

“Hey,” Mike echoed, looking up at the sky. “It’s sunny out. Are you sure El isn’t hot?”

Will shook his head. “She’s always seemed cold as of late.”

“Have you noticed anything off about her? She seems so… weak. I mean, her face is so– I don’t know the word– sunken in. And her arms look like they’re sticks. Not to mention how little she can walk on her own. She was leaning on me the entire way back and it seemed that I was carrying all of her weight.”

Will’s head drew back, the pace slowing down to a meager amble. “I don’t know, she’s just been really sick ever since we came here. I don’t think she does well in the heat. She hasn’t been eating much, but she’s always so sick and just… yellow. I mean, last week, she ate nothing but ice.”

“She ate nothing but ice and you weren’t concerned?” Mike asked. “Will, that sounds like an eating disorder.”

Will stopped dead in his tracks, feet away from the van. “Mike, if she had an eating disorder, I would know. She’s just really really ill. She’s been missing you, it makes sense why she hasn’t been feeling well.”

Mike pursed his lips, giving a glance to El through the car window. She leaned against it, gripping her stomach loosely and leaning against the window, eyes closed. She looked like she was almost in pain. “Let’s just go to your house.”

Wordlessly, he got into the car, the sound of the van door sliding perking El up as Mike sat next to her. She transferred her weight to Mike’s shoulder. It seemed dead, almost as if El struggled to carry her own head. “I can’t wait to show you my room.”

Mike said nothing and slipped his hand into hers. Her room was the least of his concerns.

Chapter Text

everyone wants what the other one’s working

El wasn’t dumb, she knew that Mike was suspicious. Why wouldn’t he be? El knew that she had to look different– much uglier, puffier, fatter. He looked almost concerned, his eyebrows permanently stitched upwards, curved to show worry. He wouldn’t understand. Nobody ever seemed to understand.

Staying true to their word, they had decided to stay at the house for the day. Mike had been given an air mattress in Will’s room. When El peeked into his room, she noticed Will’s easel missing, even if there was enough space to fit both the air mattress and the easel in. The painting had been crushed in the corner, seemingly worth nothing. El had changed into a baggier outfit, both warmer in material and hiding her body. She had learned that sweatshirts were her best friend. Of course, when Mike came to her room, he frowned.

“El, it’s the end of March in California. Why are you wearing a sweatshirt?”

El shrugged, leaning against his shoulder as they sat on the bed. “I’m cold. Why are you wearing short sleeves?”

She learned that deflecting with questions seemed to make people stop questioning. But Mike seemed undeterred.

“You don’t look okay. Are you sick or something?”

El pulled back from Mike. “No. Why?”

“Because you look… I don’t know, you don’t look like yourself.”

El stood up, trying to gain distance from Mike. “Why do you want to know?”

“Because I… Because I care about you, El. And I don’t like the way you look right now. You look sick. And I know you. You don’t normally look so sick.”

El wanted to crumble to the ground. All of her work, all of her efforts, only for him to say that. I care about you. I don’t like the way you look . She was suddenly aware of every muscle in her body, every molecule of skin. She was ugly. Ugly, ugly, ugly, ugly…

“You care, but you don’t love me?” El mumbled, hugging her chest.

Mike curled his already curled eyebrows. “Of course I do.”

“But you never say it.”

Now Mike was standing up, El subconsciously turning back to her bed. She was on too high alert, the pain coursing through her body pushed to the back of her mind. A chill went through her body that she couldn’t ignore and her arms trembled to the point she could see Mike looking at them.

“I say it.”

“The letters… you never write it. You can’t even write it,” she muttered, tears welling up in her eyes as she sat on the bed, curling her knees to her chest. “Why do you say the things you do?”

“El…” Mike kneeled next to the bed. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I… I love you, but I can’t help it if I’m worried about you.”

He grabbed her wrist, his fingers creating a familiar loop around her wrist before having to close in, the fabric bunching around it. “El, your arms are small. You look ghostly. Will said you didn’t eat anything last week. Is there something you need to tell me?”

El shook her head vehemently, snatching her arm away from Mike. “I was sick last week. It’s too hot here. I’m fine, Mike. How many times do I have to say it?”

Then she was crying, sniffling into the hem of her sweatshirt, Mike kneeling next to the bed, rubbing her knee. Through her blurred vision (whether it was from the tears or the near-constant migraine she couldn’t tell) she could see Mike’s confusion. She felt confused. What was she doing?

“I try… so hard…” she muttered. “It is never enough.”

“Never enough for who? What are you talking about?” Mike asked. “I want to understand what’s going on.”

The words came out of her faster than she wanted to. She felt the poison flow out of her, her arms aching from the pain of her own decisions. “You don’t love me…”

Mike stopped rubbing her knee. “El, I just told you I did… I love you, okay? I swear I do.”

“It is never enough for you. For Joyce. For my friends.”

“El, you’re enough for me. I don’t care about your powers. I never cared about them. I love you because you’re you, El. But this… this isn’t you.”

“It’s not the fucking powers!” El screamed, hearing footsteps racing down the hall.

“Then what is it, El? What is wrong?” Mike asked, sounding exasperated.

The footsteps stopped at the door. El could tell they were Joyce’s. “What is going on here?”

Mike turned toward Joyce, keeping a hand on her knee before she jerked it away. His hands felt like venom. “I… I don’t know. She was fine and now she’s crying. I think she’s sick or something.”

“I’m not sick, Mike. You don’t listen. You never listen!” she sobbed, a throaty hiccup erupting out of her as she broke down.

“Do you want some more Advil, honey? I don’t know if it’s safe to take much more,” Joyce muttered, El shaking her head.

“No more pills. No more medicine. No more,” El mumbled.

Joyce left as quietly as she came, footsteps being heard from the other side of the house. Mike turned back to El, El noticing his now long and floppy black hair sway microseconds behind his movements. “Do you need anything? I can get you food, wat–”

“No food!”

The words came out too strong. She had messed up like she always did. She picked up her head, her tears stopping suspiciously fast. He stared at her, with that stare. That was the type of look Hopper had given her when she had run away to go to the middle school that one day. That stare where you messed up and they know it, but they don’t want you to know that they know. It was piercing, judgemental with a bit of sorrow and despair. She felt a depression in the mattress, Mike sinking into it. She felt hands wrapping around her, and against her better judgment she leaned into the touch. The room was deadly quiet except for the soft whir of the air conditioner and the sniffles from El, the aftermath crushing both of them into silence.

“You’re gonna be okay. You’re gonna be fine,” he told her, stroking her thin hair, too many hairs sticking to Mike’s fingers instead of to her scalp.

He seemed like he was telling himself that more than her. How had spring break already gone so wrong? How had she already failed?

Chapter Text

no orange juice

It wasn’t even a full day of spring break before El and Mike had gotten into their first fight. Everything that El had feared had come true. Mike didn’t love her. Mike thought she was too ugly. She felt disgusting in her body, holed up in her bedroom, putting layer after layer of blankets over her in an attempt to make her warm again whilst concealing her body. She could feel Mike waiting by the door, sitting outside. El wasn’t an idiot anymore. She could tell he was scared. She was too fat, too ugly, much uglier than when she had left Hawkins. She felt worse than she ever had. She muffled cries of pain in her pillow, her stomach seizing, her esophagus burning, heart beating slowly and quickly at the same time.

She told herself tomorrow would be better. She would eat breakfast in front of him, effectively ruining the day food-wise, and not throw it up. She already felt guilty thinking of eating without throwing it up afterward. She would walk and hold herself up. She would wear makeup to make Mike remember how pretty she was. She may have ruined today, but there was still the rest of spring break to create good memories. Memories where he would be reminded that she was enough.

But tonight, she wouldn’t eat Joyce’s risotto. She could still make the rest of the day right. Forcing herself out of bed, El grabbed her eyeliner, touching up the makeup she had cried off. She couldn’t bear to look at herself in the mirror for more than a few seconds, looking away to the hallway to refresh her mind. Mike had left, probably to hang out with Will. She didn’t feel as upset as she thought she would, continuing to fix her eyeliner as she swallowed and tasted blood.

The taste of blood had once been associated with positive things– the accomplishment of a task, saving her friends, saving the world. But it never came from her throat. It burned like someone had taken a machete to her throat and poured hot boiling water in the bloody crevices. Rubbing the outside of her throat, she heard the terrifying words. “Dinner’s ready!”

It took all of her strength to get up, only to be faced by Mike. He carefully entered, holding out his hand. An olive branch. “Do you like her risotto? I had it once. It’s pretty good.”

El shrugged, trying to remember the times she had had risotto, every memory tainted with the acid reflux that was now associated with taste. “It isn’t Eggos.”

Mike chuckled, pressing a kiss in her hair. “No, but it’s food. Anything works, right?”

Not when it makes you disgusting and unlovable. He said he didn’t like the way you liked… he said he didn’t like the way you looked… ugly, ugly, ugly. 

El remained silent, pushing herself in between the chair and the table as aggressively as she could. She chose the chair closest to the door, in case she needed to make a run for it. What if Mike got worried again? What if he didn’t understand again? She needed the extra security.

Just smelling the risotto made her feel sick, her insides twisting. Her body already felt like hell– debilitating stomach cramps, corroding acid reflux, blood dripping down her throat, face puffing up painfully– the starchy smell was about to push her over the edge. Mike sat down next to her, brushing his thumb against the ridge of her pointer finger. He was never this touchy-feely. She assumed nine months of yearning would do that to a person, even if the person they knew was a fat and ugly disgrace.

She could barely tell when everybody sat down and began eating. Jonathan was oddly talkative, his mind spaced out as per usual as he babbled about some philosophical epiphany he had that El never understood. Joyce would always try to understand, but she made the same face El made whenever she didn’t understand something in class, her eyebrows scrunched together, the skin in between folding into two distinct hills. Grabbing her fork, El moved it around, putting a generous helping of her food on her fork before dipping it back into the risotto. As the minutes ticked in, El growing less and less interested in the conversation, Mike stopped rubbing his thumb against her finger. When she looked up, her whole body ached with anxiety. Everybody was staring at her.

“How’s the risotto, sweetie? I tried to cook it more so it wasn’t as gummy,” Joyce asked, El blinking as she stared at her risotto.

“It’s fine. I like it. Thank you,” El mumbled, trying to make the words disappear before they even reached Joyce.

Normally they would leave it at that. They would continue with their conversations. Will would talk about whatever art competition he entered himself in. Jonathan would talk about his application to Emerson. But Mike seemed undeterred.

“El, you haven’t taken a bite,” Mike said, stopping everybody in their tracks.

El looked up and glared at him. Not now, not at the dinner table.

“Mike–” Will began, speaking for El, but Mike reached his hand out, stopping Will from talking.

Now everybody was staring at her, judging her as if she was an experiment again… she remembered how Dr. Brenner waited, watching from his observation area. He waited until she completed the task and if she didn’t, she would be punished… locked… abandoned… against her better judgment, she took a bite. It was starchy, painful, chewy, cheesy.

“I already said it was good,” she murmured, forcing herself to take another bite.

Then she lost herself, the addiction spreading through her veins. She couldn’t stop her fork from entering the dish, taking bite after bite. She became a monster, somebody she didn’t recognize. Nobody seemed concerned when she went up for air, continuing their everyday conversations. Even Mike seemed satisfied. What was he doing?

More bites. More bites. It tasted good. It stung her throat. She didn’t care. Her mind was spinning. Everything was a blur. Eating, eating, eating… the guilt pounded in her head but she didn’t care. Her stomach seemed to settle, the acid reflux lessening its impact. Her body felt better as she looked down at her plate. It was empty. For a moment, she felt proud of herself. If this is what made Mike happy, then she would do it. She would do anything for Mike, even if it made her wickedly uncomfortable.

And then the guilt hit her like a truck. She hadn’t seen the bottom of a ceramic plate in weeks. It meant she ate… she felt her stomach twist and turn with the unfamiliar feeling of fullness. All of the conversations drowned out around her. All she could focus on was how sick she felt, how she felt like she was going to pass out and vomit at the same time. The waves hit her over and over again, with no respite in between the attacks. I don’t like the way you look right now. I don’t like the way you look right now. Ugly, fat, disappear. Get rid of it. Get rid of it.

She couldn’t even wait until dinner was over. Shooting up out of her chair, she barely had time to slide it back into place before she ran to the bathroom. Nobody called out for her, just watched her run away. She went to the closest bathroom, the one by the foyer. Not caring to lock the door behind her, she didn’t even bother to turn on the sink to drown out her retching. She barely even had to reach for her gag reflex, it was like her body knew what to do. Within seconds, she was throwing up the barley-digested risotto. I don’t like the way you look right now. I don’t like the way you look right now.

Tears mixed inside the toilet, her esophagus burning with acid and her risotto, and… she couldn’t tell anymore. She didn’t know what she was doing anymore. Her fingers were coated with blood, the cut in her esophagus growing with enough cough and retch. Her stomach twisted and soon she wasn’t vomiting on her volition. I don’t like the way you look right now. Then she heard a knock on the door.

“El? El, are you okay?”

Mike .

She coughed and sputtered. “I’m fine, Mike.”

She couldn’t disguise it anymore. She kept trying to vomit more, trying to rid herself of everything bad she had done that day as Mike opened the door. She could see his stupid sandals in the corner of her eye. She didn’t care anymore. She kept trying to get rid of the risotto… she kept trying to get rid of the poison…

“El, what are you doing?” Mike asked, his voice shakier than it was before.

“Go away, Mike. Please,” she whispered, coughing as she dry-heaved, trying desperately to get something out. Anything . Make him happy.

“El, stop. Please. Stop,” Mike begged, El feeling his hand on her back. “Why are you doing this?”

She couldn’t answer him. Everything was a blur. Her visions blurred with tears, streaming down her face as she gave up, flushing the toilet and curling up against the wall. Mike was sitting down next to her and when he opened his arms, she couldn’t help but crawl in them. For the first time, she allowed herself to be held, allowed herself to be vulnerable, and be enveloped in warmth. It felt scary. It felt like home .

And then she felt like she was back in the lab, being held by Dr. Brenner after she passed out from overusing her powers, being rocked back and forth as if she were a baby. And now she remembers the pain of the lab and now she can’t breathe and now she’s thrashing. But he won’t let her go. He holds her tighter and tighter. She’s clawing and gripping at herself, trying to get herself to breathe, but her throat hurts and she’s panicking and now she’s dizzy, disoriented.

She feels air entering her lungs but she can't get it out. It's seizing, it's gripping, it's horrible. Everything is horrible.

The arms won't go away. Nothing will go away.

This is what rock bottom is.

She sees a shadow in the doorway. It’s tall, like Jonathan, but timid like Will. And now she’s being lifted off of the cool tile into warm yet stiff arms. She flails around, still trying to get out of their grasp. She wants to go back to her room. She tries to scream, "I'm fine! I'm fine!" but either she's not screaming or everybody is ignoring her.

She hears something rumble, the lights dimming she feels herself being lifted into something. Joyce's car. Now she’s in the back, lying against the plush seats, and it’s moving and she doesn’t know where she’s going. She still feels like she’s being held. She looks up. It’s Mike.

“It’s going to be okay. Just stay with us, okay?”

Chapter Text

ooh, i wish i could give you my set of eyes

El had been in a state of lock for the past twelve hours. Her ears worked, her brain worked, but her eyes… her eyes couldn’t open. Her fingers and toes couldn’t move. Her limbs felt insanely heavy as if they were foreign. It felt like her body wasn’t connected to her brain, as if there were two separate entities. 

She could hear the doctors talking to Joyce. “We’re going to have to do some psychological assessments once she wakes up, but we think she may have this new disease called bulimia nervosa. It’s growing more common in teenage girls her age. The swollen lymph nodes, acid reflux, low sodium, low potassium, low phosphorus, shaking, sweating, seizure, and stomach ulcer, all of that’s related to severe eating disorder complications. Also, bradycardia, acrocyanosis, and the euthyroid sick syndrome, we think that it’s also part of it. The only thing that’s missing is that she’s at a normal BMI, but there’s been evidence that says eating disorders don’t hinge on weight, though we’re still skeptical.”

“I– I thought she was just grieving. Her dad, he… w-what do we do until Owens gets here?” Joyce asked.

“We’ve started her on a bunch of different IV medications right now. We have her on potassium chloride to raise her potassium levels, about 20 milliequivalents– that means milliliters in the solution–an hour; 47 milliliters 3% hypertonic saline an hour for her sodium; and 24 milliliters dextrose 50% before we move her to 24 milliliters dextrose 10% until her phosphorus gets stable. We also have her on isotonic saline to restore her hydration and electrolyte balances and 40 milligrams of omeprazole to get her acid reflux under control, as well as 5 milligrams of benzodiazepines to make sure her seizures stop. We have her on ECG monitoring for her heart. A surgeon’s going to come in to do a consult and see if we can do surgery to repair her esophagus. Other than that, there’s nothing we can do.”

The words meant nothing to El, but she could tell they were serious. She also felt Mike’s hand gripping hers, feeling the scabs on her knuckles as she stroked her hair, which had been pulled into a braid. Will was scratching on something– his sketchpad. El couldn’t hear anything regarding Jonathan. El assumed he was smoking his smelly plants again. He seemed to do it whenever he was stressed. This is all your fault… all your fault…

“Hang in there,” Mike murmured. “Just hang in there.”

She felt her muscles cramp up beyond her control, gripping Mike’s hands so tightly El could hear him hiss. It only lasted a second before it dissipated, pain radiating through her arm. The only thing El hung on to was Mike. Despite her fat, failing, dying body he was still here.

Time seemed nonexistent. It felt like an eternity that she was in the room, but when the surgeon and Dr. Owens came in, it seemed like an instant before she was being wheeled away, air whooshing past her as Mike struggled to keep his hand intertwined with hers before some other force pulled it away.

If she had her powers with her, she would have seen what was happening from the outside. How they immediately took her to the operating room and cut the side of her ribcage open so they could sew the tear in her esophagus back together, the pain was nothing short of excruciating. How the surgeon asked out loud how a girl this young could have endured so much and still been alive to tell the tale. How the anesthesiologist was concerned about her heartbeat halfway through the surgery before she suddenly coded. Her heart stopped for ten seconds before it decided to start again, her body trying its best to decide despite its brain telling it to die.

She would have seen Mike, Will, and Joyce anxiously pacing around her hospital room. How Will was in tears, guilt pouring out of him as Mike was dead silent, body shaking. How Joyce sobbed, saying how she had been so consumed by grief she had failed to make sure El was handling Hopper’s death. How Dr. Owens said that none of this was their fault, how eating disorders were sneaky and might have happened without Hopper’s death. How Jonathan smoked joint after joint with Argyle in the back of the hospital until their lungs filled with tar as thick as molasses. Nobody understood, but nobody cared that they didn’t understand.

She would have seen El’s room be quickly taken over by a different patient, one with a swollen ankle. El was stable but had too many problems for the emergency department. She had been placed in the PICU with a 45% chance of survival. She would have seen the doctors snake a feeding tube– an NG tube– down her nose, settling in her stomach and immediately providing a low dose of nutrition, something her body had been neglecting for months. She would have seen Mike have a fit that the half-cup of nutrition was not going to fix her. They had to explain refeeding syndrome to an enraged Mike, something that was not easy. When Mike was mad, Mike was mad.

 By the time El had gained consciousness again, everything still felt heavy. But this time she could feel all of the needles burning and stinging her. She felt the NG tube press against her non-existent gag reflex, dissipated from her months of torture. She was able to breathe easier. Her throat didn’t hurt as much. Her body felt bloated, but it felt better. Her muscles weren’t cramping anymore, no more shaking or sweating either. For a second, it was a relief. She didn’t even consider the progress that was being lost, allowing the doctors to “fix her.”

Her eyes fluttered open, squinting at the bright fluorescent hospital lights that reminded her of school. Her hands felt numb, but she tried to squeeze the mass she felt in her left hand. Turning her head, she could feel Mike turn her head back. “Don’t get up. Don’t move. There’s too many tubes. You’re okay, El. You’re going to be okay.”

Chapter Text

‘cause i know your eyes ain’t working, mmm

“Don’t get up. Don’t move. There’s too many tubes. You’re okay, El. You’re going to be okay.”

Tears welled up in El’s eyes as she struggled to make any sounds, throat burning as she moved your mouth. “What happened?”

“You collapsed after you threw up. And…” Mike sniffled, and El could see his skin getting blotchy with redness, the rim of his eyes shining with tears. “When we were taking you to the hospital, you had a seizure in the car. And you wouldn’t stop shaking and I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t stop it…”

He trailed off, tears slipping out of his eyes. “And then the doctors– there were so many of them. And now they say you have something called bulimia and now doctors have to talk to you…”

El stroked his hand. “Shhhh. Mike, please. You’re scaring me.”

“You scared me ! You scared all of us! We thought you were going to die!”

El was almost too scared to say what she was feeling, but she glanced around to see the white tiles on the floor and the countless IV bags dripping into her arms. Nothing was stopping her from speaking her mind, finally expressing the thoughts she had held deep down within her. “That’s what I wanted, Mike.”

El couldn’t bear to look him in the eye, but she could tell by the hand he squeezed her hand that his face was pale, and by the way his foot tapped on the ground El knew he was upset. “What do you mean by that? Is that why you did all of this? To die?”

El bit her lip, trying to wiggle into a sitting position before giving up. Her head spun as she flopped her head back onto the pillow. The tears dripped down to her ears, gravity doing its job before El could wipe them away. “You won’t understand, Mike. You could never understand.”

“El, please. I’m sorry that I can’t understand everything about you, but I promise that I’ll try my best to help. I just want to help, El. Please. Tell me what you mean. What has been going on all of this time?”

El glanced at Mike. He looked like he was sick himself. Crying, hunched over in his chair, his stray hand leaving her hair to wipe away a tear. El realized that this lying, this deception that she had been doing, wasn’t fair to him. None of this was fair to him. She swallowed, feeling the thread that held together his tear tickle her throat.

“There’s this girl at school. Angela,” she began.

“Your friend from school?”

El shook her head. “I… lied. She is not my friend. She hurts me. She and her friends used to beat me and call me a retard. Will says that’s a bad word.”

“And what? They took away your lunch and then you got super sick?”

“No. They made me feel… bad. Like in my chest and my brain. It made my body hurt and my brain thinks bad things. And they told me that nobody liked me,” El sobbed, tears freely flowing every which way on her face. “And I thought that meant that you wouldn’t like me. I just wanted to disappear, Mike. I wanted to go.”

El coughed. “I saw a girl throwing up in the bathroom. And I want to shrink and disappear. If you don’t eat, then you get smaller. That’s what the doctor said. And I couldn’t not eat at first so I…” the words felt like acid on her tongue. “threw it up. But soon I started not eating for days and days, especially since throwing up started hurting a lot. And I’ve felt sick ever since Christmas, maybe earlier. Everything feels like a fog in my head. I can’t remember. But I just wanted to go to see Hopper. I didn’t want to make you feel sad that I was your girlfriend.”

Mike immediately stood up and began to pace. “We have to tell Joyce. That girl should be in jail for what she did.”

“What, Mike? For telling the truth. I needed to shrink. I couldn’t hurt you anymore.”

“El, you never hurt me. She was wrong, okay? She was wrong. She’s a mean, spiteful, hateful person who wanted to do this to you because of some horrible reason. She’s a mouth breather, okay?”

“Mike–”

“No,” he exclaimed, chills running through her body as Mike spat at her. “You need to listen to me. She’s made you want to die. That’s a crime. She made you eat fucking ice for a week. That’s why you’ve had those girls posted in your room. That’s why you could barely walk today. This isn’t you, El. She has made you a shell of yourself. Why did you believe her?”

“Mike,” Will muttered, El peeking her head to see a shaking Will in the corner. She forgot he was even here. “It’s not her fault.”

Mike sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I know. I know. I know.”

El let out a cry, her body cramping up as more tears flew down her face. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to go. I just wanted to go.”

“It’s not your fault, El,” Mike muttered softly, returning to his chair. “But you can’t keep going on like this. We all want you here. I want you here, Will wants you here, Joyce wants you here. Jonathan wants you here. Angela told you lies, okay? And we’ll deal with her later. But right now, you need to focus on getting better. Please, I need you to try to get better. I’ll try my best to help.”

El let out a sad laugh. “This was a horrible vacation for you.”

“I would rather be here for you than back at Hawkins, El. I’m going to call my parents and see if I can stay an extra week to help you. We’re going to help you, El, whether you like it or not.”

“I don’t want help, Mike. I just want to die.”

“Don’t say that!” Mike exclaimed. “You have survived so much. You have fought so much. You can’t die because of an illness after all that you’ve been through. El, please, I don’t want to leave you if you’re going to try to kill yourself again.”

“I didn’t try to kill myself tonight. Tonight was an accident.”

“What was the plan then, El? Just wait until you die in your sleep or something? The doctors said another week and you would’ve been gone. I can’t go home if you’re going to just go back to your old ways.”

“Mike, you don’t want me to be here anymore. I am a bad person. I am a monster.”

“El, you’re not a monster, I swear. Everything that happened to you in your childhood is not your fault. I wish I could just kill Dr. Brenner if he didn’t die already. I wish I could just kill him over and over and over again for what he did to you. None of what he’s done to you or none of what you’ve done to protect yourself was not your fault. We’re kids. There’s so much to life that you haven’t experienced. Don’t kill yourself now.”

El pressed her lips together. Mike seemed too insistent for him to be lying to her. She felt dizzy and nauseous, muscles beginning to cramp on and off again. The sweating and shaking were starting up again, blankets trembling. Mike stroked her leg as if it would stop it. El knew he was waiting for her to talk. To say something, anything to appease him, ease his worries. “Why is life worth living if I am bad?”

“Why do you think you’re bad, El? I’ve told you everything. You’re not a monster, none of this is your fault. We’re talking in circles.”

“I killed Hopper. I opened the gate. I killed Barb, Bob, Billy, and my dad . I create stress and… PTSD for everybody. You say it is not my fault, but I still did it. I still opened the gate, even though Papa forced me. How can I live when I killed people?”

“Living is the only way to keep them alive, to keep their memories alive. The best revenge you can commit on Dr. Brenner is to keep living. He wanted to keep you small. He wanted to keep you in a cave, remember. That’s what Hopper said. A cave. Living and thriving, that’s how you get out of the cave and start living. Can you try to start getting out of the cave? You don’t have to start eating a lot, or every day. But giving yourself something and trying to be nice to yourself is going to help you.”

Immediately, her guards went up again, alarms blaring in her head. “No food, Mike! No food! No food!”

“They’re giving you food in your tube. And nothing bad is happening, El. Notice how your legs aren’t shaking as much. The acid reflux is stopping. The sweating is stopping. Your body is healing because of the food. And you need to heal to live.”

“I don’t think I want to live. Hopper said I was in a cave, but it’s too scary to get out of the cave.”

Mike stroked the back of her hand. “I know you think you don’t want to live. I know it must be scary. But I promise you, if you try, I will be there every step of the way. I will call you every day. I will send you letters, I will do anything for you because I love you and I can’t lose you, El.”

He sniffled and El saw he was crying again. “I can’t lose you. Please. I need you to try your hardest to start fighting this… illness.”

The word that slipped out of her mouth came instinctively, her illness ceasing to exist for just a moment. “Okay.”

Chapter Text

i wish i could tell you that you’re fine, so fine

It had taken a week of recovering in the hospital for her stitches to heal and for her electrolytes to balance out again. El got to learn a bunch of fancy new words that day, such as phosphorus and Booerhave’s, all words she had them talk about when she was in what the doctors said was a mildly comatose state. They had explained to her what bulimia was, and while she had learned it when she was in health class, it seemed to make Mike depressed. They had offered to send her to a psychiatric facility, but Dr. Owens stopped that idea in its tracks.

“Have you not read her history? We’re not keeping her trapped here or in any facility once her physical condition has improved,” Dr. Owens had practically yelled to the one intern who had suggested the idea.

Safe to say, El felt much more relieved whenever Dr. Owens was around her. He stuck up for her and made her as comfortable as possible even if it broke the hospital boundaries, like letting Mike and Joyce stay past visiting hours. He was the most optimistic doctor of all of them, telling her tales of how he had helped kids with worse odds and mindsets recover, how he had been researching mental illness and eating disorders before it was popular, and that he was one of the best in the business.

El had been hesitant. But Mike had practically begged her to try, that he would do anything to see her healthy. She had been stuck in the middle, in a dangerous limbo of deciding to try and deciding to give up. It was a terrifying balance for everybody around her, but whenever El pretended to fall asleep, she thought and thought. It was harder to think of a solution since her brain was moving at the speed of a snail, but she knew there had to be an in-between. A way to get better and let herself disappear at the same. Recover and stay the same.

Fake recovery was what her mind stumbled upon. Eat breakfast and then throw it up in second period, not first when Will was in class. Jonathan and Will would take the responsibility of eating lunch with her along with a very stoned-out Argyle, so she would let herself eat the lunch. But she would pack it herself, packing the things with the least amount of calories, which she had noticed were written on the back of the food products. Dinner would be rougher, but she would eat half of it, just enough for her family to believe she was trying. A meal and a half would be enough for her to be able to recover and keep that feeling of hunger physically, the only thing that would keep her alive.

When she was allowed out into society, Will knew she would get stares from her classmates, whereas Jonathan knew he would have to be more protective than usual, whereas Mike (who had unsuccessfully tried to convince his parents to let him say. “They give you wishes to get better but they say I have to go school. I tried really hard, El. I’m so sorry.”) was going to call her and make sure she wouldn’t relapse. 

Relapse from something she hadn’t tried to recover from? Impossible.

They had let her change into normal clothes- a white sweater and acid-wash jeans. It didn’t go together but El knew that Jonathan had hurriedly picked them out before he came to pick her up, so she didn’t care. Before she left the bathroom, she threw up one last time. In the confines of her hospital bathroom, nobody could see her or intervene. Nobody could hear her retch efficiently, throwing up the electrolyte-filled liquid that they pushed down her stomach. Her fingers were her only source of pride, her only source of joy. She wouldn’t be able to reach her goal if she didn't have them. Her goal wasn’t even tangible– it was a cloud of different achievements, none of them connecting in any cohesive manner. Die. Get skinny. Make Angela happy. Make Mike happy through recovery. Make Mike happy by being skinny and lovable. Too many facets, too many figs on the tree.

Wiping the spit from her mouth, the nurses forced her to sit in a wheelchair. They said she was too weak, that her body was still healing despite the doctor’s optimistic prognosis. She didn’t feel much better as the free air hit her. She would be back in the hospital with Dr. Owens after school the next day, and every day after that, to get help. Therapy , he talked about. Something that he said they should have done a long time ago. It was talking, too much talking for a girl who had barely learned to talk three years ago.

The car ride home was dead silent except for the quiet crooning of Jonathan’s mixtape. He made one of El’s favorites: Madonna, Kate Bush, Siouxsie and the Banshees; a weird mixture of popular music from Max and goth music from her brief lapse in Chicago. It did next to nothing to quell her anxiety as she curled herself into a ball in the backseat. She ran the plan through her head, the plan to fake getting better. 

They had stopped at a sandwich shop. Jonathan was wise and got her the smallest sandwich with nothing except ham and cheese on fluffy white bread. Will stared at her on the other side of the backseat until she took a bite, and another, and another until she finished the sandwich. The guilt crept in before she could finish the sandwich, nothing but chills and self-hatred filling her veins.

The house seemed different when she stepped into it. The carpet was firmer between her toes. Will’s easel was strangely empty, the painting Will had drawn was gone from existence. It didn’t smell like those smelly plants anymore, the cigarettes Jonathan secretly stored in his sock drawer in plain sight… in the trash can. Joyce had hugged her, one of her signature hugs that felt like honey and vanilla mixed into one.

“We’re going to make sure you’re okay, alright? You’re not doing this alone,” Joyce murmured into her ear, brushing El’s hair with her hand.

El gave a small smile, one without her teeth or her eyes. The sandwich was like a loose cannon in her stomach, ready to be lit up and expelled. Telling Joyce she was going to her room was a weak excuse, but sometimes even the weakest of things held up under the deepest of pressure. Slinking down the hallway, she turned an unexpected right into the bathroom and shut the door, reaching for the…

Lock.

The lock was gone.

El stared at the door for a moment. The knob was smooth, the lock being turned from the outside. Anybody could barge in, anybody could stop her. El’s chest tightened, panic surging through her. The rock in her stomach expanded as she stared at herself in the mirror. She hated everything. She wasn’t pretty anymore, just dumb and stupid and fat and ugly and unlovable and unwanted. She impulsively bashed her head against the wall and screamed, tears flowing out of her eyes as the stress of the past week caught up to her, endorphins rushing into her as she began to collapse, the air feeling too heavy to support her. She heard footsteps– Jonathan’s frantic ones– and wished she had her powers so she could make them go away.

None of this was fair.

Chapter Text

but you will find that disconcerting

Dr. Owens didn’t operate in a normal doctor’s office like most doctors. He wasn’t a doctor anymore, not in the traditional sense. If you asked his wife and his adult son, they would say that he retired after a long meaningful career of studying psychology and the human condition. He would never tell them that he was quietly let go from his governmental position for his part in failing to stop the Starcourt Mall incident. After all, everything regarding the MK-Ultra experiments and Eleven was supposed to be confidential, invisible to people who didn’t work directly with El or Dr. Brenner. He had enjoyed his retired life for a while, drinking whiskey on the rocks at night while watching television in his musty recliner with his wife, attending Peter’s college soccer games whenever they were playing at home, and occasionally contributing to a few medical journals here and there with advice and an occasional article that had never been published before.

But he had been secretly itching for a new mission, a new purpose. Learning how to swim in his big pool and playing darts only kept him entertained for so long. When Joyce had called him in tears, telling him in between sobs and gasps of air that El had been hospitalized, it was almost a relief—something new to do.

It hadn’t been easy to convince his wife to leave for a year to a small town six hours away in the middle of California, but here he was, shacked up in a small townhouse fifteen minutes away from the Byers’ residence. He barely had any furniture or food, the place looked next to abandoned except for a small room tucked away in the back of the second floor. That was his “office,” with binder after binder of information, security tapes of El’s childhood filling shelves with current files and diagnoses splayed outside of his desk.

The bulimia diagnosis hadn’t come as a massive shock to Dr. Owens, although it was still quite disheartening. With the little research done on the disease, it was incredibly difficult to treat, resources slim and the brain everchanging and outgrowing the limited options. But he hoped that by talking through her feelings, changing her unfortunately quite vulnerable mindset, she would recover. It wouldn’t be easy, especially with someone as stubborn and upfront as El, but he was willing to try.

El was shaking when she knocked on the door of the townhouse they had been given directions to for the first time. Joyce sat in the driver’s seat, talking to people about her precious encyclopedias. She had been comforted to hear she wasn’t going to the doctor’s office for her new treatment called therapy, but it was still terrifying to see Dr. Owens open the door and warmly usher her in, leading her to the small room upstairs.

“Sit anywhere you feel comfortable, kiddo,” Dr. Owens offered, sitting behind his official pointy desk on his leather chair with buttons holding together the fabric.

El settled for the corner of the small couch he had, curling up into a ball. Her head settled on a pillow that had been propped up. El had noticed that he had turned up the temperature in the room, but she was cold nonetheless. She didn’t mind that much. She only cared that Mike seemed to hate how cold she was.

Dr. Owens tapped his pen against his desk. “So, tell me. How was your first day of school back from spring break?”

El shrugged. “It was normal.”

“Describe normal for me.”

“My teachers are disappointed in me because my grades aren’t higher. I have to eat with Jonathan, Argyle, and Will now. Argyle smells like the smelly plants and drags out his words like he’s a snail. They watch me a lot when I eat, even Argyle. And then I have homework.”

“I understand school must be hard for you, especially since you’ve never been to school before. I have to say, kiddo, I’m really proud of you. The school’s trying its best to help you succeed and from what Joyce has been telling me, you’ve been putting a lot of effort into it. But with your illness, I’ve been contemplating putting you back on the homeschool curriculum for the rest of the year.”

El’s eyes widened. All of the effort, all of the progress she had made. Dr. Owens held his hands up right before she went to protest.

“Now, I know what you’re thinking. This isn’t going to discount any of the progress you’ve made during the year. But what we’re afraid of is you potentially collapsing or struggling because of your brain fog–”

“Brain fog?”

“That feeling in your head where it takes you a while for you to remember things or piece together information. Your brain works slower because you don’t have as many nutrients. However, looking at your labs from last week, your vitals are getting better. Have you been throwing up at all?”

El glanced down at the ground.

“You can be honest, kiddo. Therapy is confidential. Do you know what that means?”

El shook her head.

“It means it stays between us. Not Joyce or Mike or anybody. Just us two, okay?”

El nodded slightly. She glanced around with consideration. “I throw up in the mornings after breakfast at school. And in the shower sometimes I throw up. They don’t hear it because I’m in the shower. My throat doesn’t hurt anymore. The stitches are leaving. I don’t want to get better, not really.”

Dr. Owens paused for a moment. El could tell he too was considering. “Are you eating lunch?”

El nodded. “Jonathan forces me. I pack it myself.”

“What are you packing?”

“Watermelon and cucumber. Yesterday, Joyce asked me if I could put in an apple. Jonathan made me eat it.”

“Well, I’d like to see you start packing something more nutritious and filling, but as long as you’re getting something down. How did you feel when she told you to pack an apple?”

“I was really scared and angry. Pretty people don’t eat apples with lunch.”

“Hmm,” Dr. Owens hummed. “And how did you feel when you ate it?”

“I felt… guilty? Like I was… betraying myself and making myself ugly.”

“Did anything bad happen after? Physically?”

El paused and shook her head. “I still feel guilty but I guess I could do it again if I needed to. But I still feel ugly.”

“I want to challenge you with something. For the rest of the week, I want you to replace the…” Dr. Owens glanced at his notepad. “Cucumber sticks with an apple. And I want you also to pack something like a granola bar, something with some nutrients.”

A surge of panic waved through El and she vehemently shook her head. “I will change the apple. I will not eat a granola bar. There are too many calories and they hurt to throw up.”

“With all of the granola, it must hurt when it comes back up, huh?”

El nodded, remembering the time she ate a granola bar and puked it up. It scratched her throat for days on end.

“What are your fears with the granola bar?”

El swallowed, grimacing. “It has too many calories and it isn’t a fruit. Fruits are okay now, I think. But granola bars aren’t fruit.”

“Some of them have dried fruit in it if you think that would be easier.”

El shook her head. “It doesn’t take away the granola.”

“Granola’s good for you, though. Take…” Dr. Owens grabbed a granola bar from under this desk. “This granola bar. It’s a Chewy bar with chocolate chips in it. Do you mind reading me the first ingredient on it?”

El hesitantly gripped the bar and flipped it to the back where the black and white label stared at her. She noticed Dr. Owens had marked over the calories, her heart sinking. She glanced down at the ingredient list. “The ones in the brackets?”

“Yep.”

El cleared her throat. “Whole grain oats.”

“Have you ever tried oatmeal? Whole grain oats are what people put in it sometimes, though often they use rolled oats. Now, oats are great for your heart and they make it really strong. Do you want your heart to be strong?”

El shook her head. “I don’t want to be here anymore.”

“But Mike wants you to, right?”

El nodded. “Joyce says that I can’t recover because of other people. I have to recover because of me.”

“She’s right. But sometimes it can’t help to use motivation from other people until you find the courage within yourself. It can be a slippery slope, but I’ve known Mike for a year now. He’s a good egg– that means he’s a good kid. Don’t you want to be here because he loves you?”

El looked to the floor, the granola bar hanging limply in her hands.“I don’t think he loves me. He says he does, but I don’t know.”

“What makes you think that he doesn’t love you?”

“I’m not pretty and I don’t have powers. He said he loved me because I was me, but without my powers or my prettiness, I am not… me.”

“Your identity has surrounded your powers for most of your life. Dr. Brenner made sure of that. And it must have been hard for you to adjust to both a normal life and not have your powers, huh? Is that why you started doing this in the first place?” Dr. Owens asked.

El clenched her fists hard enough to squish the granola bar. “I don’t know who I am.”

“You’re not alone in this. No teenager, normal or not, knows who they are. Especially the kids who pretend to know who they are. But I’ll tell you what, you’re never going to figure out who you are when your body can’t keep up. Now, those whole grain oats in the granola make your heart healthy. And when your heart is healthy, it means you can run and do sports with the other kids. It means you can hang out with your friends and Mike. The oats don’t seem so bad, don’t you think?”

El shrugged. “Maybe. They have chocolate chips, though.”

“They’re hard to find, but chocolate chips have sugar, which means that they give you a quick burst of energy. It helps when you exercise for a long period of time. It keeps your blood sugar up. Do you know what your blood sugar is?”

El nodded. “When I get dizzy, Will says my blood sugar is low.”

“That’s it. This granola bar may make you “ugly”, but it also helps heal your heart and gives you some energy. And remember, if you want to know who you are, you need to figure out who you are past your looks and your powers. Now this granola bar doesn’t seem so bad, huh?”

El shrugged again. Anxiety settled in her chest as she stared at the granola bar. “Maybe I could try it once for lunch. But I don’t like it.”

“I know it must feel horrible. But I can promise you that the more times you eat the food that it will become less and less scarier.”

El sighed, putting the granola bar back on the desk. “Granola bars have heart stuff. And energy.”

Dr. Owens. “Now we’re on the same track, kiddo.”

He offered a smile. El returned it slightly, feeling the fat on her thighs splay out as she laid her legs on the couch. Pretty wasn’t her whole personality, even if she didn’t know what it was. 

She didn’t like it.

Chapter Text

you turn oranges to orange juice

El remembered a time when she hated the phone calls. Now they were every day precisely at six o’clock, no longer five since it was before dinnertime. They happened whether she wanted it or not. It was Mike’s way of checking in and making sure she was “on track with her treatment plan” if there even was one in the first place. He sent her letters every week telling her how strong she was and how she was his hero, powers or not. They were all signed with love on the bottom, and that love kept El going.

Right at six o’clock after dinner, the phone rang. El practically ran to the phone so it would stop chirping through the whole house. She picked it up and away from the box where she could bring it back to her room. There was static on the other side before a familiar voice peeked through. “Hello.”

El couldn’t help but smile. “Hi, Mike.”

“How have you been feeling?”

“I feel really sick and sad, but Dr. Owens was right. It isn’t as scary to eat granola bars with lunch anymore. My brain he says is a sponge and when I feed it new information that doesn’t go with what I think, my brain will eventually soak up the new thought and it will become my new thought. He said I have to keep doing it, so I’ve been eating the granola bar for a week. He wants me to try the ones dipped in chocolate, the Kudos. I’m not ready.”

“That’s great!” Mike exclaimed, and El could tell he was genuinely happy. He put too much worth in her for her taste. “Anything else?”

“Dr. Owens wants me to eat my breakfast without throwing it up, but I’m not ready. I cry a lot at dinner and Joyce lets me eat by myself as long as I don’t throw it out.”

“Do you throw it up?”

“No. Sometimes I throw it up when my stomach hurts. Dr. Owens says my stomach hurts because of the ulcer and because my body isn’t used to food, but sometimes I think it’s because I ate too full. Then I get upset and throw up in the shower.”

El felt horrible for Mike, having to hear all of her issues every day. But he seemed to take it in stride, scratching down notes on a notepad. “Anything new in your lunchbox? I put in the crackers and cheese yesterday that Dr. Owens told you to put in and they kind of sucked, to be honest. But maybe I just used a different cheese.”

“I didn’t put it in today. I’m not ready yet. But Joyce will pick them up tomorrow. It won’t matter much after next week, though, so I don’t know if I should or not.”

“What did Dr. Owens tell you about the crackers and cheese?”

“The salt will help my electrolytes get back up and the grains will help my heart, even if he said it wasn’t as healthy as other crackers. He told me that all foods are good for me right now, though. The cheese has calcium which will help my teeth recover and my bones get more density so I can do running and exercise without my bones breaking.”

“That’s good, right? Haven’t you been saying that you don’t like that your teeth are so weird? Which they’re not, they’re just damaged,” Mike asked.

El paused. “I may try the cheese to fix my teeth. But the crackers have a lot of butter.”

“Butter tastes good, though,” Mike sighed, El chuckling.

“Maybe another day,” El conceded.

“Have you relapsed at all?” Mike asked.

El picked at the skin on her pointer finger with her neighboring thumb. “Last night after our call. I took a shower and threw up. It made my stomach hurt more but Joyce wouldn’t let me take Advil. I think she is punishing me.”

“She’s not punishing you. She loves you more than anything.”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

Mike ruffled around some papers. “Do you think you’ll be able to come back for a week in the summer? My mom said they’d pay for your ticket.”

“Maybe. Joyce says it would be good to see you. I think she thinks I’ll eat more and won’t throw up as much with you around. I don’t think that’s true, even if you help me.”

“I know Max misses you a lot. She’s been really depressed after… everything. Has she sent you anything yet?”

Max . El had nearly forgotten about Max. If Max were here, she would have told El to cut the crap and start eating and stop throwing up. “Life’s too short to worry about how you look. It’s not like you’re looking for a boyfriend anyway.”

“Uh… she sent me something a month or two ago, but it was just a mixtape. No letter or anything. It was weird, too. Just the same song over and over again. Running Up That Hill ,” El mumbled, playing with the hem of her dress.

“I think it may be one of her favorites. She has headphones on constantly, even in math class. But I’m sure she’ll perk up eventually. Don’t worry about her. You only have the space to worry about yourself.”

El wanted to argue with her, but she knew Mike was right. She couldn’t care about anyone while she was sick. It was one of the few downsides, although that downside list was growing longer. Still, El was undeterred.

“Can you promise me you won’t try to throw up in the shower? If you do, I won’t be upset, I promise, but you have to try and fuel yourself. I don’t want you to go back to the hospital for malnourishment again.”

El paused, fiddling with her fingers. She noticed they weren’t as blue as before, but a deep purple. Indigo, Will would call it. “I’ll try my best.”

It wasn’t a promise she intended to keep.

“I have to go now. Mom’s calling me for dinner. I love you,” Mike hurriedly said, the final statement drawn out for emphasis.

“I love you, too.”

Chapter Text

into there, then spit it out of you

El had been asleep, something that was getting easier to accomplish. She no longer shook with chills when there wasn’t a blanket on her and no longer sweat profusely when there was one. She gripped the stuffed lion Hopper had given her and tried to inhale his scent again. It seemed stronger than ever today, so intense that she nearly coughed. She held it tighter to her body, running her damaged fingers along the fur. The scab on her pointer finger was healing from her relapse. She had to admit it made her happy that Mike was proud of her for three days with her increased meal plan. Thinking about him made her grip the lion all the closer.

The day had been… mysterious, to say the least, though not horribly. The kitchen sink started leaking right when Jonathan tried to get a glass of water, a steady drip emanating off the faucet after both handles had been returned to neutral. Joyce laughed and said Jonathan had an evil touch since his car was still out of commission with an exploded engine. It had taken the pressure out of eating breakfast, which had swapped out buttered toast for banana slices and some cut-up pieces of a granola bar (El didn’t understand why she wouldn’t eat the toast but more calories with the banana and granola, maybe the butter), and for the first time in a while El didn’t feel the overwhelming and horrific guilt that came after not throwing up breakfast.

It had been another relapse after dinner, though it was three days instead of two, which Mike reiterated was a good step. It felt more soul-crushing than El expected to throw up, but the thing, the illness as Mike called it, wasn’t leaving. It still controlled her in a way, warping her thinking. Dr. Owens said the more times she ignored it, the less it would control her, though it still seemed the opposite. The more she ignored it, the more it controlled her.

She was sleeping until she heard the front door open and heavy footsteps– winter boots, almost– enter the house. Peeking her head up, she heard Joyce’s voice. Her tone wasn’t unnerving or alarming, but soothing and calm. Was it Jonathan or Will? She glanced at her clock. What would they be doing coming in twenty minutes before midnight?

Sitting up, the winter boots came closer and closer to her room. Hugging her lion tightly, the door creaked open, hands gripping the metallic doorknob, the lock turned to the outside as Joyce had set it. As she saw the gaunt figure stand before her, chills went through her body, arms so numb she dropped the lion and stood up without a second thought. Her heart was pumping. He was gone. But he was here .

Hopper.

“Hey, kid,” Hopper murmured, turning on the light switch.

He was bald, his beard stubby and scraggly. His cheekbones were visible, too visible. He wore a dark blue puffy coat with different writing– Russian, El quickly realized– and winter boots. He was skinny, too skinny. But it was him.

“You were dead,” El squeaked, tears not hesitating to flow from her cheeks. “Where were you?”

“Russia. But I’m back. For good,” Hopper answered, El noticing a gash on his cheek still healing as she ran toward him.

No matter how starved he was, his grip around her was tighter than ever, hand reaching to cup the back of her head. “I’m not leaving you again, okay? I promise.”

El laughed sadly as she felt his ribs through the coat. “You lost your fat.”

Hopper pulled her face away to examine it, stroking his warm thumb over his daughter’s cheek. He chuckled, the laugh settling in his belly. “You did too, kid. What happened? Did the California heat get too much for you?”

Her eyes widened, stammering over herself. “Jo… Joyce didn’t tell you? About everything?”

“She told me you were sick, but she didn’t tell me what was wrong. I thought you just had the flu or something,” Hopper said, taking off his coat and throwing it on the ground to reveal a black t-shirt, scars littering his arms.

“I don’t have the flu. I have something worse. Dr. Owens says I can recover, but I don’t… know,” El admitted, sitting on the bed. She patted the bed and Hopper sat down next to her.

“What are you talking about? Did something bad happen?” Hopper asked. “Did the kids bully you at school and you got hurt?”

“I’m not in school anymore. Dr. Owens said I might be able to go back next year if I can recover enough in time. But my disorder is bad,” El mumbled, looking up into his eyes.

“What disorder? Did Brenner get to you?”

“No, I did this to myself,” El quietly cried.

Hopper reached over her to grab her shoulder. He held her like he had when they lived in the cabin whenever she had night terrors. “El, please tell me what happened. I don’t want to see you cry when I just got home.”

“I… I, uh-” El struggled to spit it out. “I have an eating disorder.”

Hopper scrunched his eyebrows. “Eating disorder… I don’t understand. Is that something new?”

El nodded, tears drying as she struggled to explain it.  “They don’t know a lot about it. Um… I throw up my food. Dr. Owens says it’s a brain thing, like my PTSD. But it does things that other people don’t like to my body.”

El paused. She had never seen that level of concern on his face. He grabbed her wrist, bringing it to his eyes when he saw how small it was. His eyes welled up. “What did this thing do to you? Does it even have a name?”

El could tell Hopper had turned from excited to confused and sad. She felt worthless trying to explain her illness to Hopper. “Dr. Owens said it’s called… bulimia nervosa. It’s new. Uh, I have a lot of issues because of it.”

“What issues?”

“My fingernails are yellow… from the acid. And there’s no blood to the fingertips so they’re purple. And my thy-roid is sick. And there are scabs on my knuckles. And if I stand up too quickly, I get dizzy. Joyce has my medical file from the hospital.”

It didn’t take long until Hopper called her in. She had dark circles under her eye, holding a mug of coffee out for Hopper. He took one sip, set the mug on her dresser, and looked her dead in the eye. “What the hell happened to my kid? Why does she have an eating disorder?”

The joy from Joyce’s face drained as she quietly left the room only to return with a manilla folder. “Hop, don’t get mad at her. If you have questions, you ask me, okay?”

It didn’t take a genius to see that Hopper was scared and befuddled. El scurried out of his grasp, pushing herself up against her headboard. She thought Hopper was dead, that he would never see any of this. But now he was on her bed, reading through her new medical file, the one that told him how badly she had damaged her body, some of it permanent. His fists gripped the folder tighter as he scanned through the papers, throwing them with anger as he turned to El. Tears sparkled in his eyes.

He only had one question. “Why, kid?”

With that, the tears flowed freely again as El shook her head. Her sentences came out in clumps, gasps instead of coherent sentences “I don’t know. I wanted… I wanted to be pretty. But then, I-I  wanted to see you again. And I thought you were dead .”

“I’m not dead, kid. I’ve never been dead. I’m right here. I don’t understand what you’ve been doing to yourself, but it’s gotta stop, okay?” Hopper said, scooting over to cup the back of her head again. His voice was sincere, comforting enough to know how worried Hopper was.  “I don’t care how hard it is. You’ve done harder things. You have to stop this. You don’t need to be skinny for anybody, you don’t need to die anymore. I’m here. I’m not going.”

El nodded in his lap, burying her head in the back of her neck. She inhaled and somehow still smelled his cigarettes and coffee. It smelled like home, back in the cabin in Hawkins. Hopper rubbed her back as she sobbed, shaking, “I’ll try.”

And she meant it.

Chapter Text

your body is imperfectly perfect

Ever since El had gotten out of the hospital, Will had kept his distance. El could always hear him from his room, playing the soothing old music that Jonathan hand-selected in his free time to place at a perfectly curated distance. He often displayed the paintings and artwork he did on the yellow walls of his room, El taking glances at the decadent pieces whenever she passed by. El never had a basis for good artwork, but they were much better than the stick figures she had drawn whilst trapped in the laboratory, and they were always improving.

When Hopper came back from his time in a Russian prison Will stayed further away, practically becoming a hermit. Even Jonathan, who Hopper always joked was living in the walls due to his infrequent appearances, was beginning to notice. The door was always shut and locked, nothing but painted white wood standing between Will and the rest of the family.

El often heard Joyce and Hopper murmuring and muttering about him over wine and cigarettes at night, hands being held over the coffee table instead of under like most relationships.

“It’s not healthy for Will to be in there all of the time. Something has to be wrong with him.”

“Joyce, he’s a teenage boy. No matter how sensitive and different you claim he is, he’s still a teenager. He’s going through a… phase. He’ll snap out of it.”

“That’s what we thought with El and now look at her.”

El would be lying if she said she wasn’t worried, but she was too tired whilst working on her recovery, something she had been especially focused on since her dad returned to America in what was later discovered to be a discreet prisoner trade kept hidden from the public. So she did what Hopper told her to do when she asked what was wrong with Will: keep pretending he was normal and do anything he says, whether it be leave him alone or join him for something. “Within reasonable measures,” Hopper had asked post-discussion, aware that if El was asked to murder someone for Will she would without question.

Unfortunately, Will hadn’t spoken a word to her in a week, so she had no direction to go in. So, she waited.

And waited.

Eventually, Will didn’t seem like a person in the family at all, a ghost to the world. It reminded El of her when she was deep in her disorder, the way she would stay in bed all day and cry herself to sleep as her body constantly hurt. But unlike Will, she didn’t pester until he suddenly came up to her door right before dinner. The door, now completely closed instead of three inches open, had to be knocked on for a real purpose.

“Come in,” El exclaimed from her desk, working on a handwriting packet Hopper had gotten her.

The door opened right as El turned around. Will . His eyes were wide and his hands fidgeted with each other. “Can I talk to you?”

El swung around in her chair and nodded, remembering Hopper’s advice. Do anything he says . If Will needed to talk, El would listen. She watched Will shuffle to her bed, body tensed with fear. El glanced at her poster of skinny models she had yet to take down. “Did you need to talk about something?”

Will coughed, clearing his throat thick with phlegm. “I… I just wanted to…”

El leaned in as Will stammered and stuttered. Tears in Will’s eyes reflected off of the light and El looked dead in his eyes. “What do you need, Will?”

“I just wanted to say I’m sorry,” Will admitted, clearing the tears from his eyes with a pinch.

“Sorry for what?” El asked, grabbing his wrist for comfort. “You’re okay, Will.”

Will shook his head. “No. I should’ve noticed something was wrong with you. I did notice something was wrong with you. But we just let it go on and on and on and now you’re here and I feel like if I did something sooner you would be okay but you’re not!”

Now Will was shaking on her bed, El’s heart pounding as it sunk to her chest. She shook her head feverishly, reaching over to wipe away a tear on his cheek. “No. No, Will. Don’t feel bad. It’s not your fault I got sick. Dr. Owens says that my trauma made my brain bad.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about how we didn’t catch it and now you’re really sick. I can’t stop seeing you in the hospital. El, you looked so bad. And it won’t leave my head and I feel awful.”

“Tell me.”

Will curled his eyebrows. “What?”

“Dr. Owens says to talk about hard experiences and that it takes away some pain. It… neu-tra-li-zes it sometimes. So tell me.”

“Um… you’re sure it wouldn’t make you feel weird? I mean, this all happened to you.”

El shook her head. “I felt it. I felt everything. I heard you drawing. But I didn’t see it. Mike described some of it. But you didn’t tell me how you felt and what you saw.”

“I saw a lot,” Will admitted. “I saw Jonathan carrying you outside and Mike grabbing a new shirt out of his suitcase. There was blood on his shirt and there was blood coming out of your mouth. You were shaking and we had to put you across our laps in the car. And then you had a seizure and you weren’t breathing well. You were shaking even more and we didn’t know what to do. Jonathan called the hospital ahead, though, so nurses could take you in. And you had the most doctors on you out of anybody. We just had to wait until there was a PICU bed available. When you got there, there were so many bags and needles and medicines. They had to put oxygen up your nose for a while, but it wasn’t a thin tube. It was thick, like this thick.”

El watched his hand shake as he made a circle about the size of a dollar coin. He sniffled and El kept wiping away his tears. “Keep going. You’re doing good.”

“Then they said you needed surgery and that you would have been dead in a week. That was the scariest part, not seeing you and knowing that you would have died if you didn’t collapse. We were supposed to take care of you. Mom promised Hopper and we failed. We felt like we failed.”

El moved from her chair to the bed as Will balled up. She draped her arm over his. “You didn’t fail, Will. Dr. Owens told me that my illness is sneaky to other people. It likes to hide, like how the Mindflayer liked to hide in your brain. Bulimia starts in the brain and then it works in the body, and the body hurts until it can’t go on anymore. Dr. Owens said it worked perfectly and that you guys should not feel… re-spons-i-ble for not noticing. It’s just important that I’m getting help now, even if I don’t want it very much. I saw that you guys tried. I didn’t like it back then, but I like it looking back. You tried very hard, Will.”

“I still feel bad, though. Like there was something we could have done.”

“You were busy trying to help me with school. Jonathan was busy trying to make it through school. Joyce was busy making money. We were all busy grieving Hopper. Everybody was too busy. It wasn’t your fault, Will. We were all in what Dr. Owens said was in survival mode. But we don’t have to be anymore. We can be normal, as normal as we want.”

Will looked up. “When did you get so smart?”

El laughed throatily, tears slipping out of her eyes with a smile. “With you and your family’s help. I never thought I was part of the family, but you guys never stopped helping. And I’m thankful for that.”
“You were always part of our family from the first time my Mom saw you in the pink dress. She loved you and never stopped talking about you for the year you were gone. You’re our sister, okay? And that’s why we feel so upset, not because you were just a responsibility. We feel upset because you’re family.”

El wrapped her other arm around him. “You don’t have to hide anymore. Everybody is hurt but we cannot heal without each other.”

Chapter Text

everyone wants what the other one’s working

Dr. Owen's home didn’t feel as foreign after a few months of therapy. It had become a welcome respite in the summer, especially with the nearly unbearable July heat in California. The air conditioning in their home was shaky and often faulty from some missing screws and filters that Hopper claimed, “would be too much of a bitch to work on”, so being able to go to a place with functioning air conditioning once a week was a welcome trade-off for El, in exchange for speaking about her feelings.

The couch had become more comfortable, too. El had brought in some of her pillows and she had slowly stopped noticing how her thighs touched when they sat down, even if it stung and chilled her to the bone every time it happened. She chose not to care, no matter how painful it was. Hopper didn’t care, nobody who loved her truly cared.

Dr. Owens flashed a new file folder, a red one just like the IEP folder El had at the beginning of the year. “I have your most recent doctor’s notes. Everything’s looking stable.”

He scanned over the notes, nodding with satisfaction. “Yeah, much better. I mean, to see this kind of turnaround means you have to be doing something good. No vomiting, no binges, nothing. This is looking very good, El.”

El smiled. She hadn’t vomited in two weeks. Her last binge had been three. For the first time, she was proud that she was improving.

“You know, now’s the time that kids start thinking about school. What were your grades last year, again?”

El’s leg tapped anxiously against the floor. “I got As in health and P.E. Bs in science and math, and Cs in English and math. Oh, and an A in art. Hopper said they weren’t half-bad.”

Dr. Owens smiled, teeth showing. “He’s right, kiddo. Those aren’t bad at all, especially for someone like you. Medically, I think that we can clear you to go in-person for school next year. We’re going to set you up with a new therapist back home because, frankly, my wife would kill me if I moved back east again.”

This time, El’s body bounced with happiness, an emotion she was slowly feeling more and more these days. “I’m really excited to move back to Hawkins.”

It hadn’t taken much time for the Byers-Hopper clan to decide to move back to Hawkins. There hadn’t been an incident in over a year, and Dr. Owens informed that the FBI was terminating searches of El in January of the upcoming year. There was nothing for them in Lenora Hills, and even if they would have to explain Hopper’s sudden reappearance, it seemed like a much better idea than staying in California where nothing but bad struggles surrounded them. Ever since El had heard the news, she had been following Dr. Owens's advice to a T. She wanted to look less sick to her friends, even if Dr. Owens said some effects were permanent- the scar on the side of her chest, her yellow teeth, the chronic yet fleeting nausea.

“You’re moving in a week, right? Have you guys found a house yet?”

“It’s near Lucas and Mike. Hopper says he’s upset that Mike lives so close, but he seems happy at the same time. Mike helps me a lot when I’m feeling bad.”

“Another reason I like the move back is because it’s near your support system. We talked about that, remember?”

“Mike and Hopper and Joyce, they are my main support system. Max might be, too, but we don’t know if she is feeling sad about Billy,” El uttered back, almost rehearsed.

Dr. Owens nodded, playing with a pen on his desk. “I’m very proud of you, kiddo. You’ve been doing so well. Are you going to keep this up back at Hawkins?”

El looked down. She had hated every day since she had been taken to the hospital. Dealing with the physical impacts of bulimia and noticing the fallout of her family, watching Jonathan only decide to go to Emerson with Nancy once El promised she would get better. She had nearly destroyed her family and it hurt even more to try to get better. She felt she was being ripped half, no side hurting more than the other. But she knew that when she tried, her family got happier and more peaceful. She felt better physically, especially since Dr. Owens said she was “weight-restored”, something that still haunted El every time she thought of it.

“I’ll try,” were the words that came out of her mouth nearly a minute later.

Dr. Owens flashed a small smile. “That’s all we ask for, kiddo. You've been trying so hard, even when you didn’t want to. Your work doesn’t go unnoticed, alright? Everyone that I’ve talked to notices.”

El felt proud for a moment. Praise in the lab was seldom, reserved when El did something groundbreaking or extraordinary. Recovery seemed harder than any of the experiments and torture she had been through in the first twelve years of her life.

Dr. Owens and El talked. About new recovery goals- healthy relationships with processed foods, about her classes as a sophomore in high school, about new diagnoses Dr. Owens wanted to test her for, particularly dyslexia for the sake of her school life and autism spectrum disorder, a new diagnosis only Dr. Owens had begun researching its appearance in girls in his free time. With the diagnostic criteria being vastly different between boys and girls, El fit the boxes like a glove. The discussions were far less worrisome than in the past, and when El walked out of Dr. Owens’ townhouse, she didn’t feel as exhausted as times past.

Hopper was waiting in his car, one the government had gifted him for his troubles. El opened the door and slipped in, grabbing the seatbelt. Hopper put out his cigarette. “Everything go okay?”

El nodded. “Hungry.”

“The doc doesn’t feed you?” Hopper laughed. “I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling like ice cream. Want to go?”

For the first time, El nodded to dessert, guilt rearing in the back of the head that El chose​​ to ignore. Hopper was worth the guilt. Her dad.

Chapter Text

no orange juice

It had taken all of one morning to pack up their belongings and haul ass out of Lenora Hills. Everybody was anxious, but in a good way, antsy El had been told it was called. Fuck the relentless sun, the dry heat, the lack of pretty flowers. They were going back to their people. Back home.

Two more days and they were back in Indiana. Five people crammed into one hotel room was never fun. El had offered to sleep on the floor, but Jonathan had insisted he took the floor. Will and El had uncomfortably shared one of the two queen beds. They had undeniably gotten close after nearly a year of living nearby, but sharing a bed with anyone (other than Mike) was disgusting. The only thing that kept El in good spirits was getting to see her friends again.

Hawkins had gone back to being a peaceful town in the time the Byers’ had been gone. Nobody was paranoid anymore. After a year of quiet, people had assumed that Bob, Barb, and the Starcourt fire, really had been accidents. A string of bad luck was what most chalked it up to be. Of course, Hopper anticipated some outcry from his reappearance, questions, and bombardment at the very least, but he hoped that accepting a lower position in the police department and letting Calvin keep his rightful job as the police chief would help smooth things over. A sense of normalcy was all the town would need to get everything back in order.

Jonathan’s car had been abandoned in Lenora. Nancy swore by the public transportation system in Boston, even if it wasn’t known for it. Jonathan chose to take her word, catching a train from Indianapolis to Boston once they touched base in Hawkins for a few days. El was secretly grateful she wouldn’t have to stare at that piece of junk any time she went outside. By God, it had started rusting.

Their new house was a house near Mike and Lucas’, across the street. It had four bedrooms and three baths just like their old house in Lenora Hills, but this time the extra room would be used as an office for Joyce as she chose to keep her remote job as a Britannica salesman. She was so good at it that she got paid more in commission than she ever got paid at Melvald’s. El was happy to hear that Joyce would still be around. She was always good at rationalizing the guilt that came with eating, her motherly voice making her guilt sound sillier with each passing day.

When the U-Haul pulled up to the house after twelve hours of travel, it was nearly eight p.m. Everybody staggered out of the car, exhausted. Grabbing their suitcases from the trunk, Hopper made the executive that tomorrow would be used for unpacking and seeing friends. Nobody argued with him, eyes closing as they made it inside of the house that looked like a carbon copy of Mike’s.

Will seemed shocked more than anybody else when he set his suitcase upstairs. It didn’t take a genius to know why. El had even understood without explanation. Two years ago Will lived in the slums of Hawkins. Now he was bumping elbows with Lucas and Mike, two of the richest in Hawkins. El was also similarly starstruck. She had gone from even worse living conditions– cinder blocks and metal beds– to a soft mattress and pale yellow walls with her decorations and achievements soon to be plastered around.

Of course, after they had eaten some pizza on the living room floor that El was too tired to feel guilty about, she was practically bouncing off the walls with excitement. “Why can’t we see our friends now? It’s been nine months, almost ten if you count it differently! Please, Dad. Please!”

Using the word “Dad” to describe Hopper always turned him into a sucker, not that El used it purely for manipulation. Papa was the name of her abuser. Dad was the name of her father, and she wanted to make it known how much she missed him and loved him.

Smoking a cigarette on the floor, which El thought looked depressing out of context, he released a big puff of smoke at El’s knees. “Only Mike. And be back in ten minutes, kid. It’s dark out.”

El was already out the door not five seconds later. She ran across the street, veering to the right as she sprinted down their driveway. Her hands were on the doorbell faster than her feet were at the door. She heard grumbling on the other side of the door. Karen opened the door with a frown, only to be turned quickly around a split second later.

“Mike!” she yelled, El bouncing on her toes with excitement. “You have a visitor!”

“It’s nine o’clock! Who in the wor-” Mike started shouting, only to freeze at the landing pad in between the flights of stairs.

His eyes went wide as El’s lip trembled. Racing toward each other, they landed somewhere in the foyer of Mike’s house. El felt his arms grip tighter than they ever did. He felt her hair, her back, anything to feel that it was her . El felt weird kissing in front of Mike’s mom but Mike didn’t seem to care. It had been so long apart with so much worry between them. El was really back. She was real.

“I missed you so much. Everybody’s so happy.”

El pulled away from Mike’s embrace. “We’re excited, too. California was bad. Hawkins is happier.”

“You look so much better,” Mike breathed, scanning her body loosely. It wasn’t in a judgemental way. Nothing Mike did was judgmental.

“I’ve been trying really hard. For you and my dad. I feel better,” El said, Mike kissing the top of her forehead, holding her head in his hands.

“I love you. I’m so happy you’re back.”

El smiled, wiping a tear from her eye. Happy tears . “I love you, too.”