Chapter Text
The Byers move to Lenora, and for the first time in a year, El feels weak.
It’s not a new feeling for her.
She’s used to running, used to the fear, used to being the smallest thing in a room, caged in on all sides.
But then, she broke free.
She mauled her handlers and keepers, ripped them limb from limb, broke out like a tiger finally escaping its suffocating cage.
El became the biggest, baddest thing in those woods, the king of the jungle. No one would touch her again.
Sticky sweet liquid drips down her hair, her hair, finally grown out long because she got the chance to, had the choice to. A dress that Joyce, her Mom, bought her because it’s what they could afford, now stained by cherry soda.
In her mind, she snaps the girl’s neck with a simple twist of her wrist. Easy. She watches the body contort and break, grotesque and impossible and satisfying. She wants to make Angela fold. Bend. Break.
The beast roars within her, rattling at the bars of the cage, but her claws are gone. Her teeth are gone.
All she can do now is stare. Watch. El looks down at her hands, curling into fists, shaking with rage.
Weak.
She’s just glad that Will isn’t here right now, to see this, to listen to this.
“Say something, you freak.” Angela snaps her gum.
“I don’t think she ever learned to talk. I bet her soulmate is her brother.” Another girl scoffs. “Their whole family looks like they live in a shed.” The words make El’s stomach twist with fury and disgust, and her tongue contorts around words of hatred, but they won’t come, and she’s never hated herself more than in this moment, for being so helpless, unable to defend herself with her mind, her fists, or even her own words. El can’t understand what Max likes so much about California, because El hates it here.
Angela harps out a giggle, and El can’t quite place it — chimpanzee? Hyena?
And that’s where things started to go wrong, she thinks.
After Hopper learned that El could read minds, he made her promise not to. Said it was wrong. So, she stopped. She stopped looking into people’s minds, reading who they were — it’s an invasive process, she knows that now.
But every now and then, she’d still skim the surface, get a base reading.
Nancy gave El a nature magazine, one of the many pieces of literature donated by everyone over that summer, that perfect summer, to mitigate her boredom and help her learn to read. El found herself enjoying all the different animal facts and especially enjoying recognizing people amongst those creatures.
It made them more predictable.
She needed to know who she was speaking to, what kind of person she was working with. Where their seat was on the food chain.
El couldn’t walk into every interaction blind, could she? But then she learnt that, actually, most people did.
Most people couldn’t read the emotional reactions of others as they spoke, couldn’t feel them reaching out in response to spoken words, or drawing themselves back in like turtles, retreating into their shells.
When she arrived in Lenora, mind empty, she couldn’t see anyone. Not completely. She’d never realized how fake smiles could be. They’d always been tinged with flavor before — derision, pity, joy, or wistfulness.
El couldn’t see Angela for who she was, and mistakenly thought she was as pure as her name. As pure as her soulmark, a red heart gently cupped in an open palm.
Angela plucks out her gum between two manicured fingers and digs them into El’s scalp. “Retard.”
“Oh, shut the fuck up, Angela.” This voice is new. Exhausted.
“No one’s talking to you, you antisocial nerd,” Angela scathes again, her goons tittering behind her.
“I told you to fuck off, you and your little circus act. You’re so desperate for attention, you look like a goddamn clown.” The new boy is... scrawny. He’s drowning in a neon green bomber jacket, contrasting sharply with the dark shade of his skin, and baggy jeans belted tight to his hips. And he’s short.
El wonders why this stranger is stepping in front of her. What exactly is he going to do? His neck looks like a twig. El feels like she’s being found in the woods by a gap-toothed boy.
Another boy behind Angela steps up, his long arm extending to give this smaller guy a shove, and before El can blink, the smaller boy bounces on his toes, ducks, and sinks his fist into the taller boy’s stomach with such force that he collapses, retching.
El watches him drop with her mouth gaping. The taller boy’s eyes bulge horrifically, red veins flickering around the pupils, throat flexing around the force of the pain, clutching at his stomach senselessly, hand clawing at the cement courtyard as he wheezes for air.
El’s fingers flex, clenching around nothing.
El knows how to get knocked down, and she knows to get up.
It’s what she’s been doing her whole life.
So when the door to the boxing gym shuts in her face, she’s there again the next day. And the day after that.
After the tiny boy struck down the boy a foot taller than him, El did everything she could to find out who he was. And by everything, she means that she asked Will the second they got home, and Will knew who he was, because of course he did.
On their first day of school in Lenora, Will was swarmed by the hockey team, the swimming team, the art club. He’d stood there, shocked, slowly turning pink, clutching his backpack straps while El stood beside him, not surprised at all. Will is kind and curious and everything good in the world, and she’d always been baffled by the bullying he experienced in Hawkins.
In California, everything about him opens doors and starts conversations — especially the fact that he has a blank manifestation, an indeterminate one, even. The people of Hawkins still suffer under the misapprehension that those who are unmarked are unworthy, but in Lenora, speculation as to Will’s soulmate type caused weeks of rumors — the positive kind, and everyone in the school knows him as the cool artsy new kid with a mysterious unknown soul mate.
“Sam Bender?” Will drops his bag by his desk, baffled. “What do you want with him?”
Bender. The name makes sense. Sam makes people bend.
“Who is Sam Bender?” She flops down on his bed and tries to ask the question with what few words she knows.
“I don’t... really know? I mean, he’s on the track team, he’s pretty fast, but we don’t really talk, and he’s never at any of the meets. Jennifer says that he spends most of his time boxing at the gym.”
“Boxing gym?” El catches those words. New words, ones she hasn’t heard before, usually hold her answers.
“Yeah, like this,” Will, her sweet, perfect brother, is something like an elephant — naturally artistic, born with colossal innate strength, but chooses to stick to paintbrushes and pastels rather than rifles or flamethrowers. He always makes sure she understands exactly what he’s talking about, so he picks up his fists and punches empty air, swinging them out before pulling them close to his face. “Boxing.”
“Like... fighting.”
“Yeah, it’s a type of fighting. Uh. Where are you going?”
Boxing. El gets up, heading to her room. Will is calling after her, but she puts that out of her mind for now.
She needs to learn boxing.
The next day, she ignores Angela’s taunts and laughter in the classroom, and she spends her lunch period looking for the gym. El learns that the school is much larger than she’d thought, at least twice the size of Hawkins Middle, sprawling with staircases and stacked rows of lockers. The gym ends up being on the side of school she never goes to, between the music room and the chemistry lab — both of which she had no idea existed, and she’s not sure why she’s never walked around this place before, it’s so big.
El shoves open the door to the gym, and it slams against the wall, surprisingly light. She stomps inside, ignoring the eyes of all the boys inside. Why are there so many boys and no girls? She sees rows of weight racks, a few intimidating contraptions that she doesn’t want to look at for too long, and in the corner, where some hefty leather bags hang from the ceiling, is the skinny boy. Bender.
He is slouched in a plastic chair, wrapped in the same neon jacket, eating a sandwich.
To his right is another boy, huge and hulking, and on the chair to his left is an oddly familiar object that she can’t quite place.
She strides forward until she’s standing in front of Bender. He pauses in his conversation and looks up at her, eyes her up and down with an affronted expression, and deadpans, “What?”
“What are those?” El points, trying to be clear.
“Boxing gloves.” He sounds even more confused now.
Boxing gloves. From here, she recognizes them. It’s good to have a name for the mark on the back of Max’s neck, the red shape that El was too shy to ask about over the summer, as red as the skateboard taking up most of Lucas’s bicep, as red as the forming mark on the back of her own hand, the one she hasn’t mentioned to anyone.
“Teach me.”
Bender stares at her, brows raised, chewing slowly. “Why?” His friend flips his gaze between the two of them, looking entertained.
“I want to know how to make people bend. The way that you do.”
He gives her another look up and down, like a judgmental highlighter, and says, simply, “No.”
El has faced rejection several times since coming to Lenora, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less.
So she corners him in the halls the next day, and asks again, and he says no again, and she asks why, and he says—
“Because you’ll hit someone.” With a tone like she’s stupid and she should have known that already, but she’s not stupid, so she says back, with the same tone,
“Yes.” And gives him a look like he’s the stupid one.
But he shakes his head at her and scoffs and turns away, muttering something about crazy white girls.
The third time, she shows up prepared.
El used to be able to get what she wanted. She wouldn’t even need to work too hard for it.
Actually — it was hard work, a whole lot of tears and sweat and especially blood, but it would never take this long. She wouldn’t have to sleep on the itch of it, wake up to the discomfort of failure.
She used to just take things when she wanted them, with a twist of her wrist, and the price was a few drops of blood, but she doesn’t have her teeth anymore, or her claws, so she needs to try a different method.
She thinks of all the people she knows who always manage to get what they want.
One person comes to mind immediately.
Nancy Wheeler. Impossible aim and unabating strength. Peregrine falcon.
Well, El doesn’t have a gun, and she never learned how to use one anyways, so what good would it do her, really?
And isn’t that the point? Once El learns how to do boxing, she won’t need a gun. Or anything else — she’ll be able to take care of the world with just her fists.
So she thinks back again, and this time, she settles on Steve.
Flamingo. Tall. Attention-grabbing, and a survivor of unreasonably extreme conditions.
Steve smiles, and Steve lies.
He’s nice to people, and they give him whatever he wants. One time, they were driving to Will’s house for movies and a sleepover, and they ran out of gas. Steve didn't have his wallet, so he made Max and Dustin and Lucas stay in the car and took El with him into the little shop where he flashed a charming grin to the no-nonsense lady at the register, spinning a tale about how cold it was tonight, and how he and his sister needed to make it home, just a few miles down the road, but the tank was empty and they had no cash.
She spotted them a dollar, just enough to pull Steve’s beemer onto the Byers’ front lawn.
Friends don’t lie.
But El and Sammy are not friends.
The next day, during lunch, she goes to the gym again, with her own sandwich, and a story.
“I do not talk well. When we were small, a bad man took me and Will.” She’s not lying, and the way her voice shakes is real. The way she tries to stop the tears in her eyes is real. The story is real. “He hurt me. In my head. So I need to know how to hit people.”
Sam’s arms are crossed, and he stares at her incredulously before sighing and throwing his head back, staring at the ceiling. He groans before putting his face in his hands.
“Fine, fine, fine.”
El almost jumps with eagerness, “Yes, you’ll help? You will teach me boxing?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Sam says, trying to wave her off, and El is so excited that she lunges forward and hugs him, a short, quick hug, before he shies back and pushes her off, and she smiles at him huge, and he stares back, looking at her like she’s an alien, which isn’t anything new.
El thinks she knows what kind of animal he is. He’s not the same as Nancy, lethal and explosive, not quite Will, regal and powerful, not exactly Steve, resilient and balanced, but some kind of mix of the three of them.
She remembers a picture from the magazine Nancy gave her. Largely ambivalent, mellow and unobtrusive, but seven feet tall. Light on his feet. Fast. Lashing out when necessary.
Kangaroo.
Will finds the gloves in her room when he’s calling her down for breakfast.
“What is this?” He hooks the pair by the tied-together strings and turns to her with raised brows.
“Boxing gloves.”
“Why?”
“Because I need to learn to fight.”
Will looks at her with sad eyes. Those big, brown, sad eyes that Joyce wears when they wake up from nightmares, struck with the weight of what her children have endured. Elephant. Like mother, like son.
They don’t want El to be damaged; she understands this, it’s only because they care. And because Will cares, he doesn’t want her to be violent, either, because that would mean that there is something wrong with her.
But there is something wrong with her; El has known this since she first tasted her own blood, head dizzy and spinning, reverberating with electrical currents and radio channels.
What El struggles to understand is why Will won’t fight. He’s tall, broad, and since they moved to Lenora, his muscles have grown seemingly without any work. He’s effortlessly strong, and she is deeply jealous of his physique.
With just his physical strength, he could take down people twice his size and make it look easy. For El to build that type of strength, it would take months of tireless effort.
He passes the gloves back to her, which she stuffs in her bag. They pile into Argyle’s van, and Will doesn’t say a word to Jonathan.
Devin is large and muscular, with an affable demeanor and easy grin, the heavyweight captain of the boxing club. He introduces her to the rest of their regular members — Tom is a blond boy that El recognizes from some of her classes, Damien is Sammy’s friend from that first day in the gym. He and Jorge are seniors, close friends of Devin’s, and Toby and George are sophomores.
She learns about the different weight classes. Toby and George are tall and lean, middleweights. Damien is a heavyweight, but Jorge is a light heavyweight.
Tommy is surprisingly tall for a lightweight, but Devin says that he’ll probably move up to welterweight by the end of the year. He’s a freshman, like El, and is still growing.
Sammy is the only junior and the only older lightweight, apparently, something that the heavyweight boys razz him for, making jokes about drinking that she doesn’t understand — Sam goes through two waterbottles every practice? But they all acknowledge the iron strength behind his strikes.
“Quick as a pistol, he is,” Jorge remarks while tying back his mass of hair with a bandana, the same way Lucas used to when she first met him. “He's beat me in spars, even though he's a lightweight.”
They’re excited to teach her everything they know. Apparently, the boxing club doesn’t get many new members. Most new prospects are boys looking to brag about bloody fights or who’ve watched Rocky one too many times.
El learns proper form and stance. She learns to appreciate the constant bruising ache of her knuckles, learns how tiring it is to just keep her arms up for a long time, learns that she’ll need to train all her muscle groups.
She learns terms like physical conditioning and injury prevention.
Initially, they heckle her a bit for her twig arms and easy fatigue, but they always follow it up with tips and recommendations, and it makes her feel like she’s a part of something again.
“You’ll need stronger arms before it’s safe for you to throw punches that hard,” Damien stresses. “And it doesn’t happen overnight.”
“And I know girls don’t really eat, but you’ll need protein to bulk up–” Sammy explains.
“I eat!” El says, offended.
“Yeah,” Devin chuckles at Sammy’s exasperated eye roll – just like Max’s – “but you need to make sure you’re eating the right things. You can’t build muscle with just cereal and cheese sandwiches.”
The team is fiercely loyal to one another, and the thing inside of her curls up and purrs warmly when they jump at the chance to show her how to wrap her knuckles, to teach her different combinations and exercises.
Devin makes sure El and Tommy get their homework done before hitting the sandbags every day, and El is never alone when walking through the halls, now. It’s usually Tommy with her, and it only takes El a week to pin him as a poodle. Lanky, friendly, and constantly fussing with his curly bangs, like Dustin.
Toby and George always check on her at lunch, making sure she’s eating properly. George will scarf down his meal with a pair of elegant, lacquered sticks — chopsticks, he tells her — and Toby will run through a laundry list of questions: Turned in your homework? What are you doing for your project? You did well on the quiz, right? Mothering and overbearing, just like Mike. Like Steve.
El has friends now. She’s not alone anymore.
But it only makes her miss Max and Mike and Dustin and Lucas that much more.
On one especially difficult day, when she wakes gasping into a striped t-shirt and clutching a camo-patterned bandana against her heart, the nightmares leaving her feeling like a hollow shell, nothing but a nameless beast wearing human skin, El gets the chance to return the favor to Sammy.
She’s heading to the gym after class as usual, and two boys are crowding a smaller figure against a locker.
Sammy doesn’t look that bothered by them, he never looks like he cares about anything — not when El is begging him to spar with her, the only experienced person in her weight class, not when he’s sparring with the bigger boys, bouncing away from ruthless punches before finally laying them out, not when he was facing Angela down in the school courtyard for El.
Not even now, when a larger boy rips Sammy’s bag out of his hands and chucks it across the hall, stray papers and pens spilling out.
“What are you gonna do about it, get on your knees and beg?”
They laugh, and a pig-faced boy propels him back into the lockers, body colliding loudly with the hollow metal. Sam stares back at them, as exasperated as the first time El asked for his help.
Seeing their hands on her friend makes the thing in El roar indignantly, and she storms forward faster, dropping her bag on the floor and rolling up her sleeves in preparation.
“I bet he’d like that, the fag.”
Sammy flinches, and El barks, “Hey! Move!” And she shoves through the circle to stand in front of him.
“Jane–” Sam puts an alarmed hand on her shoulder, but she shakes it off, meeting the gaze of the bully in front of her, standing as tall as she can.
“Oh look, it’s the dumb bitch defending her gay boyfriend.” The pig-faced boy jeers.
“Don't fuckin’ call her that, Rick.” Sam growls.
El would laugh if she weren’t so furious. She’s heard plenty worse.
“Move.” She repeats lowly, copying the voice she heard George use once, when someone tried to trip her in the cafeteria.
“Do you know any other words?” The other one taunts. El remembers his name. Craig. An ugly name, just like his face.
“Bender probably takes it up the ass from her.” Rick sneers.
“Yeah, cause he bends over.” They laugh like there’s some big joke that’s supposed to make her angry, but she doesn’t understand, so she ignores it.
“Because his name is Bender?” El feigns curiosity. “But that means he makes you bend over.”
“Yeah?” Craig scoffs down at her, face turning puce at whatever implication she’s made. “And what the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“Like this.” Quick as a whip, El draws back her arm, twists her torso, and plunges her fist into Craig’s stomach with the entire weight of her body behind her.
Craig buckles and drops like a stone, groaning on the floor. Rick jumps back, and El takes the chance to grab Sam’s arm and leave, picking up both of their bags on the way.
When they reach the gym, El storms straight to the lockers, changing, before attacking the sandbags. The thing inside her rumbles and froths, hissing venomously, and she doesn’t know how to feed it. She punches and punches and punches. Each time her fist sinks into the bag, carried forward by the turn of her body, entire form in sync with the motion, she feels strong and powerful and hungry.
El hears Sam’s voice calling her name, tight with concern, but she ignores it and keeps hitting, punching, fuming.
Why is she always fighting a losing battle?
Arms wrap around her middle, and El is hauled backwards, off the bag. Even as she kicks and thrashes at Devin, he dumps her on a bench like a wet cat before gripping her bare fists, now torn and scratched, she notices.
“Hey, you need to calm down, Janie, you can’t be beating the bag when you’re angry, or you’ll make this worse.” He shakes one of her bloody hands in his grip.
She starts to feel the twinging in her shoulders, her elbows.
“How do your arms feel?” Devin lightly squeezes her forearms in his grip, and she knows what he is. Huge. Hair haloing his head like a crown. Strong maternal instincts, only aggressive when threatened. Moose.
El breathes, in and out, in and out. “Arms are fine.” And they are fine. She twists her hands from his grip and shakes them out, and the ache in her joints is gone.
Devin sits beside her on the bench, and Sam sits down in front of her, and the rest of the boys return to their practice. She hadn’t realized she caused a disruption until the background noise and chatter starts up again, and she feels vaguely guilty and embarrassed.
“Why do I...” El starts. She doesn’t know how to ask this. The anger abandons her body, and she can feel physical sensations again. Hands throbbing, words hanging on the tip of her tongue, she suddenly feels painfully, viscerally human. “I am always losing. Running away. I am training. Why am I not strong?”
“Ain’t that the question.” Devin chuckles.
“I got this.” Sam waves Devin off. “Pass the tape?”
El catches the roll when Devin tosses it.
“Do you know how long it took me, training, before I won a fight against Damien?” Sam asks, taking the tape from her, inspecting the damage to her knuckles. The senior is large, but Sammy has bested every single boy in the club at least once, no matter their weight class. He’s a phenomenal fighter in a way that shouldn’t be possible — quick and bouncy, a well-balanced kangaroo that somehow punches like a bear.
“How long.” The bleeding has stopped, but the skin is all torn and her hands are a mess.
“Five years.”
El looks up at him, shocked. Five years. Five years? That sounds like eternity. Does she even have that much time?
Sam chuckles at her expression and wipes the blood from her knuckles while she’s distracted, antiseptic stinging the cuts. “I know, right? I started training in middle school. Damien and I would spar together. The white kids didn’t really want to fight either of us – didn’t want to touch us – so he was my only practice buddy for a while. And I was still tiny then, anyways, I mostly had to be quick.” He carefully peels back the bandage and tightly tapes down the gauze to her knuckles. “Then, in high school, we met Devin, and the other guys, and I was able to learn more, practice with more people.”
“Five. Years.” That’s all El can say, staring at her beaten, dressed hands.
“Hey,” Sammy bumps her shoulder. “What I’m trying to say is, these things take time. Strength takes time to build. You need patience. And consistency. Routine. Don’t deviate, and you’ll get there. You will.” He looks her in the eye when he speaks, hand firm on her shoulder, and El figures that Sam probably doesn’t care enough to lie to her about this. He stands and picks up the bloodied wipes. “Thanks for your help back there. Didn’t need your help, but,” he shrugs, shoulders up, facing away from her, “thanks anyways.”
The doors to the gym slam open, and every head snaps towards the noise.
Will rushes inside, and El understands how Mike feels when Nancy is always checking on him.
“I’m fine!” She calls. She should probably get ready to leave now, before Will sees her hands.
“Jane,” Will starts, warning coloring his tone, and El hates that name, “I heard what happened, are you hurt?”
“No.” She deadpans, because of course she’s not, and she picks up her bag, waving to the boys before letting him drag her by the wrist out of the gym.
“Then what happened to your hands?” Will asks sarcastically before lowering his voice. “You could get in trouble!”
“I didn’t break anything.” She whispers back, equally meaningful. Will shoves open the double doors of the hall, and they stride to the parking lot where Jonathan and Argyle wait in the van. “Don’t tell Jonathan. Please.”
Will sighs. “Fine.”
During the car ride home, El hides her hands under Will’s folded jacket, and she thinks about Sammy’s words.
Strength takes time to build. Consistency. Routine.
El thinks of the most consistent person she knows.
An eighteen-year-old girl with the aim of a retired marksman.
But not everyone can be Nancy Wheeler, so El thinks again.
When they get home, Jonathan and Argyle head to his room, and after El showers, she goes straight to the phone like she usually does, but this time, she combs through the phone book and dials the Sinclairs.
Erica picks up the line and shouts for Lucas, “Your weird friend from California is calling!”
“Will?” A familiar voice asks over the phone, sounding slightly surprised, “We just finished up dinner here, how’re you doing, man?”
“Uh, no, it’s Jane.” The name still sounds strange leaving her mouth.
“Jane!” Lucas sounds even more surprised. “How’s it going, how’s California?”
“It is going well. I have joined the boxing club.”
“Boxing?” Why does everyone sound so surprised by this? “Uh–” Lucas stammers, “Any, any reason for boxing in particular?”
“There was a boy who helped me, and he is on the boxing team. We are friends now.”
“Oh, uh, okay.” There’s a tone to his voice she can’t quite read. Maybe he’s just being awkward. Jonathan says that’s usually the case. “Well, I’m glad you met him, then. Is he chill? Nice, I mean?”
“No. Not very nice. He is annoyed all the time. But he is kind. Like Steve. Except he does not care about his hair as much.”
Lucas chuckles, and the sound echoes tinny and scratchy over the line. “Well, he sure sounds like a step up. Steve literally wears sunglasses on our runs, like someone’s gonna catch him looking uncool at six in the morning.”
They share a laugh at the image – which reminds her. “I wanted to ask about your routine! Sammy said that to build strength, you need a routine. And Mike says that you want to do basketball.”
“Yeah! You need to have a good schedule set up every week, Steve has me doing strength training four times a week, cause I’m bulking up, and then conditioning in two months.”
“Yes, bulking up! Devin says I need to eat protein.”
“Yep, protein’s important. You know what– d’you have a pen?”
“Uh… wait.” She runs to her room and grabs a pen and a pad of paper. “Okay.”
“Alright, write this down–”
And they go over every detail of his weekly workout schedule, which she tries to match up with the recommendations her teammates gave her. El writes down everything he mentions — his diet, how often he goes on runs, the different exercises he does — jump rope, push-ups, planks. Lucas is patient and kind, and she’s so glad that he’s her friend.
“How do you spell cardio?”
“Cardio is c, a,…”
“Thank you.”
“You got it.” Silence for a bit while she scratches away at the notepad. “By the way, have you gotten any letters back from Max? She’s…” Lucas’s voice breaks with an uncharacteristic tremor. “She’s not doing too well. She hasn’t– she’s been avoiding me. She won’t even talk to Erica.”
And that is concerning. Erica idolizes Max, and Max absolutely adores the younger girl. She’s like the annoying younger sister I never knew I wanted. Max had confided in El's summer-warm bedroom, the background hum of Tears for Fears, nothing ever lasts forever everybody wants to– floating faintly from the radio. For Max to be shutting out everyone, including her favorite fiery brat, something is very wrong.
“No, she has not. I have no letters from her.” El announces grimly.
“Damn.”
The silence is static with grief and pain. Billy is dead, but somehow, he is still hurting Max, still hurting Lucas, and El hates him beyond comprehension.
“Do you have her number?”
“Yeah,” Lucas reads it out and warns, “but she might not pick up. Erica tries calling her twice a day, but she just won’t answer the phone.”
“She will.” El promises. She plans on camping out by the phone for hours if that’s what it takes. She will send letters every single day. If she still had her powers, El would be blindfolding herself and hunting Max down across the dimensions. “I will call her tomorrow after school. She will answer.”
“Okay.” She can hear Lucas’s grin over the line. She can even picture it — tilted on one side, not completely meeting his eyes, wry with amusement.
“She will.” El says more firmly. “I will call until she picks up.”
Lucas laughs, surprised but fond, “I think you’re the only one who can out-stubborn her.”
“I am.” El says proudly.
“Damn right. How’s school been going for you?”
“Better! I go to classes with Tommy now. He is a lot like Dustin.”
And they spend another hour on the phone, and Lucas learns about all of her teammates on the boxing club, how Tommy can never shut up, how George shares his lunch with her sometimes, how Jorge badgers her about her clothes in a way that reminds her of Steve and the bandana he sports as a headband, just like Lucas used to.
She resolves to call Max the next day, and Lucas again the day after because he needs to stay updated on her workout schedule, and he needs someone to fret over Max with.
At the breakfast table, Jonathan flips bacon in the pan while El stuffs her face.
“You look taller.”
El hums and swallows her mouthful. Now is as good a time as any. “I joined the boxing club.”
Jonathan drops the toast.
Is he surprised? El has known what he is since the moment she first laid eyes on him.
Jonathan has that beast inside him, too. The angry one. El is pleased to share it with her family. He just knows how to hide it better.
By the time Hop had told her that what she was doing was wrong, she’d already seen Jonathan in all his glory, teeth bared and wicked claws and slouched shoulders, prowling silently, unnoticed by the masses. Hidden, like a massive jungle cat, waiting for his moment to strike.
He wasn’t always a panther, though, because people change.
Jonathan used to be a skittish bird of some kind, one with clear sight, that much El knows. Not an eagle or a raptor, but some kind of prey.
And then he learned how to use his fists.
El watches the seconds tick by on Jonathan’s face, before he muses aloud, “Boxing, huh? Are you enjoying it?”
El nods eagerly around a mouthful of egg whites.
“I guess… that’s why I’ve been making you different breakfasts, then.”
Which. Yeah.
Maybe El should have told him why, but Jonathan just shrugged and said okay, and ever since, he’s been making her egg whites and bacon and whole grain toast for breakfast, packing high protein meals for her lunch, no questions asked.
Jonathan continues making Will’s breakfast, and Joyce has already left for work this morning, so it’s just the two of them. El decides to take her chance.
“There is a word I don’t know.”
“Hit me.”
“It’s a bad word.”
Jonathan turns to her, surprised, and El meets his gaze easily, chewing. “Okay.” Jonathan sighs. “Tell me what it is.”
El tells him. He drops the spatula.
“Damn.” He picks up the spatula, quickly rinsing it under the sink, before taking the pan off the heat and fully turning to face her. “Where did you hear that?”
“Sammy is on the boxing club.”
“In the boxing club.”
“He is in the boxing club.” El corrects. “In the boxing team?”
“In the team, on the team, both work. But you can only be in a club. Not on a club.”
“Weird.”
“Weird.” Jonathan agrees. “You were saying?”
“Sammy is in the boxing club.” El repeats. “And some boys were being mean to him. Called him that word. He did not like it. I want to know what it means.”
Eyes sad and angry, just as big and brown as his brother and mother’s but holding an edge that theirs are always missing, Jonathan explains. El chews and listens.
She grows more and more confused.
“So his soulmate is a boy? How?”
Jonathan shrugs, rustling through the cupboards for brown bags. “Your soulmate can be anybody. D’you know who my soulmate is?”
“Nancy?” El asks.
“No,” Jonathan frowns from where he’s crouched by the counter. “It’s Argyle. You know this, I told you all, like, a while ago.”
Argyle? El remembers a dinner a few weeks ago where Jonathan invited him and then helped prepare most of the dishes. Argyle brought a bottle of fancy olive oil and a singular sunflower, “It was the only flower that encapsulated the true beauty of both you and your children, Mrs. Byers. Also, in a week, you should be able to eat this.”
Jonathan had cuffed him up the head and trimmed the stem, gently plopping the flower in their nicest vase while Mom cooed over the thoughtful gift.
“Oh.”
“Oh?” Jonathan looks at her incredulously before sighing and shaking his head. “Anyways, soulmates can be two girls. Or two boys. They can even be groups of three or four people. And they’re not always romantic, either. Your soulmate can be someone who’s just a really good friend. You don’t always have to, like, get married to them and everything.”
And this is news to El.
It’s why she and Mike are dating. Neither of them had marks, and with how close they became, so quickly, everyone had been sure that they were soulmates.
“But how did you know? If you had no marks?”
“Argyle and I had a blank manifestation. We can share physical sensations.”
“But then why — why were they mean to Sammy?” She’s so confused. If it’s normal, then why does everyone care so much? So much that they would bully Sam for it?
“Because,” Jonathan sighs, “they’re idiots. People are stupid about things. Most of the time, they’re just angry and they want something to hate, so that they have an excuse to be angry.” He bags the sandwiches with unnecessary force — the usual ham and cheese for Will, extra turkey and lettuce and onions for El. “Does that make sense?”
El thinks about that. How Sammy said that some kids wouldn’t touch him because he looked different. How Max said that boys at school would treat her differently from Dustin and Lucas and Mike because she’s a girl. How Lucas stuck close to Steve when they visited Ohio for a weekend, how he’s more wary and nervous whenever they leave Hawkins.
“Like Billy?” She asks.
“Yeah. Like Billy.” The beast peeks through his eyes for a moment, a split second, and El doesn’t want Jonathan to get in trouble. She doesn’t want Will and Joyce to worry about him the way they worry about her.
“Sammy and I are okay.” She stresses firmly, looking him in the eye. She needs him to understand. “We can take care of the bullies.”
Jonathan looks taken aback for a moment, but then he nods. “Okay.”
She finishes eating, and Jonathan finishes packing their food, lining up the brown bags on the counter. “Soulmates don’t always make sense immediately. They take time to understand. There are stories of people born with physical marks that are confusing, that don’t completely work out until the time is right. Sometimes it takes years.”
El thinks about Joyce and Hopper, who knew each other for just a few years before they were torn apart.
Soulmarks don’t make any sense at all, El decides, and she doesn’t want to think about them anymore.
She asks Jonathan her most important question so far.
“Why are you not Jon? Or Jonny?”
“What?” He turns to her, completely baffled.
“You don’t have a nickname. I have El. William is Will. You are just Jonathan.”
Will comes thundering down the steps, grabbing a lunch bag, yelling, “What are you still doing in here? Argyle is waiting outside, we’re gonna be late!”
“And whose fault is that?” Jonathan snaps back, and they’re racing to the front door.
After school, El tells Sammy that Jonathan said that she looks taller, and she badgers him to teach her new combinations, and he says no, as always.
“You look taller because you’re a shrimp with bad posture and you’re finally standing up straight.” Sam scathes, turning his attention to the pads he’s holding up for George, barking at the boy to pick up his hands again.
So she asks Devin instead, and he holds the bag for her while she practices, and each punch lands like a rush of oxygen, her head clearer, her soul more settled.
They sit on the concrete ledge by the parking lot, El waiting for Jonathan and Argyle to finish up with their photography project. Will is probably home by now, having gotten a ride from one of his friends.
Sam swings his legs beside her, and she doesn’t know who he’s waiting for. He usually walks home or gets a ride from Damien or Devin, but El enjoys his quiet companionship.
It’s just the two of them, lamplight shining halos around the darkening parking lot as the sky bleeds orange and purple, the faint rustle of palm trees, kids messing around in the distance and the rumble of cars driving by.
Everything feels right.
El tells Sammy something she hasn’t told anyone else yet. “I think there’s something wrong with my soul.”
He turns to her, slowly, brows raised. “You’ll have to be a bit clearer than that, Janie. Before you give me a heart attack.”
“I mean my mark. Sorry. I did not mean to attack your heart.”
“Oh, I’ll be fine.” He bumps her shoulder. “You, I’m not so sure about.”
El shrugs.
“What’s wrong with your soul mark, then?”
She shows him.
“Huh. I thought it was just like that.” The tiny red dot has grown, faint concentric circles ringing the small spot. The last time Sammy saw it, her hands were covered in blood and torn skin, and then he unknowingly hid the mark with bandages.
“No. This is new. It started after we moved here. Before, they thought I had a blank manifestation.” The first time El had noticed the mark, she’d been in the school bathroom, sorting out her face. She’d thought it was blood. Something had struck her on the nose, a painful gift from Angela, and she’d wiped the blood by habit and then panicked when it didn’t completely wash off the back of her hand.
“Hmm. You know, I’ve heard of marks changing over time, not spontaneously forming out of nowhere. But I wouldn’t be surprised if something like that started with you.”
“Why?” El turns to him, curious.
“Because you’re weird.” He deadpans. El scoffs, affronted, and shoves him.
He shoves her back. Then he takes his backpack off and dumps it on the sidewalk below. He lifts the edge of his shirt, and El is nearly blinded by the shine when solid gold gleams back.
It takes her a few seconds to blink away the spots in her eyes, and she realizes that Sammy isn’t walking around with gold painted around his torso, no, this is much more permanent than paint. It’s a soul mark.
“My soulmate. Is. A guy.” He bites the words out. “You’ve probably heard as much by now. I got scared. Rejected him because, well, I don’t like boys like that. Don’t like girls like that, either, not that anyone cares. But then I guess he got scared that I was gonna go around telling people that he liked boys? So he went and told them first, and a week later, he fucked off to the east coast. And it faded.” The mark shines against his dark skin, searingly bright and obnoxious and unmistakable. “But recently, it started coming back. Nothing like yours, coming up out of nowhere, but… yeah.”
El bursts out, “That. Is so cool. You are so. Cool.”
Sammy laughs, loud and bright, like his mark, and he drops his shirt back down. “Yeah, I was pretty bummed when it faded. I was such a dickhead kid, running around with this thing for a mark. Man, everyone hated me. I loved it.”
“It came back? Do you know how?”
“I found out that Ty’s on this collegiate team, now, back home. California State. Welterweight champion. Team captain.” Sam says the words like he’s reading them off a magazine headline. “I’d always lose to him. He was good. So good that he stopped sparring with me after a while. Just– refused to.”
There’s a look in Sam’s eye that El can’t quite read. It looks like he wants something. Like he hates something. Envies it. Needs it.
“One day, I’m gonna beat him in the ring. In front of the whole world.”
El still doesn’t understand the whole soul mark thing. She’s a bit sad that Sammy’s soul is so unmistakably gold, because it means that he’s nothing like her, small and red and bloody.
But now, she thinks, she understands people a bit more.
Like Sammy, with his championship belt, buckled around his torso like a promise. Like a chain.
It suits him.
El hopes that Sammy gets to defeat his soulmate one day. And she hopes that afterwards, Sam and Ty can become friends, too.
When Argyle and Johnathan drop her off at the door before heading off to wherever they go, El calls Max and tells her about her day. Then she calls Lucas, and they discuss her increasing mileage.
Then she calls the Wheeler house and breaks up with Mike.