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beverly

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Hopper had warned her, before they'd come here. There's another girl. Not like her in the way that she had powers, but like her in the way she'd needed a family. Eleven tries to keep that in mind when she meets her.

She'd needed a family, too. Just like Eleven.

She doesn't expect the red hair, or the freckles. She doesn't expect her to look like she could be Max's sister. Not like Max, not exactly. But like her the way that Nancy looks like Mike.

And just like Max, it's hard not to feel jealous when she sees her. This girl she doesn't know has crept into the hole of El's absence, and it stings to see her. No matter how much she knows the words Hopper has said, it stings, and she frowns at the girl when they're finally face to face.

"...Hi," she says.

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"I can show you around, if you want," Beverly offers, glad for something that feels like common ground, a place to start, something she can do. This was probably always going to be somewhat awkward, but it doesn't have to stay that way. At least, she hopes it won't. As much as she won't say so, probably not to anyone, she's never really felt as comfortable — as at home — here as she has anywhere else. It's hard not to worry that that might be about to change.

"As far as school goes... I mean, I think school sucks, but it's not bad."

Eleven frowns at that. "Why does school suck?" she asks. No one has told her that, before now. School is important. School is big. School is boring. But no one has said school sucks, before now.

"It's better here than it was back home, for me," Beverly says, which she knows isn't really an answer, but it's still the truth. With the shit she had to put up with back in Derry, there probably wasn't any chance of her ever liking school. Besides, she largely finds it pointless, but she wouldn't really know how to explain it if she tried. "It's mostly just boring. And you have to learn a bunch of things you'll never need to know outside of class."

"I like learning," she admits, but the way Beverly says it makes her frown. "I'll never need to know it?" she asks. Then what's the point of her learning it to begin with?

"Not a lot of it," Beverly says with a shrug. "But if you like learning, that might not matter as much. Some of it is interesting, just not very useful." She hasn't fully settled on what she wants to do with her future, or even if she wants to go to college when she finishes high school. She's sure all the same that she'll never have any practical use for the things she has to learn in math or history or science. Some of it is helpful to a point, but it tends to go far past that.

"What sort of things do you most like to learn?"

Edited 2021-08-07 09:16 (UTC)

"Everything," she answers, honestly, but vaguely. She shrugs, then smiles wanly. "I... didn't do school, ever. And I don't know a lot. So when I get to learn, I feel less... dumb." She winces a little even as she says it, but it's true. She feels less intelligent than her friends, and she knows it's because her education and her experiences were vastly limited compared to theirs, but sometimes she feels it more than others.

"You don't seem dumb to me," Beverly says earnestly. "I mean... that's cool, to like learning things, and don't let anyone tell you it's not. But there's different kinds of smart, I think. And school-smart is only one of them." It's definitely not her strongest suit, though at least she's doing better than she was at this time last year. Still, she's not sure she wants to continue with it once she graduates high school in a year and a half, and that's a conversation she has no idea how to have yet. "What else do you like to do?"

El realizes that she's still learning what else she likes to do. She'd liked shopping with Max, but less because of the shopping and more because she'd been spending time with Max, being friends and being silly.

"I like... hanging out," she says, though the term seems unfamiliar in her mouth. "With my friends," she clarifies, in case that isn't clear. "I like the mall." She pauses, then smiles shyly. "And ice cream. What do you like?"

"Those are good choices," Beverly says with a grin. "I like those, too." There hadn't actually been a mall back in Derry, and she'd rarely left the town's limits. Here, it's far more accessible. "I like... riding my bike. Anything outside, really. Going to the boardwalk."

A thought occurs to her then, brow raising a bit. "Have you ever been to the beach?" Knowing what she knows about both Hawkins and Eleven, she doubts it. That's definitely something they're going to have to change.

She shakes her head. She hasn't been here for long enough to visit it yet, and it's still cold outside. "There isn't a beach in Hawkins," she says, still in that slightly stilted cadence. "Is that where 'the bored walk' is?"

"Yeah, it's like... right beside it?" Beverly pulls a face, unsure how best to describe it. That, too, is something they didn't have back in Derry, but she's long since gotten used to it as a fixture of Darrow, and it's beautiful even when it's cold. A thought occurs to her, and she fishes her phone out of her pocket. "Here, I can show you."

It only takes a moment to search for 'boardwalk,' an assortment of images coming up. Holding her phone out for Eleven to see, she says, "It's really nice, especially when the weather is warm. There's food, and games, and little shops."

"Like the mall?" El asks. She moves closer so she can see, and realizes that, in a way, it's a lot like a mall. Just outside, the shops much smaller and somehow both more and less discrete than she'd expected to see. All of the pictures show summer: people in shorts, sunlight and blue skies, or starry nights with the shops and games lit brightly.

"Can I go?" she asks, though she probably should be asking Hopper that question, not Beverly.

"Like the mall, yeah," Beverly says with a grin. "Just outside, and by the beach." Having grown up with neither, she's found that she likes the boardwalk more than the mall, but she's always been outdoorsy. They sort of have different purposes, anyway. If she needed to buy something, she would go to the mall, but just to hang out, at least in the warmer months, she would opt for the boardwalk.

"And definitely," she adds, nodding. "We can both go. It's a lot of fun, I think you'll like it."

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