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[eggos]

Talking to Ellie about how and why El had been hurt by her actions at the train crash had helped a lot. Ellie had been cagey — a word that El has found she both hates and likes — about her reasons, but she'd had reasons, and Eleven can't fault her for them. It's made it a little easier to understand her, and that had made it easier to be her friend.

And they are friends, she realizes. Like the others, she checks in on Ellie often, making sure she isn't getting hurt or into trouble, using The Void and, more and more, her phone to text her or call her. Sometimes, it's a short and simple conversation to coordinate a meet-up, but sometimes Eleven can coax Ellie into longer talks, and that's nice, too, although Ellie has proved that she's even worse about using her phone to text than Eleven ever has been.

On Saturday, Eleven texts her to ask if she wants some cotton candy and a prize from one of the boardwalk games. She's gotten very good at using her powers to win, and Beverly has told her that it isn't cheating when the games are already rigged anyway. If she can bring a little silly delight to her friend's day, then why not do it?

It takes Ellie three days to answer, which might offend some of the more modern teenagers, but El understands completely. The novelty of phones isn't something either of them particularly grew up with. It's easy to forget that they're there.

Besides, she knows Ellie hasn't gone from Darrow because she can see her in The Void.

When they agree to meet, El heads out of the townhouse and to the boardwalk. It's easy enough to find Ellie, at least, and she smiles once she sees her.

“Ellie!” she calls, waving to get her attention. Her hair is up in a ponytail to keep it off her neck in the summer warmth, and she's wearing high waisted shorts with her bright graphic tee shirt tucked into them, and crew socks shoved down against the tops of her sneakers. Her bracelets jangle together over her left wrist as she waves, with only her blue hair tie keeping them all together.

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[sallyfuckingride]

This world of lighted screens is easy to fall into. The phone I could take or leave. Movies, video games and comic pages are what fills my time. Soon it'll be school. My idea -- somehow I'm still not sold on it. I want the education. The people -- like my phone -- don't interest me as much. I can't imagine I have anything in common with these kids.

Being friends with El gives me some hope. Talking to her, she sticks out like she's different, but she fits in well. Maybe it's her social appetite, her clear fashion sense. Despite all of her hardship, El manages to be something of a normal kid. Maybe I will be, too.

Is that even what I want? I don't fucking know.

"Hey, El," I reply, a muted smile back. The boardwalk is the kind of place I always imagined -- all chaos and laughter and an impressive range of smells. Popcorn, sugar, barf and the beach. And me, in my newest pair of pink sneakers. Jeans that actually fit. Still long sleeves, despite the heat. I'm still hiding the bite on my arm.

Did she dress up? Should I have? What would that even look like?

[eggos]

"Hi," she greets, still smiling, though it tilts a little confused when she says, "Why will I wish I was not born?" It had seemed like a warning as much as a joke, but despite having been in Darrow for three years, living a teenager's life, El is still not knowledgeable in common parlance. There has to be a reason Ellie's said it that El just doesn't understand.

[sallyfuckingride]

For a second, I don't know what she's talking about. The judgemental twist smooths out of my face. Right. Their phone messages.

"It means I'm gonna beat your ass at these games," I boast. Remembering how she is with metaphors, I add quickly, "I'm gonna win." This is just a fact.

Now, to find a shooting game.

[eggos]

El has grown more familiar with competitive games — high school sports have helped with that a lot — but it surprises her that Ellie wants to play the boardwalk games against instead of with her. But maybe that is fun for her, in the same way that it is fun for the football players to play against each other. Ellie might find enjoyment in the competition in the same way that El finds enjoyment in the collaboration.

"Beverly says that the games are rigged," she warns, and then explains, "That is my sister. She says it is okay to cheat because they are rigged, which is like cheating, too."

[sallyfuckingride]

El doesn’t take the bait. She's not as competitive as I'm used to. A flash of disappointment disguises the sting of feeling, once again, like I have no clue what I'm doing.

"Your sister?" She has a sister. That's new. I guess I know more about her life before than I do about what she has going on here. "Is that who you live with?"

[eggos]

"My sister and my papa," she confirms, smiling warmly just to think of them. "They are not the family I was born to, but they are the family that picked me." The pride in her voice does nothing to mask the very careful articulation of her words, though it does break her from her usual flat tone of voice. "He is not the papa that kept me in the lab," she adds reassuringly, recalling how Ellie had called Papa 'a dick' that day on the ice rink. "Hopper is a good father."

[sallyfuckingride]

I nod, happy to have something to relate to. "Good."

We're walking along, the stalls of games and food pouring sound and scent into the crowd. The spaces on the sidelines, where the tents turn to tables, are currently more crowded than the aisle of entertainment. Thank fuck. I'm still not used to being around so many people at once.

"Joel isn't my dad, either." I figure she knows -- I called him my friend right before I tossed her ass off a derailed train car. "You know Hopper from before? And your sister?"

[eggos]

"Hopper, yes," El says with a nod. "Beverly is not from Hawkins. She is from a place called Derry. She had a bad papa, too, before she came here." She probably shouldn't have said that, but it's out, now, and it's important for what she says next: "That is why I like Darrow. It can be bad sometimes, but it gave me my sister, and brought us both away from bad things. It brought many of my friends from bad things." She swings in a circle around Ellie, looking at the games.

"Oh! Skee ball is my favorite," she adds, pointing at a skee ball booth. "The name is really 'skee ball,'" she adds. "I used to think that was a lie, but it is not."

[sallyfuckingride]

El confuses me. She's this lab-forged badass, full of optimism and trust. She talks like she walked into this place knowing it was good. Not like a wild animal fighting for her life.

Maybe Hopper, like Joel, was here first. I hope so, for El's sake.

"I've seen this one!" I answer, excited to change the subject. Something similar caught my eye in the mall back in Boston. "Where's the ball?" It's called Skee Ball but all I can see is skee.

[eggos]

El pulls a dollar out of her pocket and feeds it into the game. It takes a game card, too, but there's something very tactile about using a physical dollar instead. "You give it money to play your turn," she explains, "and your turn has three skee balls, and if you get the ball into the smallest hole in the middle, you get tickets. The tickets act like money, and you use them to get a prize from the man."

She hopes Ellie doesn't ask why they don't just pay the man for the prize to begin with, but only because she doesn't really know the answer.

[sallyfuckingride]

"I've been to a couple arcades," I tell her, more patient that I would be with Joel or would have been with El a year ago. She and I each lived joyless existence in one way or another. I don't want to alienate her more when she's, like, my only friend around my age.

Not that I've told her much about my life. I don't know if it's allowed -- but I'll tell her if she asks.

I watch El take her turn, soaking it all in. I wonder if she's going to use her... powers, I think she called it. She doesn't. She slides the ball underhanded.

"Wouldn't it make more sense to throw it?"

[eggos]

El doesn't answer right away, watching the ball pop up and bounce against the walled rings before landing between the lowest two and rolling down to the hole between them. Ten points.

"Against the rules," El explains, turning to Ellie and offering her one of the balls. "It is... like bowling, but smaller."

[sallyfuckingride]

I nod. Bowling, sure. I can pretend I know what the hell that is.

Easily enough, I follow her example. The toss is too hard and bounces against the top of the enclosure and ricochets down into the well in front of the buckets with the point values. Damn it.

It's her turn now, so I hand her the next ball and stand back.

"How do your powers work?" The question seems sudden, so I add, "you said I could ask you anything."

[eggos]

El nods. "You can," she assures. She holds the ball, hesitating to take her turn. She doesn't understand the question. "Do you want to know how I can have them, or do you want to know what I have to do to use them?" she asks, because those are very different questions. The answers might end up being the same, though, because she doesn't entirely know the answers to either of them.

[sallyfuckingride]

Without a hint of my typical irony, I answer, "I want to know everything." This is no understatement. I want the universe's knowledge, to chew it all up and keep it until there's nothing I don't know. No assailant could get the jump on me. No asshole could hurt the people I love. No vibration of cosmic dissonance I couldn't comprehend.

Getting to know El is a pretty good start.

[eggos]

El laughs, because that's familiar. She wants to learn so much, too, to understand the world that she grew up not knowing. Still, it doesn't help her answer her question, so she considers, then shows Ellie the skee-ball. She focuses her eyes on it, grips it with her powers, then her hand. The ball hovers there in the air.

"I find it with my mind," she explains, moving the ball towards the skee-ball ramp. "And then I hold onto it. It is not like a hand. It is... a thought. I think it forward. I think it back." The ball moves forward and back with her words. "I think it towards the rings." The ball wobbles as it gets closer to them, as she tries to make sure it doesn't hit the rings themselves. Splitting her focus between speaking and doing is hard, too, something she doesn't usually do outside of The Void. "I don't know how it works. It just works."

[sallyfuckingride]

My eyebrows float up like the ball El is levitating with her fucking mind. I watch it with all of the attention of the first time Joel finally showed me how to load and shoot a rifle.

"Holy shit," I breathe. I saw her move an entire sheet of busted metal off my body and still wasn't prepared for this display. "You're like a superhero."

[eggos]

Mike had said that, so many times, and hearing it now has El blushing a little. She's always wanted to be a superhero. She'd even met with the spider man and tried to be Move Girl for a time. It hadn't worked out. The ball lands in the center hole, the highest scoring one, and El smiles, then reaches up to wipe the sluggish trickle of blood just beginning to peek from her nostril.

"I can find people, too," she says. "I..." She hesitates, then says, "It is easier with a picture of them, but if I remember what they look like, then I can find them. In Hawkins, I could find them anywhere. In Darrow, I can only find them in Darrow. I like to check on my friends, that way. To know they are still here."

[sallyfuckingride]

This is all cool as fuck. I cheer when she makes the shot until I notice, "you're bleeding." She knows and she wipes the blood away carelessly. "Does that always happen? Does it hurt?" The second question is the kicker. If using her powers makes her bleed, does that mean her powers hurt her?

Finding people is also cool, but not if one day using her powers is going to kill her.

[eggos]

"Not 'hurt,' exactly," she says. "But I can feel it. Like a squeeze." She shrugs, wiping her knuckle clean on her shorts. "If I use my powers more, my nose bleeds less. It means I am stronger, I think." And she's stronger than she's ever been. She smiles a little. "You do not need to worry," she assures.

[sallyfuckingride]

There are still too many things I don't understand to have such a strong opinion. Guess I'd better get to knowing them. Maybe I'm wrong, but when does that ever happen?

"But how did your powers happen? You weren't born with them. Did he make them?" And how would that work? And why would he do this? I could go on forever.

[eggos]

Eleven considers this. "I think I was born with them," she says at last. "I think Papa did something to Mama while I was inside her. I don't know what, or how. But I was not very strong when I was little. I grew into it." That last bit is said uncertainly, like she isn't sure the phrase is the right one or that she isn't using it right. Three years in Darrow and she still doubts her speech sometimes.