Chapter Text
"First day jitters?"
Max looks over at her dad. Hands at 10 and 2 and his eyes glued to the road, he has the vigilance of a 16-year-old taking his driving test. She shifts in her seat, tugs at the seatbelt biting into her neck. And then she dodges the question. "You didn't have to drive me. I could've taken the bus."
"Your mother let you take the bus in that hick town?"
Lenora is smaller than Hawkins, Max thinks, but she doesn't take the bait. At least, she tries not to. "Actually, Billy drove me."
Her dad's face scrunches up like he's just tasted spoiled milk; his eyes never leave the road. "So she let you go off alone with an older boy and thought that was just fine and dandy? Maxine, if that boy ever touched you—"
Jesus Christ. "Dad, nothing happened. He was my brother. For a while, anyway. He's dead now, anyway, so what does it matter?"
"My daughter's safety will always matter to me."
Which is why you never called me or paid Mom any child support. "So I guess skateboarding to school is also off the table?"
This earns her a smile, somehow. "I'll think about it."
He won't, but that's okay. He's not going to be able to keep up this Super Dad act for long. It's not like he's happy to have her here. Max overheard the conversation between her parents that decided her fate, and her dad was not exactly overjoyed. It went a little something like this:
MOM: [sniffling] Neil and I just need some time, Sam. His son—
DAD: [calmly, angriest he's ever been in his life] And what, it's my fault? My fault your boyfriend's kid died? And now I have to uproot my whole life to accommodate a kid—
MOM: Your daughter.
DAD: If you'd just let her stay with me in the first place we wouldn't be having this conversation.
MOM: You didn't want her!
DAD: That's just not true, Susan.
And so on, and so forth. That was at the end of September, nearly three months after Billy died. And then a couple weeks later, Max got shipped off. And now she's here. And it's complicated, because she didn't really want to be in Hawkins, didn't really want to be living with her mother's tears and Neil's rage, but she also doesn't really want to be living here with her dad, who in turn doesn't really want her here.
Her dad attempts to reignite the feeble flame of their conversation. "It's a good school. This is a nice town. Good people. I've only been here a couple months, but I fit right in and I'm sure you will too. San Diego was getting too urban. I'm glad I got out of there. For my sake, and now for yours too."
Max knows exactly what he means by urban. She bites her tongue and thinks of Lucas. Sweet, gentle Lucas. She should call him. Or write a letter. But what the hell is she going to say? Sorry I dumped you a bajillion times and that my dead stepbrother tried to run you over. My whole family is crazy racist. Come visit? Yeah, no. She'd get in touch eventually. Just…not now. Not yet.
Mercifully, they arrive at the school. Max can't say she's looking forward to it, starting over again, but it's nothing she hasn't done before. Hey, maybe some weird boys will stalk her again and turn out to be halfway cool. Or maybe everyone will ignore her. Either scenario is fine by her. So long as she keeps her head down and nobody popular notices her, she'll be fine. It's just high school. Can't be worse than middle school.
It's not until third period that Max realizes where she heard of Lenora Hills before. During yet another awkward introduction, she feels someone watching her and scans the room until she locks eyes with someone she didn't think she'd ever have to (get to?) see again: El. The last time they'd seen each other, El gave her a hug before getting into Joyce Byers' car. They didn't even get to have a conversation; El had been too busy saying goodbye to Mike.
El casts her furtive glances throughout the period, which makes it kind of hard to concentrate on their English teacher's lecture. She keeps toying with the corner of her notebook paper, as if she's contemplating the risk of tearing off a piece to write a note. Ultimately, she doesn't. Brave enough to fight monsters, not brave enough to risk passing a note in math class. Sounds about right.
Max manages to get out of the room first, but a throng of people stands between her and the next section of clear hallway. She's not above shoving, but there's a tap on her shoulder before she can make her way through. She considers ignoring it. But what's the point? May as well get it over with. Max turns and comes face to face with El. Her hair is longer everywhere except the front, where it looks like Joyce decided to turn her signature bowl cut into bangs. She's wearing a dress with a purple zigzag pattern, which would make Max smile if she were into smiling these days. Looks like she's dressing herself, at least.
"Hi," El says, the way she always does, like it's a full sentence.
"Um. Hi."
"Why are you here?"
"I guess I'm in your English class."
El frowns. "No, I mean, why are you—"
"In Lenora? Short version, my stepdad didn't want me around anymore, so my mom sent me to live with my dad, and he lives here now."
"How long?"
"How long, what?"
"How long have you lived here?"
"Like a week?"
"Oh."
"I didn't remember that you lived here."
"Oh. Okay."
"So…yeah."
"Do you have lunch now?"
Max consults the folded up schedule tucked into her pocket, grateful for something to look at besides El. "Yeah."
El brightens. "Me too. And Will. You can eat with us."
It takes Max a second to remember that El and Will are basically siblings now. No wonder El is glad to see her. What do she and Will even have to talk about? Mike?
She could say no. But then, what is she going to do? Sit alone at another table while El and Will pretend not to look at her? No thanks. Hide in the bathroom? Pathetic. Ask to have her schedule changed? Too much work. Besides, if she says no, it will hurt El's feelings, and even Max doesn't kick puppies.
"Okay. Thanks."
El beams and shows her to the cafeteria, explaining cafeteria food to her the way someone else might describe their visit to a 5-star restaurant. Max has to remind herself that this is El's first time in school. Of course she's stoked about strawberry milk and chicken patties on a bun. "And it only costs one dollar and ten cents! Joyce is trying to get us into a program for reduced lunch so that it only costs fifty cents. But she says she will still give us the full amount and we can save the rest. Oh, there's Will." She waves, and Will waves back, smiling until he clocks Max. He tips his head to the side and frowns slightly before breaking into another smile, although this one looks a little forced.
They join him at the table, El beside him and Max across from them. It feels interrogational. "Max is here," El says, unnecessarily.
Will looks from El, to Max, back to El. His expression is odd. Unreadable. "Yeah, I can see that. Why—"
"Moved in with my dad," Max supplies, hoping she can avoid rehashing the whole thing again. "I forgot the name of the town you guys moved to or I would have let you know." This is a lie, but it's a kind lie, and Max has never subscribed to the whole "friends don't lie" thing that Mike so strongly believes in.
"Isn't it great?" El asks. Will doesn't say anything, but his expression shifts to match hers, and they both look at her eagerly. As if they don't remember hating her guts when she first moved to Hawkins. And, well, maybe they don't. Maybe time has softened that memory for them. It hasn't for her.
"Good thing El found you before the popular kids scooped you up," Will says. Max honestly can't tell if he means it as a joke. She looks between El and Will, trying to gauge if she should laugh. They're not really siblings, but they may as well be. MadMax the Sarcasm Queen versus The Earnest Twins.
Max can't help herself. She smirks and says, "Yeah, she got me in the nick of time. I was about to be recruited to the cheerleading squad."
Will raises his eyebrows. "Their loss."
El frowns. "Cheerleading?"
"You know, the girls who hold pom-poms and cheer at football and basketball games," Max tells her.
"She knows who they are," Will says, a little defensively, which Max initially interprets as a signal that El has been bullied by the cheerleaders.
But El smiles and says, "I see them at the football games. I'm in marching band."
"And regular band too. She's learning clarinet," Will adds.
"Mr. Ware—"
"—the band teacher—"
"Is letting me march even though I can't play very well yet. So for now I pretend to play some of the parts. But I am getting better."
"She's learning viola too."
"I like band more. But orchestra is good too. I might join choir next year. With Will."
"She doesn't believe me when I tell her she's a good singer."
"I'm not!"
"You are."
Max stares at them. It's only been four months. Right? Four months, and they have this back-and-forth, mind-reading, bantering thing going on. She doesn't say anything. She doesn't know what to say.
Will speaks for her. "You're surprised."
"I mean, yeah. I guess. I didn't think you'd be…involved in stuff."
"Let me guess, you also didn't think we'd have any friends?"
Max gestures to their empty table. "You do sit by yourselves at lunch."
"My friends have second lunch," El says.
"And mine have third."
"Oh."
"It's all right," Will tells her. "I only had three friends before, four if you count my brother, five if you count El, and we weren't friends before, not really." It doesn't escape Max's notice that she's not numbered in his count. "And it's not like we're popular here, or anything. But we're also not—"
"Losers," El supplies.
Will shrugs. "Some would disagree. I mean, I'm in choir and AV club. Not exactly a jock. But basically, we fly under the radar. You probably thought we were getting stuffed into lockers, huh?"
Max doesn't want to admit that she hasn't thought about them at all. But if she'd had to guess… "Maybe. I don't know."
"So what teachers do you have?" Will asks, gracefully changing the subject. Four months, and he's an adept conversationalist. Maybe he always has been. The truth is that Max doesn't remember much of Will. Of everyone in the party, she knew him the least. They were friends by association, awkward in-laws.
Grateful for the out he's offering, Max pulls out her schedule again. Will and El analyze it, telling her which teachers are easy graders and which would hit you with a ruler if they were still allowed to do that. She and El have English and French together. Will is in her biology class.
"Why are you taking French?" she asks El. It's hard not to ask how the hell she's going to learn another language when she's still mastering English, but she manages to bite her tongue.
"Jonathan takes German and Will takes Spanish, so I am taking French."
"Wouldn't it make more sense if you all took the same language?"
"We're going to teach each other a little bit of every language. Why are you taking French?"
"I already know a lot of Spanish. I would have been in Spanish III with juniors and seniors, and the guidance counselor thought that was a bad idea." A lot of people spoke Spanish in San Diego. Max had gone to a dual immersion elementary school, and took Spanish up until she moved to Hawkins, where the middle school didn't offer any languages. She had hoped the new school wouldn't notice—she could have used a blow-off class—but they did. So, French it is.
The bell rings. Max has only eaten half her lunch. She chugs her chocolate milk and crushes the carton, chucks the rest of her food in the trash. El looks at her half-eaten sandwich so wistfully that Max almost reaches into the trash can.
Mercifully, she has algebra next, so she'll get a break from Will and El before biology and French at the end of the day. They point her in the right direction, and she mumbles a goodbye before setting off.
After introducing herself again, Max sits in the back of her class and half-listens to her teacher explain quadratic equations. So, Will and El are thriving here. So what? If anything, that's good. They have other friends, so they don't need her. After school activities, so they won't try to hang out after school. Max is free to go straight home and—and—she'll find things to do. Homework takes a while. She still has her skateboard.
"Miss Mayfield?"
Max snaps to attention. The teacher, and most of her classmates, are looking at her. She gets the sense that this isn't the first time the teacher called on her. "Yeah? I mean, yes. Sorry."
The teacher, whose name Max has already forgotten, crosses his arms. "Would you care to come up to the board and solve this equation? Since you, apparently, don't need a refresher on the method?"
Ears burning, Max scrapes her chair on the floor and heads to the front. Thank God she's good at math, and the Indiana curriculum has algebra in eighth grade. She was relieved when the guidance counselor didn't say anything about bumping her up a level in math. That would require an amount of trying that Max just doesn't have in her. She solves the equation easily and sits down. The teacher appraises her with an unreadable look and moves on.
She's not quite so lucky in biology, where she's swiftly assigned as Will's lab partner. Interestingly, he doesn't look thrilled about the arrangement either, which would explain why he didn't mention at lunch that he'd previously been in a trio and there was a 33% chance they'd end up working together.
"You could have written her a letter, you know," he mutters at the end of class, as they're packing up. "Or called."
Max does not look up from her backpack, staring at her zipper like it's the first one she's ever seen.
"You were her best friend, you know."
She was mine too. "Yeah, for like, a week."
"That doesn't matter, and you know it." His warmth at lunch was an act, then. Not so earnest after all. He's not happy she's here. Well, good. That makes two of them.
"So what, you're her keeper now? Did Mike give you instructions for taking care of his pet?" It slips out before she can stop herself. She's impressed by the speed with which she came up with something so awful. She hates herself for it.
The bell rings, and the other kids start filtering out of the classroom. Neither of them move. Will clenches his jaw. "I never understood what Lucas and Dustin saw in you. Still don't."
It should hurt more than it does, but things don't hurt as badly when you deserve them. Max grips the straps of her backpack tightly. "Don't worry, I'm not going to break your precious sister's heart. But that does mean I'm gonna have to sit with you at lunch, unless you want me to find some way to weasel out of that?"
"I'm not telling you not to be her friend. I'm telling you not to be her friend if you're just going to drop her without warning." He backs away, turns to go. "Bye, Max." He doesn't offer to help her find her next class.
It turns out, he doesn't have to. El is waiting for her in the hall. "Prête?"
"Huh?"
"It means 'ready' in French."
"Oh. Yeah, I'm ready."
El beams at her. They walk. "I think you'll like it. Madame Blackwell is really nice. She's not really French, but she lived in France for a while. She tells us lots of stories. Usually in English, so we have not actually learned very much French, which means you will not be too far behind. And you get to pick a French name to use in class."
Max doesn't care about that, but it reminds her to ask: "What do people call you at school? El? Jane?"
"Jane. My paperwork is already complicated because Hopper—" She pauses and clears her throat. The next part comes out strained. Right. Her dad is dead. Max kinda forgot. "He adopted me but now I live with Joyce. So it is easier, for now, to be Jane. I don't feel like a Jane, though. Some people call me Jenny."
"Jenny?"
"I don't mind it. In French class, though, I am Elodie. I would have picked Elle, but in French that means 'she', so it can be confusing. But there are lots of names you can choose. Madame has a whole book with meanings and everything."
El continues to chatter during their weirdly long walk to French class, but Max is barely listening. She's thinking about what Will said. That she dropped El. He's not wrong, but he doesn't get it. Besides, El seems to be welcoming Max back with open arms. Max isn't sure she deserves it, or wants it, but she'll survive it. She's survived worse.
In class, Max selects Manon as her name. According to the teacher's book, it means 'bitter', which seems appropriate. She could choose Maxime, but she doesn't want to be called that any more than she wants to be called Maxine. Besides, apparently her name means 'greatest'. Yeah, right. She slumps in her chair and listens to Madame Blackwell tell a lively—and highly inappropriate—story about getting lost in Paris after a night of partying with her college friends.
And then, just like that, her first day of school is over. El comes to her desk when the bell rings. "I have marching band after school, but I'll see you tomorrow?"
"Yeah," Max says. "Tomorrow."
"I'm so glad you are here, Max."
Max nods. She's not glad she's here, and she's not glad El's here. "My dad is probably waiting for me."
If Max's non-reply bothers El, she doesn't show it. "Okay! Have a good night!" She gives Max one last smile and trots out of the room. Max trails behind her, watching as a group of older kids wave to her enthusiastically and envelop her in their fold. Of course, El is beloved. Why wouldn't she be? She's sweet, and clueless, and easy to love, easy to mold into whoever you want her to be. Max took advantage of that, once.
El disappears with her friends into the crowd. Off to band practice, then home to her little family. El's happy. She's happy.
Why the hell does she get to be happy?