Chapter Text
Roofing nails chip away the tree bark. Flakes like paper splinter and spit. Beneath, live yellow wood is revealed. The nails chip that away too.
This tree isn’t very old, maybe not even as old as Billy. A short, slender shrub with big spade-shaped leaves and odd brown flowers still blooming in mid-May. Grew here in this spot long before he came to Indiana.
Billy kills it in one day.
It feels so good. Strike, rear back, strike again. Harrington's bat is sturdy. It makes short work of the slimmer twiggy branches. The main trunk takes more abuse. Billy lands swing after swing at the main vee where the trunk diverges at waist height. A branch thicker than his wrist cleaves and splinters away.
Rage is good. Rage is an old friend. The charging rush that sparks his body to life. A volcanic extrusion that vapourizes everything in its path. It's a break. A time out. While there is rage nothing else can be happening. Everything else must come to a halt.
It used to be he surfed. Out on the ocean, bobbing on the waves, you are unreachable. A nearly monastic isolation between the rider and the water. A simpler way of relating. Who your dad is is of no concern to the ocean. Who you slept with is no concern of the ocean. It only demands that you swim.
And when he could not surf, Billy would drive.
He had purchased the Camaro one month to the day after he turned sixteen. Working three summers in a row he had saved up enough. Found it in a want ad used with ten thousand miles on it and spent the summer of ‘83 fixing it up.
The car was a monster. A nervy V8 engine wrapped in blue chrome. It had handled like a dream but had an attitude as bad as Billy's. Being in charge of all that horsepower, being able to control it, it was the most powerful Billy had ever felt.
Peeling through the oceanside highways under a clear sky of stars, music turned up, windows down with the marine wind in his hair, Billy sometimes thought he might really escape, really fly away.
That summer before they moved away from San Diego had been the best Billy had lived since his mom left.
But Hawkins, Indiana is a hell he keeps waking up in.
Days in the cabin are mind numbing. He can’t take it anymore. That’s probably what brought him out here, to this tree with Harrington’s spiked bat. Billy had found it in the shed with a trove of other ad hoc weapons. Premade molotovs. Rifles and bear traps. A backpack flamethrower with Russian letters painted on it.
The cabin feels like a cage. El and Hopper and he have been stepping on each other’s toes, all crowded in this psycho bunker of Cold War refugees. Between the three of them they probably average out to one civilized person.
Nobody knows what to do with him. No one's said it out loud but it's obvious. Now that Max has refused to see him, the Scooby Gang doesn’t know what to do with Billy. So they’ve banished him to this ramshackle hovel populated by only semi-mute feral vagabonds. It probably seems like Billy should fit right in. But if Billy has to eat frozen waffles or to listen to that Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young record one more time he is gonna go make good and jump off the quarry cliffs.
So instead he's out here with the bat because he doesn't know what else to do.
No one’s ever known what to do with him.
The bat connects and sticks deep in the trunk. Billy’s forearms burn. Sweat beads down his neck. Chopping down a tree is hard work.
No one’s ever known what to do with him. But the shadow knew just what he was made for.
So Billy resorts to what he knows. Destruction. Destruction of this fucking tree. It’s pitiful, it’s meaningless, and it’s so damningly pathetic, but it’s all he has and Christ it feels good. It feels good to make something suffer worse than he does. Too good to stop.
Fuck the shadow, fuck his father, fuck Steve Harrington and his pet freakshow Munson. Fuck the police chief and his weird spooky daughter. Fuck Max. Fuck Sinclair. Fuck all of it. None of it matters to this sorry tree, decimated under the unyielding blows of Billy’s bat.
“Hargrove!”
Billy spins, splintered bat raised in his grip.
The chief is there with Harrington and Munson huddled behind him, maybe a dozen yards away. Returning from their supply run to the Big Buy. A grocery bag hangs from Steve's elbow. A six pack is tucked under Munson's arm.
"Put the bat down!" commands the old chief.
Sweating, heaving, Billy refuses.
"Aw, man," groans Munson, "not the pawpaw tree."
"What's going on, Hargrove?" the chief tries instead. "Are you hurt?"
"Fuck off!"
"Dude, you totally ruined my bat!"
"Stay the fuck away from me Harrington!" Billy kicks one of the long, ruined branches at him, but it only rolls once and teeters to a stop.
"What's the matter with you?" Dropping his bag of groceries, Harrington shoves through Eddie and the chief.
"Hey, hey, Steve!" Munson tries to hold him back by the arm.
"Harrington, stay back from him."
But Harrington isn't listening. "What the hell did you do all this for?" He surveys the damage that Billy's managed, takes stock of Billy himself, frazzled and roiling, covered in dirt and wood chips.
“You hear me?” Harrington demands, unimpressed with Billy’s savage state. “What’re you doing out here? What’s the matter with you?”
"The fuck do you care!?" Billy snarls.
"Because you're destroying my stuff, asshole! You're destroying Hopper's property."
"Eat shit, Harrington!" Billy brings the splintered bat down in an arc. Too short, the jagged spear of wood passes through the air in front of Harrington's face.
“Jesus, dude, put that down!”
“Fuckin’ make me, shithead!” He could kill Harrington, right now. Might not even live to regret it.
“Look at all this,” Harrington groans, gesturing to the stunted corpse of Billy’s tree, raw yellow wood chips littering the ground. “What’s your problem, huh, Hargrove? Do you need to fuckin’ destroy everything all the time?”
Billy smiles, a rictus, menacing flash. Half-snarl, half-dare. “You stay the fuck back from me, Harrington!”
“Or what, you’re gonna chop me up too?”
“You wanna know where I was the other night, Harrington?” roars Billy. “Hmm? The day with Maxine in the hospital? When you called your little search party? You wanna know what I was doing out at the quarry? I was going to fucking jump.”
"That's enough!" bellows Hopper.
Harrington’s expression breaks. “W-what?”
“I went there to fucking end it and finally be rid of you all!” Billy lobs the fractured bat overhand at Steve’s head.
Harrington puts up his arms to protect his face and Billy pounces. Lunging, he grabs the front of Harrington's shirt. It's easy to stagger him.
"Jesus Christ, what's your problem, man?"
"You are." And Billy hits Steve in the face.
It's a really sloppy hit. Not a lot of force or coordination, but it makes contact. Harrington recoils and tries to duck his head behind his raised arms but Billy's regrouping for a second blow when something strong grips the back of his shirt and trips his foot and shoves real hard.
And then just as fast, Billy is looking up at the blue sky through leafy tree branches. Like the first night he found himself in the woods.
Air is knocked from his lungs and he coughs, groaning in pain, curling like a bug on its back.
Then Hopper's mean, angry face is menacing over him. "You stay down."
Like Billy has a choice. The old cop bowled him over like a Mack Truck.
Again Billy coughs as his lungs resume breathing. His vision doubles a bit and the back of his head stings and throbs. Connected square with one of the hard tree branches he'd hacked away. Fucking figures.
"Shit, dude," mumbles Munson from somewhere nearby, "did he get'cha good?"
"No, it's not bad. It's fine, Eddie, really."
Once the world stops swimming, Billy props himself up on his elbows. Just out of arm's reach there's Munson poking the fresh red mark on Harrington's cheekbone. Hopper is inspecting the damage too, planted squarely between Billy and Harrington.
“Let’s have a look,” instructs Hopper.
“Seriously, it’s fine.”
“Nah, nah, lemme see.” The ex-chief takes Harrington’s chin in one big mit of a hand, turns it up to the light to get a better look. He whistles. “No blood. Eye’s fine. But you’ll probably have a shiner in the morning.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Harrington shrugs out of Hopper’s grip. “I’ve had worse. I’ve had worse from him.”
They all three turn to look at Billy. From the ground, he feels fucking mortified. Sitting flat on his back among the leaves and the splinters. Like pathetic kid. A psycho that can never get it together.
Hopper told him to stay down, so he does. Doesn’t need the old cop giving him a beatdown in front of everyone. Hopper has easily got half a foot and forty pounds on Neil. Ex-military, too. Probably hits like a freight train.
“Man, why’d you have to go berserk on the pawpaw tree?” Munson asks him like a crazy person.
Billy blinks.
Munson scrapes a shattered branch with his boot. Gets a twig of big shaggy leaves over his toe and kicks it toward Billy. “See?! You know how long it’s been since I had a pawpaw? Like five years, easy. Those would’ve been ready to eat by September.”
Billy doesn’t know what the fuck Munson’s talking about.
Hopper stares him down, bushy eyebrows scowling, radiating fury. “Hargrove, get inside. Now.”
Well, at least Billy’s not getting a beatdown in front of Harrington and Munson.
He scrambles to his feet. Brushes the wood chips and splinters from his knees. His hands are still shaking.
All three watch him retreat to the cabin. Billy doesn’t miss how Munson tugs on Harrington’s arm to shield him.
Harrington’s burgundy BMW sedan sits in the clearing by the cabin. Next to the front bumper, El is standing. Her pensive face observes, takes in the whole scene. Billy pretends to not notice her.
Stomping up the steps, Billy throws the front door open so hard the windchimes on the porch rattle. Slams it closed just as forcefully. The frame of the cabin shakes.
Killing that tree has only made him tired. Adrenaline crashes and now he’s only sore and just as enraged. Why couldn’t Harrington just stay the fuck out of it? Why couldn’t he allow Billy an outlet. The sudden dark quiet of the cabin settles over him like a heavy blanket. His ears ring.
After a few gasping breaths, Billy feels the sting in his knuckles. His hands are chipped and cracked. He tore a fingernail down to the quick. Really, he’s coming out of this encounter worse off than Harrington.
Like walking through fog, Billy goes to the big porcelain sink at the back of the cabin. He turns on the tap and lets the ice cold well water wash over his scraped up hands.
The sting in his fingertips is focusing. Sharp and steadying. The little cuts and scrapes turn bright red under the cold water. Cupping his hands Billy splashes some water over his face, wipes his eyes with the back of his arm.
He’s dead meat. Hopper is going to kill him. The old cop is going to beat Billy black and blue and toss him out on his ass. Maybe put one between his eyes. Would probably turn him over to the Army if he could.
Stupid fucking Harrington. Charging at him when Billy told him to stay back. Pushing his last hairline nerve. Now he’s gone and got Billy killed.
Outside, beyond the timber plank walls, voices murmur. Hopper, Munson, Harrington. Billy can’t make out any words for the most part. But then Munson’s loud obnoxious voice, coming closer, crows, “How ‘bout you, Harrington? You ever have an Indiana banana? They’re so freakin’ good, man. There’s no way you’ve never had one. My uncle used to take me down to the creek when I was a kid at the end of summer and there was a whole mess of pawpaws. Big yellow leaves. They’re soft like a banana but kinda taste like pineapple. Man, we’d each eat, like, ten in one sitting and take the rest home. Should see if I can find some in the fall—”
Munson is still rattling on this insane nonsense when a car door shuts and the BMW’s engine turns over. Tires crunch over the litterfall and the car slowly putters out back toward the road.
Probably the last time Billy will ever see either of them.
The screen door rattles and slams shut. Billy’s head swivels. The chief and the girl come in from the porch with their plastic bags of groceries.
“Hey El, go hang out in your room for a minute, alright?” the chief tells her calmly, not taking his eyes off Billy.
El hesitates. Looks slowly between Billy and the chief and then back again.
“Remember all our talks about privacy?” asks the chief when she doesn’t budge.
She nods. “Doors can be closed. No three inches rule.”
“That’s right,” replies the chief, like that’s a statement that makes sense. “So I’ve got to talk to Billy in private for a moment. Okay? Sound good?”
Still reluctant, El moves around the coffee table and old sofa, her big brown eyes riveted to Billy as she walks into her bedroom and shuts the door without touching it.
Then it’s just him and the chief. Billy turns off the faucet, shakes his wet hands off in the old farmhouse style sink. His knuckles aren’t bleeding, just red and sore now that the dirt’s washed off. They shake as he twists the tap off.
“Right, you and me gotta talk, kid.”
The chief places his grocery bags down on the coffee table. Billy can track him moving through the cabin, even with his back turned. He turns to face him before the chief can get too close.
Billy’s gonna fight, if it comes to that. Doesn’t care that the chief could probably wipe the floor with him. Doesn’t care that the telepath in the next room could crumple him like a tinfoil ball with a flick of her wrist. He’ll go down swinging. Always promised himself that he would.
The chief towers on the other side of the small linoleum kitchen table, folds his arms across his barrel chest. Got that disapproving glower written all over his face, looking like a mean son-of-a-bitch.
“You gonna tell me what the hell that was all about out there?” asks the chief.
Billy sets his jaw. Refuses to cower. “Nothing.”
“Enough bullshit, Hargrove. Start talking. ‘Nothing’ doesn’t cut it.”
“Harrington pissed me off.”
“Yeah?” the chief’s bushy eyebrows fly up almost comically. “And what before that caused you to go apeshit on that tree out there?”
“I was angry.” Billy shrugs.
“About what?”
Insulted, Billy scoffs, rolls his eyes. Tries to look annoyed and not terrified.
“Okay,” the chief exhales, runs both hands over his face, “right, fine. Establishing boundaries. Here goes.”
The chief pulls out the kitchen chair and sits. Leans heavy on his elbows like a bear. Billy sidesteps to have a clearer line to the front door.
“Look, kid, I know you’re angry, okay? And really, you got every right to be. This is bullshit, what you’re going through. What you’ve been through. You probably don’t give a shit about what some old man thinks but believe it or not I was eighteen and pissed off once too, y’know? And you are definitely dealing with more shit than I ever went through at that age.”
Technically, Billy should be nineteen, but no one can agree upon whether they should count the birthday he had been dead for.
“And now you’re stuck here all day,” Hopper continues, “with the other dead people in hiding and we're all stepping on each other's toes and no one is happy to have to be out here. I know that. I get that. So if you’ve gotta blow off some steam and chop down a whole tree every day like Paul Bunyan or something, I’m not gonna complain. Knock yourself out. But listen to me. Hey— hey, look at me. You cannot keep attacking people. My daughter lives here. I’ve got a 15-year-old girl that has the entire US Army hunting her, ready to shoot on sight. If you’re going to be a danger to her, if you’re going to draw attention to us, if you’re going to jeopardize her safety, then we’re going to have to find somewhere else for you to go.”
Billy sneers, bounces his knee. “Think she can protect herself, chief.”
“She’s just a kid. She shouldn’t have to.”
The sooner she learns to, the better for her, Billy thinks. But he knows better than to say so.
His hand throbs where he made contact with Harrington’s cheekbone. Billy folds his arms to try and hide his reddened knuckles. Doesn’t understand what came over him, really, only knows that he’s not sorry for it.
"What you said out there," the ex-chief continues, a margin more compassionate, "about being at the quarry. That true?"
Billy bites the inside of his cheek. Nods. "Yeah."
"Do I need to be worried about that?"
"Won't be your problem to worry about."
"Because I've lost people that way before," Hopper says. "Buddies from 'Nam. I’ve had to bury a few of them. I've found people before, on the job, working as police. I've had to talk to spouses, family who've found someone."
No one who finds Billy is gonna care. Poachers or hobos, nothing they haven't seen before. Not gonna stick in anyone's mind.
"So if I need to worry about this," implores the ex-chief, "then you need to tell me right now, and we'll figure something out. But do not let my daughter be the one who walks in here and finds you. Or goes looking for you in here and finds you." He taps the side of his own head. "Please. I’m asking. Just, as a favour to me. Man to man. Don't do that to her."
For some reason, the thought of El finding his body makes Billy's skin crawl. Disappointing her. Letting her down like that. Makes him feel like a real piece of shit.
"You don't gotta worry about it," says Billy at length. He exhales, looks away. "Just a stupid spur-of-the-moment thing. Not gonna try it again."
"Can I have your word on that?"
Billy rolls his eyes. "Sure. Whatever. You have my word."
The chief sits back in the creaky kitchen chair, looks at Billy for a long, silent moment, clearly assessing Billy's trustworthiness. Billy stares right back.
"Okay," Hopper nods, resigned, "okay. I'll take your word."
Billy hasn't decided if he really means it, but he'll probably give it a few days, in any case.
“What’s this bad blood between you and Harrington, anyway?” asks the chief after Billy’s silence.
“He’s annoying,” grumbles Billy, “and a smartass. Thinks he’s hot shit just ‘cause he drives a nice car and played for some shit high school basketball team.”
The chief laughs, a gruff, dismissive sound. Raises an accusative eyebrow at Billy. Billy squeezes both hands into fists.
“Okay,” the chief exhales, “that’s fine. You two don’t have to like each other. Whatever the reasons. But I don’t care about your bickering and your horseplay, got it? That high school bullshit does not matter around here. I’ve got a kid. She comes first.”
Billy clenches his jaw and swallows down a swell of emotion. The rage is still simmering in his throat. It’ll be there all day now.
“Understand me?”
“Yeah, I understand,” replies Billy.
“Got anything you want to say to me? Now’s the time.”
Billy looks at the floor, shakes his head.
“Alright,” heaves the chief with a tremendous sigh, “then I guess we’re done here. Put these groceries away before they go bad, okay? Me and El are gonna take a walk, check all the traplines and tripwires. We’ll have our radio. Be back in an hour or two. You want a smoke?”
“No.”
“Okay. Heat up some leftovers if you get hungry, but we're having spaghetti tonight. At El’s request.” Hop stands and knocks on El’s door before entering.
And now Billy is alone. Standing in the small kitchen not knowing what to do with himself. The old fridge hums. The faucet drips. Billy fidgets with unresolved anticipation. He hadn’t expected Hopper to just leave. It feels almost like a trick.
He turns back to the sink. Leans both palms on the rounded porcelain edge. Stares at the dirty dishes stacked in the basin. The goofy mounted bass gapes at him from the wall. Billy almost knocks it down.
El and Hopper are back by sundown.
The purpling dusk falls early in the woods. No streetlights and dense trees mean that visibility drops fast. This cabin might as well be at the end of the world.
Standing out on the deck, itching for a cigarette, Billy sees their flashlight beams lurching through the underbrush first. Then the snapping of twigs under their feet, drawing closer, the approach of an unstealthy predator.
They break into the clearing side-by-side, looking like Butch Cassidy and a tiny Sundance.
“All good?” asks Hopper, climbing the porch steps.
Arms crossed, Billy nods. "Yes, sir."
“Good.” Hopper steps inside the front door, a man of few words.
Billy plans on lingering out on the deck until it gets too cold. Doesn’t want to be trapped in the cabin in case Hopper belatedly decides to dole out some discipline.
But, to his horror, El lingers on the deck.
She is not subtle. Stands there and watches him unblinking, with the calm madness of a prophet. A modern seer who peers into the otherworlds and is driven insane by what she sees.
Touched in the head. Literally, as it turns out, in El’s case.
“Hello, Billy,” she greets with a clumsy smile.
She’s standing in her oversized hiking boots and a red, garish United Colors of Benetton sweater, looking like a camp counsellor who’d fallen into a mosh pit. A look that is not helped by her buzz cut.
“Hey,” he offers.
“Do you feel better, Billy?”
For just an instant, Billy considers blowing her off. But he can't keep anything from her. So he replies, “No.”
“What happened? When me and Hop got home in the car with Steve and Eddie?”
“Scrapped with Harrington. Wasn’t that bad. I was angry. He volunteered himself.”
“Why were you angry?”
“Jesus, why do you think, kid? Because I’m fuckin’ stuck out here in this shithole cabin in the middle of nowhere with you two. And frankly neither of you are all that great company. And somehow I’ve been… been dead for a fucking year, and absolutely fucking no one can explain how that is possible. And there’s… there’s monsters. That thing fucked me up, fucked up my head. It got to me, and it got to Maxine. This shitty fucking bullshit town got us both. And she won’t even see me. Thinks I’m a monster too. And none of that even fucking matters because the whole world might be ending soon. Monsters or ICBMs or whatever else pops up. So there. Any of that answer your question?”
He doesn’t mean to raise his voice. But El doesn’t seem frightened. Only sad.
“Why did you hit Steve?” she asks solemnly.
Does she know? Can she see it in Billy’s head? What he and Harrington had done that night out by his pool? “Because I don’t like him. And I was angry.”
“But he wants to help you.”
“No he doesn’t. And even if he did, he’s going about it in a dumbshit way.”
El blinks. “Dumbshit,” she mutters to herself, testing the word.
Taught her a curse word. Billy suppresses a chuckle. Oh well, too late now.
In the leaf litter, the crickets have begun their song as the sun descends. Shadows pool and grow on the forest floor. Billy turns up the flame on the hanging lantern, giving them a smidgen more light on the deck. It will attract mosquitoes and june bugs pretty soon as the night floods in, but Billy won’t be staying out too long.
After a moment of thoughtful silence, El turns her stoic face back toward Billy and tells him, “Sometimes, when I’m angry, I hurt people too.”
“That so, kid?”
“Yes. Sometimes they were bad people. But sometimes they were not.”
Okay. “Sure.”
“You and me are alike, I think. When we are angry.”
Billy doesn’t think he and El are anything alike. “Nah, you’re wrong about that one.”
“People have hurt us. And that makes us angry. That other people can get away with making us hurt. It’s not fair.”
Billy clenches his jaw, chews on this thumbnail.
“The anger. It can make you powerful,” she says seriously. “But also… dangerous.”
“And who told you that?”
“Papa.”
Hopper had given Billy the broad strokes. A research scientist turned Cold War spook. Took in disaffected flower children and war veterans from Vietnam and treated them with LSD and electroshock. Kidnapped children for Uncle Sam and prepared them to fight the next war. Hid them all away in a sleepy Indiana town, right under the country’s nose.
It’s still fuckin’ weird to hear El call him that.
“Yeah?” Billy growls. “Your ‘papa’ tell you that? And why should I listen to anything that sick psycho ever said?”
“You still listen to what your papa said about you."
That blindsides him. He stares at her in open shock. How the fuck? How does she know that?
But of course she does. She knows him better than anyone. She would have seen it first hand in his own mind.
Her mad seer’s eyes blink. “Papa was a bad man. He loved me, but he did bad things. He lied. He hurt Mama. He hurt me. Hurt a lot of people. Your papa is a bad man, too. He hurt people too.”
“Don’t,” Billy warns, teeth gritting.
“I saw,” she tells him, her eyes welling. “I saw. I saw your papa. What he did to you and your mama.”
“Stop it!” snaps Billy, but he quickly gets a hold of himself. If Billy raises his voice to El, no doubt Hopper’s wrath would be permanent and unsurvivable. “You shut up about that! Understand me? That shit is none of your goddamn business. Got it? And if your papa was such a bad man then why do you even give a shit about anything he says about you?”
“Why do you?”
Red hot fury pricks behind Billy’s eyes. This kid. Thinks she knows anything? Thinks she can just mutter vague bullshit and Billy will be impressed?
But he can still feel her standing next to him on the beach. Can see her guarding his child self. Can still sense her presence in his heart of hearts, the parts of himself he can’t stand to look at. No amount of his usual snapping and threats will deter her.
She is not scared of him at all.
Is she doing it right now? Peering into his most guarded memories? Could Billy even tell if she was?
“Our papas,” she tells him, “they lied to us. They are wrong about us. We shouldn’t listen to them just because they are our papas.”
To save face, Billy looks away.
“Sometimes we hurt people when we’re angry. And when you hurt someone, you should say sorry,” El informs him.
“And what if I’m not sorry?”
“Then you are like your papa.”
Billy rounds on her, flaring rage. Takes a step toward her, fists clenched.
But El is immovable as stone, bedrock sturdier than anything ever built by man.
She stares him down in her tacky clothes and buzzed head. Calls his bluff. She doesn’t even need to worry about repelling him because she knows she is right. The calm surety of the superhuman.
They stare at one another as El waits him out. Patient as with a child throwing a tantrum.
“When I am angry,” El begins, “or scared, or hurt, and I feel like I’m going to scream, I have to remember to breathe. And it helps me to stop.”
“Breathe? That’s it?”
“Yes.”
“I breathe every day of my life, kid. Never made me less angry about anything.” Billy scolds himself for buying into this nonsense for even a minute.
“It’s a special way. Deep. Slow. Like you’re diving underwater.”
“Why?”
“To focus.” She says the word like she recently learned it. “It slows down my heartbeat. Makes my muscles relax. It makes finding people easier. If there is no water tank. Or static.”
Whatever that means.
“You breathe in. Then hold. One. Two. Three. Then breathe out.”
“Yeah, sure, kid. Just leave me alone.”
But El stays right where she’s standing.
“I’m serious!” he barks and spins on her again. “Get away from me!”
She doesn’t so much as blink at his faux lunge. Billy can’t even scare a little girl anymore.
“We want to help you, Billy. Everyone wants to help you. Me and Steve and Mike and Will and everyone else. We want to find out what happened to you. Even if you are mean. Because we should help people who need help. If this way isn’t working, then we will find a way that is not dumbshit.”
Billy sputters to hear her swear in that solemn tone of hers. Actually cracks up, despite himself. Smiles darkly and runs his tongue over his canines.
“Hopper is making spaghetti tonight!” El smiles, suddenly sunny and gleeful. “I am going to help. You should come inside soon. Dinner won’t take long.”
She hoists open the screen door. But she pauses, looks back at Billy standing on the porch with her solemn regard.
“You remind me of my sister,” she says sadly.
“You have a sister?”
But El only shakes her head before stepping inside. “Not anymore.”