Chapter Text
The summer holidays were unfairly short after having started so late. According to the school’s notice board, all the following holidays would take place as they normally would after a fresh start into the new year.
Max anxiously gripped the push ring of the wheelchair. She felt El’s hand on her shoulder and took a breath in. It had been a while since she had last been here, and she imagined all the students arriving in the parking lot and the courtyard. Someone was honking their car, someone else shouted something across the yard. A ball was kicked somewhere.
“I can’t do this,” she said. “Let’s go home.”
“We can both do this,” El replied, though her voice sounded uncertain. “You know your schedule?”
“Memorized it.” Max tapped her head. “Rooms and everything. We’ve got the first together.”
“We’ll sit together?”
“Obviously.” With another anxious exhale, she propelled her wheelchair forward before stopping abruptly and reaching for El’s arm, tugging at her shirt. “I have no idea what’s in front of me, you need to help me. Be my eyes.”
“Do you want me to push you?” El offered.
“No.” Max grabbed the push rings again. “If you do, they’ll immediately see me as helpless. Just tell me what’s in front of me, I trust you.”
“There’s nothing in your way now,” El said and began walking slowly, Max following her voice. “Clear path to the entrance. But it’ll be loud in there, there are many people, so people will probably walk in front of us.”
The paved ground turned into linoleum which made it easier to move the wheelchair, but all the conflicting noises disoriented Max. Where was all the talking coming from? Who was loudly running up the stairs? Someone shut their locker in the hall, but Max couldn’t tell which one it was.
“Slow down,” El said and put her hand on Max’s shoulder again. “People are crossing through the hall. But most of them are making room for you.”
“Are they staring?” Max asked, turning her head from one side to the other to try and orientate herself through the noise.
“Some of them are,” El said honestly. “They don’t know me, and last they saw of you, you were walking around. They will get used to it. Left turn.”
Max followed her instructions until they arrived at the classroom. She sighed in relief and let El guide her to the desks. El pushed the chair out of the way for her, so Max could settle in next to her.
She leaned over and quietly asked, “Is there anyone we know in this class?”
“Yes.” El paused briefly. “Troy.”
“God damn it, that fucking asshole. What about the others?”
“I don’t know,” El replied. “I think Will has a different class now, maybe they’re with him.”
Max let her head fall back briefly and groaned. “I hate school,” she stated. “And I hate it even more now.” She crossed her arms on the desk and put her head down. El was unpacking her pens and paper, but Max hadn’t brought anything. She hadn’t received the Braille books yet, and writing was pointless if she couldn’t see the paper. It’d just end up a mess anyway. She’d have to rely on El to take her notes for a while.
The door opened again, and the chatter around her died down.
“Maxine,” the teacher said. She had a rough voice and was already unlikeable to Max considering she had called her by her full name. She vaguely recognized the voice to belong to her English teacher from last year whose name she couldn’t remember. “Heads off the table, please,” Miss What’s-her-name said. Reluctantly, Max leaned back in her wheelchair and stared straight ahead, hoping that whatever fierce was still left in her eyes would burn a hole into the wall.
“I see we have a new student,” the teacher said. She flipped through some papers and Max imagined her staring with squinting eyes on a list. “Jane, is it?”
El didn’t respond, but Max assumed she nodded with blushing cheeks. She knew that her best friend hated attention, and she was probably shrinking in her chair right now.
“Good,” Miss What’s-her-name said. “I won’t make you introduce yourself to your classmates, you can do that on your break. We’ll get started right away, please open your books to page 116 – Maxine, where’s your book?”
Max crossed her arms. “At home,” she said.
“What is it doing at home?”
“Having more fun than I am, I imagine.”
The teacher signed and put the book down on her desk. “Bring it next time.”
“I won’t.” Max felt all the attention gather on her instead of El, but she didn’t mind it.
“It’s the first day, Maxine,” the teacher said. “Do I already need to call your mother?”
Max shrugged. “Feel free to try. But that won’t help you, you need to call whoever is responsible for distributing the correct books to your students and get them to give me the right material.”
“I can share my book with her,” El offered quietly, but the teacher didn’t seem to hear her.
“You should’ve bought your own books, you had plenty of time to get the correct material,” Miss What’s-her-name said. There wasn’t as much as a hint of a smile in her voice.
“I don’t know how obvious it is when you look at me,” Max said, “but I am blind. I can’t read in those books. What’s the point of bringing them? No, the book my family tried to get hasn’t been available yet, and I’m pretty sure that the school needs to provide accessible books to disabled students. Nobody has done that, so, I won’t bring my book until I get the right one.”
“Maxine, out of all the excuses you have made up to get out of doing your work, this is by far the most outrageous one.”
“Made up?” Max laughed briefly. “Do you want to come closer and look at my eyes? Do you want me to walk you through the events that led to this happening? Believe me, if I wanted to get out of work, I wouldn’t make up something that would require me to fake a disability. So, get someone to get my Braille books for me, and then I’ll do my work.”
“She really is blind,” El added next to her. “But I can share my book with her.”
“Alright,” the teacher said with a sigh. “Do that for today. I’ll see what we can do about those books.”
The class dragged by, and Max tried to listen to everything the teacher was saying to them, but it was difficult to stay focused the whole time and remember everything. On top of that, she felt the constant stares on her back.
When it came to working on exercises, El moved closer to her and quietly began reading the tasks to her. Max tried to focus on it, but after not even one hour of class her focus was already drained, and she desperately needed a break.
“Read it again?” she asked quietly, her mind having wandered elsewhere.
“Quiet down back there,” the teacher called. “The others are trying to focus.”
“You’re hindering my education,” Max said with a steady voice. “I’m trying to hear the tasks.”
“That’s fine, but we don’t all need to hear it. Keep it down.”
“I’m already whispering,” Max argued. “How am I supposed to learn anything if I can’t read the tasks?” Someone was whispering something in the rows behind her, and her classmates’ glances burned on her. “Why aren’t you telling them to be quiet?” she asked, forcing herself to keep her bubbling anger down. “I’ve been here for less than two hours and already, I’m the new town gossip. I don’t give a shit if you’re pitying me or if my new disabilities are just that interesting to everyone around me, I’m not going learn anything if this is how it’s going to be.”
“Why don’t we just all read the tasks out loud to everyone, and we'll discuss together,” Miss What’s-her-name said with a slight annoyance in her voice.
“Do you want to teach me?” Max leaned into her wheelchair with crossed arms.
“Excuse me?”
“What I said. Do you want to teach me? Because it doesn’t seem like it to me, and if my presence in your class is such an inconvenience to you, I should just leave. I don’t like it any more than you do, but I also have to be here, and I am trying to adjust to it. People like you make it harder.” She turned her wheelchair around, gripping the push rings tightly. “And all of you need to get a life. Especially Troy, you asshole. I’m still pissed at you.” She maneuvered her wheelchair through the rows of desks and stopped in front of the door. “I’d be glad to be in your class,” she said through gritted teeth, “once you decide that I’m worth teaching.”
As she left, she heard El scramble to get her things too and follow her after muttering an apology to the teacher.
“You don’t have to come with me,” Max said, but she was secretly glad about it.
“I’ll come with you no matter what,” El decided.
“Even to detention on day one?”
“No matter what."
“So, where do we go now?” Max turned the wheelchair toward El. “We probably still have like half an hour until I can yell at the next teacher.”
“Outside?” El suggested. “We can wait for the others.”
“You’re already in detention?” Dustin asked during recess.
“ Already ? That sounds like you expected me to be.” Max was enjoying the sun on her face while El was absent-mindedly braiding her hair. “Officially, I didn’t get detention. Yet. But I did yell at a teacher, cursed and left the classroom. And El left with me. So, we’ll probably both get it.”
“Out of all of us, you’re definitely the most likely to get into detention,” Mike stated confidently.
“Like you’re one to talk, you grump,” Max replied. “You’re just as ill-tempered as I am.”
“Where’s Will?” El interrupted their bickering. “Wasn’t he in class with you?”
“Haven’t seen him,” Lucas said. Max pictured him leaning against the wall with one foot propped up against it. “I thought he was in your class.”
“He didn’t want a ride this morning,” El said. “He said he’d take his bike.”
A brief silence fell over them, the air buzzing with questions.
“This is feeling eerily familiar,” Dustin said.
“He’s fine.” Max made a dismissive hand motion. “There are no demogorgons anymore. He’s probably just in the bathroom or something.”
“Or avoiding Mike,” Lucas added. “Did you finally talk to him?”
“No,” Mike said defensively. “I thought he wanted to talk to me, not the other way around.”
“You’re terrible,” Dustin sighed. “Both of you.” Turning to El, he asked, “Can’t you just find him with your powers?”
El stopped braiding Max’s hair for a moment. “Not here,” she said. “It’s too loud. Maybe he’s just skipping.”
“Will doesn’t skip,” Mike disagreed. “Never.”
“I’ll find him later if he doesn’t come,” El said. “He is fine.”
“Should we tell Joyce?” Max asked. “I mean, if my kid had been taken into an alternate dimension a few years ago, I’d wanna know if he was missing again.”
“Will is not missing,” El disagreed. “He’s somewhere around, we’ll find him.”
“Hey, how’s your first day going, Max?” Lucas asked to change the topic. “Apart from possible detention.”
“Well, I hate everyone,” Max said. “And there are way too many noises around. It sucks when you can’t see the source of a sound.”
“Maybe you should get a cane,” Dustin suggested. “Could help.”
Max shrugged. “Maybe. I’ve thought about it.” She hated admitting to herself that navigating around outside was a lot harder than she had anticipated, and a cane would only make her feel more reliant on external support. Was there anything still left that she could really do on her own? Finding her way through the streets that she had memorized was one thing — difficult, but manageable with auditory cues. But school seemed to be a whole different issue. There was a higher chance of something or someone being in her way, and the sounds only confused her more.
“I just hope the day is over quickly,” Dustin whined. “Cinema after school, anyone? Maybe we can get a discount from Steve and Robin.”
“I’m down,” Mike said. “It’s not like I have anything else going on.”
“Me too,” Lucas agreed.
“Can’t,” Max said and shook her head. “I’m busy getting in trouble for yelling in class.”