Major Malfunction (Sequel to American Heroes)

Thanksgiving

When Thanksgiving of nineteen eighty-five came about, not much had changed between the Party yet. It had been around a month since the Byers and El left, and everyone was adjusting to the change. The minute Will and El got settled in their new room, they set up their ham radio in order to reach Dustin's Cerebro and talk to everyone without holding up the phone line. Since Mike still hadn't broken things off with El, she was under the impression that they were still going steady and used every free moment she had to call Mike. Will did his best to give them the time they needed to sort things out, but after several weeks of the obsessive calling, he was getting impatient.

"I'm serious, Mike," Will told him one day when he was able to sneak into their room while El was watching a show on the TV. He kept his voice as quiet as possible, for fear El might come in at any moment. "You can't keep leading her on like this. It's mean."

"I'm not trying to," Mike said, "but I don't want to just break up with her over the radio!"

"Then you have to at least tell her to calm down with the calls. It's driving me insane. And you barely even talk to her; it's like she's just talking the whole time."

"What am I supposed to do? Tell her she's not allowed to call me anymore?"

"Of course not, but I'm just saying you should try to communicate with her at least. It's like the less you talk, the more she wants to call you."

"So you want me to talk to her more?"

"I want you to figure something out. And don't ask me for any more help because you started this in the first place."

By the time November rolled around, El was calling Mike less and less and talking to Will more. A welcome change. Things were starting to look up, Will and El growing closer, and a few days before Thanksgiving, he told her he was gay. She didn't seem too phased by it which relieved him, but what surprised him was that she already knew what being gay meant because Max told her when they were reading Wonder Woman comics.

Soon after this, the day before Mike and Nancy were to arrive, she asked him, "How do you know when you like someone?"

"What do you mean?"

"How do you know if you want someone to be your boyfriend or girlfriend and not your friend? How can you tell?"

Will furrowed his eyebrows at this. "I think you just... know. I mean, think about you and Mike and you and me. You don't like us in the same way."

This seemed to confuse her even more.

"Honestly, El, I think you just know after a while. You can't really force yourself to like someone if you just don't. It's not something you have to think too hard about."

Thanksgiving break brought a flurry of calls from the Party – mostly from Mike, Lucas, and Dustin – everyone sharing stories of how high school was going so far. According to Lucas, Max was acting distant, barely speaking to the rest of the Party at all, but given the circumstances, they weren't surprised. After what happened at the mall, she and El were impacted by the deaths the most, but El had the Byers to lean on at home while Max's home situation was surely worse off than before.

Although Mike spoke with Will over Cerebro, El and Mike hadn't spoken in more than a week when Thanksgiving arrived. Will was pretty sure El was avoiding him because whenever Will offered her the radio to speak with him, she went off to do something else.

On Thanksgiving, Mike and Nancy arrived in the evening, bags in hand and offering up a casserole for the dinner. They were staying for three days, leaving on Sunday morning, which meant Will had to get Mike and El to talk.