the unpromise- stranger things 4

T H R E E

"This is the golden age of something good and right and real" State of Grace, Taylor Swift

The next few weeks fly by, and I'm doing pretty well in school. Will and I get close to Kelsey, Laura and Chris and each other. Will teaches me some drawing stuff, and we start making friendship bracelets for the whole party as a part of our Christmas gift when we go back to Hawkins.

Finally November 21st rolls around and Joyce picks Will and I up early from school, at around noon. We are bickering on our walk from the office to Joyce's car, and I call the front seat as we climb in. "Hey kids, how was school?" she asks.

"It was fine," Will shrugs.
"I could barely focus," I giggle. Joyce laughs, and starts pulling out of the school's parking lot. "So I've gotta go grocery shopping for tomorrow's dinner, so just come with me then we'll go home and clean up, and hopefully they'll be there around 3," Joyce explains.

The minutes feel slower and slower as I wait for three o clock. It's torturous, really. After we finish cleaning around two, I go to the bathroom. When I catch myself in the mirror, I immediately start worrying. I guess I'd never considered myself to be very pretty, and I wasn't very confident. But for some reason, when I see myself in this moment I feel even worse than I usually do.

I pull around my curly hair in all different ways, and rub my face a bunch of times to see if I look differently. There's a knock on the door, "El, you've been in there a while are you alright?" I hear Joyce call.

"Yeah," I say quietly. She comes rummaging through the door, "you're not sick are you?"

I shake my head, dropping the curls from my hands. "What're you doing sweetie?" Joyce asks. "Am I pretty?" I ask innocently.
"Well yeah, you've got these great sweet eyes, and the prettiest curls. Why wouldn't you think so?" she asks. I shrug, turning on the faucet to wash my hands, even though I already did. "You're not nervous are you? You know you can talk to me about all that, right?" She comforts me. I always longed for a mother, just like Anne in that story Hopper used to read me. Joyce was kind of like that, but I still wasn't sure. I liked that I could talk to Joyce about those things and not sound stupid, because she'd been my age before and knows about this stuff.

"I just- what if everything's changed? I mean I've changed since we've been here and what if it messes everything up," I explain.

"It's not going to change, you're just growing up and into yourself. And besides, I don't think he thinks you're anything less than beautiful," Joyce grins. I chuckled softly, and walked out of the bathroom. Jonathan comes home soon and we all sit on the couch watching a movie.

When there's a greatly anticipated ring of the doorbell, Will and I both go bolting to the door. Knocking each other with our elbows and feet, as soon as we both fight for the doorknob it flings open, and I crash right into Mike, waiting patiently for someone to open up. I shake my head and look up. I laugh, "sorry, we're excited." I push my hair back and sigh, and I'm pulled into a long awaited hug. "I missed you so much," he chuckles.
"Me too," I grin.
"Miike-" I grab Mike's hand pulling him away from Will and into the corner of the foyer, where no one else is. "Hey I better not have to deal with this shit all weekend!" Will screams after us.

I press my lips to Mike's, quickly and goofily. "Can't do such things in front of everyone," I laugh. He smiles, in a way that was loud and big that I didn't see often but when I did I knew he was truly happy. I smile back just as big and drag his hand back to Will. "Sorry Will," I laugh, going to walk out to hug Nancy.

We ate a huge snack all together since we were hungry and Mike, Will and I were watching a movie in the living room at around 6. "Well I've gotta go listen to mixtapes with Jonathan, normal Thursday afternoon activities," Will jumps up and walks to his room.

"Bye Willlll," I giggle.
"Don't do anything I wouldn't approve of." I roll my eyes and flip him off, a gesture Max taught me. "What did Mom say about that!" Will whines.

"Don't listen to the things Max tells you to do," I repeat glumly. Mike erupts in laughter. I shoo Will off with my hand and hop up from where I was laying. "We should go outside on the roof and watch the sunset!" I suggest.

"Do you do that often?"
"Well they always do that mixtape thing and I get bored, so most Thursday's yeah." I'm tapping on my thigh and looking through the glass windows in front of me. Mike's hand grabs mine and he stands up quickly, pulling me with him. "Alright come on," he says, but I have to direct him to where I go. I walk up the stairs to my room and open my window to crawl out. "Grab a blanket, it's cold!" I called.

The second I step onto the roof the sky captures my entire mind. It's just so interesting how at the end of a blue day the huge golden sun lights up the entire sky with oranges, pinks and even deep purple and blues. Even when I sat down my eyes stayed directly onto the sky. Mike eventually sat down too, placing the blanket evenly over our legs.

"Isn't the sky just so pretty," I turn my head to look at Mike's. As soon as I turn my head, he turns his, I don't know what he was looking at.

"I've seen prettier," he says nonchalantly. What? I sigh, a little disappointed. Maybe it was because I was "underdeveloped" or something that I took too much joy out of stupid things. He could've been nicer about it.

"Oh," I sigh, "I guess it makes sense I mean when you were ten and outside playing with Will, Dustin and Lucas you saw sunsets every night but I-"

"El!" Mike grabs both my hands that were waving in the air, "I was talking about you!" My sour face lights up into a smile and I immediately start laughing. Mike laughs too, and tugs lightly on the hands he's still holding onto for me to get closer to him.

I wrap my arms around him, still giggling softly. "Sorry," I laugh.
"I love you," he kisses my forehead.
"Love you too."

*****
We watch the sunset until the sky is all a dark blue. "Just be careful because I've almost fell like ten times going back in," I stood up crawling through the window.

My backs to Mike when I hear "shit!" and a loud bang. My head whips to the roof, where Mike's now laying. "Mike!" I plant my feet back down, kneeling and grabbing his hands.

"I'm ok," he says woozily.
"Can you get up?"
"No." I huff and tilt my head into the window to yell for help. "Help!! Nancy!! Joyce!!" I repeatedly scream until Nancy and Joyce come. They help to get him back into my room and bring him downstairs. He's falling in and out of consciousness, and apparently dizzy.

We decide it'd be good to get him to a hospital, and Nancy drives there, Joyce, Jonathan, Will and I following shortly behind.

A/N: idk what to say except this chapter is the calm before the storm. praying for y'all for chapter 4 :/ OH and did you like the my girl reference. i love shelly and vada they remind me of el and joyce a lil.