Stranger Things: Beyond the Silver Rainbow

[27] (Jonathan)

Jonathan chewed his thumbnail until he encountered a nasty acidic morsel and spat it out.

His little corner folded him up comfortably with his back to the wall, his head tipped into the joint and his feet on the side of the desk. The position held all his limbs cozy under his scratchy blanket and he didn't even have to try. No wonder Will liked hiding. Small spaces were big hugs for lonely people.

The rest of the room had grown enormous. The bed was a cheesecloth cliffside, and the distant dresser, bearing its twin magazine stacks, rose up as a mountainous horned cathedral. The ceiling had become a real sky from which the projected moon's blond light outshone the rot, imbuing the place with the deep turquoise of a nighttime aquarium. Jonathan's nausea ebbed and flowed with the rhythm of a shoreline, and while he knew he was breathing, he couldn't really feel it.

Elle was enormous too, but that was an illusion sown by her magic and her oversized pink jacket. Even towering above him in her chair she was still just a kid with sticks for legs, a newly hatched tortoise in a big old shell, growing into the hand-me-downs of the gods all on her own.

"Why aren't you wearing your mask?"

Elle didn't open her eyes. "I don't like it anymore."

"But you'll get sick like me."

She shrugged one shoulder.

Jonathan pushed his blanket down over his knees. He unzipped his jacket, unbuttoned his flannel, pulled up his t-shirt and felt around, spilling his cold popsicle stick fingers over himself and digging them in like tombstones. When he found the deep lump below his ribcage it convulsed and shuddered, losing its numbness to pins and needles as it awakened from its restlessly vibrating sleep.

Elle had been watching him find it.

"Can you get it out of me?"

It took her forever to say it again: "No. It's too smart."

"What's that mean?"

Elle scooted her chair away and sat down on the floor next to Jonathan's accordioned legs, meeting him at eye level. She held her arm out over him, and with the other hand she pulled a tab on the cuff of her sleeve. It made a ripping noise: velcro.

She sandwiched it back together and pulled it apart again.

The horrible implications of the tearing sound introduced Jonathan to a new cluster of nerves in his back and elevated the whine a few octaves, turning the pins and needles into teeth and rapiers. Another sneeze grated his sinuses and made his head heavy, so he fell to rest in the corner again. "What if you really concentrate?"

Elle's hands landed on her knees. "No."

"... And take your time?"

"No. Can't."

"How can you know that for sure?"

Her mouth trembled. Her head fell. Her pompom danced and her hands wrestled. A tear fell out of her eye, through the darkness and into her lap with the glint of a falling star.

"Why don't you think you can do it? You think it's your fault, you think you'll mess up?"

She sniffed.

Jonathan's next breath struck him as hard as a salt sack full of razorblades. "You said―" He borrowed strength from his arms to keep talking. "You said you made me the monster too. That means it can't be my fault―that's why you feel bad. Right? So if you're the monster, I bet someone did the same thing to you. I bet it's their fault, not yours. I bet they should feel a lot worse."

Elle's voice was a little bell again: "You don't understand."

He could try. "Sometimes other people change us, and we have to take responsibility for it even though it's not our fault. I get that. But knowing we're a little messed up―that doesn't mean we have to call ourselves monsters. We don't have to let anybody call us monsters. It's good enough to be sorry."

"Mike said I'm not the monster."

"I hear he's. A pretty smart guy."

"He doesn't understand either."

"Nobody does, right?"

Elle rubbed her palms over her hidden face.

"Maybe if. If you didn't think you were the monster. Then you could do it."

Elle was still.

Jonathan didn't know how to ask for her hand so he just took it. "Here. It's this. It's just small." He put her fingertips right about where the lump was and pressed them down on it. She immediately yanked her hand back as if the pincushion had pricked her too, and waved it really fast, and touched it again, and waved even more emphatically.

"Secret," she said. "Why?"

"What, the buzzing? It's not a secret." He gulped. "...I guess I forgot to mention it."

"Why?" What was she―angry, happy? Both? She poked him too hard, knifing him with a fingertip. "Stupid."

"Sorry."

"Stupid." She shut her eyes and formed a line between her faint eyebrows. "Explain."

"It gets quiet sometimes. Like when I was talking to Will. It started at the woods. When I was killing the woods. And now whever I get... scared, actually, it starts... humming and screaming, like―"

"Jonathan." There were galaxies in her big brown baby eyes. "You broke it."

Hope fluttered up and blanketed the razorblades with its wings. "Can you get it out?"

Elle searched her pockets and fished out a yellow ball. Her frantic fingers peeled away layers of cellophane, revealing the grid lines of a prized peach made of squashed Eggo waffles. "Help me. Be scared." She brought the doughball to her mouth and tore away a huge bite.

"You want me to what?"

"Vee scaret," said Elle's full mouth.

"But I was just starting to feel better."

"Helt we." She had hardly chewed yet. "Vee scaret. Oo haf to."

The invader got quieter and quieter as a silent laugh tickled its edges. "You're not serious," Jonathan said.

But she was. With one chipmunk cheek puffed out and two crumby lips, Elle was dead serious. She swallowed. "I can get it if you're scared."