you are not alone → stranger things

ii. depression

Wednesday night, January 3, 1984
Mike's POV

The ceiling shook with thunder.. just like when El had been here.

I was in the basement.. where El had stayed.

"Mike?" I heard, but it was foggy and distant. "Mike!"

"What?" I murmured, the word dying on my lips. The sound of my swallowing was the loudest- everything else was dull and blurry.

"Mom says dinner is ready. She called you herself, like, five times."

I nodded slowly to Nancy, my gaze focused on the fort where El had been.

It had been three weeks since she had disappeared, and the pain had only sharpened since then. Everyone said she was dead, but that couldn't be true. It couldn't.

I dimly realized that Nancy had come down and sat next to me on the sofa. "Mike, I'm worried about you," she said. "We all are." I said nothing. "You aren't eating," she continued. "You barely move from this sofa. Just last week you were still playing D&D with your friends, and then it's just like you shut down."

I tried to push past the murky shadows in front of my eyes, unable to ignore what she was saying. Nancy was quiet for a moment, and I heard her sniffling. I looked at her.

"It's El, isn't it?" She looked back at me. "That's why you're acting this way."

Hearing her name sent a stab of emotion through my mind, and I swallowed hard. My stomach swooped like I was on a rollercoaster, and I felt like I would throw up. My eyes grew hot.

Nancy suddenly stood and ran from the room, taking two steps at a time. I paid no mind, closing my eyes painfully. I mentally went over the places I had looked again.

By the lab. The quarry. The supermarket. Will's house. The woods by the Harringtons' house.

I had looked for El every night for the last two weeks, but this week, I found myself with nowhere else to search. So I had confined myself to the basement, hoping that somehow, she would appear in the fort I had built her. Sometimes I sat in it and willed her to walk down the stairs, wiping her bloody nose. Maybe it was my imagination, but sometimes I felt her beside me. Sometimes I just knew she was there. Or maybe I was crazy.

"Mike!" My mom's voice sounded angry. "Come up here now!"

I stayed where I was, and a moment later I heard her coming down the stairs. "Mike, I will not let you stay down here any longer. And for some girl too!" she scolded. "Come on, come eat dinner."

I slowly turned to her blearily and shook my head.

"Mike, you-" my mom began fiercely, but more footsteps came down the stairs. Nancy.

"Mom," she cried, "stop yelling at him for being in love!" I was so shocked that she was sticking up for me that I didn't protest. "I would be doing the same if I was him. It isn't his fault."

Mom turned her glare to her, but then her gaze softened. "Maybe you're right," she said quietly. "But he needs to eat, and sleep, and go to school. He hasn't talked to anyone, either."

I tuned them out after that, returning my gaze to El's fort.

Oh, El, where are you?