only fools fall for you [mileven]

19 - that could work

The man dumps the water on El's head, and it goes all over my clothes, but it doesn't bother me because all I want is for El to be okay.

I shake her, whispering her name over and over again, speaking to her. 'El, I love you. Stay with me, Eleven,' I say. 'Come on.'

At that moment, El sits up straight and starts crying. The man starts to walk away, and I nod, mouthing thank you.

'Oh, thank god you're okay. Why are you crying?' I ask, holding her up.

'Bad,' she takes a deep breath, but I know what she'll say after it.

'Men.'

I hide El inside the basement and tell her to stay there. She nods, and I sprint off to round up everyone. When everyone is in our basement with El, including Jonathan and Nancy, I start talking.

'Why do they want El so badly? She's a kid,' Dustin asks. 

'I don't care what they want from her. She's my sister. I'm not letting them take her,' Jonathan says.

'They're not taking her from us,' I say, standing up. 'We're here to talk about what to do.'

'Joyce is her mom. Shouldn't she have a say in this?' Nancy asks.

'Yeah, Mom should know about this,' Will says.

'Okay. But do we hide her?' I ask.

'We change her look,' Lucas says.

I look at him. He shrugs.

'That could work,' Jonathan says. 'They won't know it's her.'

'She's already grown out her hair quite a lot, so we could maybe dye it some other colour. Like red!' Nancy says. 'And we can make her look really grungy and bad-ass hipster, you know? She could totally pull it off, and we could get her some round glasses that aren't real, and we could-'

'Calm down,' Jonathan says, touching her shoulder. 'What do you think though, Mike? I'm pretty sure Mom would be on board; she's always wanted to give a girl a makeover, I can tell. But you're the one in love with her.'

I look at El, and she smiles. 'I think she'd look amazing either way.'