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CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN | JINGLE BALL
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i love you in waves, and lately, everyday has been a hurricane.
-amanda helm
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"Do you like this dress?" Jackie asked, holding out an old blue dress of hers to El.
El smiled softly. "Pretty."
"You can wear it tonight then, yeah?"
Tonight was the Hawkins middle school Jingle Ball and Hopper had entrusted Jackie with the duty of helping El get ready for it. Technically, El was not quite yet supposed to go out in public, but Hopper wagered just one night would be fine. El disappeared into the bathroom and took a decently long time getting the dress on.
"Help, please," El said, turning around for help with the zipper.
Carefully, knowing El had a pretty big aversion to touch, Jackie zipped up the back of the dress and placed her hands on El's shoulders, grinning.
"Very pretty," Jackie said, grinning at the younger girl.
"Like you?" El asked, eyes wide with hope.
"Prettier," Jackie promised. El flushed and looked down at her bare feet on Jackie's carpeted floor. "Do you want some makeup?"
When El nodded, Jackie instructed her to sit down at the desk chair. She pulled her minimal makeup ( that she rarely used ) from one of her desk drawers and held up so of the lightest shades of blush and eyeshadow that she had. El was so pale that most of Jackie's makeup would look cheap and tacky on El's face. Jackie applied the makeup to El's skin as lightly as possible. Once she was done, Jackie looked at her own reflection before deciding to apply some mascara and lipgloss.
"Why are you putting makeup on too?" El asked.
"I have a date," Jackie said, dabbing lip gloss onto her bottom lip.
"Date?"
"Yeah," Jackie said, glancing at El. "It's when two people that like each other, or love each other, go out to a fancy restaurant, or a movie, or... anything, really."
"And," El spoke slowly, taking in Jackie's words, "is this date with... the boy with the baseball bat and big hair?"
Laughing quietly, Jackie dropped her lip gloss into her jacket pocket and nodded. "Yeah. His name is Steve."
"Steve," El said quietly, stretching out each letter-sound of his name. "You... like him?"
"Yeah," Jackie said, reaching out and brushing El's styled curls away from her forehead. "More than like, actually."
"Love?"
"Mhm." Jackie pulled her jacket on and zipped it over her black off the shoulder top. "Come on, I don't wanna make you too late to this thing."
