010 & 011-Elmax

23

A/n: Fair warning, all the chapters that take place during S4 will have dive deeper into Mar's mental state (which isn't good) so it'll be darker themes just like in the show.

-This chapter takes place during S4E1: The Hellfire Club-
-Hawkins, Indiana-
-Max's POV-

I step off of the bus with Mar behind me, her earbuds in. I can just barely hear the music blasting in her ears. Her face is blank, like it normally is, and her outfit is just jeans and a hoodie. Her entire wardrobe is similar to this now. She doesn't dress up anymore or go all out. I take longer to get ready than her at this point. I swing an arm over Mar's shoulder and pull her close, trying to comfort her. She doesn't react. She just stares straight forward, her expression blank as ever. Her eyes are glazed over like they always are.

I genuinely thought she was getting better for a while. Somewhere around Thanksgiving she started eating normally again. She wouldn't lay in bed all day. She'd talk and conversate almost like she used to. She even stopped lashing out as much. She was still sad, that much was obvious, but she was pushing through. Then two months ago Neil left. After all of the drunken fights he'd had with my mom, he finally left. We didn't even have his savings anymore to help us pay bills so we had to move to a shitty trailer park. My mom started drinking, a lot, which was hard to believe due to the fact that she used to hate all of that shit. And then Mar started getting bad again. After that, she dumped Lucas. She didn't even tell me, Lucas did. Apparently she didn't want to drag him down into all of her shit. All of in the span of a few weeks everything went to shit.

I've been doing better than I thought I would without El. I mean, for the first month or so it felt like I was just waiting to see her. It hasn't really settled in yet that she was gone and there was no easy way to get to her. I felt like I was living in a loop for awhile. Then after my mom finally called Mrs. Byers, I got permission to go to California. And since then it feels like every moment has been dragging by. Days are slower and longer and they started to blur together almost.

But working at the arcade helped a bit. I run the prize counter with one other employee. He's pretty chill but we don't talk. But he's basically covering for me all next week so I hope he doesn't end up hating me. Since I started working I refused any of Steve's money. Told him it was fine. It took a lot of arguing but he eventually backed down. I'd feel pretty guilty if I was still taking his money even when I had plenty of my own. After moving to the trailer park I picked up a lot of extra shifts just to help out my mom some. She'd focus on rent and shit while I tried to buy groceries. But all that working took a hit on my grades. Not that my mom knows that. She'd absolutely freak.

Mike was still an absolute wreck. I swear he didn't know what to do with himself half of the time. After the first time he came to my place, he continued coming. We wouldn't even talk. We'd just sit and watch TV or something. Or just sit in silence at the dining table. I think we both found a comfort in each other's presence since we knew what the other was going through. Like yeah, I liked spending time with everyone in the party, but Mike understood how it felt. I guess Dustin does too but it's not the same.

Whenever Mike and I do talk it's never my about powers. He actively avoids that topic. And when it does get brought up somehow he always throws an insult my way about how unmoral I am for controlling people. I don't think he's ever forgiven me. And if he has he certainly hasn't forgotten and is holding a sort of grudge against me. Which I get it. I did invade in his personal thoughts and I did force him to do things against his will. But it was still years ago at this point. It feels kind of unfair sometimes.