Shutter [Jonathan Byers] Stranger Things I

XXI: Withhold

with·hold

verb

suppress or hold back (an emotion or reaction)

She was only fifteen.

 A year before she officially met Jonathan.

She didn't know there were people like Jonathan.

Or maybe she did, but did not believe they would be part of her life.

In her pale hand she held a red Solo cup with beer, staring down at the contents and shaking her head. She wasn't going to drink, she promised herself she would never drink after a drunk driver killed her mother six months ago. The air around her was warm, and yet she had goosebumps on her exposed arms. There was a white foam atop her drink, she didn't want to feel that running down her throat followed by the beer that she knew tasted vile from the one time she tried her father's behind his back. 

A short but muscular arm wrapped around her shoulders, "Come on, Em, lighten up!"

"I-I..." I don't want to do this. "Sorry, I'm just a little stressed out."

"All the more reason to drink up," He whispered in her ear like a creature telling her to do bad things. Everyone was drinking, people she knew from school. She didn't know all of their names, but she knew she went to school with everyone there. She was safe with them right? Even if they didn't know her name, and only knew her as the girl with the dead mother?

"A-are you sure?" She glanced back down at the drink, the very drink that killed her mother.

Just leave.

"Look, Em," Sshe hated that nickname, but he kept using it. "Everyone is doing it, everyone comes to parties to have a fun time, stop being so stuck up like you're better than the rest of us. Embrace your teenage desires, Emily."

"It's Emilia," she corrected, surprised at the boldness of her tone.

"I know," he brushed it off, taking his arm off of her and then reaching his hand down to the bottom of the red Solo cup. Tipping it slightly, he nudged it up higher.

Emilia wanted to run away, but instead, she brought the cup to her mouth and swallowed back everything. The pain, the worry, the fear, the self-loathing. She did it all to make him happy.

Emilia pulled herself from the memory, the one she wished she could put in a box and tape up, mail it somewhere that she would never have to think about it again. Sitting on the porch of her own small home, she didn't feel the need to go in despite the bite of the cold. Her fingers were numb, but it was not from the cold. Placing her head between her knees, she forced the thoughts of that night out of her head, and wondered if maybe that night had done more damage to her than the accident. A wind rippled through the air and made Emilia's coat shudder, but she still didn't move.

The door behind her opened and she tensed; this was not how she wanted to face her father because there was no logical way to explain why she was in the state she was. He'd freak out if she told him the truth, and yet, what else could she say to him? He stood there for a moment, as if contemplating going back inside to ignore the problem or to sit down next to his broken-seeming daughter. He chose the latter, but only after some serious thought. Sitting down beside her but making no other move to show he cared, there was a silence so thick between them that Emilia wondered if he would even be able to hear her if she spoke. It was like a wall between them; two years of tension.

"Emilia..." Her father started; there was a slight slur to his words.

She stood up without another word and went inside; she wasn't going to talk to him when he was drunk. The screen door slammed behind her, but she didn't close the main door as she walked down the hall to her bedroom. She placed her bag by her closet door and flopped down on the small, single bed that was shoved against the wall. Her walls were an ugly off-white that had been stained and drawn on over the course of her life. Pictures she had taken and developed hung along the walls to cover some of the childish drawings in crayon she'd done years ago. Even though art was always her thing, her five year old self didn't have the best of the ability.

A light rapping on her door made her groan, "Please, dad, go away."

"You tell me what's wrong, Emilia," he said through the closed door.

She took a deep breath.

You wouldn't understand.

"A girl at school is..." her words faltered, she didn't want to sound childish and say a girl was bullying her. Her struggle had not much to do with Carol, even though she was relentless in her bullying. It was something much more than that. She was withholding so much from both her father and Jonathan, and Carol easily could upturn all of that. One little slip to Jonathan and he would know; Emilia wondered if it would be better for her to just tell Jonathan outright, but she never wanted to say the words of what happened that night.

"Dad, it doesn't matter!" She replied, "I'm fine."

"You ain't fine," he was leaning against the door, she could hear him shuffle against the frame.

"Dad, please, I just want to go to bed."

She heard him mutter a "fine" under his breath and leave her in peace.

Jonathan entered his house and looked dazed; Joyce spotted him and suddenly a rush of fear filled her. When him and Emilia had taken off so quickly, she presumed it was so that he could drop her off. Joyce wanted to mention that driving Emilia everywhere was going to take a serious toll on his wallet, but didn't want to be the one to lecture him about spending money. She had her bad habits too, and she knew Jonathan wasn't stupid. Jonathan looked broken, and Joyce wanted to wrap her arms around her son and hug him until everything was better, but teenagers didn't appreciate that.

She stood with her hands just in front of her, like the hug was still on the table if he wanted it, and she struggled to find the words. "Jon, are you alright?"

He noticed his mother suddenly, "Yeah, fine."

"Is Emilia alright?"

"Yeah," he shook his head though, "I'm not sure."

"Did she do something to hurt you?"

"What?" He looked her in the eyes, wondering what she knew. "No, mum, she's just... All over the place."

He wondered, did Emilia suddenly realize that the pictures he had taken were not acceptable? Things had been so electric between them, and suddenly she wrenched herself from him and demanded that she go home. What had he done wrong? He replayed it in his head a thousand times in the drive home alone, and couldn't figure out what he had done wrong. Was it the scars? He didn't care about them, he reminded himself to tell her that the next time he saw her. Was it the fact they were on the road where her mother died? Nothing felt right, and all Jonathan knew was that somehow he had done something wrong.

"Jonathan," Joyce had been speaking and he hadn't been listening. "You know she might be trouble, right?"

"We've gone over this," he glared at his mother, not intending to be so harsh. "Just because you chose Lonnie doesn't mean that I'm going to make bad choices too."

She gaped at her son as he brushed passed her to his bedroom.

He just wanted to be alone to process, but no matter how hard he focused, the answers never reached him.