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There were many strange things Eleven had to get accustomed to after leaving Papa. Shoes were one of them.
She had never worn them in her entire life; they were reserved for the orderlies and nurses and other bad men. Venturing outside her home of twelve years taught her that shoes were not only for everyone, but that everyone must wear them. Even the weak-limbed infants she saw in their mother’s arms had soft little booties on.
Her feet knew linoleum, rubber, metal, tile, and water. They began to know the damp, dark earth when she ran away. Now they had to acquaint themselves with socks and the toe-pinching sneakers Mike gave her.
The soles of her feet were tough; they used to be the only barrier between herself and hard floors. But now socks insulated her from dirt and air, and shoes protected her from pebbles and glass and nails.
That was a good thing, she supposed. Being barefoot was just one more way she’d stand out.
She could not decide whether or not she missed it – missed the connection of the ground beneath her feet.
***
It had not escaped Eleven’s notice that she and her siblings were underdressed compared to the adults in the lab, but the disparity became glaring when was sitting amongst the boys in their layered outfits.
She would never forget the shame their reaction stirred in her when she lifted Benny’s shirt. She had not understood why they were so insistent on her privacy, just that they were, and that her body was not to be seen.
Privacy had never existed to her before then. It was foreign, more than any of the new things she had been introduced to. It seemed that nakedness was both a shameful and sacred thing outside the confines of the lab.
That’s why Mike’s sweatsuit had been a comfort for more than its softness; it was the one item of clothing she could relate to. Although his was navy and hers was grey, they were proof that she wasn’t entirely different from him – that she had not always been exposed.
Nancy’s drawer of unmentionables further illustrated the perverse nature of Eleven’s upbringing. Hers were a similar brief cut and had the same stretchy waistline, but they came in many colors that Eleven had never worn herself. Blush pink, baby blue, spring green, dotted with little bows and tiny rosebuds.
Judging by her digging excitedly through Nancy’s neatly folded stacks of underwear, Mike had probably come to the conclusion that Eleven was unfamiliar with wearing such girlish garments.
She refrained from informing him that she wasn’t overly familiar with wearing underwear at all. They had been reserved for periods of exercise.
***
Although she had yet to meet Nancy at the time of donning her frilly pink dress, Eleven thanked the older girl for helping her blend in. She had Nancy’s underwear, her wig, and now her dress. She was pretty, as Mike said.
She did not know what pretty meant, but smiled at the compliment anyway. Nancy was his sister, and Nancy was pretty, therefore it was good for her to be pretty too.
The dress did not last long before she ruined it, as she did everything else. She dirtied and bloodied and disrespected it. She cast the wig aside in a fit of rage. She rubbed the sticky stuff off her lips with the sleeve of Mike’s jacket.
It hurt to wear the Wheeler’s clothing, and it hurt not to.
***
Hopper handed her a pile of hand-me-down shirts and pants with a guilty frown on his face.
“I can’t be seen shopping for a young girl. Can’t risk exposing you,” he said.
Eleven nodded in understanding. These clothes had belonged to a boy – a boy like Mike or Dustin or Lucas. It meant she would not be pretty, but she would be warm, and she would be like them.
Hopper have her a few of his own shirts, ones made of a fabric called flannel. They were so large they fell down to her knees, but they were her favorites nonetheless.
***
The first person to dress Eleven with true regard was 008. Kali.
It was the only outfit she’d worn that did not make her frightened of her power. Though it had been many years since she and her sister had been parted, the bond between them was still unbreakable.
As she rolled up the cuffs of Eleven’s jeans and smudged something black around her eyes, Kali instilled in her the quiet confidence she would need in the coming days.
Eleven may not have picked out the clothes on her own, but she loved them because her sister said they looked bitchin’. She wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, but it sounded better than pretty. It sounded electric.
And when she walked into the Byers home, she felt it too.
***
Eleven had wanted desperately to dance with Mike ever since he told her about the magical Snowball thing. Differentiating between sister, friend, and whatever he’d been trying to explain to her had been difficult, but as Nancy dressed her for the special evening and she felt a flutter in her stomach, she thought she may have figured it out.
It was a boy-girl thing – something that was apparently as natural to the world as wearing shoes and watching television. She wanted to partake in this ritual for the normality of it, but more than that she wanted to make a memory that she could treasure forever. After tonight, it was back to the cabin for the foreseeable future.
Nancy’s fingers skimmed her back as she pulled the zipper up, and Eleven shuddered involuntarily. She had worn the girl’s clothes until they were ruined, but this was their first moment alone together.
And Nancy did not dress her like the boys had. She was not rushed or confused. Pretty was a practiced skill of hers, and it was touching that she had happily agreed to use it for Eleven’s sake.
She had never stood in a room of such beauty, or been subject to it, but she did know what wearing a dress felt like. This one was cute and colorful where the lab gown had been plain and functional, but the sensation of being naked was similar. Although she had underwear on, her bottom half still felt bare.
All of a sudden, Eleven wanted her jeans back.
But the clock was at six-four-eight. It was too late to back out now, and she needed to see her friends before the window of freedom ended.
“You look amazing,” Nancy said, admiring her handy work in the mirror.
As Eleven studied her reflection, a strange chill ran up her spine. She found that she did not recognize herself.
In the back of her mind lurked a memory of the last time she’d faced herself in a mirror for this long. It left an acrid taste in her mouth.
***
Max refused to reciprocate the cold shoulder Eleven had greeted her with. Her open smiles and effort to include Eleven whenever they were in each other’s presence wore the girl down, and the tension between them soon faded.
What solidified their friendship once and for all was a rather petty conversation – one that Eleven secretly found a bit thrilling.
It was fun to complain about boys. She had not known that she was allowed to feel that way. Before, the fear of losing her friends had made such a thing seem impossible. Now Max was opening exciting new doors for her, and walking her through them.
Max was a girl like her, but Max was not pretty. Eleven thought she was beautiful, but she did not look like Nancy had at the Snowball or the glamorous women on TV. She looked sincere and comfortable - so completely herself.
Eleven craved that freedom. And, as if she could read her mind, Max took her by the hand and led her toward it.
No one had ever asked her to find her own style. Even once Hopper started buying new clothes for her after the adoption, he didn’t put much thought into it. He had assumed she didn’t care, and so did she.
Max made her think. Out of all the stores in the mall, all the racks of chemical-smelling clothes, what grabbed Eleven’s eye?
They tried on everything – things Eleven hadn’t seen outside the screen of Hopper’s ancient television set. Bedazzled sunglasses, feathery scarves, teetering stilettos, and ridiculous lingerie they pulled over their clothes (which had gotten them kicked out by an angry employee).
They commemorated their outing with a trip to the photo booth. As she posed next to Max, making all sorts of silly faces, Eleven realized that it was the first time someone had let her smile for the camera.
When it was time to get serious and find some clothes they could actually purchase, Max was a tad surprised at what Eleven gravitated toward. Clothes of an androgynous style, with bright colors and bold shapes. Splashes of neon, zigzags and stripes, black belts and suspenders.
Nothing bare between her legs.
The look on Mike’s face when she strode up to him in one of her new outfits with an ice cream crone gripped firmly in hand was priceless. She dumped his ass, and Max celebrated with her all the way home.
***
The power those clothes had lent her disappeared when Billy caged her to the floor with his arms. The fabric felt thinner than paper. Worse, it felt like nothing at all. She was stripped bare beneath him.
But there was no time to ruminate on it. He needed her help, so she pushed through the horrible pain in her leg and the tight clench in her chest.
When she breached his mind, it dawned on her that he had also been introduced to the awful feeling of being totally and completely naked in front of something far greater than himself.
The faint caress Billy gave her cheek before steeling himself to face his monster was void of the deceptive kindliness she’d been victim to by many other men.
***
Jane asked to take a piece of clothing from each of her friends to California, and they acquiesced with nothing more curious than an arched brow. Lucas, unexpectedly, gave her three items – two t-shirts and a jacket his growing frame could no longer fit.
Her first year at a real school proved to her how woefully inept she was at not only dressing, but being. For the life of her she could not get it right, and the other kids had no problem saying so. If it wasn’t with their words, it was with the odd looks and contemptuous sneers they shot her way. The teachers communicated their distaste for her in a different manner, but she still felt it keenly.
Will was her only friend, and she came to learn that he wasn’t quite comfortable in his skin either. It was a small comfort, one that she drew from when days were rough.
Mike was trying the best he could from miles and miles away. He called her every day, listened to her patiently, and sent frequent letters (albeit ones that were not signed with love).
When he hung up and she was left alone with her thoughts, his consolation felt lacking. She worried that something was broken inside her – something that nobody's words could make better.
One night, she mustered up the courage to seek answers from Will. For some reason, Joyce was not bothered by the two of them being alone together the way Hopper had been with her and Mike. Jane and Will had been sleeping in each other’s rooms one or two nights a week ever since they moved from Hawkins. It had been awkward at first, as she got the feeling he didn’t like her as much as the others did, but they grew more comfortable over time. Will was honest with her in a way the others weren't.
But she could tell there was always something gnawing at him inside, which she was wise enough not to push on.
“Will?” she whispered into the darkness of his room.
A moment passed, and then, “Yeah?”
“Can I come in?”
There was a rustling of sheets as he scooted aside. She laid down on top of the blankets, making sure to keep a respectable distance between them.
“Do you think we should go to that dance next week?”
He snorted. “No. I’m sure all the people we hate will be there. Besides, who would we even go with?”
“Each other. As friends…You can do that, right?” Her cheek pressed into the soft pillow as she looked over at him.
“Yeah,” he said. “Do you really want to though?”
Jane thought about it. No, she did not. She did not want to go to a dance without Mike, and she certainly did not want throw herself into a room full of their school’s most vicious vipers.
“I guess not,” she muttered.
“Mm.”
They lay in silence. The streets were vacant, and Jonathan’s boombox was off, so they had nothing to listen to but the sound of their own breathing.
“Do you think I’m ugly?” Jane asked a few minutes later.
“No. I mean...Mike wouldn’t be dating you if he thought you were ugly, would he?”
There was a slightly bitter tone in Will’s voice that distracted her. “What do you mean?”
“Guys don’t want to date ugly girls,” he explained. To Jane it sounded like he was repeating something he didn’t really understand or care about himself.
“Oh.”
“Anyway. I’m tired, El. And we’ve got to get up early tomorrow.”
“Okay. I’ll leave,” she said. He began to protest, saying he hadn’t intended for her to leave, but she waved him off and tip-toed back to her room.
Sleep would not come easy to her. She tossed and turned in bed, hoping to dispel the dark thoughts racing through her mind, but it was to no avail.
With a small huff, she got up and padded to her desk. On top of the folders she used for school sat her most recent and glaring failure – a history essay with a big fat F at the top and red pen scrawled angrily across the whole page. As she reread her teacher’s critiques for the tenth time, hot, shameful tears welled up in her eyes.
Joyce had yet to be informed of the grade, and neither Jane nor Will were going to tell her. The woman was lenient in regard to Jane's academics, perhaps overly so, but being lied to in that gentle voice of hers was mortifying. She would pat her hand and say, There’s always next time! You’re trying your best, sweetie. We can’t swing a private tutor right now, but Jonathan can help. Don’t let anyone make you feel inferior.
Jane told Mike about it, of course. His suggestions for her were laced with kind patience rather than her teacher's condescension, but they couldn't disguise the fact that she did not measure up to her peers. She had been taught so many things in her life – in the lab and out of it – but her intelligence and skillset were not comparable to kids her age.
She had been grappling with the possibility that she had been sculpted so differently from others that she was not capable of being like them. She was not made of the clay they used in art class. She was marble, like the statues they saw at the museum.
She could not slap fresh clay on her figure and mold it to her liking. When she attempted to be normal, she had to use a chisel. But she was not talented or strong enough to make masterfully delicate changes like Michelangelo did with David. She just added more and more force, and one day it would smash her statue to pieces.
Jane could never be David.
She tugged on one of Lucas’s shirts and crawled back in bed. The fabric was faded blue and soft as butter from being worn so many times, but the consequence of that was his scent had long disappeared from it. When she nuzzled her face into her shoulder and took a long, deep inhale through her nose, not a trace of the boy could be found.
***
Eleven woke up more exposed than she had been since she was twelve. Her hair was shorn close to her scalp again, leaving her neck cold. Someone had stripped her of her own clothes and maneuvered her naked body into the crisp gown she’d spent most of her childhood in.
Her hands massaged the short fuzz on her head, and she looked around the room in horror. It was all too familiar. The orderly she encountered after that was not. At least, not until she’d had the same conversation with him dozens of times.
She ran frantically through the same halls, ended up in the same room, and listened to the same sickeningly sweet voice that dragged her back to a world she thought she’d been freed from.
011 was back to square 001.