one hundred days
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Mike is quiet the whole day, stuck in his grief and his inability to know what he should actually be feeling; he’s glad that the others don’t mention anything, they must figure it’s El related.
One hundred days… it sounds like a long time, but it’s not even a third of a year, even so, it’s a lot of days.
He doesn’t cycle home from school with Dustin and Lucas that day, and instead detours past the grocery store to buy a box of Eggos.
He tries to enter the house quietly, but his mom hears him and starts badgering him about cleaning his room. He ignores her and heads to the basement, but Karen snatches the box of Eggos out of his hands before he even starts going down the stairs.
“Mo-om!” Mike snaps, reaching for the Eggos.
“Mike, really? Still?” Karen asks, sounding both concerned and annoyed. “I thought you were feeling better now?”
“I am! Just give me back the Eggos!” Mike retorts angrily.
“Michael!” Karen scolds. “I know these past few months have been hard for you, but we really need to talk about your behaviour.”
Mike rolls his eyes.
“I know that everything that happened with the Russian Girl–”
“El, Mom,” Mike interrupts, “her name is El and she’s not Russian. Now can I have the Eggos?”
Karen, having heard this ‘Not-Russian’ story before, isn’t fazed, and continues on. “–was difficult for you to comprehend, but what she told you wasn’t real, Mike, you need to remember that.”
“It was real, Mom, it was, I’ve told you this,”
“And I’ve been thinking that you keeping that fort up after all this time can’t be good–”
“What?”
“I think you should take it down, Michael.”
“What?! No! Mom, I can’t– You don’t get it, I can’t just take it down!” he protests. “What if she…” he trails off, suddenly embarrassed.
Karen sighs, hands on hip. She has no clue what to do about her son, they’ve tried therapists, they’ve tried letting him work through his grief, but nothing seems to be working.
The two look at one another in silence for a moment, Mike embarrassed yet defiant, and Karen desperately trying to decide whether to let Mike continue on with this charade or not.
She gives in, mostly because she knows he’s prepared to put up a fight, and she’s not sure can handle another fight with Mike. She passes him the Eggos, and he mumbles thank you before vanishing into the basement.
“It’s a safe place for him,” the therapist had told her.
“So his obsession with the basement and the fort isn’t unhealthy?” she’d asked.
The therapist had sighed. “I didn’t say that, but you certainly can’t take it away from him until he’s ready.”
She wasn’t sure how long it had been exactly, but surely it has to be long enough for him to be ready.
Down in the basement, Mike sits in El’s fort, and holds the radio up to his mouth, pressing down on the receiver.
“El,” he says quietly. “El, it’s me, Mike, it’s, um… it’s been one hundred days, and I guess… I was hoping that today would be the day, y’know, that you reply, that you give me a sign that you’re okay.” he’s crying, but he doesn’t see the point to wipe away the tears, there’s no one here to see him anyway. “I just… I just want to know, if you’re okay.” he lets go of the receiver and listens to the static, hoping to God that for the first time in one hundred days El says something, anything.
But there’s no sound of El, just the static.
“I, um, I bought you Eggos,” he finally says, but that’s all he can manage, because he’s really crying now, sobbing.
He rubs his eyes defiantly, and stands up, taking deep breaths to stop the sobs. He throws the radio down. He’s angry now. Not necessarily at her, but angry. It isn’t fair. He saw her that night, he’s sure of it.
So where is she? And why isn’t she replying?
Did they get her? That’s his greatest fear, that after everything, the Bad Men at Hawkins Lab have managed to find her, and taken her back to that torture lab. He can’t even think about it.
He picks up the radio to try one last time. “El?”
Static.
“El? Are you there?”
Static.
He gulps and tries not to cry, dropping the radio down beside the fort.
He walks back up the stairs, leaving the Eggos in the fort.
In the cabin in the woods, El pulls her blindfold off, tears and blood running down her face as she listens to the static from the television.
