18. girl's day out

GIRL'S DAY OUT

✧･ﾟ: * The night before with Dustin has been blocked out of Nora's mind. The two were brainstorming for a few minutes before Dustin's mind - somehow - went to Russians.

Nora decided to call it a night at that point.

Just recently, the doorbell rang and Nora fell off her bed and onto the floor.

"Ugh."

She slowly gets up and fumbles to her door, then fumbles down the steps, then fumbles to the entrance, and fumbles with the front door doorknob.

"El?" Nora stares at the girl with a frown.

"Where is Max?" El says in greeting, looking at Nora with wide eyes.

"At home?" Nora shakes her head. "Does Hopper know you're out?"

"Take me to her?" El asks instead of answering.

Nora squints her eyes a little, still lost on the whole thing. "Yeah?"

El nods and makes a move to leave, "Let's go."

"Wait- what? Wait, I have to change first!" Nora immediately wakes up completely and pulls El in before she walks off.

Still confused with whole situation, she drops El onto her couch, makes a "stay" motion with her hand, and sprints upstairs to brush her hair, wash her face, and throw on random clothes.

Ten minutes. New record.

"Okay," Nora buckles up her belt as she comes down the steps, trying not to trip over her untied shoelaces. "Why do you need Max?"

"Explain on the way," El jumps up at the sight of the disheveled girl and starts out the door again.

Nora runs after the girl and locks the door frantically behind her. "El!"

—

✧･ﾟ: * "-and then, he said he- he said he missed me. And then, he just hung up," El explains as her and Nora sit on Max's bed while Max paces in front of them.

After a, "I never really liked him," and "I know we've been friends since kindergarten, but he's still annoying," from Nora, the group collectively agreed to stop listening to her inputs.

She doesn't blame them.

"He's a piece of shit," Max announces, turning to the girls.

"I knew it!" Nora's interest piques.

El just looks up sad, "what?"

"Sorry, El," Max looks somewhat sympathetic. "But it's true. Mike doesn't have jack shit to do, and Nana obviously isn't sick."

"I bet, him and Lucas are playing Atari right now," Nora turns to the brunette, not nearly as emotionally involved as the other two.

"But friends don't lie," El says, more to Nora who was there when she first heard the words.

"Yeah, well," Max butts in. "Boyfriends lie. All the time." She sits down in front of El. "Here's what you're going to do. You're going to stop calling him. You're going to ignore his calls."

"He doesn't exist!" Nora states, far too excited.

"Doesn't exist?" El repeats confused.

"He treated you like garbage," Max explains slowly. "You're gonna treat him like garbage. Give him a taste of his own medicine."

"Give him the medicine."

"And if he doesn't fix this, if he doesn't explain himself. . ."

"Dump his ass!" Nora stands up. The two girls look at her, Max with kind of a smirk and El just frowning. "Now, let's go."

Nora pulls the girls up and drags them all the through Max's room, her house, her street, and up until the bus stop.

"Where are we going?" El asks as the girls sit on the bench, probably too taken aback earlier to ask on their way.

"Somewhere that'll change your life," Nora grins, still holding the two girls' hands.

Max laughs with a slight nudge, " Okay, you dork." She then turns to El, "we're taking you to Starcourt."

"Star. Court?" El rolls the word around in her mouth.

"The greatest mall in the history of the world," Nora takes on a dramatic voice.

"You've been spending too much time with the D&D geeks," Max pulls her up as the bus pulls up in front of them. "We're gonna go shopping." She jumps up the steps and the girls all take a seat towards the back of the over-crowded bus.

Before Nora realizes, the bus stops in front of the mall and most of the people got off, including the three girls, still connected by their hands.

"What d'you think?" Max asks El on the other side of Nora, grinning up at the large mall.

"Too many people. Against the rules," El shakes her head.

"Seriously? You have superpowers. What's the worst that could happen?"

El nods a little and Nora drags the girls ahead.

Her two best friends getting along? Greatest day of her life.

"So," they stand in the center of the food court, looking around. "What should we do first?" Nora sets her eyes on the Sam Goody store, but waits for El and Max to respond.

El just turns in circles, in awe by everything she sees.

Max notices and smirks a little, "I guess we have to try everything."

The trio runs into the Gap store and Max and Nora laugh as they watch El touch everything on the racks. El stops in front of a mannequin wearing a bright blue sweater and Nora tosses an arm across her shoulders.

"You like it?" Max stands next to them.

"How do I know. . . what I like?"

"You just try things on," Nora shrugs. "Until you find something that feels like you."

"Like me?"

"Yeah," Max starts pulling clothes from the rack. "Not Hopper. Not Mike. You."

El takes the clothes Max had just picked out and runs into the dressing rooms.

As she spins around in her overly patterned tops and bottoms, Max goes to try on sunglasses, Nora beside her looking at hats.

When El finally comes out again, she's wearing a black romper with colorful shapes and patterns on it.

Max and Nora pool some of their money to pay for everything, and the girls rush out to the next store.

They go into one with a Flash Studio sign, throwing on random dresses and accessories, laughing on each other as a man took their photos excitedly.

After taking a few more, they go into a shoe store where El tries heels on. Max and Nora stand on either side of her, hands out to catch her if she falls. . . She does.

They all laugh on the ground, only harder when a group of girls in their grade watch then with annoyed looks.

Once they left the store, El in her fancy new clothes, Max in her fancy new sunglasses, and Nora in her fancy new hat, they walk to the food court as if they own the mall.

Arm in arm, El in the middle, the girls suddenly break apart when they see one of the girls from earlier laughing with some guy.

El grins a little and uses her powers to make her drink explode all over her.

They all laugh loudly and run away to Scoops Ahoy.

"See," Nora manages to get out. "What did we tell you?"

"There's more to life than stupid boys," Max finishes smiling.

They run into Nora's older brother's workplace and order their ice cream.

Steve seems too preoccupied to acknowledge the fact that his literal sister is in front of him.

"Hey, Robin," Nora grins as the girl opens the hatch leading to the backroom.

"Hey, kid," Robin smiles before turning to Steve. "We have our first sentence, 'The week is long,'" she says in a Russian accent, confusing the others there.

"Thrilling," Steve responds unamused.

"I know, but progress," she shrugs, closing the hatch.

Steve turns back to the girls. "Wait a second. Are you even allowed to be here?"

They share a look and laugh before grabbing their ice cream and running out of the store.

They leave the mall, heading towards the bus as the bright sunlight shines on their face.

Nora makes a move to take a bite from Max's cone, but stops as Max freezes in her tracks.

"Oh, you've got to be shitting me."

Nora and El follow Max's line of sight to see her staring at Will, Lucas, and Mike, all struggling to get their bikes off the rack.

"Isn't this a nice surprise?" Max goes up to the boys, Nora and El close behind.

Mike drops his bike and points at El, "what are you doing here?"

"Shopping," El answers sassily with a small shrug and glare in her boyfriend's direction.

Nora grins.

"This is her new style," Max gestures to the clothes. "What d'you think?"

"What's wrong with you two?" Mike glares at Nora and Max. "You know she's not allowed to be here."

Max scoffs. "You think you can just boss her around?"

"What is she? Your little pet?" Nora scoffs too. Dickhead.

"Yeah," El stands up al little taller. "Am I your pet?"

"What? No!" Mike defends.

"Then, why do you treat me like garbage?"

"What?"

"You told me Nana was sick."

"She is!" Mike turns to Lucas for backup who nods his head excessively. "Yeah, she is. Definitely."

"Oh, bullshit!" Nora rolls her eyes at her guy friends.

The two glare and Lucas just adds to the lie, "She's super sick. That's why we're here actually."

"Yeah," Mike nods. "We're shopping, not for us, but for Nana. Also, we're here to get a gift. . . for you," Mike stares at a squinting El. "Just, we couldn't find anything that suited you, and I only have, like, three dollars and fifty cents, so it's hard."

"Super hard," Lucas chimes.

Nora, annoyed with Mike and Lucas, focuses her attention on Will.

He's standing at the back of the group, watching the conversation like a tennis match, but he doesn't seem very interested either.

Nora tries to get his attention to see what's going on in that head if his, but is pulled back into reality when she hears El's voice,

"I dump your ass."

a/n:

man, FUCK mike wheeler