What is Normal?

One Way or Another

     Authors Note: boobs. Also major trigger warning for self harm. Seriously, if anyone actually reads this I'd love some feedback.

     "Of all the months I could have come out of a coma, why did it have to be the one that's as hot as the inside of an asshole," Max complained as El wheeled her up to her trailer. They'd only been outside for a few minutes and they were both already sweating.
     "Nah, this is way hotter than asshole heat, it's maybe like," boobs El thought, but she didn't say that. Instead she said, "balls." El wasn't entirely sure what balls were, but she'd heard them mentioned before, and even though she'd been having some interesting thoughts about boobs, she knew she couldn't say that out loud.
     Max laughed as they reached the little trailer home. It wasn't too far from the rift, which made El nervous, but as Max was fond of telling her, her legs were basically healed and her eyes would get better.
     "I can't thank you enough for taking me home, I'm so sorry, my mom had work-"
     "Stop apologizing, I was gonna come by today one way or another," El replied, cutting Max off. Hopper had agreed to take Max home from the hospital because apparently her mom couldn't be bothered. Hop sat in Joyce's car, listening to the radio and as content as El had ever scene him. It made her happy how glad he was to be able to do the things he couldn't do in Russia. Even things as simple as listening to the radio. She understood completely.
     El helped Max up the steps and into the trailer. While she could walk, she was still unsteady on her feet and El had insisted in pushing her up to the door. The inside was a wreck, empty beer cans were scattered everywhere. I guess you couldn't blame Max's mom for having a hard time.
     "Jesus, I can't believe she didn't OD," Max muttered, kicking over a can. The worst part was Max's room, in which her stuff was mostly packed up in boxes. "She was really that sure I wasn't coming back, huh?" Max said.
     "Well you did," El said, taking Max's hand and giving it a squeeze. She knew gestures like this were odd for two friends, but they just felt right.
     "Yeah, I guess I did," Max said, sitting down at the foot of her bed. El knew better than to ask if she was ok. Max had always hated that question.
     "You thought you were gonna die, didn't you," El said, barely above a whisper.
     "Yeah, I guess I did. And now I'm still here, and I don't know what to do. I can barely see, how am I supposed to roll my mom over so she doesn't choke on her own vomit? How am I supposed to go to school? How am I supposed to fucking read?"
     "You'll figure that out. I promise. I hope you know that I'll help you, as much as you want me to. You helped me, when I could barely speak and didn't even know what I liked. I guess both of those things are still true, but that's not the point, the point is that I'm here. I'm here and so is the whole party. You can come over to the cabin anytime."
     Max wrapped El into a big hug, which took El by surprise. Max wasn't much of a hugger. "I don't even know what I'd do without you El," Max whispered into El's shoulder.
    "Well, you'd be dead," El whispered back. She really wasn't very good at reading the room yet, because Max started laughing like El hadn't seen in a long time.
     "You are so weird, El. You're so weird and I love it," Max said. El was still confused as to what had been funny, but her cheeks got hot at the compliment. Thank god Max was basically blind or El would be really embarrassed.
     "So, what have you been doing these last few months? What's even going on with you, it's been so long since we talked," Max asked.
     "Um," El wasn't sure what to say. Listening to angry music and having trouble breathing when I think about basically any part of my life. Instead, El settled for, "not much, I've been learning how to play guitar and listening to a lot of music. Not your kind of music, really weird music," El finished.
     Max gently smacked her shoulder, "you've been playing guitar? That's awesome! You've got to play for me sometime."
      That idea gave El worries she didn't even know she had. Am I any good? "Yeah, maybe, I don't know I think I kinda suck."
     "Eh, I sucked at skateboarding and you still watched all of my sort of almost ollies. I'd love to hear you play, El."
     "Hey, you almost did a kick flip that one time!" El said.
     "El, I'm not sure you've ever seen a kickflip," Max stated.
     "Yeah, fair enough," El scratched the back of her neck. She didn't know why she was so nervous. I mean, it was just Max, right? It's not like a boy or something.
     Hopper knocked gently at the trailer door and said, "El, we gotta get going, Joyce is making casserole."
     El faked a smile, Joyce's casserole was... I interesting. Nobody really knew what was in it. Maybe not even Joyce.
     "Max, I'm sorry, but I think I have to go," every bone in El's body was telling her not to leave Max alone here, in this house full of memories she'd probably rather forget, but she found herself hugging her best friend goodbye and trudging out to the car with Hopper.
     "Did you guys have a good chat?" Hopper asked on the drive home.
     "Yeah, really good," El said. She couldn't help thinking about how Max had told her that she loved her weirdness. No one had ever told her that before and it seemed to El to be about the best compliment a person could ask for.
     "You know, I wasn't sure that Max girl was a very good influence when I first met her, but she seems to make you real happy, so I think she's growing on me," Hopper said.
     After El suffered through the mystery casserole, she took a shower, which Joyce told her she didn't do nearly enough for a teenager that was outside and sweating as much as she was.
     She stared at herself in the mirror. She was scrawny as ever, and she was in the awkward phase of growing out a buzz cut where her hair was making the transition from standing straight up to curling around her forehead. El liked it better stuck up, Eddie said it was punk rock. She liked punk rock.
     The main thing she noticed were the two symmetrical pad shaped burn marks on her chest from when they'd had to restart her heart during the NINA project. She'd never quite figured out why it stopped. Maybe it was telling her that it didn't want to be in a world where people murdered dozens of children for personal gain.
     God the blood. There had been more blood than El had ever seen. The memory hit her so hard that she felt like she could taste the death on her tongue. Her hands shook and she realized that she was doing it again. Spiraling. She dug her pocket knife out of her jeans. It was the only thing she knew could stop the spiraling.
     Re-opening the scab over the tattoo hurt more every time. It bled more, too. Maybe too much. El made a few smaller cuts in places on her arm that didn't bleed as much. That was better. Not enough blood to feel sick, but still enough to feel ashamed. El could run as fast and as far as she wanted, but shame would catch up to her in the end, one way or another.