Trauma - Hopper Fan fiction

8. The real truth

Jamie woke up in the middle of the night to her dad snoring and found herself in his bed with her heel pressed into his back. Jamie chuckled to herself as she remembered the nights where her and Sarah would fall asleep in bed with their mom and dad while they watched a movie, Hopper being too tired and comfortable to carry them to their own beds.

Jamie got up and went into the kitchen for a drink. As she opened the fridge, she heard the floorboard creek coming from El's room. She whipped her head around and saw El standing in the doorway rubbing her eyes. She noticed El was dressed in pajamas designed for a six year old and she thanked god that her mom was there to buy her clothes. Jamie sat the milk carton down onto the counter and pulled two glasses from the cupboard.

"Thirsty?", Jamie asked giving El a friendly smile.

El folded her lips into each other before nodding her head and taking a glass from the counter as Jamie poured her a drink.

"I'm Jamie...", she said shyly, not knowing what else to say.

"My name is El, short for Eleven, but mama named me Jane"

"Your mom? ... is Joyce your mom?"

"No. But she is like my mom"

"Oh... okay. Well... my mom's name is Diane. Her and my dad used to be married, but they got divorced a couple of years ago."

El thought about the word divorce. Hopper explained the word to her when she heard it while watching one of her soap operas. He said that sometimes married people fall out of love and don't want to be together anymore.

El nodded her head slowly, showing Jamie that she undersood.

What Jamie really wants to ask is why the hell is she living in her dad's house, and why she thinks that they are sisters, but she doesn't want El to feel offended like she probably did eariler.

"So... um, you said that we are sisters?", Jamie said, attempting to break the ice as she took a sip of milk.

"Yes," El responded. "I started living with Hopper after I closed the gate, and then he adopted me because I used to live in a lab... He said that he would be my dad if that was okay with me and that he had another daughter, so I would have a big sister."

"Well... shit. Okay. I'm sorry for how I acted eariler. It's just that I haven't seen my dad in a really long time and it just looks like he forgot about me and started a new family", Jamie said as she felt guilty.

El's eye's perked up and Jamie looked at her in confusion.

"No! He talks about you all the time! He tells me about how much he loves you and that you mean the world to him and that when you grow up, you always said that you wanted to be a policeman doctor!

"He remembered that?", Jamie thought to herself. Jamie unknowingly let out a huge smile and put both of the now empty cups into the sink.

"You can sleep in my room if you want", El suggested, fearing that her new sister would still not accept her.

"Actually, I'd like that", Jamie said smiling and follwed El' into her room. As Jamie went to close the door, she saw El flick her head as the door closed simultaneously. Jamie gasped as El realized what she had done and looked at Jamie like she had seen a ghost.

El tried quickly to come up with a lie. "It does that som—"

"You can do that too?!", Jamie said in a loud, shocking whisper.

"Wait, w-what do you mean?", El said as she glanced at Jamie's wrist with her sleeves slightly rolled back. She didn't see a number, so she didn't know what Jamie was talking about.