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mad max goes way above the speed limit
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. ✧ ・゜. +・o ✧
After school, Alina biked home with Lucas, Mike and Dustin. She enjoyed this new routine, giving her more time to talk to her friends and also to discuss the project she was planning with Mike, who also agreed to the idea. Still, Alina couldn't help but notice that Dustin and Lucas had conveniently forgotten to tell Mike that they had invited Max trick-or-treating. She wouldn't tell him, either, because she knew it was unlikely Max would come after the fiasco from earlier, and because Mike had been in such a mood lately. It was the Anniversary Effect, the stupid doctors at the Lab would say, and although Mike didn't have the level of trauma she and Will did, Alina figured the same thing still applied. Eleven. He missed Eleven.
She did, too, and, when she looked at Mike, she could almost picture the girl on the back of his bike, arms around his waist, looking around in awe like she'd done last year, the first time she'd really gotten to explore Hawkins.
The only difference between Alina and Mike in their missing Eleven was that Mike thought she was still alive. Even though Eleven had died right in front of them, Mike assumed that because they hadn't found a body, it meant she was still out there, even confessing to having seen her that same night.
Alina knew he was just in denial. She, very rationally, had told him that her body most likely had been transported into the Upside Down, but Mike still wasn't having any of it. So, Alina had dropped the topic and didn't speak about her death again. But she could tell that Mike was still waiting for her to come home.
It was ironic, because sometimes Alina didn't want to believe Eleven was dead, just like her dad. But she knew that the first steps in recovering from the traumatic experience were accepting that they were—even if she sometimes found herself wandering the woods, looking for them.
"What?" Mike's voice suddenly pulled Alina out of her thoughts, and she blinked, entering reality again and finding that he'd turned, staring at her with confusion. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
