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The first time she saw the book, it was peeking out of one of the dust-laden boxes at the cabin. Books were still new in El’s experience; there hadn’t been many in the Wheelers’ basement, and she didn’t know how to translate reading a few letters, a few practice words in the Lab, into reading stories. But when she asked Hopper about it, he got sad.
(Papa was never sad. He was cold, even when his voice was warm. Remote, even when he said that he was sorry for the way that things had gone.)
El pieces together what she can: that everything that makes Hopper sad links back to the life he used to have, the one with a daughter who had no powers—except over him.
Love is what she means when she thinks that.
Love is a word she’s known for a while.
The book is Anne of Green Gables, and Hop brings it out himself at bedtime one night. Bedtime is a ritual, El learns, something you do again and again. Teeth brushed. Face washed. Sheets swept back and up. Corners of the blanket turned and tucked.
Hop sits on the edge of the bed. His weight pushes the mattress down. Creak. He flips the mossy cover of the book over in his big-knuckled hands and says,
“Saw you looking at this the other day.” His voice is soft.
El says, “Yes.”
“It’s a classic.” He clears his throat. “Do you know what a classic is?”
El shakes her head, and so he says,
“It’s something that never gets old.”
“That’s the worst of growing up, and I'm beginning to realize it. The things you wanted so much when you were a child don't seem half so wonderful to you when you get them.”
After Hop is—gone, closed behind as many doors of El’s mind as she can slam shut in the name of grief, she sees the same mossy spine on Nancy Wheeler’s bookshelf. It’s a golden afternoon in early October, days before they leave for California.
Mike says the weather won’t be anything like this. It will always be boiling hot there.
She should be with Mike right now, while she still can. Every minute just brings them closer to the end.
(Grief makes you afraid. Afraid for everyone else. How many minutes did she waste with Hopper? How many times should she have left the doors open, in life?)
She should be with Mike, but she loves Nancy, too, and Nancy asked her to come upstairs.
Said she had a going-away present to give.
The Wheelers’ house changes so little. Nancy’s bedroom is still as pink and pristine as it was when El first crept into it, swimming in one of Mike’s sweatshirts, entranced by the tiny ballerina she didn’t have a name for. Nancy is still—despite all that they’ve shared together—as delicate and sparkling and distant as a dancer who answers only to music.
El can’t say no to her.
“So, Jane,” Nancy says. “I figured, since you’re going to be out with all the movies stars, you might as well have a little sparkle to match. They’re not diamonds, but they’ll have to do.”
They are as good as diamonds to El. They are tiny crystal studs, winking in Nancy’s palm.
“Oh, thank you,” El breathes, but she must have been looking at the book too long.
“Not the gift you were thinking of?” Nancy asks, her eyes straying demonstratively to the bookcase. “Anne, right? That was one of my favorites.”
“H—my dad,” El says. She never really knew what to call him when he was alive. It was part of her mistakes. But now she knows. He’s what a father is, not Papa. Not Ted Wheeler, who doesn’t even seem to understand how good he has it, with Nancy, Holly, and most of all, Mike. “My dad gave it to me.”
Nancy’s smile is wonderfully soft, something the little ballerina could never give.
“Then I’ll hang onto this one,” she says. “And give you Anne of Avonlea. That comes next.”
“Really?”
“Uh-huh. Anne tries teaching school. When she’s younger than I am now.” Nancy shakes her head, her curls springing. “I can’t imagine. But it’s still great. And Gilbert is dreamy.”
“Dreamy,” El repeats. “Like Mike.”
Nancy grimaces. “Eek. Right. I guess you would think about Mike, huh?”
El blushes. “Yes.”
“Oh, sometimes I think it is of no use to make friends. They only go out of your life after awhile and leave a hurt that is worse than the emptiness before they came.”
El reads it all the way west, never forgetting its moss-green companion packed at the bottom of her suitcase. She doesn’t care that her stomach churns a little, reading on the road. She doesn’t let the tears that occasionally blur her vision stop her from continuing. Page after page.
Nancy’s gift. Hop’s rituals. Mike’s promises. And all the rest—Max and Lucas, Dustin and Steve. Hawkins, in all that it’s given her, when it wasn’t breaking her heart.
Love is what she means when she thinks that.
“Well, we all make mistakes, dear, so just put it behind you. We should regret our mistakes and learn from them, but never carry them forward into the future with us.”
The first time El sees California, it’s a golden afternoon in early October. She is truly Jane Hopper, not Eleven any longer.
There’s a lot of life behind her, a life she used to have.
Grief and love have a lot in common. What you put in boxes will gather dust, but El doesn’t think the memories will ever grow old.