Work Text:
Officially, what happens in July is this:
Steve Harrington is closing up Scoops Ahoy with his coworker Robin Buckley when the fire starts. They run towards the nearest exit only to discover it blocked, with a couple kids nearby panicked and frightened. Steve leads them towards a back exit — them being Robin, Dustin Henderson, and little Erica Sinclair who’d been at the movies seeing Back to the Future — and just as they're about to leave, a massive, flaming support beam falls from the ceiling. It nearly hits Robin and Dustin, the official story goes, and Steve fearlessly, unhesitatingly, tackles them both out of the way.
Legs trapped under its weight, he screams at them to leave and they do, promising to get help. But when rescue crews get to where they tell them he is, it’s too late; it’s engulfed in fire; no one would survive it, and so they bury Steve Harrington in an empty casket just like they do Chief Hopper, the heroes of the Starcourt Mall Disaster, the papers say.
Unofficially, what happens in July is this:
After —
After Robin spends the first part of her summer terrorized by the loveless long arm of capitalism and King Himbo himself, after Henderson catches the Russians on tape and she proves her genius, after he proves his with the Indiana Flyer, after the rain and after the elevator, after he is stupid and brave and wonderful and idiotically selfless, after they laugh and throw up and after she cuts her own chest open and shows this strange, beautiful boy the terrible, awful heart of herself, after —
After, he tells her she has dogshit taste in women instead of telling her she’s dogshit. After, they meet up with his other numerous children and there’s that disgusting business with the slug in the little super-powered girl’s leg. After, Chief Hopper tosses him a set of keys and he shakes his head, says no, says Erica was right, says you need someone to lead the way and hey, Chief, I think I might just be your guy. After, he tucks the keys into Robin’s hand instead, despite her protesting that she only has a learner’s permit; after, he says yeah but you’ll keep my kids safe, right? and after he says, you got this.
After, he follows them back down to hell and her heart follows him. After, Robin takes one look at that dumb fucking car and says oh, no, Robin’s your daddy now, because, after, she’s scared, she’s terrified, she’s shaking, but everyone else needs her to be brave and she thinks it’s kind of something that might make him laugh, even without him there. After, she crashes that car straight into Billy Hargrove, and, after, they flee. After, they come back.
After, after, after —
After, she sits on the back bumper of an ambulance and waits for him.
And waits.
And waits.
And waits, and waits, and —
In August, when her hands stop shaking, Robin asks Jonathan Byers to teach her how to drive before school starts back up. She thinks about asking Nancy, because Nancy’s always trying to check in on her and ask about her feelings and she’s so nice Robin’s about fifteen minutes away from developing a really unfortunate crush, but also she’s seen her in action behind the wheel and, listen, she knows she’s shaky at best but goddamn, okay?
And anyway Byers has practice carting precious cargo around, and he always seems sort of calm in a crisis — at least, in the one crisis she experienced and that was a doozy, so — so she figures he’s her best bet.
He says yes as soon as she asks, because Jonathan Byers is a boy characterized by silent devotion, she thinks, always waiting to take care of others first because he knows how to take care of himself already and he’s happy to make himself wait, even when maybe he shouldn't. He says yes, and doesn’t ask her why — though that might be because she gets nervous halfway through asking and starts babbling about how she wants to make sure the kids have another adult-adjacent figure, like, in the know, you know? Who can, like, cart them around and be there for them and all that touchy feely shit she didn’t go in for until a month and change ago — and he just shows up at her house at eight on a Wednesday and lets himself into the passenger seat of the beat to hell ‘81 Dodge Aries K she got for a song at a police auction with her dad down near Lawrence using the government hush money she didn’t squirrel away for college, the money a part of some settlement with the people who owned the mall, the shady government people tell her parents when they had over the check with a bunch of zeroes attached. She’d already signed the NDAs when they weren’t looking.
Byers talks her quietly through the different gears as they sit on her sleepy little side street, points out all the same knobs and levers her dad had done when they got the car. She plays with the windshield wipers, then the turn signals, adjusts her mirrors carefully, and ends with her hands carefully at ten and two.
“You’ll break your wrists like that in a crash,” says Jonathan quietly and gently adjusts her hands to something more comfortable. One time, back in June, before she thought oh, you’re the one for me, and never got the chance to say it, she’d bullied her way into getting a ride home, because her front tire was flat; she’s not confident enough to drive the way she saw then, right hand on the wheel, at the bottom, and the left out the window. Maybe someday, she thinks.
He instructs her on how to take the car out of park, get it in first, then second as they build up speed, and takes her down the main drag in town. She goes a solid fifteen under the speed limit but he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t say a lot, as they go, just makes a correction here or there, a word or hum of encouragement too. He tells her to relax, once, and she breathes in deep and pretends to be someone else for a minute. It’s easy; she’s wearing a boy’s polo and Byers clocks that too, she thinks, the way his eyes flickered to the collar of it when he saw her on her stoop. She knows he knows. But he doesn’t mention it, so neither does she.
(Byers had been pulling getaway driver duty that night two weeks ago, same as Nancy, while Dustin let them in the sliding glass doors in the back with the key he’d been given for emergencies only, Henderson, capisce? The house had sold almost immediately when it had got put on the market, which had happened silent and fast pretty much the day after they put their only child’s empty casket in the ground, and Dustin had shown up on her doorstep, white-faced and vibrating with fury and Robin had said well let's go get some of his shit ourselves then.
So the gang broke in, for a given value of breaking in, and they’d tiptoed their way over cream carpet and past professionally wrapped up furniture, just waiting to get shipped somewhere else, and on up to a plaid nightmare of a room where everything was already carefully tucked into cardboard boxes marked donate. Any goodwill or shame Robin felt had evaporated like rain on hot pavement and they’d freakin’ ransacked the place, silently picking and choosing anything and everything they wanted.
On the way out, Max said think they’ll be mad if it accidentally burns down? And Robin had thought about it, had honest to god thought about it, because they’d probably love the insurance payout more than they loved their son. But she’d said cool it, Charlie McGee, we don’t have an in with the local Federales anymore, and El had flinched and Robin had felt sick to her stomach so they just left it at that.)
They’re moving soon, the Byers. She heard it through the grapevine. (Henderson, mostly, who’s taken to calling her on the walkie she inherited in July when he can’t sleep. It’s fine, because she can’t sleep either, and Henderson is kind of a hoot, the little know it all.) She waits to bring it up until they’re outside town limits, cruising five miles under the speed limit now and feeling tentatively optimistic about this driving thing.
She’s not totally sure how to bring it up. She wants to, wants to see how he’s feeling about it, be, like, a good friend in this moment for this person she thinks she inherited just like that walkie. She also — well, she also has this thought, this theory and —
Listen, okay — listen: Robin’s observant. Robin’s smart. She’s used to spending a lot of time on the fringes of groups, watching. And sure she may not be great at reading social cues, you may have to point things out to her point blank sometimes, but if you watch long enough, you’re bound to pick something up. And these people — these new friends of hers — they’ve been handling her with kid gloves, mostly, because they don’t really get how she got involved, besides the fact that she worked at Scoops, translated the message and bing bang boom, right? They think she got pulled in because of this one thing, and it meant another certain thing, but it didn’t, it really didn’t.
It meant more, she thinks, when she’s alone, when she can’t sleep. She’s not sure what that more means, if it means anything at all. Nothing had taken root but that night, that moment, knee to knee in that bathroom stall: when she’d been seen clearer than she ever had before, then she ever dreamed she would and — she would’ve liked more, she means. She would’ve liked more.
Didn’t get it. Doesn’t know how to make that right, in her heart.
But what she also means is that she’s better equipped to see things than most, especially things like —
“How’s Will feeling about the move?” Robin asks, because like recognizes like, she thinks, and she knows what it looks like to look and not look, to want and not have and never get. “And, um, El, too. And you!”
“They’re taking it okay,” he tells her. They’ve been at it for something like two hours now, and they’re finally turning back onto her block. She starts downshifting as they approach her house and he continues, “Upset about leaving their friends, but Mom’s right. They need a fresh start, and it’s — it’s safer, for El.”
Robin nods. They pull up to the curb and Jonathan quietly talks her through an approximation of a parallel park. She only runs into the curb, like, three times, and he only winces once. Big win for Robin Buckley, she thinks.
And because she’s still working on being brave, on being something bigger than herself, on being some nebulous second self that she’d pretty sure everyone can see her trying to become but are too kind and too traumatized to try to call her on it — because of all these things, she finds it in herself to put her hand on Jonahan Byers’s thin wrist and stops him before her can reach for the door handle.
He looks at her, an eyebrow raised under those floppy bangs, and Robin says, “Uh, hey, you know, I know you guys are gonna be all the way out in sunny, far out Cali, ugh no pretend I didn’t do that voice, um, you’ll be in California, but, uh, if if like El or Will ever need to talk, like, especially Will? Or even if you want to talk about the kids, I’m, like, here or whatever?”
Byers’s eyes flick to the collar of her polo a second time. He’s observant too, she thinks, and he smiles faintly at her. He says, “Thanks. I’ll let them know. Especially Will. I think he could probably use more friends like you.”
“Same,” she says. “Thanks for the lesson. Same time next week?”
“Sure,” says Byers.
In September, she gets herself hired at Family Video after she passes her driver’s test. Keith’s gonna be an absolute nightmare to work for, because not only is he the worst manager who’s ever walked the earth, she’s pretty sure, but he also keeps trying to look down her shirts and yuck. She’s already working on the perfect five-step plan to establish dominance though and a girl’s gotta keep herself in Chuck Taylors and trombone reeds somehow right?
She takes her two favorite step-kids out for ice cream a couple towns over to celebrate even this mediocre little win, because Erica’s the kind of girl who’s never gonna let a check go uncashed and sometimes Robin wakes up in a cold sweat with Dustin’s voice in her ears: if you die, I die.
Plus, the Byers officially hit the bricks two days ago, and she figures they could all use a distraction.
So she takes them for ice cream.
They make the hour drive west to Lafayette and Budges Drive In. Robin gets some loaded tots — she’s gotta give herself a full calendar year before she tries to eat ice cream again, she thinks, but she still springs for a malt for herself — while Dustin gets a perfectly respectable twist in a cake cone and Erica gets a turtle sundae.
Robin’s never been big on kids. She likes them in the abstract, probably, but babies wig her the hell out — too small, too loud, and why are their bones soft? That seems like a recipe for disaster if you ask her — and there’s no one meaner than a twelve year old girl (exhibit a: Erica Sinclair). Plus, all that energy? Wasted on people who don’t need to work a job with someone like Keith, go to high school, and try to get into Sarah Lawrence with a 3.8 GPA.
But the ones that she’s found in her orbit are kind of alright, though she’s sure that’s gotta be the trauma talking, mainly, you know? Wheeler can be a real drag with that sour puss and those bitchy manners that don’t come with any fun perks, unlike some people she used to hang around, but Max’s way too cool for school and Lucas has a really solid head on his shoulders. Her favorites are, obviously, the ones across from her at this picnic bench, currently bitching each other out about the latest episode of My Little Pony.
Truly, she thinks, her life is a cosmic joke.
Letting their voices wash over her, Robin eats her tots and allows her gaze to go vague. She hums every once in a while but they’re good at entertaining themselves when they get together and honestly she’s got a bet with Nancy to see if the unholy alliance between Henderson and Sinclair the Younger will burn itself out with time or forge itself into an even more terrifying one.
She tunes back in when Erica starts talking shit about Tina, apparently on the outs again, and Dustin follows the drama with all the voracious interest of a boy raised by a single mom and soaps. And to be fair: Robin is also deeply interested in this saga too, because there’s beef between them every other week and there’s nothing more juicy than tween girl drama because, again, no one is meaner than a twelve year old girl and drama in Erica’s little circle is some real Caesar and Brutus shit, she swears. It’s probably gonna come complete with a stabbing too one of these days, what with the little walnut handled switchblade in Erica’s rainbow backpack initialed S.D.H. that she clearly thinks Robin didn’t see her swipe that night.
When she runs out of steam bitching about Tina, Dustin starts telling them about the DnD club that the high school has, and how the “super fucking cool DM, so metal” who runs it is almost finished with the plans for their new campaign and he’s, like, so excited, it’s going to be so sick.
Robin, who has, against her will, learned a not inconsiderable amount about DnD over the last two months thanks to her continued exposure to these dinguslettes, makes interested noises but focuses on not absorbing any further information on the subject, thanks.
“This guy can’t be that cool if he runs a DnD club,” says Erica, with all the disdain of the coolest mean girl at the table and who actively uses her own DnD campaigns as, like, trial runs for her take over of the United States government, she’s pretty sure. “I’ve been in the Wheeler basement. It smells like corn nuts and sadness.”
They wordlessly high-five over the table while Dustin points at them. He says, “Well, now, there’s where you’re wrong! Eddie’s cool as shit. He’s a senior, and he’s in a band, a metal band, and he’s got, like, the best taste in music because of it. And we do DnD in the theater, not Mike’s basement, and there’s, like, a full set up and everything. I’m talking candles, and music, and atmosphere.”
“Oh, apologies —”
“Yeah, you make ‘em —”
“I was being sarcastic, nerd —”
“Wait,” says Robin. “Hold on, what’s this club called?”
“Hellfire! Eddie founded it his freshman year, isn’t that cool?”
“Hellfire?” she parrots, then, “Eddie? Eddie the Freak Munson?”
Dustin beams. “You know him?”
Who doesn’t, thinks Robin, he’s only Hawkins’s High’s foremost teenage — well, not teenage for much longer, she thinks he’s a November birthday, if her recall of the morning announcements over the years is accurate — anyway, he’s Hawkins’s High foremost drug dealer, and she doesn’t even run in the circles that avail themselves of his services. (Mostly. Sometimes the band kids end up at parties. Robin’s, like, moderately cool, okay? Also the cheerleaders have been treating her a certain way since this summer, almost reluctantly bringing her into their fold because they think she’s like them in some respects and Robin refuses to address it directly so, yeah, she’s been invited to more parties so far this month than, like, her entire high school career to date.)
“Uh, yeah. He walks on the cafeteria tables and shouts about capitalism and conformity.” And sometimes has some good points under all that hair and his feral raccoon manners, but she’s not telling Dustin that either. She tacks on, “Also, he’s failed senior year twice. He’s kind of hard to miss.”
Erica looks aghast at him. “And this is your king? Damn, Henderson, you used to have standards.”
“I have standards,” he hisses. “So what if he’s failed senior year —”
“Twice!”
“— academics aren’t everything!”
She leans over the table and puts her wrist against his forehead. Robin asks, “Oh my god, are you feeling okay? Is this some sort of fever? Did you hit your head on the way to the bathroom earlier and not tell me? Do we need to go to the Emergency Room? Oh my god, please don’t make me have to tell your mother, I can’t break Claudia Jean’s heart like that, she’ll forgive me but I’ll never forgive myself —”
He bats her away as Erica cackles into her sundae.
“I have standards! I have great standards. My track record with older male friends is—.” Dustin shoves the rest of his twist in a cake cone into his mouth, rolls his eyes, and says around it, “I have great standards.”
“Sure,” she says. “That’s why you talk with your mouthful. Gremlin.”
“Don’t feed me after midnight,” he says agreeably.
“Ain’t planning on it.” Robin pops her last tot in her mouth and stands, bussing the table as she goes. “Alright, saddle up little doggies —”
“Oh my god, why?”
“—truly, I don’t know, and I am sorry — but yeah I need to get you home before curfews.”
“Can we get milkshakes for the road?” asks Erica. “And remember I’m owed for life.”
“Sure, sure, whatever. Hop to it, and it’s malts all around.”
So they do, following behind her like little ducklings, and when they get to the car Erica gets shotgun — in perpetuity, apparently Dustin lost a bet, and Robin thinks he really should’ve seen that shit coming. He’s a nerd, right? Shouldn’t he know not to make deals with the fey? They sing along with the radio, Top 40, and they freakin’ crank it when Prince and the Revolution come on with “Pop Life,” scream the roof off her Aries, and it’s almost enough — it’s almost enough.
(Dustin’s got on a Members Only jacket that’s probably getting a little funky with how much he wears it, even when it’s warm out; Erica’s got on a men’s watch that’s way too big and serious for her spunky little girl wrist; Robin’s got a stack of polos and a nearly brand new bottle of Creed’s Green Irish Tweed, that pretentious schmuck, that she never wears but huffs like glue when she’s alone and half a heart and —)
She drops Erica off first and Dustin stays reclining in the backseat, mainly because he knows he’ll get slapped to high heaven if tries to crawl over the center console again and get his grubby little feet all over her shit. She watches him in the rearview.
“You okay?” she asks when he presses the heel of his hand into his eye socket, wincing.
“Yeah,” he says. He wiggles the remains of his malt at her. “Brain freeze.”
Mrs H waves at her from the porch when she drops him off but she stays in the car, because she’s not super hungry after the drive in and the double malt action and she knows she’ll get invited in for dinner if she goes up to make small talk and it’s, like, completely impossible to say no to Claudia Henderson, which proves it must be genetic, she thinks.
Instead, she heads home, pulls on her sleep shirt, and lies on top of her chenille bedspread. She grabs the walkie from her nightstand and places it, switched on and waiting, on her breastbone, right over the Hawkins High Swim Team logo. She stares up at the ceiling until her alarm goes off in the morning.
It’s fine; she’s not that tired. Maybe she’ll catch a nap in homeroom.
In November, Robin starts driving Max to school. Forest Hills isn’t exactly part of her normal commute, but Dustin’s been mentioning Max has been pulling away since her own move the last month after Neil Hargrove bailed on her mom and hightailed it out of town. Also, Max is kind of her favorite, so.
(Favorite kid, she has decided, is an arbitrary title she bestows upon whoever has amused her most in the past week, or if it somehow causes strife among the others because of it, which in turn circles back to amusing her. She’s open to bribery too but only Erica’s figured that out, and Erica is the kind of kid who says crap like it doesn’t take talent to pay full retail, so she’s not getting bribes out of that one, like, ever but also it doesn’t matter because Robin is happy to take notes when she starts dropping gems like that. She wonders if she can be her official translator or press secretary or something when she inevitably becomes dictator of Earth.)
Max rides shotgun with her skateboard between her knees and her headphones around her neck. She’s really into Kate Bush lately, and it’s not a huge sacrifice to pop in Max’s Hounds of Love cassette each morning instead of Robin’s preferred Patti Smith. Max likes that too, she says, which, like, good because if Max wasn’t into Horses they were going to have beef; but Kate Bush is solid, and if it’s in the tape deck Robin’s got better odds of getting her to actually talk to her.
They’re seventy-thirty odds, sure, but with the headphones jammed in place it’s more like ninety-eight to two, because Max is about as receptive to bonding with Robin as a cat is receptive towards a nice bubble bath.
But the girl to boy ratio in their little monster hunting pack is kind of whack — or, at least, it used to be — and Nancy’s not really her speed — which, talk about judging a book by it’s cover, Mayfield; she probably doesn't know about the guns, she’d probably be all over that; plus, Max’s best friend is a massive phone bill away and Erica’s cool but she’s also the little sister of her off again, on again gentleman caller. (Honestly, being a lesbian with no prospects is kind of relaxing when she considers that relationship.) Dustin’s always talking about his cool older male friend, which, gross, Henderson, but Max could probably use a female version, maybe.
Also Robin’s got eyes and, like, deductive reasoning and has an ear to the ground for gossip always and she knows shit’s ot great with her mom, so she definitely needs like one kind of, sort of reliable semi-adult in her life, and Max once complimented her Chucks and the doodles on them with a knowing little smirk before skating off into the night like some sort of California cool anti-hero.
All this to say: Robin figures she’s got some kind of chance with her. Maybe even sixty-forty odds on this one.
Mainly they just listen to music. Sometimes they talk shit about the girls in Max’s grade. Sometimes they talk shit about the boys in their group, and every once in a while Max will say something that doesn’t sound emotional in the moment but then Robin’s having dinner later that night and she’s like wait a minute but then can’t ever figure out how to bring it up.
She’s smart, Robin is, but not particularly emotionally intelligent compared to some other people, she thinks again. Or maybe it’s that she’s really, really not great at reading social cues; it’s probably a lot of different things, to be honest. Like, she talks too much and too fast, and it’s usually easier to just pretend she doesn’t notice things or she doesn’t care, because if you don’t talk you can’t babble and get mocked and also caring gets you hurt, caring gets you noticed, and Robin’s heart is broken enough these days and she just doesn’t want to be, like, perceived, okay? She just wants to get through her day and listen to her music and she doesn't particularly want to be emotionally vulnerable and whatever and so she doesn’t know how to get other people to be emotionally vulnerable in return, because it’s probably supposed to be an even exchange?
Robin’s never had very many close girl friends, is the other thing, or even just close friends, the weird, continued overtures of Hawkins High’s cheer squad notwithstanding: they can smell the weirdness, she thinks, the otherness, the her-ness. But for Max she wants to try; for the kids she’s trying to put the effort in, because they need someone and she’s all they got, her and Nancy and Jonathan and —
“You got Lawrence or O’Hare for social studies?” she asks.
“Lawrence,” Max tells her. “Did you have him too? He’s senile, right?”
“Yeah, and totally,” she says. “He should’ve retired then but no one can get him to. Also I think I still have all my old tests in a box somewhere because he, like, never changes his questions all that much, so I’ll bring them next time I pick you.”
“You condone cheating?”
“Cheating’s just winning with style. But I think it’s more, like, strategy than anything. Don’t tell Wheeler, he’ll tell his sister, and she’ll get all on my case about academic integrity.”
Max smiles meanly. Though, to be fair, she doesn't really have any other style of smile. She says, “He’s in my social studies class too, so hell no. Those dweebs always think they’re so superior because they’re, well, dweebs so it’ll be very funny to totally smoke him, grades-wise.”
“Nice.”
A few blocks from school, she pulls over and lets Max out like she always does. She skateboards the rest of the way because she, quote, likes the fresh air on her face, but mainly she and Robin both know that if the other little twerps know she’s open to some morning chauffeuring rather than just weekend and evening chauffeuring around her work schedule she knows she’s never going to know peace.
And like, not for nothing either but then Max for sure won’t want a pick-up if the car is filled to the brim with boys shouting about DnD. There’s also only so much of that Robin can take, and she likes her mornings filled with Kate Bush, Hounds of Love or Never for Ever because Robin likes the Babooshka song and Max is occasionally agreeable on that front, or sometimes Patti Smith or even Blondie and shit talking.
So she pulls over, ejects the tape and hands it off to go back into her Walk-Man, and Max hops onto her skateboard once she’s out. She watches her put on the black wayfarers that had been pushing back her hair over her eyes and pull up her headphones to cover her ears. She waves a hand over her shoulder at Robin and skates off.
She gives it about five minutes and then slowly heads towards the upper lot all the seniors get to park in. She always tries to get one of the shady spots, because the Aries’ chipped black paint absorbs heat like a mother fucker, and this morning she’s early enough to snag one since they’re making Max talk to Ms Kelly before classes start on Tuesdays these days. Robin parks, grabs her stuff, and makes her way to the main building, bag slung over her shoulder. Her eyes don’t catch on each vaguely red, vaguely brown, boxy car. She’s not late to class.
In January, she asks her dad to teach her about basketball.
He’s shocked, though probably not as shocked as she is that she’s willingly asking to know more about it. It’s a weird moment for them both.
They stare at each other and he says, “Really?”
“Really.”
“Why?”
Robin shrugs. She’s got kind of a working knowledge of the sport, thanks to four full years of sitting on the sidelines in band and watching the games, same with football. She never thought she’d want to know more, but Lucas made the JV squad back in October when they had try-outs. He’s been elevated to a bench warmer for Varsity since they’ve come back from winter break because someone on the first string got hurt and they started moving people around, and she’s noticed that the other boys give him a lot of shit about it and he usually laughs it off, but it stresses him out, totally upsets him, she thinks (and Max and Erica tell her in not so many words when she pumps them for intel, because Robin’s freakin’ slick when she wants to be, okay).
So the kid’s torn between these two worlds and it doesn't look like he’s got anyone who, like, wants to talk to him about it, basketball, that is, and Robin just kind of feels bad. She knows what it’s like to have your friends outgrow you, or leave you behind, or just leave , never come back and—
And anyway, she picks the burgeoning baby jock up from the occasional practice sometimes, and he asked her the other weekend if she’d maybe drive him to the good outdoor court halfway across town sometimes, and it’s not like Robin’s going to be out there with him shooting baskets and shit, or even giving him tips. Look at these noodle arms, you think she’d do anything other than die immediately when forced to do wind sprints?
Okay, so, maybe she wouldn’t die. Maybe that’s a little hyperbolic — she’s in decent shape, she does marching band and she used to play soccer, so she’s got some skills. She could maybe get up and down the court with him, but making baskets? Forget it.
But she wants to be supportive, you know? She wants to call out something like hey nice three pointer and watch the traveling but she’s not totally one hundred percent on what lines mean what and frankly she heard something once about “high dribbling” and she’s been confused ever since. She wants to be able to talk to him about it, if he wants to; she wants to be someone for him, like she is for Dustin and Erica, and Max occasionally, and Wheeler, against both of their wills. She wants to do this for him.
Sometimes, she wonders why. Sometimes, she wonders if everything she’s doing, all the things she’s doing with the kids and for them — if how she’s trying to help them and befriend them, is because she thinks it’s what would be done (had been done) by someone else, or what someone else would have (had) wanted. Sometimes, she wonders that, and other times she wonders if she’s just trying to recreate the shape of something within herself because it’s the only way to keep it close — because she’s afraid of losing what little she had of it, and this way —
This way, it will always be a part of her.
This way, she can’t lose it again.
She doesn’t say this. Why would she? Her parents are already iffy on her relationship with the kids, though it helps that she accepts money from their parents sometimes to pay for gas and so she can kind of say she’s their new babysitter — she doesn't ever say this to their faces, feels a little sick when she says it to her parents actually, but it gets them off her back — and, like, what good would it do? They worry about her enough, after everything, how she’s sleeping, if she’s eating, if she’s talking to people her own age because right now it probably seems like all her friends are freshman, except for Nancy, who she’s not even sure if she counts as a friend, just the ex-girlfriend of her —
Robin shrugs again as her dad stares at her, says she’s curious, and almost hopes he thinks she’s got a crush on someone on the team instead. Maybe it’s not so far off from the truth.
Not like they’d guess her real crush if they even tried, she thinks. Her parents both think that she’d had a fling last summer, and she’s struggling to deal with her grief.
That’s maybe not too far off from the truth either, she thinks.
He makes her sweat it out for a second, still staring, but eventually he grabs the remote and finds whatever game is on — the Lakers and the Celtics, and honestly she’s surprised he wasn’t already watching it, on account of how much he likes Larry Bird — and he starts talking as they watch.
In March, Robin thinks she might hate Eddie Munson. This is weird for a number of reasons, up to and including the fact that she’s always sort of thought freaks should stick together when they can and, even if he’s not her normal flavor of it, once again: like recognizes like, she’s pretty sure. (He always grins when people say it, call him those names, sort of proud; she wants to like him for that alone but alas.) Also, she’s just never thought of herself as a person who goes in for jealousy and hate; sure, she’s got some latent mean girl tendencies but she tells herself that’s because she’s discerning and shit, and because most people are just, like, annoying, on the whole so she can’t be blamed for rolling her eyes and talking shit.
But she’s pretty sure she hates Eddie Munson, or, yeah, is at least jealous of him and the place he’s carving in her dumb step-kids’ lives. Luckily, he doesn’t have his weird little nerdy claws in Max or Erica yet, though it might just be an inevitability for Erica, given the nerd pipeline Dustin set her on back in the fall, so Robin doesn’t have much hope there. (Well, actually, she does — it’s just the hope that Erica will destroy him and then laugh with her about it. Erica’s the devil and she loves Henderson and Max and the others, sure, but that girl is something else and that something is evil incarnate and it’s awesome.)
She doesn’t want to hate him. She really doesn’t. She thinks, in another lifetime, in another universe, she wouldn’t, and that this would be something she was laughing about with someone else. In another lifetime, she’d been trying to make them all be friends — stay together for the kids, she’d joke and they’d both roll their eyes at her and —
But this is the lifetime she’s got. It kind of sucks ass, she thinks, what with the interdimensional nightmare monsters in the rearview, but what can you do?
So she tries to swallow down her feelings, focus up on the present and being present. Max has really been going through it — she hasn’t agreed to a ride to school since the weather started warming up, and Robin’s trying not to take it personally or worry too much except how Robin worries so much, all the time, about everything, so it’s kind of a losing battle — and she won’t talk to any of them, and even Dustin’s been kind of off this past week, though he keeps telling her it’s his seasonal allergies, Jesus, Buckley, I’m fine, which means she’s feeling off because the kids emotions work like a feedback loop half the time.
It’s becoming, like, a mantra for her. Don’t hate Eddie. Don’t hate Eddie. Don’t hate Eddie.
Pick up the kids from Hellfire — don’t hate Eddie.
Drop the kids off at the arcade before her shift and listen to them sing his praises — but don’t hate Eddie.
Think about joining the kids for lunch only they’re sitting with the Hellfire gals and guys now religiously and it’s good they’ve found people like them — so don’t hate Eddie.
Sit through a lecture from Dustin about how great it is to have an adult male friend — and don’t hate Eddie.
But Robin hates Eddie. In little bursts — in little frustrated gasps — in dark, sad moments as she stares up at her ceiling and her fingers open and close convulsively on her inherited walkie — in absent thoughts as she stands in the hair care aisle at the pharmacy, about to buy a bottle of Faberge Organics just for the smell —
Robin hates Eddie.
She hates him right now, fierce and bright and mean, as she digs through her locker for the books for her afternoon block of classes and Dustin stares up at her with those big sad cow eyes of his and his weak little chin and she knows it’s not his fault, it’s no one’s fault —
(It’s Martin Brenner’s fault. It’s Sam Owen’s fault. It’s Hawkins National Lab’s fault. It’s Reagan’s fault. It’s the Russian’s fault. It’s everyone’s fault, and she’s alone, alone, alone, why did you go when you did, please, please, why did you go when you did —)
— but here she is, and there Dustin is, and Robin Buckley thinks she hates Eddie Munson.
“I’m sorry,” she says flatly, “run that by me again, Henderson.”
“It’s the last part of the campaign,” he tells her, almost whining, “and Eddie says we have to find a substitute for Lucas, since he won’t play, and —”
“Okay, cool, cool cool, that’s what I thought you said.” She slams her locker closed, hefts the books against her chest. “I was just confused, because it’s insane. First of all, pass — DM rights to Erica for life. Second of all, I’m in band, which, I don’t know if you were unconscious during assembly, but we’re kind of playing, and you think I’m gonna just be able to bail like that? Oh, sorry, can’t do this championship game, I gotta hang up my trombone to go play a little table top dweeb game instead. Relatedly, why do you think Lucas who is on the basketball team can bail on the championship game? You need to check yourself before I wreck yourself.”
“That’s not how that goes, Robin.”
“Oh, it isn’t, my weird child friend? Color me surprised.”
“I just thought maybe you’d help us out.”
“Any other time, I would maybe consider it, make you sweat a little before I said no, but this time? Nope, right outta the gate, Henderson. Seriously. He won’t move it? You’re, like, twenty minutes old so I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt, but Eddie the Freak Munson’s been around the block, so what’s his excuse? It’s not like Lucas made the damn schedule for the games.”
He stares up at her some more, still looking particularly pathetic. But his eyebrows are drawing together in a very specific type of way as he says, “No, I know, I know, I just — whatever it doesn't matter. Thanks for nothing.”
“Hey!”
And yep there it is: Dustin rubs at his temple, wincing. “Sorry. Sorry, it’s — sorry.”
“Your head again?” She pokes him in the shoulder, but gently. “Here, I’ve got some ibuprofen in my bag.”
“Thanks. It’s just allergies,” he says.
Robin juggles her books, her backpack, nearly upends the contents with her clumsiness, and then finally gets her most on the bottle, shakes a few out, and hands them off. “Don’t dry swallow those.”
“I won’t. Thanks,” he says again. “Anyway, I gotta go find a replacement.”
Shaking her head, she sighs. “I would like the record to show that, as your step-father, I’m very disappointed.”
Henderson trundles off with a wave and, perversely, she wonders if he gets the joke, isn’t quite sure if she wants him to either, but one time he’d jokingly fought back, said you’re not my real dad, and the car had gotten real quiet after, and neither of them brought it up again. So, yeah, she thinks maybe he gets the joke; maybe not all of it, but most of it — the sharpest parts of it, she thinks.
Leaning her head back into her locker with a sigh, Robin wonders if she should find Nancy, give her a head’s up that the dweebs are on the hunt for a substitute nerd for the evening. But Nancy’s more than capable of shooting down her brother and his friends, she thinks, has more practice at it than Robin, who honestly would have capitulated if it had been literally any other night because she hates Eddie Munson but she loves Dustin Henderson, that little shitbird.
Hefting her books again, she heads off to her own class.
She hopes Lucas’s feelings won’t be too hurt when he realizes his friends not only didn’t come to his game, but decided to play his other game to completion without him, except she sees his little shining face peering around as he sits on the bench later that night, takes in the way his smile freezes and falls when he doesn’t see them and keeps not seeing them as people filter into the gym.
Even the natural high of having Vickie next to her as they get ready to play, once the anthem is done, isn’t enough to quell the desire to start a blood feud with Eddie Munson. She reminds herself that she’s not a hateful person, or an angry person, but it bubbles in her regardless and she wonders if anyone will miss her if she storms out at halftime to drag those assholes in by the ear.
After all, she knows where they are, and Robin knows the exact words that it would take to get them to drop everything. She doesn’t know if she could force them out of her throat, thinks that maybe she would choke on them, would let them choke her, but for Lucas she would try.
I said I was disappointed, Henderson, she would say, cool and collected, smooth here in her mind the way she isn’t in the world. She would put her hand on her hip, reach out to tug on the collar of his Members Only jacket, and she would say, But it’s not me you’re really disappointing.
She won’t though. A little because she’d be lying if she said she didn’t feel sick thinking about it, mostly because she’d probably start crying immediately. She wants to cry now. She always wants to cry, if she’s being honest.
“I think we have a real chance,” says Vickie.
Startled, Robin’s head snaps to the side. “Huh?”
“The team.” She smiles. Her eyes are big, pretty; they’re always big, always pretty. Get it together, Buckley. “I meant. I think we have a real chance to win this thing, don’t you?”
“Mhmm,” she says. “Real — big chance. Real big chance.”
Jesus Christ.
She’s saved from herself and her immense awkwardness by the band director swinging them into motion to play again after their breather. They keep it jaunty and light, and then they’re being told to rise for the national anthem.
“Singing for us tonight, we have a very special guest — all the way from Nashville, our very own, Tammy Thompson!”
To applause and wolf whistles and a we love you Tammy from some poor schmuck, a blast from Robin’s misguided romantic past strolls out, waving and grinning. Her eyebrows shoot into her hairline so fast they nearly achieve lift off, she thinks; and when Tammy starts to warble out the national anthem, she looks instinctively to the stands behind the home team’s bench, searching for a flash of dark hair and freckled skin, the word Muppet already shaped on her own silent lips and —
No one is there.
Beside her, beneath the music, Vickie quietly asks, “Are you okay? You look like you saw a ghost.”
“I’m fine,” says Robin, turning back to watch Tammy, and she doesn’t say, I wish —