Chapter Text
The clock in the hallway showed ten minutes before the start of the exam. Nancy’s leg was bouncing anxiously while she chewed on a pencil she had borrowed from Jonathan, her mind was going over everything she had studied.
Jonathan moved to the seat next to her and put a shoulder on her hand. “You got this,” he said quietly. “You’re prepared.”
Nancy glanced around the hallway. All of her classmates seemed equally stressed, looking through index cards and notes. “What if I don’t?” she whispered back. “What if I’ll fail? I spent all day yesterday recovering from a hangover. And I forgot my lucky pencil at home. It’s doomed to fail.”
“You got drunk?” Jonathan chuckled lightly. “Why?”
“I don’t even know.” She sighed and flipped her index cards over. “I was freaking out.”
“It’ll be over in a few hours. You’ll be done quicker than everyone else, and we’ll go out to celebrate after, alright?”
“We?” Nancy pushed a strand of hair out of her face. “Like, you and me?”
“Yeah.” He shrugged with a smile. “We could get a drink, catch up…” He nudged her knee with his. “I miss you, Nance.”
“You know I miss you too. But I really have other things in mind right now, I don’t think this is a good idea. I mean, you’re leaving in, what, two weeks? We’ll be right back where we started.” She shook her head slightly. “I don’t want that.”
Her focus on the cards was disrupted by an echoing noise in the hallways. It sounded like running footsteps, turning everyone’s heads toward the end of the hall.
“Is someone late?” Jonathan asked with a glance around the group.
“I don’t think so, everyone is here.”
The footsteps became quicker until Robin turned up around the corner, stopping her run by grabbing the corner of the wall. “Nance!” she called and hurried down the hallway. “Great to see all of you again, keep studying,” she said out of breath as she passed the other students, watching her.
“What are you doing here?” Nancy stood up and glanced at the clock again. Six more minutes.
“Hold on, give me a second.” Robin leaned on her upper thighs, catching her breath. Panting, she pushed her hair out of her face and stood up straight again. “Okay, so, uh, I called your house this morning to wish you good luck, but you weren’t there, and your mom said that you already left. Um, wow, I am not cut out for physical activity, whew.”
“Get to the point,” Nancy whispered. “I have about five minutes until that door opens and I’m being dragged into the most important exam of my life so far.”
“Okay, okay, you’re tense, I get it. So, I was talking to your mom, and she mentioned that your favorite pencil was still on your desk, or your lucky pencil, or whatever, so I went to ask Steve to drive me to your house and pick it up for you, but Steve was God-knows-where, so I walked there, or rather, I ran there, and I picked up your pencil, and then I ran here, and now I can’t breathe.” She exhaled and wiped over her forehead.
Nancy stared at her with a confused and expectant expression. “So...?”
“Right.” Robin frantically dug around in her bag. “Here it is!” She pulled out the pencil and handed it to Nancy. “There you go, one lucky pencil.”
“You seriously did that?” Nancy stared at the pencil in her hands.
“Yeah, no big deal.”
“Um, huge deal.” Nancy pulled Robin into a hug. “Thank you,” she muttered. “It’s just a pencil, but thank you.”
“It’s more than a pencil.” Robin held her tight. “But the clock is ticking, and you gotta get in there in a few minutes, and I’ll wait for you to celebrate afterwards, because you will pass, alright?”
“Okay.” Nancy nodded into the hug. “Yeah, I’ll pass. We’ll celebrate.”
Robin let go of the hug, gently holding onto Nancy’s shoulder with some distance between them. “Yeah, you will. We’ll all celebrate for both of you.” She glanced and smiled at Jonathan. “All of us, for both of you.” Her hands moved down to Nancy’s and squeezed them lightly. “You got this.” Her eyes flickered down for a split second before locking with Nancy’s again.
“I’ll see you after,” Nancy said quietly.
“Mhm, yeah.” Robin ripped her glance away and cleared her throat. “Okay, yes, I’ll leave you be.” She let go of her hands. “Good luck. Not that you need it. But, um, good luck.” She walked a few steps backwards with her eyes glued to Nancy. “Uh, good luck to all of you,” she said and lightly raised her hand to Nancy before turning around and walking out.
“Okay,” Nancy said to herself, smoothening out her skirt. “We got this.”
“Yeah,” Jonathan agreed. “We got this.”
The door opened, and Nancy picked up her bag from the floor. She nodded briefly at Jonathan, who gave her an encouraging smile.
When she found her seat and laid out her pens, Nancy let her eyes wander over the room. This was it, the end of high school, the beginning of her life.
Robin had no idea how long the exam would take. She decided to sit on a bench outside the main entrance to wait for Nancy. She leaned against the backrest of the bench and stared at the door, when someone sat down next to her.
“Hey,” Will said. “You here for Nancy?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m waiting for Jonathan. El’s with Max. I didn’t have anything else to do.” He folded his hands in his lap and glanced at her. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure, kid, hit me.” Robin leaned one arm over the backrest and turned toward him. “And don’t ask me to stop calling you kid, because you’re a kid.”
He chuckled lightly. “No, that’s not it. Do you remember the day we all visited Max after she woke up?”
“Like it was yesterday. Crazy day.”
“Yeah. Um, you said something to me in the car that day. Do you… do you remember that?” He pressed his lips together.
“Uh,” Robin said and thought back. “Very vaguely.”
“You said we could always come to you about non-alternate-dimension related problems. About everything.”
“I remember it,” Robin said. “Sorta. That was like…three months ago?”
“Two.”
“Right. Feels so much longer.” She sighed and looked at the entrance for a moment before turning her attention back to Will. “What about it?”
“I have something I need to talk about, but I can’t actually say it, because I don’t know how to or if I should speak about it at all.”
“Okay,” Robin said slowly. “Sure, try.”
“Okay.” He turned toward her slightly, keeping his eyes on something in the distance. “I like someone. And I told that person that I do, and now everything is weird. We fought, we talked it out and agreed to put it past us because they don’t feel the same way and never will, and I thought it’d be easy to just ignore my feelings, but I don’t think that I can. And I don’t know what to do.”
“Hm.” Robin slightly narrowed her eyes at him and watched as his face turned redder. “Before I help you with my incredible advice, I have a counter question for you.”
Will didn’t reply.
“First of all, why are you coming to me with this? Not that I don’t wanna help you,” she added quickly, “but we’ve barely interacted before, considering you’ve been in California for a year. Surely, you’d prefer talking about this with your brother, El or your mom.”
“Jonathan’s been busy,” he said quietly. “I don’t want to talk to my mom about it, and I’ve talked about it with El before, but there’s… a reason why I’m not doing it now.”
“Ah,” Robin said. “A conflict of interest?”
“What?” For the first time in the conversation, Will held direct eye contact, his cheeks growing even redder. “How – I mean, what do you mean?”
“I’m going to say something,” Robin said carefully, already picking out her words in her mind, “and I want you to know that me saying this is in no way trying to hurt or attack you or get too personal.”
“Okay,” Will said slowly and moved away by only an inch.
“You came to talk to me specifically because you have a feeling that I might understand you,” Robin said. She worded it like a question, but she didn’t need a confirmation from him.
“Yeah,” he said anyways.
“You just told me you like someone , and you talked to that person and they don’t like you back and I know a thing or two about dancing around direct pronouns or names. Is there any chance that this person you’re talking about is a guy?” Robin watched as he swallowed and looked away. She had no intention of outing herself to another person in the group, but she figured if she had to out herself to anyone, it should be someone who wasn’t all that different from herself.
The way Will was speaking reminded her of the way she talked to Nancy about Vickie before coming out, and she had always had a feeling about him.
“I don’t know if I can tell you that,” Will said slowly.
“Well,” Robin said and tried to show an encouraging smile, “if it is, I’m letting you know that I would not have a problem with that, I would not tell anybody about it if you didn’t want me to, and you have my full support, no matter what, okay? I promise. I’m your friend. What is it you kids always say?”
“Friends don’t lie,” he mumbled.
“Yeah. Friends don’t lie. And most importantly, Robin doesn’t lie, because Robin can’t lie for shit, but I can keep a secret.” She raised her hands as if in swear and placed her other palm on her heart. “You can trust me.”
He nodded slowly and smiled lightly at her hand gesture. “Yeah. It’s a guy.”
“Okay,” Robin said. “Good. I’m assuming the guy is Mike, but you don’t have to confirm or deny that to me, that’s none of my business.”
“So, what should I do?” he asked uncertainly. “It was a mistake to tell him at all, I’ve just made things worse. I should’ve just kept quiet.”
“No,” Robin said decidedly. “It would’ve killed you. Maybe things are awkward now, but they will pass. You’ll either be able to move on from him, or he’ll fall for you, too.”
“What if both of that doesn’t happen?”
“Trust me,” she said. “It will. From my own experience, everything passes over time. It gets easier, and you get to move on.”
“How long?”
“My first hopeless crush passed after a year or so.”
“Mine has been going on for three or four.”
“Ouch.” Robin inhaled through her teeth. “That’s a tough one.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, the good news is, that you can talk to someone about it now. And talking helps. That’s something I can promise you, as long as you can vent to someone about it, it’ll get easier. I assume you haven’t had that before.”
He shook his head. “I haven’t.”
“Now you do. You can always call or come over, alright? Vent it all out. Get angry about it, cry about it, process it. That’s the best way to heal. Just come by any time.”
“What if Steve’s there? I don’t want everyone to know.”
“I can assure you, Steve doesn’t judge or tell either.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because he kept my secret. Hasn’t told a soul. And he’s still my best friend, in fact, he became my best friend after I told him about it.” She gently put a hand on Will’s shoulder. “You’re not alone in the world, kid. You’re not the only one who feels this way and there are people who are going through exactly the same thing right now, just like there are people who have gone through it before. You will find your person, and you will have people who know what you’re feeling. Like me.”
Will looked like he was holding back tears, fidgeting with his hands and looking away. “I just feel like I’ll never get to be like the others.”
“You don’t have to be like the others. You only have to be like yourself. Look at me, for instance.” She gestured up and down herself. “I am so not like most people, and that’s okay. You’re not like most people either, and neither is anyone else. That’s the beauty of it.”
“Do you actually believe it’ll get better?” he asked hesitantly.
“I really do.” She smiled at him. “When I was going through the same thing, I didn’t have someone to confide in. I just suffered through it until I finally accepted that this is who I am. You’ll get there too.”
“Thanks,” Will mumbled. “For… being a safe person.”
“You got this.” She gently placed her hand on his back. “We’ll stick together.”