I catch Milton laughing behind his trumpet. But he wasn’t willing to stop marching.
Fine, then.
I’ll just have to find someone else. Someone who’s not afraid to step out of line.
SEPTEMBER 16, 1983
I’ve spent the rest of the week scouring my classes for someone who might fit the description. But the closer I look, the more everybody seems locked into their high school lives. It’s all so banal that I actually fall asleep in history class, halfway through the fall of the Roman Empire.
Miss Click snaps her fingers right in front of my face.
“Nice French tips,” I say with a yawn.
“That’s detention,” Miss Click says.
Wow. Detention. I’ve never gotten one of those before. Often, simply being known as a nerd is enough to fend off serious disciplinary action from most teachers. But not Miss Click. She means business, apparently. (At least when it comes to falling asleep in class. Last week, when a bunch of guys started donkey-laughing about how gay the Greeks were, she pretended not to notice.)
I steal a glance over at Tam. Did she see that I got in trouble, or is she really, really into her notes about the Goth invasions? Does she ever get detention?
We’ve been in school together since we were kids, but I don’t know all that much about Tam. I know that she’s not an outsider, a nerd, a loner, or a burnout. She might not be immensely popular, but she exists in the same realm as the popular kids. That’s easy enough to explain: Tam is pretty. Not paint-by-numbers pretty, either. Her nose is a little sharp and her eyes are this mild, sweet brown. She doesn’t have the kind of curves that seem to shatter boys’ brains on impact; she’s small and trim, with smooth lines everywhere. She’s the kind of pretty you have to think about, the kind that you can’t take in all at once so you have to keep coming back to consider her from a new angle. Which means that she’s the kind of pretty you can’t stop noticing once you start.
Tam might be mildly popular, but I can say with confidence that she’s not an ass about it. In fact, there’s something soft and sweet and silly about her personality that doesn’t usually translate well into the harsh lexicon of popularity. In fourth grade she used to spend every rainy-day recess “rescuing earthworms” from the blacktop, tossing them back into the dirt. She gently calls out her friends when they get catty and gives them better things to talk about. I’ve even seen her give Sheena Rollins a pep talk after she was bullied for taking too long to choose a dessert in the lunch line. Tam gave Sheena her little bowl of rice pudding—and gave the jerk who was messing with her a solid punch on the shoulder. Which I thought was improbably cool.
Under that chopped red hair, there’s a good heart.
But is there a hint of rebellion?
She sings before class starts almost every day, and maybe that’s not textbook rebellious, but it does feel like something that most people would be too cowardly to do. (And maybe not being textbook rebellious but finding your own way to go against all known grains is, in fact, extra rebellious.)
I still have to rule her out as my escape partner for Operation Croissant, though. To be able to ask her to go to Europe with me someday, I’d have to spend lots of quality time with her, and to do that I’d have to actually talk to her first. And I can’t seem to do it. I get shy around her in a way that…well, it’s not like me. Maybe it’s because I don’t have a good place to start—when you’ve technically known someone for ten years but you’ve barely spoken to each other, it’s hard to launch into things. Or maybe it’s because her friends are always around her, and while I can imagine talking to Tam, I can’t seem to get past their social-climber glares.
Or maybe it’s just Steve Harrington’s fault.
At least five times since the school year started, Tam and I have been on the verge of talking. Once or twice we’ve even gotten past the part where we exchange pleasantries.
Tam: Do you have an extra pencil?
Me: Yes.
Or…
Me: Do you have the notes about the Ottoman Empire? I left mine at home.
Tam: Sure thing.
But then Steve strides into the room and it’s all over. Tam’s eyes slide to him and never slide back. (Unless Miss Click is commanding the room’s attention with her historical anecdotes, which are drier than my mom’s Thanksgiving turkey. She was a vegetarian for ten years and she still hasn’t really figured out meat. I keep telling her: if it tastes like wood pulp, you’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere.)
And then, because Tam is staring at Steve, all of a sudden, I’m staring at Steve. Which is not what my eyes would do under any natural circumstances, but nothing about being fifteen-and-a-half is natural.
He must be so used to having people stare at him that he doesn’t even notice anymore. He’s the kind of popular that has its own gravity and draws everyone in, inexorably. (Kate calls it the black-hole effect.)
Even right now he doesn’t seem to feel the death ray of my eyes. So I keep on staring, even though I must look creepily obsessed, because I need to figure this out. I need to understand why Tam can’t stop looking at him. He’s like a riddle hidden inside of a jock and buried under an ocean of perfect waves.
What is it about him that girls can’t get enough of?
It can’t just be the hair. I refuse to believe that one part of someone’s physiognomy can be all-powerful. It exerts an otherworldly force on what sometimes feels like half the girls in school. I’m immune, but so many people aren’t.
Okay, now I’m not just looking at Steve Harrington, I’m specifically hate-watching his hair.
It’s a low point for me, I know, but here we are.
I watch for long enough that I can’t help feeling like the hair is sending Tam subliminal messages.
Steve’s hair: I’m everything you’ve ever wanted.
Tam: (blushes)
Steve’s hair: Lustrous. Rule-defying. Gravity says no, and I say whatever. I’m the hair that most guys—and let’s face it, also some girls—wish they had. Which means that whoever I belong to must be important. And whoever is seen with me? Goes out in public standing next to this? You get the picture. You should probably also be thinking about how silky and full I am to run your hands through during make-out sessions— Oh God, is he making a face? Is it supposed to be flirty? Please someone tell him to stop doing that. While you’re at it, can you remind him that I’ve been doing the heavy lifting for years.
Tam: (giggles)
Steve’s hair: I’m so glad we agree on these things.
Tam writes a note, folds it, and passes it off to one of her girl friends. (Sorry, but I am never smashing those two words together. It’s so weird to me when people say “girlfriends” when they clearly mean girls who are friends. Compound words have their own singular meanings; we all know this, yes?) Anyway, her friend unfolds the complicated origami of the note and looks back at Tam, scandalized and delighted.
What does it say?
What is she thinking about him?
Why does he merit thinking about at all?
This is a mystery that I’ll probably never solve, so even though Tam is undoubtedly special, I have to keep up the search for a travel partner. Because every time I look at her, I seem to get stuck in this impossible loop.
And I can’t find my way out.
SEPTEMBER 22, 1983
I kept hoping it wouldn’t come down to this, but a week later I’m standing in front of the sign-up sheet for the school play.
It’s not that I’m anti-theater. I did costumes for the spring play last year—Anything Goes. The songs were cheesier than the entire state of Wisconsin and nobody really knew how to tap-dance, which made the whole two hours sound like a metallic stampede. But I had a surprisingly good time putting together all of those sailor outfits.
It’s just that when you’re de
ciding what kind of nerd to be in high school, there are only a few tracks you can pick. Kate, Dash, and Milton have all committed (in some cases, overcommitted) to band and academics. Doing crew for the play can fit into any kind of nerd profile, but actually getting onstage is reserved for a very special kind of nerd, which in some cases also has crossover potential with the lower ranks of popular kids, but which always involves singing in public and flirting a lot and laughing so loud that your back teeth show.
Not really my thing.
I take a step closer, and I can see that the sheet is much more filled in than when Mr. Hauser had it. Those first few names must have been the people who knew to find him and get their spots before the list went up in such a public forum.
I look around once, twice, making sure that nobody’s watching. It seems like the monster that is Hawkins High is slumbering—or maybe it’s just busy devouring someone else, in some far-off classroom that I can’t see.
I step closer and the names on the list come into focus. Picking up the pencil dangling next to the list by a piece of string, I hunt through the time slots tomorrow afternoon for one that’s still open. And then I see it.
Right there, in loops and swirls.
Tammy Thompson.
She’s going to be at auditions.
I go back into the loop from class—me staring at her, her staring at Steve, me staring at Steve.
I think about how she sighs and looks at him with that sort of dreamy unfocused longing that makes the whole world seem to soften at the edges. That sort of thing doesn’t come naturally to me, but when I see her do it, I feel sort of dreamy-by-association. Tam is a romantic. It infuses her singing. It probably makes her a good actress, too.
I put my name down, squeezed at the bottom of the sheet because there aren’t any spots left. Who knows. This might be my chance to talk to Tam without Steve Harrington around.
This is my way out of the loop. This is my chance.
“Hey, Robin, are you signing up for this?” someone behind me asks. I whip around so fast that the pencil—which is still in my hand—comes detached from the wall, and the string whips Milton directly in the eyes.
“Ah. Okay. Ouch.”
“Why were you skulking like that?” I ask.
“Skulking? I’m not sure you know the definition of that word. I’m right in the middle of the hallway.” He laughs at himself nervously. Then he blinks a few times. “Can you, um, look at my corneas and make sure they’re not scratched?”
I put my face weirdly close to his face and inspect his eyes, which are dark brown, and have a bit of his black bangs falling into them. I have to hold his bangs to one side and push my face toward his again and then rotate so I can see his corneas in all kinds of different light. My face just keeps switching angles, and his face becomes blurry and then sharp and then blurry again.
I wonder if this is what kissing feels like. Minus the lips.
It’s…not that thrilling.
“Um, so why did you freak out so bad when I walked up to you?” Milton asks quietly. He’s probably worried that I don’t want him around. Milton is always a little afraid that people don’t like him.
I don’t want him to worry about that. But I definitely don’t want to mention why I whipped around so quickly and nearly impaled his left eyeball. (Which is not scratched, thank goodness. I don’t have money for his optometry bills if I want to go to Europe.)
The truth is, I was touching Tam’s name. My fingers were just resting on it, lightly. I turned around so fast because I didn’t want anyone to see that and think that it meant anything, because it didn’t.
“I just…You’d look good with an eyepatch,” I deadpan. When in doubt, sarcasm. “Like Kurt Russell in Escape from New York.”
“You think I look like Kurt Russell?” Milton asks, perking with some kind of delight that I really didn’t expect. “A half-Japanese Kurt Russell, of course.” Milton’s mom is Japanese. He doesn’t talk about it that much, and honestly there aren’t that many kids at Hawkins High who are something other than white or Black. It must be weird for him, in ways that I can’t really begin to fathom.
“Of course,” I say.
It’s more than we’ve talked one-on-one since the beginning of the year. Last year, Milton and I talked way more. We’d write notes back and forth in the margins of our sheet music—mostly about music we liked more than whatever stuffy old march Miss Genovese had us playing. But for some reason Milton’s been weirdly quiet around me since we got back from summer break. Maybe it’s because Kate and Dash take up all the air with their flirting.
Or maybe it’s because he can sense that there’s something off about me—something different. My band nerd camouflage might be fading. The ways that I’m different from my friends feel like they’re multiplying. My heartbeat plays triple time as I reattach the stupid dangling pencil to the wall.
“Are you trying out for the play?” Milton tries again, pointing at my cramped signature on the sheet. It’s already there, so I can’t really say no.
“I think so. I might not actually make it, I might have to stay home and shampoo the dog or—”
“You don’t have a dog, Robin.”
“Which is why I am going to get really good at dog shampooing to help convince my parents I should have one.” Why am I lying? Why am I lying about dogs? Am I really afraid that Milton will tell everyone that I’m trying out for the play and acting generally bizarre? Will he report back to the rest of the Odd Squad? Has Dash already told everyone else about Operation Croissant?
I’m suddenly feeling very protective of my whole plan. My whole existence.
Is it because a small part of me already wants to jump ship on band and spend the rest of the season in play rehearsals with Tam? Because even though we haven’t talked quite yet, I can see us becoming inseparable?
“I’m just doing this to make Mr. Hauser happy,” I lie, because the truth is a little too intense to admit. “He really, really wants me to try out.”
SEPTEMBER 23, 1983
Mr. Hauser doesn’t exactly beam when he sees me walk into the auditorium, but his lack of a frown feels like the same thing.
I can tell that he’s happy that I made it. And for a single moment, I feel weirdly guilty that I’m mostly here to see if I can find someone to (currently) befriend and (eventually) go to Europe with. Yes, my first hope is Tam. But it feels like, if there are people in this school who are going to care about culture, they’re going to be in this auditorium…right?
Looking around, I get the sense that maybe my initial estimation was wrong.
Sprawled over the folding auditorium chairs, freshman girls are working on their makeup en masse, trying to get the perfect electric-blue eyeliner and pouty, puffy magenta lips. A mixed-gender group of upperclassmen down in the orchestra pit are gleefully giving each other back rubs. I can’t for the life of me figure out how random back rubs are supposed to make someone a better actor. Are these people all here to show off and hit on each other? If so, why bother putting on a play?
“Robin,” Mr. Hauser says, brandishing a handful of paper in my direction. “I want you to read for Emily.”
“Great,” I say, taking the pages and heading for the door. I have an excellent exit strategy. I’m going to pretend I want to practice my lines privately in the hallway. Then I’m going to run.
But in the row right before the double exit door, I see Tam sitting by herself, quietly mouthing lines as she scans the script pages. (Which I guess are called sides, because Mr. Hauser keeps saying that as he hands them out.) Mine still have that burnt, fresh-from-the-Xerox smell to them.
It combines with the smell of Tam’s raspberry-scented product (soap?), and deep down I know that those two smells will remind me of her from now on. Fresh new pages and tart red sweetness. That sounds right to me, for some inexpli
cable reason.
Maybe it’s just more evidence that I’m the Weirdest Girl in Hawkins, Indiana, as Mr. Hauser dubbed me.
I’m still not sure I want that crown.
Tam looks like she’s pretty focused, head down. I don’t want to interrupt her while she’s getting ready. But this might be my only chance to talk to her without the threat of Steve Harrington looming nearby.
I think about her singing in class. I think about how she wasn’t afraid to be seen, to be heard, to be different.
What if Tam really is the person I’m looking for?
I go and sit down in her general vicinity. Just to see if she’s interested in talking to someone. Of course, now that I’m sitting, I need something to do, so I look through the sides. But my eyes aren’t really absorbing the words. They seem to bounce right off and go back to Tam.
The third time, she notices me looking.
“You have Emily too?” she asks, craning over to see my pages.
She’s looked so bold and carefree to me since the start of the year, but right now she seems a little nervous. Like she’s afraid that I might poach her part. (As if I could honestly hold someone’s attention as well as she could.) “Yeah, but I didn’t ask Mr. Hauser to give me these. It was a random page assignment.”
“Really? You’re not trying out for the lead?” she asks, her upper body hovering over the seat that separates us.
“No,” I rush to assure her. “I’m cool with anything.”
Those are not words that have ever left my mouth before. In any permutation.
Still, I can see that whatever I said made Tam feel better. She settles back into her chair and smiles. Not a big, fake showy theater smile. Not a vague I-know-you-from-history-class smile. She’s looking at me like I’m any other girl at Hawkins High.
For some reason, that terrifies me.
Because I’m not any girl at Hawkins High. I’m the one slinking around, trying not to be noticed, because I’m weird enough that even teachers can see it from a mile away. I might want to be friends with Tam, but what if she doesn’t like me? The actual strange, scrappy, me? That seems like the kind of rejection I don’t need to put myself through. And it might catch other people’s attention. What if people think I’m trying to climb the social ladder by spending time with her? What if this is what awakens the monster, its mouth waiting for me like a dark pit when I inevitably fall? Will I be ridiculed so hard that I don’t even speak for the next three years, like Sheena?
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