“I guess all of that’s true,” Kate says. “It just feels weird to be this close to what’s happening and do…nothing.”
“That’s exactly what my parents expect me to do,” I say. “Possibly forever.”
Finding out that Will drowned in the quarry didn’t exactly set my parents’ minds at ease. It’s like a genetic switch flipped or something. Their parental instincts, long dormant, have gone into overdrive. It’s like they’ve suddenly become aware the world is actually full of dangers.
“Just come over tonight,” Milton says, kicking at my shoe with his. “I’ll give you a ride home.” He’s been weirdly calm through this entire purgatorial week. Apparently, he’s the kind of person who expends all their anxiety on everyday events and when a big crisis comes along, he doesn’t have any left.
I could really sponge some of his serenity right now. Dealing with my parents has been difficult, verging on impossible. I actually stomped away from them after finishing “family dinner” last night. I’ve felt the teenage drama spiking higher and higher with each passing day. I’m not that kind of person, usually.
But they’re ruining Operation Croissant.
If they won’t even let me ride my bike around town, they’re not going to give their blessing when I announce I want to ride one around Europe. Even if Milton is with me. They don’t even want me to stay out at his house past nine thirty anymore.
“You two have been spending a lot of time together,” Kate says, eyeing me and Milton with an impenetrable look on her face. I can’t tell if she thinks this is good, bad, or indifferent. “Why don’t we all hang out? Moonbeam Roller Disco on Saturday night? I could really use some time together, the four of us.”
“You mean besides every band period and field practice?” Dash snarks.
“Hey, the season is almost over,” Kate says, sounding fake-wounded. “I want to make sure we all stay friends.”
It’s true that we’ve been spending more time as pairs than as a group lately—me and Milton, Kate and Dash.
“Robin, are you in?” Kate asks, looking at me with such hope that I don’t have the heart to say no.
“All right,” I say. “But you have to rent the skates. And find me ones that don’t smell like the last person used them to age cheese.”
“I will valiantly smell skates for you,” Kate agrees.
“I won’t,” Dash says.
“Dash!” Kate slaps his chest.
And then they’re gone, disappearing down the hallway toward their shared first-period chem lab.
Milton lingers with me, hands shoved deep in his pockets.
“How is your family doing?” I ask. I’ve hardly seen them all week, and maybe it’s weird, but I miss them.
“My parents won’t let my little sister out of their sight,” he says. “And my brother is always calling home from college for updates. He calls five times a day at this point. Part of the whole perfect-son thing.” He shrugs. “I’m flying under the radar. Middle-kid birthright.”
“I’m feeling pretty jealous of that right now. Can you please scare me up some siblings?”
“Robin, anyone would be scared to be your sibling.”
I push his shoulder. “Ha.”
This feels like our normal. And that feels good. Milton and I are friends, and it doesn’t matter that my parents have gone into complete filial lockdown. Their parents tried to keep them from doing what they knew was important, too. I remind myself that it’s not a real rebellion if it’s parent-sponsored. I promise myself I’m going to tell Milton about Operation Croissant at the roller rink on Saturday.
Right now, I have to face history class.
“Sorry, gotta go,” I say, leaving Milton behind and ducking into the girls’ bathroom. I won’t be able to focus on the Protestant Reformation if I have to pee this badly. I close myself in a stall right as a group of girls come in. I can see their fashionable shoes through that missing bottom strip of the door. (Why do they leave it like that? Do they think we all need to see each other’s feet while we’re peeing?)
Wait. Those are Tam’s dusty pink sneakers paired with turquoise leg warmers.
“He had a party that he didn’t even invite me to.”
And that’s Tam’s voice. She doesn’t seem upset—more angry.
“It’s not like we got invited, either…,” one of her friends says, trailing off.
“It’s just a party, Tam,” says another.
I can almost hear her shaking her head. I can picture her red hair flying. “You can stop pretending you didn’t hear about it. Everybody heard about it.”
“Heard what, Tam?” the first friend asks, pretty clearly faking innocence.
“He had sex with Nancy Wheeler.”
Carefully, I ease open the stall door. It squeaks like a dying rat, which is excellent. Everybody looks up at once. Tam’s a wreck, both blotchy and pale, and the second she sees me she starts blotting at her cheeks with a scratchy brown paper towel. I slide my eyes away as she pulls herself together. I don’t want her to think I was listening on purpose, but it’s also not like this is a particularly big or soundproof bathroom.
“You’re going to get past it, Tam,” promises the first friend. She’s a blond Jennifer.
“You’re going to get Steve away from her,” swears the other friend, a brunette Jessica.
I install myself in front of the sinks, back turned to all three of them, and run the water.
“Linger much?” Jessica asks.
“Jess,” Tam says. “It’s the bathroom. Robin has every right to be here. It’s not like Steve Harrington should ruin another girl’s day.”
I knew, on some theoretical level, that Tam knew my name—but knowing that and hearing her say it are apparently different things. Her voice brushes over words, and having it brush over Robin makes it feel almost like she reached out her hand to touch my arm. We’ve barely talked since the auditions for the play, but I’m shocked back into that feeling, like we’re right on the precipice of knowing each other better.
“Oh, sweetie,” Jennifer says. Jessica gives her a big hug. Her friends are all fawning over her. Like this is a tragedy on par with what happened to Will Byers. Nothing that we’re doing right now feels quite so huge or terrifying or all-important with that perspective.
And somehow that knowledge is what gets me to finally take a few steps toward Tam. Her friends eye me like I’m some kind of invasive species. “Are you okay, Tam?” I ask. I like saying her name as much as I liked hearing her say mine. It makes whatever tiny connection we have feel solid and real. “I couldn’t help hearing….”
The bell rings. We’re all supposed to be in class right now.
“Oh, it’s just dumb boy stuff.” She says those words with a bite, the way I’ve heard myself say them before. Tam swipes at the pools of mascara beneath her eyes. “Ugh, I hate that I’m this messy about it. This is ridiculous.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Tam,” Jessica says.
“No. I’m over it. I’m over him.”
“Good,” I say.
The word just leapt out of my mouth.
Everyone is staring at me now, three sets of unblinking eyes, one of them ringed in watery black.
“I just mean…Steve’s an asshole.”
“He really is, isn’t he?” Tam looks genuinely delighted by the notion. “I mean, I heard he broke Jonathan Byers’s camera….”
“Right?” I say. “Who does that to a guy who just went through a complete tragedy? Who’s, like, I know what I’ll do, I’ll find Will Byers’s brother and break the one thing he cares about, because he definitely hasn’t been through enough? Steve Harrington, that’s who.”
“He’s a complete and utter asshole!” Tam says, really getting into it now.
I keep going. I can’t seem to hel
p myself. “He’s an asshole raised to the power of asshole. An exponential asshole.”
Tam laughs so hard that her neck and the shoulder she’s got peeking out of her off-the-shoulder sweater turn bright red.
Her friends are full-on glaring at me now.
But I don’t care, because making Tam laugh is the best feeling I’ve had since…umm…It’s possible I’ve never felt this good.
“Come on, we’re late,” Jessica says, grabbing for Jennifer’s hand. They leave in a combined huff. They clearly don’t have the same tolerance level that Tam does for social underlings.
She doesn’t seem to care that they’re gone, either.
Maybe she needs new friends.
Maybe I could be that person….
“Thanks, Robin,” Tam says, breathless from laughter. She turns on the water, ducks her head, and wipes off what remains of her mascara. When she comes back up, her face is naked. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her without makeup on before. Her cheeks have a faint natural blush under the rouge, and her brown eyes look lighter without all the eyeliner and mascara amplifying them. She’s pretty both ways. She’s pretty all the time. “Being that honest made me feel so much better.”
“No problem,” I say. “I’ll take down douchey guys any day of the week.”
She giggles one more time. Then she looks at me. Really looks. And smiles, like she did that day at the auditions. Except this time, I don’t feel scared.
This time, I’m ready for it.
“Hey, are you coming to see the play next week?” Tam asks. “I know you didn’t end up getting cast, but—”
“Oh, yeah, I’ll definitely be there,” I say, even though I had zero plans to go until this moment.
Tam lights up. “Great,” she says, pushing down the leg warmer on one calf with her other foot, a sort of nervous tic. “I think it’s going to be really, really good. I’m so embarrassed I sang at auditions, though.” Her face goes raspberry red, and she puts one hand over it, then peeks out at me from between two fingers. “I should have just read the part and given it my all. Like you did.”
“Umm. I guess I did? And then I gave the floor all of my face.”
She laughs again, softer this time. “Well, you would have been a great Emily. It’ll still be good, though. Mr. Hauser did a great job.”
I’ve never heard a non-nerd student in this school compliment a teacher. And it was Mr. Hauser, the only teacher really worth complimenting.
“See you in class, Robin?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I say, breathless, but not from laughing. Breathless for absolutely no reason. “See you.”
I let her leave the bathroom first, because I’m not quite ready to face Miss Click (and Steve Harrington’s existence) yet. When the door flaps closed, I look at myself in the mirror. Under my wilting perm and half-hearted makeup, there’s someone Tam keeps smiling at.
“Wow,” I whisper to myself in the mirror. “Okay.”
I didn’t think anything could possibly feel good today, and then I got to make fun of Steve and make Tam feel better all at once. At least I’ll have one thing to remember fondly when I’m halfway across the Atlantic.
NOVEMBER 12, 1983
I show up at the roller rink a few minutes late—my parents insisted on dropping me off. The rest of the Odd Squad is already assembled at the counter when I walk in.
Kate and Dash are both dressed up for Date Night.
Milton is dressed like…Milton. (Or his older brother, really.) I’m wearing the same high-waisted jeans that I usually do, along with a fuzzy black sweater with white polka dots, since it’s starting to get cold. I threw on some electric-blue eyeliner right before I left the house. Kate swears that it looks good. (My eyes are already a color that’s close to electric blue, so the effect is creepily monochrome, if you ask me.)
Kate shoves a pair of size 9 roller skates into my hands.
“Pre-sniffed,” she says, beaming.
“Excellent.”
We sit down on one of the benches and swap out our shoes for skates, watching a half dozen people straggle onto the floor to attempt the YMCA while rolling in a circle. How did I agree to this?
I look over at Milton, who’s cringing at both the music choices (endless disco) and the sound quality (fuzzy as an earmuff). I shake my head and grab his hand, rolling him right to his feet. At least I have a partner in disgruntlement. We’re the perfect pair to travel together. We can marvel at everything worth marveling at, and when things are subpar, we can cringe in stereo.
Kate is by far the best skater in our group, so Dash, Milton, and I follow her out onto the scratched-up wooden floor like fledgling ducks. It’s a quiet night at the rink. Probably because of what an intense week it’s been in Hawkins. Apparently, Steve Harrington and Jonathan Byers got into a knock-down, drag-out fight earlier today, and nobody could tell which side Nancy Wheeler was on. Steve’s face got messed up, his hair no doubt got mussed for the first time, and Jonathan even got arrested. Nothing to keep the popular crowd away like drama that can be endlessly dissected.
The only two people I recognize here are Matthew Manes of the fake eighth-grade crush, working on his routines like he always does, and Sheena Rollins, who’s out there in an ankle-length white skirt and a cropped white sweater, rolling endless circles by herself.
“All right,” Kate says, clapping her hands like she’s the official Night Out on the Town Coach. “Let’s at least try to have some fun.”
Dash grabs her around the waist and she shrieks as he pushes her backward on her skates.
“No shenanigans,” says a disembodied voice over the speaker, interrupting the music for a few seconds before it picks back up.
“YMCNoShenanigans?” Milton asks.
“It’s an obscure B side,” I say.
Kate and Dash subside into skating side by side. She has to keep slowing down because he can’t keep up with her, and every time she circles around to herd him, he gets a little more pissed off.
“Wow, super fun,” I say. “Is that what dating looks like?”
Milton gives a little shrug. We have the exact same level of experience with these things. Or inexperience, as the case may be. We sail around the rink a few times, and I stretch my arms out for balance.
“We should really make a run at the next Olympics,” Milton says as we both slam into the wall, palms first, because we’re not very good at braking.
The voice over the speakers crackles from on high again. “All right, this one is for the lovers. Couples only, please. This is your couples’ skate.”
Matthew Manes sighs, like couples’ skate is the bane of his existence. Sheena Rollins vacates the rink quickly, with a backward glance and a sigh that makes me wonder if she’s lonely—if all of the bullying she endures at school hasn’t completely quenched her interest in other humans. I tried to talk to her at school all through ninth grade, but all she did was nod and run away, so at some point I stopped trying.
A plinky piano intro starts up, and then Bonnie Tyler comes on, singing “Total Eclipse of the Heart.”
“At least it’s not disco, right?” Milton tries.
As I trudge-skate back toward the benches, Kate laps us and grabs my hand, whipping me away from Milton. She leans in close and whispers, “You should ask him to skate.”
“Milton?” I ask. “Are you kidding?”
“You two clearly like each other. Dash and I are together. Wouldn’t it be so perfect if we were two couples? Think about the symmetry of it.”
“Math isn’t how you choose a boyfriend,” I mumble. “Are you going to use an algorithm to find me a prom date next?”
Kate has already told me at length about how she’s going to get herself into prom this year, even though she and Dash are both sophomores, and obviously getting a junior or senior to ask her is o
ut of the question. She’s got an elaborate scheme involving lots of volunteering on the prom committee. (I guess it’s worked for a few overachievers in the past.)
Kate nudges me gently toward Milton, until my skates roll me toward him without my express permission. I rock my heel up and hit the brake. Hard.
“Look, I’m not skating with Milton!” I say. I don’t say that I don’t like Milton. Because I do. I like Milton a lot. Just not in the way Kate wants me to. He’s basically my best friend, and it’s been so long since I’ve had one of those that the last time, there were juice boxes involved. I hate that in high school caring about someone doesn’t count for as much if it’s not romantic. If it doesn’t come with a gold anklet and a diamond chip.
Across the rink, Dash has cornered Milton. They’re barely moving—you’re not allowed to stop in the rink—and Dash has his arm around Milton’s shoulder.
“Was this whole thing a setup?” I ask, suddenly furious.
Kate tries to be cute about it, shrugging and waggling her dark eyebrows. Can she really not see how pissed I am? Or does she just not care?
“I thought we were hanging out as friends tonight,” I say, my voice coming out all scratched up.
“This is better. Think of it as enhanced friendship. Friendship plus.”
Milton skates over. He holds out his hand.
Ugh. I guess we’re doing this.
I take his palm. Why is it so sweaty? Is mine that sweaty?
We clunk along together. It’s probably the worst collective skating ever done in the history of the Moonbeam Roller Disco Rink.
“This is Tam’s favorite song,” I blurt as the song swells into the wildly melodramatic chorus.
I don’t know where that came from. I just needed something to say.
“Who?” Milton asks.
“Tammy Thompson? She’s in my history class.”
Even though Milton and I have been hanging out all the time, I’ve never talked to him about Tam. I’ve never really talked to anyone about her. And for the first time I wonder why. Am I really that worried that people will think I’m a social climber? Am I afraid that they’ll remind me of Tam’s obnoxiously huge crush on Steve Harrington, which I already know plenty about from firsthand observation? What, exactly, is so secret about my not-quite-friendship with Tammy Thompson?
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