Why would that change now? Did a crush descend on him out of nowhere?
“So,” I say. “What do you think happened with Will Byers?”
Yikes. I’m so uncomfortable with my almost-best friend possibly having a crush on me that I dropped the question. The one everyone’s been asking all week, until we ran out of things to speculate about and the conversation shriveled up.
There’s only one thing we know for sure: Will Byers is back.
Not the body in the quarry—the actual Will Byers.
“I guess the coroner made a mistake,” Milton says. “I’m just glad my parents can finally relax about Ellie.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I wish my parents got that particular memo.”
They still haven’t restored my life to normal status, even though Will is back, and Barb (as I have maintained throughout this entire catastrophic autumn) probably just ran away and found herself a better life somewhere else.
“Your parents just want you to be safe. And I know your bike being gone sucks, but it’s almost winter. You walked it in the snow most of the time anyway. And I mean…you can always take the bus.”
“A public school bus? The yellow kind that looks and smells like pee on wheels? Milton, I would gag, but that would ruin your pristine wayback seat.” He laughs. I can hear the sound perfectly, even though it’s low-pitched and barely audible. I suddenly realize that everybody in the front is quiet—and band nerds are never quiet in large numbers. It’s like when you take our instruments away, we have to overcompensate by making a cacophony all on our own.
They’re listening in. Waiting to see what Milton and I will do when we’re stuffed together in close proximity.
I drop my voice to the lowest of whispers, lean in until my face is nearly touching Milton’s, and say, “What about this beautiful luxury vehicle that you’ve been so kind to chauffeur me around in?”
“I’m only a chauffeur if you’re riding in the back seat and I’m alone in the front,” Milton says, his voice as quiet as mine.
The sound in the rest of the car resumes. My plan to keep us from being overheard is working. But what if it’s only playing into Milton’s crush? Our faces are basically touching right now.
Oh, God. What happens to Operation Croissant if Milton has big, unrequited romantic feelings? If I ask him to come, knowing that he likes me, am I just leading him on? Is that as cruel as Kate and Dash treating us like zoo animals they’re trying to get to mate?
“Umm…Robin?” Milton asks gently.
And then he takes my hand.
How did I get to fifteen completely unprepared for the moment when a fully decent boy tells me that he likes me? Should I give him a chance to tell me how he feels? Or should I cut him off now right now—before he says something he can’t take back?
I can’t seem to open my mouth.
“I feel really bad only telling you this now….I mean, I should have brought it up a long time ago…but we were having so much fun and I…”
“It’s okay,” I blurt. “It’s not like we ever talked about crushes, in general.”
Milton pauses, like I threw off his rhythm. (Finally. I tried to do it with so many pillows and weird, random comments while he was playing his instruments. Apparently all I had to do was say the word crush, and the world would more or less stop turning.)
“That’s true,” he admits. “We didn’t broach the subject. Either of us.”
Of course we didn’t.
That wasn’t the point of our friendship, but it was certainly a bonus. Being around a boy who wasn’t constantly bringing it up felt sort of like finding an escape hatch. Girls like Kate expect me to talk about boys with them. Milton seemed happy to talk about music and movies and their strange bastard children, music videos, forever. He didn’t need me to dissect my feelings. He didn’t push me to tell him my deepest secrets.
Not that I have any.
My biggest secret is Operation Croissant. And I’m supposed to tell him tonight. I can’t let a little crush get in my way. High school crushes fade. They aren’t forever. Milton and I will get back to being friends by holiday break. We’ll laugh about that one awkward time in the car, when Milton declared his feelings to me. All of this will be okay. But first, we have to push through this.
“Milton, I need to tell you…”
But his voice is already crossing paths with mine in the dark. His words are already hitting my brain. “I like Wendy.”
“Oh!” I say.
That’s…not what I was expecting.
“That’s excellent news!” I’m glad for him. I’m glad for Wendy. They’re both amazing. And now the level of nervous close-talking makes sense, because Wendy is in the car with us. Milton isn’t ready to tell her yet, but he’s ready to tell me. And for someone as socially nervous as Milton, that feels like a big step.
I squeeze his hand. “You two are going to make a genuinely not-awful couple.”
“Thanks, Robin.” He clenches my hand tight. “You’re the best. Which makes this the worst.” He winces in the here-then-gone light of a streetlamp. “There’s something you said at the roller rink….You asked if I could give you space, and I think you’re right. We need to spend less time together. Everyone thinks…They think…”
“That we want to date and we’re so shy and nerdy that we just can’t get our shit together?” I ask. There’s a slight edge to my voice. (Okay, there’s a whole razor blade in it.)
“Exactly!” Milton whisper-shouts.
“But we know that’s not what’s happening,” I say. “Isn’t that what matters?”
Even as I say it, I can feel the monster tracking us down. Breathing in the dark. Waiting for its prey. The truth about who we are has never been what matters most at Hawkins High. What matters is what everybody else thinks about you.
“I’m sorry, Robin,” he says. “But I don’t know how I can ask Wendy out if everyone thinks I’m secretly in love with you.”
“Kate and Dash can take a flying—”
“Ten other people have asked me if we’re going out since Halloween.” Well, crap. We shouldn’t have gotten our costumes together. Even if they were fantastic. “Even my sister assumes I have a huge crush on you.”
“But you don’t,” I say, really letting the relief of that part sink in. “We don’t need to hang out all the time!” I offer, ready to help now that I know what we’re dealing with here. “There are other things we can do.” Like plan a big, friends-only, no-kissing-under-the-Eiffel-Tower trip.
“I don’t want to stop being your friend.” He lets go of my hand. “I just need some time.”
“How much?”
Two minutes ago, I thought I’d be letting him down gently, and here I am sounding needy.
“Give me until prom tickets go on sale?” he asks, like he knows it’s a lot. Like he’s aware of just how bad a friend he’s being, in the name of love and not letting other people around us have a new excuse to be awful. “I really want to ask her, but I know it’s a big deal. Especially since it’s her senior year. I won’t be the only guy who wants to be her date. And…you know me. I have to work up to it.”
“I mean. Yeah. You needed two months to work up to telling me, and I’m not even Wendy.”
We’re riding backward. My neighborhood unfolds in reverse as Dash turns onto my street.
“Robin, now that we’re talking about it…” Milton sounds antsy, like he knows we have a limited amount of time left before I get out of the car. “Is there anything you want to tell me? About liking anyone?”
When Kate asked me this question, I was angry. It felt like she needed me to have an answer. Like it was required. A question on the test that you can’t just skip.
“I don’t get crushes,” I say absently. It’s my standard response.
“Are you sure?” Mi
lton asks. “Back at the auditorium tonight, I wondered if maybe—”
“I liked you?” I ask. “I thought, for a second back there, that you liked me, too. What a sitcom, right?”
Milton gives me a strange look—like maybe he had a completely different idea back at the auditorium. But before I can ask him what that look was about, Dash brings the station wagon to an abrupt, coughing halt.
“All right, Buckley. This is your stop.”
I wait for someone to come release me from the prison of the wayback. (It’s impossible to open the door from the inside, which seems like a serious safety issue.) Kate takes her time getting out of the car and walking around, probably because she’s hoping that we’re mid-make-out back here.
Little does she know.
When Kate finally opens the door, I leap out.
It’s gotten stuffy in the station wagon, but the air that comes in is bracing, nearly winter.
“Robin—”
“Bye, Milton,” I say as I close the door and Kate returns to her seat. As the car ping-pongs off down my street, I add, “I’ll see you soon.”
I might understand everything Milton just said, and I obviously want him to find happiness with the girl of his dreams, but I’m not giving in to this enforced friendship break. I don’t know if it’s fixable, but I know I have to try.
And I’m going to use my entire puzzle-solving, problem-fixing brain to do it.
NOVEMBER 20, 1983
This time, I’m the one who suggests a scary movie night at Dash’s house. But it’s only three of us: me, Kate, and Dash.
We settle into Dash’s room quickly. It’s filled with a king-size bed and a couch, and the furniture is a combination of black wood and smoked glass that looks extremely out of place in a seventeen-year-old’s bedroom but matches the decor of the rest of the house. Dash turns on the TV and pops The Evil Dead into his very own VCR. As the tape starts to play, Dash and Kate settle onto the couch with a bag of Ruffles between them, their fingers doing a weird little dance as they both reach for the same perfect chip.
Yeah, not watching that all night.
I sit right below Kate and let her French braid my hair. She looks far too delighted to have some girl time as well as her boyfriend right at her side. I think this is the scene she’s been dreaming of since the beginning of the school year. Even though I know she’s still terrified of this movie, she’s grinning down at me as she grabs big, tawny chunks of my hair and gets to work.
We’ve had a long, late-season weekend of marching band. My entire body is exhausted because carrying a mellophone around for hours on end is bizarrely strenuous, and I melt into the rhythm of Kate’s fingers, the combination of smoothing and tugging that helps me forget all my worries, then brings them back into sharp focus.
I remember my mission.
“Hey, guys,” I say, looking at them both upside down, because I can’t imagine saying this straight on. “I’m sorry things have been so tense lately.”
I don’t mention that their pushing is one of the prime reasons for that tension, and that I’m still pretty mad at both of them for pulling on strings that they should have left alone. I’m giving them both one big chance to make it up to me before this whole situation gets out of hand and I’m not allowed to speak to Milton until after the spring thaw. (It hasn’t even started snowing.)
“I just think that everyone should know that Milton and I are friends. Just friends. Really great friends.”
“Then why isn’t he here tonight?” Dash asks with a smirk.
Anger flares up my throat, but I douse it with a bit of preparedness. “Milton is the one who asked not to see me right now, and, honestly, it’s pretty upsetting. He’s afraid that people are going to keep seeing us as a couple, and he doesn’t want that. Neither of us do. I would really appreciate if both of you would help me spread the word through the marching band.”
The marching band nerds will tell the choir nerds. The choir nerds will tell the theater nerds. The theater nerds will even tell the popular kids—if any of them care. And so the information will snake its way around Hawkins High, and Milton will be free to go after Wendy DeWan without any false gossip hanging over his head. Then Milton and I can go right back to where we were as friends, and Operation Croissant will be back on track.
“Hmmm,” Kate says, narrowing her eyes. “You want us to spread…the antidote to a rumor?”
“Exactly,” I say with a sigh of relief. I should have known that Kate’s megabrain would be able to keep up.
Her hands tug the roots of my French braid so tight that I can feel it in my sinuses. “I still don’t get it. Milton is great, and you clearly like him. Are you sure you don’t want to at least kiss him once, to see how you feel?”
“Kate, you know how scary this movie is to you? You know how your skin crawls every time you look at those zombies?”
“They’re demons, Robin,” Dash says.
“Shut up, Dash,” Kate and I both say at the same time.
“That’s how I feel when I think about dating a boy at Hawkins High.” I feel like this makes sense, like it’s conclusive.
“Are they really that bad?” Kate asks, patting Dash’s knee. “My first boyfriend is from Hawkins High. Are the boys here really not good enough for you? Milton is amazing! I hate to say this but…I feel like maybe you’re just holding out for someone who doesn’t exist, Robin.”
My mind flashes on Tam smiling at me in the school bathroom.
And everything wobbles.
Kate finishes off my braid and I stand up suddenly, my head still off-balance. I tell myself it’s from the too-tight braids. I touch them and find that they’re so firmly set in place that a tornado couldn’t take a single wisp out.
“Where are you going?” Kate asks.
I look down at her absently. “More chips,” I say, picking up the empty bowl and clutching it to my chest.
My feet make almost no sound on the dark stone circular staircase at the center of Dash’s house. Not that I have to worry about bothering anyone. His two older siblings are out of the house already, and his parents aren’t home—they’re hardly ever home. We originally bonded over being latchkey kids, but it’s different when one person’s parents are working late to keep the bill collectors from swarming, and the other person’s parents are driving out of town to much fancier places with much fancier parties.
I breathe in the stillness of the kitchen, which is all glass and chrome with the most cutting-edge everything. It takes me six tries to find the chips, as I rip open cupboards and find that half of them are empty.
When I finally locate the food, I stand up to find that Dash is watching me with his arms crossed and his eyes brightly amused.
He grabs the chips from me and pours them into the bowl—like I can’t do it myself. “When Kate won’t let go of something, she can be so annoying, right?”
“Don’t you mean cute?” I ask.
He looks at me, not blinking. We’re in some kind of standoff that I don’t fully understand.
“I think I know why you won’t date Milton….”
“Finally!” I say. “Thank you!”
And then he ducks in and tries to kiss me.
“Are you kidding?” I ask, pushing him away so fast that he nearly lands butt-first on the cold, dark stone. The heel of his hand catches on the glass kitchen island and he staggers back to an upright position.
“Yikes, Buckley. Those are some strong reflexes.” He steps closer. “Want to try that again?”
I shake my head so fast that my French braids whip my face. “No!”
“Look, is this just because Kate is upstairs? We can do it another time….”
“Dash, you are supposedly smart,” I say. “So you should definitely understand one of the simplest words in the English language. No. I’m
not interested in kissing you. Now, later, ever. No.”
“You’re being weird again,” he says, still acting amused—which for some reason makes this all worse. “You told me all about your little plans to go to Europe! You didn’t tell Kate. You think I don’t know what that means? You and I have secrets, Buckley.” He smiles at me, and I feel twice as sick as that time I drank that spiked eggnog. “Maybe we should take that trip together. Wasn’t that what you were hoping? I have enough money that I could pay for the whole thing. And I speak three languages. I have a very talented tongue.”
My upchuck reflex kicks in, and I release a retching sound. “You’re…ugh, you’re the worst, Dash.”
He shrugs, grabbing a cherry soda to bring upstairs, like none of this just happened. Like we’re all going back up there to watch the movie together. “Whatever, Buckley. Your loss is Kate’s gain.”
“Were you seriously going to break up with her if I said yes?”
He shrugs. “High school relationships don’t last forever. Smart people know this. They don’t get bogged down in sentiment and attachments that can’t possibly stay static. Evolve or die, right? Besides, you’re the one who said that sophomore year is the dead zone of our education. We’re all just killing time.”
Maybe that’s true for some people, but no matter how much she acts like she’s just practicing, I know that dating means a lot to Kate. Way too much, if you ask me, but still. What Dash just said is so cold and self-centered that I actually stagger backward into the pristine steel refrigerator.
“I can’t believe you just used your intelligence as an excuse to cheat on our friend,” I say.
“How can nerds rule the world if we’re supposed to be more moral than everybody else?” he asks with an aggressively bored shrug. “It’s a double standard, and I’m not interested in living up to that.” Dash has taken the concept of nerd and twisted it, until it’s something dark and self-serving, just another way to be awful.
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