Stranger Things

by A. R. Capetta

  I storm up the stairs, Dash quick on my heels.

  “I’m leaving,” I say to Kate as soon as I reach the bedroom. Demons fill the screen and Kate clutches a throw pillow. “Come with me.”

  “What?” Kate squeaks. “Why?”

  “Because your gross boyfriend is being gross,” I snap. I know I need to tell her the rest, but it’ll have to wait until we get out of here. Dash is glaring at me now, and I don’t exactly want to relive the scene in the kitchen right in front of him.

  Kate looks like she’s the one being tortured as the demons on the screen behind her start wreaking havoc. “Robin…please don’t make me choose between the two of you. My boyfriend and my best girlfriend?”

  “Don’t use that word,” I mutter.

  “You know that’s not fair,” she whines playfully. She clearly still thinks we’re playing some kind of game.

  “I have to get out of here,” I say. “I never should have come here with just the two of you.”

  Kate sighs like I’m a lost cause and her voice goes hard. “Robin, if you’re feeling lonely, you have nobody to blame but yourself, okay? I keep trying to help you. There are plenty of boys who would go out with you.”

  I feel the shriek bubble up in my throat right before I release it. “I don’t like any of the boys at school!”

  “Okay, okay,” she says, placating me and petting my braids, then looking over at Dash with a quick eye roll, like I’m obviously overreacting. “We’ll find you a way better boy. From a way better school. Somebody you really like, all right?”

  “You’re not listening to me,” I say to Kate, nearly in tears.

  She just stares at me like I’m a word she can’t possibly translate.

  Dash pauses the movie and stares at me. “Are you done stomping around my house?” he asks. “I want to watch the part where Cheryl goes rabid demon on the rest of them.”

  “Just go, okay?” Kate says. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  “No,” I say. “You won’t.” Because that’s when I know that I’m done with all of the people I’ve previously thought of as my friends. Milton needs time away from me. Kate can’t understand me. And Dash…well, Dash was always a wolf in a really nice wool sweater.

  I leave his house early and start the long, lonely walk home.

  We might have a week left in the marching band season, but as far as I’m concerned, Odd Squad is over.

  NOVEMBER 21, 1983

  Living in an unexpected state of suburban parental lockdown, losing the friend they wanted to go to Europe with (along with their other ones into the bargain), and having exactly zero dollars in the bank because they were focusing on said friendships and getting through the remainder of marching band season, some people would let go of their plans.

  I’m doubling down.

  Marching band is over in one week. By then, I’m going to have a job where I can make enough money for not one but two people to get to Europe next summer. Something about the way Dash (creepily) offered to pay for the whole trip made me extra determined to raise the funds all on my own. By the time my friendship with Milton is officially reinstated, he won’t have time to fund his own plane ticket, though my hope is that he’ll be able to contribute to the “trains and hostels and moules frites” fund. I’ve called and priced out every airline while my parents were asleep. If we leave from Chicago, round-trip tickets for Charles de Gaulle Airport near Paris will cost eight hundred dollars each.

  If I work for the rest of the school year and combine that money with the saved-up funds I get from my rogue relatives who send birthday and Christmas cards stuffed with twenty-dollar bills, I might just have enough.

  In the meantime, I’ll wait for Milton to fight his battle with the high school monster. Maybe I should be mad at him for bailing on me, but I understand his choice better than I want to. There are things the people around us just don’t understand or accept. Girls like Sheena Rollins, who won’t talk to anyone, refusing all forms of social connection, even though they’re the constant target of bullies. Girls like me, who won’t cave to the pressure to date a boy—any boy—even though it means losing longtime friends. And boys like Milton, who can manage to be friends with girls like me.

  I trust Milton, though. He’ll ask out Wendy, go to prom with her (okay, I judge him a little for caring so much about prom), and then we’ll be back on for Europe. It would be weird to tell him about it now, when we’re in friendship purgatory, so I’ll just keep planning in his absence.

  And in the meantime, I’ll look for a backup candidate—just in case.

  My brain is clicking away with all of this as Mr. Hauser starts into the topic of Shirley Jackson. We finished Lord of the Flies back in September, slogged through The Catcher in the Rye in October, and for November are on to short stories by a bevy of assorted writers. Last week was Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants.” (Even Mr. Hauser looks bored when we talk about Hemingway. When I wondered aloud why he keeps it on the syllabus, he revealed that he isn’t allowed to set the readings. They’re based on school board approvals and whatever copies remain after the previous year’s students descend on the beat-up old paperbacks like a plague of locusts.)

  This week we’re reading our first woman author of the year. (Yes, I’ve already pointed out that it’s late November and asked how it took us so long.) We’re focusing on her story “The Lottery,” which was originally published in 1948 and feels like it could have been written about Hawkins yesterday.

  “What are you getting from the opening lines?” Mr. Hauser asks. “What secret messages are folded up in that first paragraph?”

  I love when he talks about stories this way. Like they’re filled with meaning that could leap out and surprise us at any moment. And depending on who is reading them—and when and where and why—different meanings are waiting for us to discover. He doesn’t treat stories like dead things on display.

  Dash holds up his hand and starts talking at the same time. “This town doesn’t really like the lottery, but they’ve figured out how to live with it. It’s a commentary on how people minimize evil in their own minds.” Which is pretty rich, coming from a person who tried to cheat on his girlfriend last night and then acted like it was no big deal. “Most people just want to get the nasty bit over with so they can get back to their regularly scheduled programming.”

  “But the nasty bit is regular to them,” I add quickly, stomping over the satisfaction he clearly feels about his answer. “It’s right there in the opening paragraph. They do this every year. They sacrifice someone every year. Like clockwork. And their town isn’t the only one who does it.” It makes me think about how the United States was the first country in the world to try to standardize time, because they wanted the trains to run from place to place without any confusion. So everybody had to match. “It’s a story about how this country is…standardizing evil.”

  Dash looks pissed, like I hijacked his point.

  Good.

  I raise my eyebrows in a challenge. Boys like Dash, the ones who’ve turned the idea of “nerd” to the dark side, hate it when you show them up in class, but I no longer have the capacity to care about his poor hurt feelings. He and Kate are not exactly on my list of favorite people right now.

  I do feel bad for Kate—still stuck dating a slithering excuse for a boyfriend—so I decide to leave her a note in her locker later today, telling her everything that happened in Dash’s kitchen last night. But I’m not talking to her directly. I don’t have it in me to face another round of her “why aren’t you just like me?” interrogation.

  Mr. Hauser gives me a dry smile. “Robin, can you stay after class?”

  There are some laughs, poorly hidden behind hands.

  My cheeks startle with red. If I’m being pulled aside or punished for something, I have the right to know what.

  “
Did I say something wrong?” I ask.

  “Not at all. But you’ve been writing notes in Italian since the class period started, and if you’d check your schedule, I believe you’ll note that this is English class.”

  I glance down at my black-and-white marbled composition notebook, where I have indeed been scribbling an update on Operation Croissant. Now that I’m getting worried about secrecy, and the importance of hiding these plans from my parents (and anybody else who would block my much-needed escape route), I’ve started writing in a mix of Italian, French, and Spanish. Anybody who speaks even one of those languages can’t translate the notebook in its entirety. They’d need to know all three.

  And if they did, I’d probably ask them to come with me.

  Today my notes read things like: L’ostello costa cinque lire a notte.

  I put a protective arm over my notes. “What if I like to write about Shirley Jackson in other languages?” I ask. “That can’t possibly be against the rules. In fact, I’d think you would encourage such flexibility of thought.”

  “I would, indeed. And in that case, I would love if you could translate your notes for me. After class.”

  The laughing notches up a little higher.

  As soon as class is over, I find myself in front of Mr. Hauser’s desk, awaiting my sentence.

  “Robin, do you need somewhere safe to spend your time?”

  “Wait. What?”

  “Before school. At lunch. During free periods. If you ever need somewhere to be, you can come here. I won’t bother you. In fact, I’ll barely speak to you, since I have two hundred mediocre essays to grade every week.”

  My body releases a metric ton of tension, and I realize how relieved I am by this offer. I hadn’t really been aware of how much I was freaking out about facing down the wilds of the hallways or the endless indignities of the cafeteria without the Odd Squad at my back. If I’m mad at Kate and Dash and not spending time with Milton, who else do I have?

  Exactly no one.

  “Thanks, Mr. Hauser.”

  An uncomfortable memory barges into my mind. Dash told me not to spend time with him alone—that he’s creepy in some indefinable way.

  But Dash is the worst.

  And I trust Mr. Hauser. That much I know. Maybe there are things about him beyond what I’ll ever learn in school, but that’s the deal with teachers. They exist at school with us, and they exist in their own personal lives, but there’s no real overlap. It’s like a Venn diagram where the circles don’t touch.

  And yet they see so much of our petty little personal lives unfolding in the hallways like a bad play….

  I wonder what Mr. Hauser saw that made him think I need somewhere to be, away from all of my classmates.

  “How did you know that I—?”

  “In case you haven’t noticed,” Mr. Hauser says, seeming to have anticipated this question, “you’re one of the only students who actually engage with the material. And young people who do that tend to be under constant onslaught from the slings and arrows of outrageous teenagers.”

  “I’m pretty sure Shakespeare never said that.”

  “The unit on Hamlet isn’t until senior year,” he says, setting his sandy eyebrows in a firm line. “Are you sure?”

  Mr. Hauser goes back to his papers, marking a C- on one before flipping it over and turning to the next.

  “What did you think about the play?” he asks, multitasking.

  “Hamlet?” I ask.

  “Our Town,” he says.

  Honestly, I haven’t really thought much about it since the curtain dropped. I haven’t thought about anything but Tam standing on that ladder, giving her one big speech of the show, her face shining in the lights and her voice eager. “Some of the actors gave…really strong performances.”

  “There were a few surprises, that’s for sure,” he says. “I’ll miss it. Not because it was the world’s greatest production. But it kept me busy.”

  “I’m getting a job,” I blurt out.

  “Good for you,” he says. “Still dreaming about Europe?”

  “More than dreaming.” I clutch my composition notebook.

  He nods briskly. “We might never have an easy road to what we want, Robin. But that doesn’t mean we stop wanting.”

  I don’t know who we is. The general we? The people who think too much, dream too hard, refuse to standardize themselves—even when it means we might lose the next lottery and have to face a horde of entitled townspeople who are just going through the motions of anger and fear?

  The bell rings. I’m already late for next period, but I don’t care anymore. Besides, Barb was the hall monitor, and they never replaced her.

  I hope she’s far away by now.

  I hope she’s somewhere incredible, living a life that nobody in this town could ever dream, far away from the people she was forced into close proximity with for so long—the people she called “friends,” even though in the end they were just as much a part of the high school monster as anyone else.

  Heading for the door, one more question stops me cold. “Mr. Hauser, why are you doing this? Letting me come to your class whenever I want and invade your free time?”

  “I wish a teacher had done it for me.” He doesn’t look up from the stack of papers, just grades the one on the top with a swift hand and keeps going.

  NOVEMBER 21, 1983

  I have to make it through one more nightmare before this day is through.

  Without Mom’s old bike or Milton’s trusty station wagon in my life, there’s only one option left for getting to and from school. Dad dropped me off this morning on his way to work, but he made it clear that would only be happening sporadically, when he had the extra ten minutes to spare (he’s notoriously late leaving the house in the morning) or when there’s a blizzard in the forecast.

  For the most part, I’ve been condemned to a new fate. Or really, an old one.

  I step onto the bus.

  I haven’t been on a school bus since fifth grade. I started riding my bike in sixth, with a flock of other kids at first, and then alone. All of my memories of this process are dated. They’re circa the elementary school bus, which always smelled like milk.

  I’m not an idiot. I know that the high school bus bears no resemblance to that one. They’re the same genus, but completely different species. Even as I reach the top step of the bus, things already seem dire. For one thing, the bus smells like it’s on fire.

  The black rubber on the stairs matches the burning rubber in the air, which is probably from the tires. The driver gives me a cursory glance, then looks through the windshield with a thousand-yard stare.

  She doesn’t even know where I live. How is this going to work?

  “Um, Robin Buckley,” I say. “Forty-Two Magnolia Drive?”

  The driver gives no indication that she’s heard me. She’s a woman probably in her early forties, wearing a T-shirt stained with something that looks like fruit punch, but her eyes seem unfathomably old. Ancient, even. Like she’s been driving this bus since the dawn of time.

  The bus pitches forward as I start walking back, and I stumble down the aisle. There’s no assigned seating, not even a suggested plan based on what grade you’re in. In other words, it’s a complete free-for-all.

  I don’t see any of my people.

  What’s the point in letting everyone think I’m a generic nerd if it doesn’t offer safety in numbers? Even without Dash and Kate and Milton in my life, I should at least have other bandmates and related types to stick close to. I touch my perm, like a talisman. I hate this hairstyle more and more with each passing week. But when people see it, when they watch me lug my instrument case around the hallways, when they notice the way that I dress, they know what I am.

  Even if they don’t know who I am.

  That’s enoug
h to get most people not to look any closer.

  But on this bus, I might as well be naked with a target painted on my back.

  “Buckley! Buckle up!” shouts a horrible junior named Roy from the back row.

  “There are no seat belts on this bus,” I remind everyone. Loudly.

  “That’s not the kind of ride I was talking about,” Roy says, giving a hip thrust that makes me gag. Also loudly.

  Roy plays a little bit of victorious air guitar and returns to the backseat kingdom of upperclassmen metalhead burnouts who don’t bother learning to drive because they’d rather congregate here, where they can headbang in peace and stash their drugs in the hollow seat backs that have been ripped and then covered back up with brown sticky tape. The front half of the bus is packed tight with freshmen. They’re only a year younger than I am, but somehow they look like newly hatched chicks. Fluffy hair, unsuspecting manner. But they can be vicious in groups. A nonstop spitball factory and gossip machine.

  I wedge myself into the no-girl’s-land in the middle of the bus, a swath of seats where I can push myself between two seat backs like a piece of toast in a toaster. I slide down and I stay down.

  Pulling out a pen, I open my composition notebook to work on some Spanish phrases for traveling.

  Sí, yo soy Americana.

  Sí, mi país es el peor.

  I mutter the words out loud. My parents have their soothing mantras. I have mine.

  But it’s not enough to counteract this bus ride. By the time we make it to the third or fourth stop, there are so many spitballs in my hair (how? The angles don’t even make sense) and about four dozens variations of the “Buckley, buckle up” joke have been shouted in my direction.

  “Hello?” I call out to the bus driver. “What are you doing to curb this madness?”

  The driver doesn’t even glance in the rearview mirror. I can only see the strip of her face from eyebrows to upper lip. She remains impassive. Unmoved. This is how she survives, I guess. By pretending the bus is empty. By acting like whatever’s unfolding behind her simply isn’t happening.