Stranger Things

by A. R. Capetta

  “That’s because they always love it,” Dash snarks at her.

  Kate’s smile droops, but it doesn’t quite disappear. She goes back to playing as the final chorus swells.

  The rest of the band is loving it nearly as much as the crowd. Earth, Woodwind, and Fire Squad is marching with a sort of energy that I haven’t seen since early in the season. As we march into a new formation, I catch a glimpse of Sheena Rollins with her perfect white sneakers and white ribbons down her sectioned ponytail. She’s actually smiling—as much as you can smile and play an oboe at the same time.

  Even Miss Genovese looks happy, which is nearly unheard of.

  It’s tradition for the Hawkins High School band to put our raggedy, tired traditional marches aside for the last game of the season and play something new. When Miss Genovese asked for a “fresh number” to round out our repertoire and bring the house down at the final game of the season, there was only one song stuck in my head, because Tam had been singing it that morning. Because Tam was always singing it.

  “ ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’?” I said.

  Milton shot me a look (the first in a while), and I remembered telling him that the song was Tam’s favorite.

  But what did that matter? Was he worried that I was becoming best friends with Tam now that I wasn’t allowed to spend my afternoons parked in front of his Yamaha/MTV setup, arguing the merits of Kajagoogoo (none, in my opinion)?

  I didn’t pick this song because Tam has in any way replaced Milton. I just said “Total Eclipse of the Heart” out loud because I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Couldn’t stop thinking about her. Playing this song every day has been a way to funnel all of those stupid non-friendship feelings somewhere.

  A microscopic part of me wonders if Tam’s up there in the bleachers. If she’s watching. If she’s excited that we’re playing her favorite song. Did she take this opportunity to buy a chalky hot chocolate and cheese fries from the concession booth that the Booster Club sets up? Is she impatiently waiting for the moment when Steve Harrington bursts back on the field? Did the familiar notes catch her off guard? Did she lose a little bit of her balance?

  And even if she’s looking at us and seeing what I hope she sees—that we’re playing this song, just a little bit, because of her—would she even recognize me under this abomination of a hat? I wave the plume out of my face, but it just keeps drooping.

  And then, with one final crescendo, we’re done.

  The crowd loses its collective mind.

  Everybody is up on their feet, and I’ll admit that it feels good. Not least because we upstaged the football team that we’re supposed to exist solely to support.

  I empty my spit valve for the last time this season, tuck it into the case, and sling the mellophone onto my back. Not that I have anywhere to go just yet. We’ve been released into the wilds to watch the rest of the game. Normally, I wouldn’t stay—I’d bike straight home (back in the golden age of wheels and freedom), or I’d go back to Milton’s and watch the Betamax footage and help set the table for dinner. Neither of those are an option anymore. So I head for the concession booth, hoping they have something I can buy that takes the smallest possible chunk out of my Europe money. I stand at the end of an abominably long line. Out of the corner of my eye, Tam’s red hair is like a beacon. I turn to it, without thinking.

  “That was amazing!” she’s saying to Jennifer. “Didn’t you love it?”

  Jennifer shrugs, noncommittal to the last.

  They’re both gathering their orders. Craig Whitestone appears out of nowhere and puts on a horrible act of gallantry, insisting on carrying their nachos. “You liked the little show we just put on?” he asks.

  “That last song,” Tam says. “It’s the best. Whose idea was it to play ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’?”

  “Ladies, look no further,” Craig drawls. “It was my idea.”

  Kate pushes forward from her place in the middle of the line. Even if I’m not talking to her, she’s not one to let any untruth go unchallenged. “Actually, it was Robin’s idea.”

  “Really?” Tam looks all the way to the back of the line, like she knew exactly where I was the whole time. She gives me a skewed smile. “I didn’t pin you as the Bonnie Tyler type.”

  (Tam pinned me? This is news.)

  “I’m not,” I admit. “But that song just keeps getting stuck in my head.” I leave out the part where it’s entirely because of her. I also leave the line, approaching the spot where Tam stands with her nachos, which she’s taken back from Craig. Jennifer draws back like I have some kind of undiagnosable disease.

  The game starts up again.

  Steve Harrington is busy getting trounced on the football field.

  I’m right here. With her.

  I swipe my face one more time, to be absolutely sure there’s no band-inspired spit left on it. (Dry. Thank goodness.) “Have you seen the ‘Total Eclipse’ music video?” I ask, thinking of the dozen times it popped up while Milton and I were watching MTV. “With her in that gauzy white dress and the guys with glowing eyes and all of the weird gymnastics?”

  Tam laughs. “How embarrassing is it if I tell you I taped it? And that I watch it all the time?”

  Jennifer moves her weight from one leg to the other and tugs the end of her cardigan, which is foolishly tied around her neck. Has Jennifer not gotten the message that it’s nearly December? Or is slinging a sweater around your shoulders such a great status symbol that it’s worth the frostbite?

  “In case you haven’t heard, I’m the Weirdest Girl in Hawkins,” I say. “So that really shouldn’t embarrass you. Not around me.”

  Where did that come from?

  Why did I admit how weird I am, boldly and yet in the softest voice, right in front of Tam?

  It doesn’t seem to put her off, though, because she’s laughing again. And not in a mean way. “I’m always singing when I get into Click’s class because when I get out of my car, whatever was in the tape deck is fresh in my head. It’s like I can’t stop the music from coming out or it’ll just…dry up inside me. You must have heard me sing Bonnie Tyler before class.”

  I feel like she’s calling out something that happens every day, but I don’t know why. Is she trying to say that she notices how aware I am of her singing? Do I admit it? What happens if I tell the truth? What happens if I lie?

  “You’ve got a great voice,” I squeeze out.

  (I chose D, all of the above.)

  “Well, it’s not great enough to turn Our Town into a musical,” she says, pretending to pout.

  Wow. Okay. We have in-jokes, too.

  “Only Bonnie Tyler herself would be powerful enough to do that.”

  Tam shakes her head. “I still can’t believe you played my song.” She blinks at me a few times, disbelieving. Her eyes are a bright brown. Her lips are muted purple, a softer and prettier color than the fuchsia that everybody in band is obsessed with, and right when I realize I shouldn’t be staring at her mouth for more than a second to clock the lipstick shade (because: that’s weird) she starts to hum. The notes burst into lyrics and Tam is singing her favorite song. For me. In public. She’s total eclipsing me right in front of the snack bar.

  And then it’s over, and Jennifer is dragging Tam away to the bleachers and talking about how unfortunate my hair looks because it’s been under the shako all day. Tam doesn’t laugh. She doesn’t pile on.

  She just looks back at me and shrugs.

  Like she’s not sure what to do with all of this normal, either.

  DECEMBER 22, 1983

  Nearly a month later, I’m in Miss Click’s classroom waiting for a test on the Industrial Revolution to hit my desk, but my mind is wandering along the French Riviera.

  And I’m imagining Tam at my side.

  Mr. Hauser has asked me, more than once, i
f I have a travel companion in mind for Operation Croissant. I go to his classroom nearly every day now, either during lunch or free period. I mostly read while he grades tests, but sometimes we talk. Eventually, our conversations end up where my mind always goes these days. In Europe.

  Or with Tam.

  Or both.

  My original plan was to wait for Milton, but the longer he goes without even remotely talking to me (or asking out Wendy DeWan), the more I wonder if I should give up and move along. And the closer we get to the new year, the more I want to have this figured out. It’s not exactly something you can spring on someone in May and expect them to leave Hawkins with you in June. This kind of planning takes time and a certain amount of emotional precision. But Kate and Dash made a mess of everything, and weeks later I’m still scrambling to clean it up.

  Maybe this is good news in disguise, though. I never would have thought of Tam as my first choice, but with the entire Odd Squad out of the running, she’s suddenly at the top of my list.

  And ever since Tam opened her purple lips and sang right in front of me like we were the only two people who mattered, I’ve been wondering if maybe she’s like me. A weirdo who’s been lying low—with the occasional episode of bursting into song—just waiting for the opportunity to escape.

  What if I can give her that?

  I’ve saved up over five hundred dollars since I started working at the Hawkins Theater. I’m going to pick up double shifts over the holidays. By the time school starts up in January, I should be tantalizingly close to the amount I need for my plane ticket. Then I can start saving for a second one.

  The Industrial Revolution quiz is handed back by the girl in front of me, and I fill it out so quickly that I’m left with too much free time. My eyes wander over to Tam. She’s wearing a white miniskirt and a yellow sweater and it’s easy enough to imagine her in that same outfit, settling into a long flight with me. Walking through the Bargello. Singing in every piazza we pass through. (Maybe not riding a bike through the Italian countryside, but I’m sure she can bring some pants with her, too.)

  She keeps filling out her test, slow and careful. When she’s done, she takes it up to Miss Click and sets it on the finished pile, and then turns back to the class, her eyes snagging on Steve Harrington.

  He’s squinting at his test paper like it’s written in invisible ink.

  It’s laughable, really, to think that a girl as smart and ambitious and talented as she is would waste all of her glances on him. (Especially after she cried over him in the bathroom and vowed to be done with him forever.) But what if she only stares at him because she thinks she’s supposed to? What if it’s part of her cover, the way that being a perfect band nerd is part of mine?

  I open the Operation Croissant composition notebook and turn to a blank page.

  And—in French—I let myself dream.

  I write everything I can imagine us doing together. I translate every wild hope, every silly dream.

  When the bell rings, Steve Harrington is still struggling his way through the Industrial Revolution. And I feel so stupid about what I’ve just written that I tear it out of my notebook, the paper ripping raggedly away from the center. This doesn’t belong with my plans for Operation Croissant. Tam would never go to Europe with me.

  (The truth is, I would never ask her. I’d be too afraid she’d say no.)

  (I’d also be slightly afraid she’d say yes.)

  I crumple the paper and let it drop into the trash basket on my way out. Steve is still working on his test, and Tam and her friends are straggling, probably in the hopes that she can get him alone for a second.

  Even though he’s still dating Nancy Wheeler.

  Wow, I hate myself for caring about any of this.

  I stop outside the classroom for a drink from the short, sporadically functional water fountain. My face feels flushed with the kind of embarrassment that can only come from wanting to befriend a girl way above my social station.

  This must be what Victorians felt like all the time.

  I sip at the measly little stream of water and splash some on my face. When I straighten up, I can see Tam and her friends gathered right outside Miss Click’s classroom. They’re all bending around something. A piece of paper. I’ve seen them do this sort of collective note-reading ritual before. It takes me a second to realize that Jessica is clutching my discarded paper, now uncrumpled and whole.

  She’s clutching it to her chest like it’s a defibrillator. Like it could restart her shriveled heart.

  “Who do you think sent it?” she asks. “Did you see anyone drop it near my desk?” Her desk is right by the wastebasket. Perfectly placed for a piece of paper that missed its target and bounced onto the floor.

  I do a quick, vital scan of my memory. I didn’t write Tam’s name anywhere on the paper, did I?

  No. Jessica thinks the note was for her. And her mom is from Montreal, so Jessica can speak French. Oh, merde.

  “It’s très romantic,” she says in a voice that’s 90 percent breath. “I wonder which boy in our class knows French.”

  Boy? What is she talking about?

  Romantic? What is she talking about?

  My brain slams into the implications of those words. I’m not a boy, and I wasn’t writing about love. Those were just daydreams. Those were my daydreams, and Tam should never have seen them.

  I study her face.

  I pick apart her reaction.

  She doesn’t seem to be terribly interested in the note. She bounces on her feet. “Gotta get to my next class, okay?”

  She leaves Jessica there to pore over the note.

  My heart sinks as Tam leaves. Why did I want her to blush raspberry pink when she heard those words? Why did part of me hope she’d understand the note was for her, the way I wanted her to guess that “Total Eclipse of the Heart” being played by the marching band was inspired by her, too?

  Her red hair swishes as she disappears down the hall.

  Jessica reads the note again, this time out loud, translating for her friends as she goes.

  I listen to it.

  And I hear the words this time—not from my own perspective, but from the outside. I wrote about walking hand in hand with Tam down the Champs-Élysées, picking out books for each other at Shakespeare and Company, getting dinner together and sharing dessert (because one of us orders chocolate soufflé and the other gets tarte tatin, so of course we have to trade bites). She tucks her head on my shoulder as we stroll at dusk, because I’m taller and we’re both tired. Then we tuck away in a rented garret, watching the city lights come on as we light up inside at the thought of doing it all again tomorrow. And finally, we fall into the garret’s one tiny bed together, because, well, it’s a garret, people, not the Ritz.

  Still. Snuggling together into one tiny bed is, objectively, romantic.

  Suddenly I’m glad that Tam left for her next class, because my face is burning with the fire of a thousand suppressed blushes.

  Milton told me that I’m good at solving puzzles, but I somehow didn’t see this puzzle for what it was until I dropped the missing piece and someone else picked it up.

  And I might be good at languages, but I’ve been using the wrong one to try and decode how I feel about Tam. My world is filled with the assumption, everywhere I look, that girls like boys. That girls date boys. That gay people are just a rumor about what happens in towns that aren’t Hawkins, a segment on the news. I had no context to assume that, when I looked at Tam, I was feeling anything other than friendship. It took Jessica and her handy Rosetta Stone of boy-girl crushes to make me see this for what it truly is.

  I have a crush on Tam.

  I think I’ve had a crush on her since she walked into Miss Click’s class the first day of school.

  DECEMBER 22, 1983

  I get through the
rest of the day—the last one before winter break—in an utter fog, and when I come out, I’m on the other side of the big, gay woods.

  I like Tam.

  I like girls.

  Weirdly enough, the thing that still bothers me about this is that I couldn’t see it sooner. I couldn’t see it at all. I’m supposed to be smart, and yet I wasn’t doing the most basic possible math. Robin + Tam + Staring + Feelings = Enormous Crush.

  That wasn’t so hard, was it?

  But somehow, it was.

  Of course, there’s the whole “I had no context to understand my feelings for what they actually are” factor. But on further examination, there’s something else at play. They really might revoke my nerd card over this one. All year, I’ve been so certain that I understand everybody around me, but I haven’t been looking at my own feelings with any kind of real scrutiny. Doesn’t knowing things presuppose that you know things about yourself? Or at some point, does hoarding information become an excuse? It’s like writing your own emotional hall pass: if I can learn three new languages, I don’t have to learn whatever’s going on inside my own head.

  Now, thanks to the Jessicas of the world and the fact that I couldn’t stop myself from daydreaming about Tam—and then discarding those daydreams as hopeless—I’m stuck with this revelation.

  It doesn’t help that I’m also stuck on the bus, which smells like exhaust and wet gloves and rowdy freshmen. They’re hopped up on holiday excitement—they’re basically still kids waiting to see what Santa will bring, only they know Santa is their middle-class dad maxing out his credit card.

  Meanwhile, the metalheads in the back of the bus are extracting their stashes of pot out of the brown-taped holes in the back of the seats. They probably need it to help them get through the break.

  I can’t really blame them.

  All of a sudden, the idea of ten days without seeing Tam feels excruciating. At the same time, I’m not sure how I’ll survive our next encounter. If the monster that is Hawkins High was a concern before, I can only imagine how it would react to this: a girl with a crush on another girl who only has eyes for Steve Harrington.