Stranger Things

by A. R. Capetta

  “Robin Buckley!” he shouts, his voice amplified like he’s informing some third party that I’ve arrived. At first, I think his parents or his little sister might come to the door, but then Wendy DeWan appears. As if by magic. She’s breathless, too, wearing pink shorts and drinking one of the Snapple Tru Root Beers that Milton’s dad keeps stocked in the fridge at all times.

  “Hey, Robin!” she echoes. “Do you want to hang out with us?”

  “Oh! No! I mean, I didn’t want to interrupt…” I give Milton a searching look. Because, what is going on?!

  “I’ll just wait in the living room, then.” She gives Milton a look of her own, complete with a scalp-tingling smile. My face surges with heat. I can’t tell if it’s because Milton’s blushing and I’m blushing by the associative property, or because Wendy is really pretty and I can’t help it.

  “You did it!” I whisper-shout as soon as she’s gone.

  Milton puts his hands in his pockets and shrugs.

  I inspect his lips. They’re puffy, and his rate of breathing is just now returning to normal. “Were you two making out when I rang the doorbell?” Milton looks like he might melt into embarrassed goo and spill all over the front steps. “I’m going to take that reaction as a yes.”

  He shakes his head at me—but he’s smiling.

  “And she said yes?” I ask. “About prom?”

  “She rejected my prom invitation, but she came over to make out with me anyway,” Milton deadpans.

  I yell into the house, “Please give me a pillow so I can throw it at him!”

  The truth is, I’m proud of Milton. He did what he wanted to do, even if it was extremely hard for him to work up to it, even if he had to banish a thousand anxieties. The other truth is that I’m jealous for the exact same reasons.

  “Wait!” he says. “I have something for you.”

  He disappears for a second and then comes back with a white card laden with cursive writing. Very fancy.

  “This is a ticket to prom. With my name on it. You just told me that Wendy…”

  “She wants to be my date. She is my date. And maybe, possibly my girlfriend.” He blushes again but forges bravely ahead. “I might have admitted that I stopped hanging out with you because people were being weird about it, and then she got a little mad that I’d ever ditch a friend like that, especially on her behalf. So I came up with a plan. She got a ticket with her friend James. And I got this one for you. Once we get there, Wendy will be my date. And you can come, too, and I can apologize for the whole thing.” He holds the ticket out at arm’s length. “Take it. Please.”

  “I have no interest in prom,” I say, honestly. “I have anti-interest in prom.”

  I’ve literally never thought about going. Even as an upperclassman, I had firm plans to skip.

  “But they’re going to play such bad music,” Milton says. “Who else is going to make fun of it with me? Besides, if you say no, you’ll always wonder what it would have been like. The absurd decorations! The taffeta dresses!”

  “Yeah, but if I went, I’d have to wear one of those dresses.” They’re basically a uniform at this point. Everyone wears one—it’s just a question of how puffy the sleeves are. “At least you get to wear a suit.”

  “My brother’s old powder-blue tuxedo,” he says. “You can’t miss that. Right?”

  He’s got this hopeful smile on his face. And I believe that he missed me as much as I missed him over the last six months. But I can’t go to prom for Milton. I can’t subject myself to that kind of teenage torture for anyone. “Trust me,” I say with my hand over my chest, swearing a very sincere oath. “I am not going to have a prom-shaped hole in my heart.”

  He sighs, finally pocketing the ticket. “Fine, but if you change your mind, your name is on the list as my date, so—”

  “I have other things to plan for, actually.” I take a deep breath and dive right in. “I’m going to Europe this summer.”

  “Wow! That’s immensely cool. Are your parents taking you?”

  I shake my head. Here goes.

  “I was hoping you’d come with me.”

  “Oh…”

  That one little sound is enough to make my hopes take a sudden swan dive into the abyss.

  “I would love to do that, Robin. I really, really would. But I promised my parents I’d help out with Ellie this summer. And Wendy…I mean, she’s leaving for school in the fall….We don’t have a lot of time….”

  “You need to be here.” Even though you hate it here.

  “Yeah.”

  I try not to let bitterness infect my voice. “Okay. Yeah, of course. I’ll find someone else.” But there’s literally no one I can imagine asking at this point. Not with Kate and Dash being—Kate and Dash. Not when thinking about Tam in any capacity, let alone a European escapade, makes me too nervous to breathe right. I try to stay focused on the part of this that is working—the part that I can control. “I’ve already got enough money for my plane ticket. But then I got fired from the theater for burning through Sixteen Candles. Literally.”

  “Wow, I really have missed a lot,” Milton says.

  I think about Tam. About everything I’ve figured out.

  He really, really has.

  JUNE 8, 1984

  Remember how I told Milton I would never put on a taffeta dress and go to prom?

  It turns out, I was only half right.

  It’s Friday night and Hawkins is in the sweaty grip of prom fever. Students at school have spent all week creating dramatic social fireworks over every last detail—rides, hairdos, corsages—counting down every minute. I’ve barely seen them as they buzzed around me. I’ve been too busy with some last-minute plans of my own.

  Yesterday, I went out to Hawkins’s one and only thrift store and found a secondhand dress that fits me. (Not like a glove. More like a sausage casing.) It’s electric purple and so shiny that it’s basically a mirror. I spent a precious eleven dollars from my Operation Croissant funds on this terrible thing.

  I’m in prom uniform, which I never, ever thought I would be.

  But it’s all in service of my plan.

  I stoop in front of the mirror on my desk, trying to shove my entire body into the little square, checking my hair (teased), my lipstick (also bright purple), and my expression (a mix of elated and terrified).

  My parents think I look like this because I’m going on my first date. I didn’t exactly lie to them and tell them outright that I’m going to the prom with Milton. But I didn’t dissuade them from thinking it, either. I only mentioned true things. He bought me a ticket. He wants me to be there.

  (Nobody asked, once, where I want to be.)

  There’s a small bag, already packed, tucked under my bed. The trick is going to be sneaking it into the car without my parents noticing. I have my learner’s permit now, and Dad gave me a few hesitant lessons right after my sixteenth birthday, but I’m not going to drop their car off and leave for Chicago. It’s too much like what happened with Barb—her car abandoned outside that party.

  I have to believe she made it out. That she’s living a defiantly great life far, far away from here. The alternative is too upsetting. If Barb didn’t run away, that means Hawkins just…swallowed her up somehow. That the monster I’ve been fighting all year got hold of her and didn’t let go.

  I shake off a shiver.

  To suit my chosen cover story, I’m going to let my parents drive me to prom (which would be humiliating to anyone who actually cared about the dance, but in my case it’s a practical choice). I’ll wait until they clear the parking lot, swap my high heels for sneakers, walk to the train station half a mile away, and catch the late train into Chicago. I should reach the airport just in time to buy a ticket for the red-eye that leaves at midnight. The Midwest will be dark and docile as I rise above it, finally leavin
g this place behind.

  Eight hours later, I’ll land in Paris.

  It’s wild, really. If you can afford it, you can shrug off your entire existence like an old sweater. You can change your life in a single night.

  I decided to move my plans up right after I found out about Milton and Wendy, aka as soon as I realized that I was truly on my own. On the one hand, I didn’t have anyone to take with me, after all of the time I spent waiting for Milton to be allowed to speak to me again. On the other, I had plenty of money to travel on my own.

  The freedom was dizzying and slightly vertiginously scary. I wonder if this is what it will feel like to take off in the plane tonight.

  I know that Mr. Hauser wanted me to travel with a friend, that he thinks I should share this experience with someone. He doesn’t want me to be lonely, but he should understand more than anyone else: sometimes you have to leave town on your own terms. The best I can do is go before this feeling gets any worse. Every day since Tam’s friends unfolded that letter, the itch to leave has grown bigger and bigger, slowly taking over every bit of my skin.

  It’s not like I’ll be missing that much by leaving early, anyway. The last two weeks of school are a bad joke without a punchline, sprawling out longer and longer as we learn nothing from our checked-out teachers and the brick oven of the building gets hotter in five-degree increments.

  And I’m only a sophomore, which is good news for once. I’ll get in trouble for missing those two weeks, maybe, but it won’t really matter in the long run.

  But the second I think about the long run in Hawkins, I feel sick.

  Maybe I won’t come home at all.

  I don’t want my parents to worry too much. I’m going to call them from the airport, and I’ll send them a postcard from every single place I go. Maybe I’ll send Milton and Wendy one, too.

  I check my bag again. Passport, two changes of clothes, a few granola bars, a book for the plane. The Polaroid I took of myself the day I decided to go to Europe. (I look so much older now. Were those really my squirrel cheeks?) My composition notebook with all of the plans I’ve gathered over the course of a year, with one page ripped out. A page that changed the whole story.

  As I come out of the bedroom, my parents swarm, which I wasn’t really expecting. Dad’s even got his own camera out, the proper Kodak, and he’s snapping shots of me waddling around in my dress.

  “You look beautiful,” my mom croons. “Just beautiful, Robin.” She can’t really like this outfit, can she? “Your soul is really shining right now.”

  Ah. That makes sense. Thinking about leaving is enough to make my soul do delighted backflips.

  Dad sighs. I hold my breath, afraid he’s going to say something about how fast I’ve grown up. I’m not sure I could handle that right now. If they get emotional, I’m going to get emotional, even if their emotions are based on something completely false (like my prom date) or completely bizarre (like this dress). Still, I’m afraid that if we all start crying right now, I’m going to burst a seam, literally or metaphorically, and everything I haven’t told them is going to spill out.

  But Dad just sniffles a little and says, “Ready to go, Robin?”

  “I’ve been ready since the first day of school,” I say. “Wait, I just need to grab something.” I don’t think I can get away without them seeing my bag, so I have to commit to my first actual lie. “It’s for after the prom, just a change of clothes for hanging out at Milton’s house.”

  I snatch up the bag, running like a streak of purple lightning across the house, into the garage. “All right! I’m ready!”

  The doorbell rings sharply. Who is that?

  “Oh, hello…” I hear my mom’s voice waft from the living room.

  What’s going on? Did somebody figure out what I’m doing and come here to stop me? Did they get hold of my composition notebook, somehow, and read it? No, it’s nestled safe in my bag. I’ve checked the contents three times. But maybe someone picked it up and read it and now they’re here….

  I walk into the living room, only to find Milton and Wendy framed in the front door, the blue almost-summer evening behind them. They’re both dressed to the nines, and then multiply that by another nine. I would never have guessed that someone could look good in a powder-blue tuxedo, but Milton is making it happen. Instead of his normal nerd-standard hair, he’s done it up in a sort of wall, like an abstract sculpture, similar to some of his favorite New Wave artists but also completely his own. Wendy’s dress is silver and shining, with a full skirt and capped sleeves. Her hair is curly and piled high, topped with a silver lace headband that would make Madonna cry.

  Milton clears his throat. “I’m here to pick you up. Throw on something nice and—” He actually seems to notice me for the first time since I entered the room. “Whoa.”

  “Whoa,” Wendy agrees.

  Even her friend James, who’s hovering on the steps behind them, adds his own faint “whoa” in the background.

  I can’t tell if it’s a good reaction or just a shocked one. I know that this is the style everyone seems to like right now, but I can’t help feeling that I look like a grape Popsicle with big dreams.

  Milton shakes his head, like I might be a mirage. “I thought you said you weren’t coming.”

  “You told us Milton couldn’t pick you up,” Mom says, squinting me like she’s seeing me through a haze, like she can’t quite get a clear picture.

  “I offered,” Milton starts, “but Robin told me—”

  I give him a look that means stop talking, you’re about to ruin the secret plan I’ve been working on for a year.

  Dad comes in from the garage with my bag open. He sets it down on the table, my things spilling out.

  “Young lady, what is this all about?” he asks.

  In my entire life, I’ve never been young lady-ed. It makes my throat close up. My parents are onto me.

  Mom sifts through the contents of the bag. Clothes, food, passport. “This doesn’t look like what you bring to spend the night at a friend’s prom party. Milton, are your parents hosting a party?”

  “No,” he says as Wendy elbows him in the side.

  She saw the look.

  “Are you going somewhere after prom? A hotel? Why do you need a passport?” My mom’s questions gather in speed and intensity.

  My dad turns the bag upside down, dumps the rest of it on the table. The wad of money that I tucked at the very bottom drops out, sitting right there on the kitchen table, looking enormous.

  “What in the world do you need that much money for, Robin?” Mom asks.

  “Is it for drugs?” Dad follows up quickly.

  “Are you kidding me?” I ask. “I spend half of my time in the room next to yours and the other half at school! You would know if I do drugs!”

  “I don’t know, Robin,” Mom mumbles, looking at the spilled contents of my bag. “It feels like there’s a lot that you’re not telling us….”

  Okay, fair.

  “Are you getting my daughter in trouble?” Dad asks, rounding on Milton.

  Now I’m laughing uncontrollably, my emotions swinging everywhere. Because seriously—Milton?

  “My boyfriend could get someone in trouble if he wanted to,” Wendy announces in his support.

  “Boyfriend?” Dad repeats, still trying to work this out, his puzzle pieces hopelessly jumbled. “So you two aren’t…?”

  “It must be some other boy that she’s meeting with a packed bag,” Mom says. “A boy who she has a reason to be hiding.” She goes into some kind of nervous parental fugue state, pacing all over the living room in a frenzy, running her hands down her long hair. “I knew that I’d rub off on her. I knew it. I did all kinds of stupid things when I was younger, and I got in trouble with all sorts of boys and—”

  “I really need everyone to stop assum
ing that everything is about a boy,” I say quietly.

  “You’ll have to give us another explanation, then,” Dad says, sitting down like that somehow makes his point final.

  This is not how I’m going to tell them I like girls. Absolutely not. Even in the midst of a disaster, I’m not going to sully that feeling.

  So I rip open the rest of my secrets and pour them out on top of everything else they just found. “You think I’m meeting a boy in secret to pay for a mountain of drugs, and then…running them over the border with my middle school passport? I’m planning on going to Europe! Without any of you!”

  When the dust settles, there’s a thick layer of uncomfortable silence.

  “We should probably get going,” Milton says. “We’re going to be late….”

  He backs off the front steps, into the shadows. Wendy mouths the word sorry and then spins to follow him.

  The door bangs shut, leaving me alone with my parents.

  I grab my bag, clutching it to me as if I can somehow salvage my plans. But they’re strewn around me with everything I so meticulously packed.

  “Whatever the truth is, we’ll figure it out. Until then, you’re not leaving the house,” Dad says. He holds up the thick collection of bills, the ones that I painstakingly collected, shift by shift. “And we’re confiscating this until we know what’s going on.”

  “You don’t believe in grounding me,” I remind them.

  Mom and Dad exchange a look of worrisome solidarity.

  Mom points to my room. “When you start acting like Robin Buckley again,” Dad says, “you’re no longer grounded.”

  JUNE 8, 1984

  Those words linger long after I’ve slammed my bedroom door.

  When I start acting like Robin Buckley again, I can leave.

  What does that even mean?

  I pummel my empty travel bag onto the bed, and it flips around, releasing something that survived the Big Purge of Robin’s Dreams.

  My Polaroid flutters to the bed.

  The girl in that photo has a gleam in her eye. She wants to be a rebel—and she thinks she’s ready. She believes it’s as simple as getting on an airplane and waking up somewhere new. Now, with that plan in tatters all around me, I can see that even her so-called rebellion is just another partial lie.