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It was two o’clock on a Saturday afternoon, and Cal and David Brookfield were trying to steal E.T. again. Recently their attempts on the movie had escalated from once to twice weekly, and Robin had sincerely considered just letting them have it permanently, 90 dollar price tag be damned. If they were only a little more subtle, she could’ve pretended not to see them, but the boys were seven and nine respectively, and their approach to the Spielberg heist was, to put it shortly, grotesquely incompetent.
Robin had been reading a magazine behind the counter when she heard the spectacular clatter of a whole row of tapes somehow falling to the floor. She looked up to see the two boys trying desperately to cram the VHSs back onto the shelf, while David cradled one arm protectively around a suspicious lump under his shirt. Robin sighed. Usually she dispatched Steve to deal with the two of them, but Steve was unavailable, at home with some sort of mystery illness. She felt, though she knew it was impossible, that Steve had directly planned his sick day to coincide with the Brookfield Brother’s latest feat.
She slapped her magazine down on the counter and eyed the boys warily. They were still trying to organize the fallen tapes, seemingly unaware they were being watched. She entertained the idea of letting them go. But that wouldn’t work– Keith would have her head, or somehow decide it was Steve’s fault, even though he wasn’t there, and use it as his long hoped for excuse to fire him. She had to confront the little monsters.
“Hey, you!” She called. Cal looked at her with massive saucer eyes. “I know you’re trying to take that movie again, and I won’t let you.” Typically, a chiding was enough to get them to stop and guiltily put E.T. back where it belonged. This time however, perhaps because they noticed Steve wasn’t there, the boys took a different approach– they ran.
They smashed directly into a young woman, who was opening the door as they were rushing for it. As David bounced off of the woman’s legs, not just E.T., but a copy of The Terminator slipped out from his shirt. Giving the situation up for lost, the brothers made a break for it and scrambled around the woman’s legs. The customer stared behind her and then down in surprise, evaluated the situation, and picked up the tapes. She headed for the counter.
“I assume that they were trying to run away with these.” She put the tapes down on the counter. Robin quickly inspected them– no harm done.
“Yes, they were, the little idiots. Thank you so much–” her sentence died in her throat as she looked up and took in the customer. She was indeed a young woman, just around her age. An incredibly beautiful young woman. The girl had long dark hair with a subtle curl. She had several delicate freckles on her light brown skin, and was sporting a wide, brilliantly white smile. She had a movie star smile. Where did she go to the dentist? Robin was pretty sure her brain was melting.
She tried to snap back to normal “Thank you for stopping them. And, uh, rescuing E.T.” Hopefully she hadn’t paused for too long. Hopefully this girl didn’t think she was a lunatic.
“It was an accident, but I’m glad I could help.” Oh, she had dimples too. Robin had always loved dimples. She hoped she wasn’t blushing. That would be profoundly embarrassing.
There was a brief silence, and Robin realized she was probably supposed to say something– give her saleswoman speech. “So, is there any movie in particular you wanted to get? We actually just got in a couple copies of Witness– you know, with Harrison Ford? It’s great, it’s just being snapped up.” Robin hadn’t seen it, but she was trying to prove she was competent at her job. Her mother had liked the movie, anyway.
The girl shook her head politely. “I was actually wondering where your Foreign Language section is. If you have a Foreign Language section?”
“Of course we have a foreign language section!” Robin was delighted. Somebody really interested in cinema was a rarity in Hawkins. Somebody under forty (and good-looking too, a corner of her brain contributed) was rarer still. “It’s just over here.”
She left the counter and led the girl to a small section in the back corner of the store. Despite Keith’s application interrogation on whether or not her taste was sophisticated enough to get a job, the vast majority of the tapes in the family video belonged in the substantially more profitable ilk of E.T., or the new cheap release of Pinocchio. The customer had only four shelves to look over, and immediately zeroed in on a target.
“I love Seven Samurai!” She cried, retrieving the tape. “I’ve seen it something like four times.”
“Isn’t Kurosawa the best?” Robin said, caught up in the enthusiasm. “The Hidden Fortress is my favorite of his. Just hilarious. And the action scenes are great. Have you seen it?”
“Of course! I loved the composition in the fortress scene– very artistic.” She paused and looked at Robin. “You know, I kinda doubted anybody here would know who Kurosawa is.”
“Here? You mean Hawkins? This isn’t the boonies. We don’t just sit around looking at paint dry.” Robin was mildly insulted. Sure, Hawkins was hardly the cultural center of Indiana, something she had long privately bemoaned, but Robin felt she had to defend her honor as a cinephile.
“Oh! I mean, like, uh.” The girl trailed off. Robin panicked. Had she been too aggressive? Had she so quickly made an enemy of this cultured stranger who had shiny hair and adorable dimples?
“It’s fine.” She said quickly. “I get it. We only have the one video store. If you’re from the city, it’s probably tiny. Are you from the city?”
“Yeah, New York.” The girl smiled. “The Big Apple. The city that never sleeps. Whatever dumb name you wanna call it.” Oh. Wow. Robin had meant Indianapolis. “It is a bit of a transition. My parents packed up and moved almost halfway through my senior year. Extremely inconvenient for me, let me tell you.”
“Jesus, that sucks.” Robin had lived in Hawkins since she was born. She’d always dreamed about leaving it, was still hoping to leave it when she graduated, but she wouldn’t leave right now. She had something that vaguely resembled a social life amongst the band kids. There was no easy way to make friends months before the end of senior year.
“Yeah. It’s not ideal.” The girl paused. “Hey, uh, Robin,” She’d looked at Robin’s name tag. That was perfectly normal, but something twitched pleasantly in Robin’s chest when she heard her own name in the girl’s sweet voice. “Do you go to the high school?”
“Yes, I do!” Ok, too enthusiastic. Was she being weird? She was being weird. “I do, I’m a senior too. If you need any like, insider information, I’m your girl.” That was the dorkiest thing Robin had ever said in her life. She wanted to run into the back room and scream from embarrassment. Instead, she stood there with a hopefully not too wide smile.
The girl laughed, but not meanly. “I’ll keep that in mind. My name is Kristina, by the way. Kristina with-a-K-and-no-H. You can call me Kristi, or Kris, or anything that isn’t Tina. That’s my mom’s name.”
“Ok, Kristi, nice to meet you.” Robin smiled again. It felt more natural this time. Kristi didn’t hate her. She’d laughed as if Robin made a funny joke! “I guess you already know that I’m Robin.”
“Yeah.” Kristi paused a moment. “So, I’ll probably rent Seven Samurai.”
Robin startled, then nodded. She was at her job, and her job was to rent movies to customers, not talk to them. She went back behind the counter and Kristi went to the other side, tape in hand. A quick ringing up, and– “That’ll be five dollars and seventy four cents, and make sure to come back in a week.”
Kristi handed her two bills, and Robin shuffled through the register to retrieve a quarter and penny. She held out her hand with the coins, on the verge of dropping them and saying ‘here’s your change’, when before she could Kristi delicately plucked the coins out of her hand, the tips of her long fingers brushing Robin’s palm, which suddenly felt very warm. Kristi’s white teeth flashed.
Robin’s arm dropped back down to her side, a little too quickly. “Thanks for shopping at Family Video! Come back soon.” She racked her brain for something charming and witty to say. “Maybe we’ll have more than twenty foreign movies, next time.”
Kristi laughed again. “Miracles do happen, I suppose!” She turned to leave, then glanced back over her shoulder. “I might take you up on you offer. Of ‘insider information’, I mean.”
The bell jingled as Kristi left the building. Robin let out a small sigh, and after realizing she had sighed, tried to check the ghost of her reflection in the window. Did she look presentable? She ran a hand through her hair. Then she huffed internally. She’d been interrogated by Russians, damnit, she wasn’t about to lose her mind because a pretty girl had talked to her. A pretty girl who liked movies. A pretty girl who she was probably going to talk to again.
Maybe she could lose her mind, just a little bit.
---
“The thing is, I think she might have liked me? Not that I’m saying that she liked me like that, I mean, I wouldn’t know that, she wouldn’t like me like that, but it seemed like she probably didn’t hate me. Like, she laughed at a joke I made. So she probably doesn’t hate me.” Robin stopped and took a breather.
“Prob’y” Steve said around a mouth of chicken noodle soup. They were sitting at his dining room table. Robin’s mom had insisted she bring soup when she’d told her Steve was sick. She’d also winked aggressively and told Robin that boys like a girl who can cook. Though Robin knew it was hopeless cause to convince her mother she and Steve weren’t dating, it was true that he appreciated the soup. His parents were gone this weekend, and as far as Robin could tell, he’d been subsisting off of Doritos and Doritos alone.
“It’s just, how many highschoolers in Hawkins know who Kurosawa is?” Robin leaned back in her chair with a dramatic groan. “And how many of them are drop dead gorgeous?”
“At least one.” Steve said. Robin rolled her eyes. “It’s pretty crazy, you know, I get sick for one day and you meet your soulmate.”
“Shut up! I never said she was my soulmate, dingus.”
“She’s gotta be something, you’ve been going on about her for like ten minutes.” His voice rose an octave. “Oh Kristi, her freckles are so cute and she likes weird French movies, ooh wooow.”
“She’d just a fellow woman of culture.” Robin gave him a look. “And a potential friend who’s not addicted to hair products.”
“She probably uses some hair products. You said her hair look shiny, right?”
“Yeah, shiny. Not like a sorta wavy heap on top of her head.”
“My hair is not a heap! You take that back.” He jabbed his spoon in her direction, spilling soup on the table. Robin snorted.
As he wiped the soup up with a napkin, Steve looked at her with mock narrowed eyes that quickly widened up into a slightly devious smile. “Well, she’s going to Hawkins High, right? You’ll probably be seeing her again real soon.”
---
Robin did not, in fact, see Kristi real soon. She was not in any of Robin’s classes, nor in the hallways as she went to classes, nor first lunch. Robin didn’t see Kristi until after school on Wednesday, when as she was unlocking her bike from the bike rack, she felt a tap on her shoulder.
“Aaaahhh!” She yelped as she turned around, nearly whapping Kristi in the face with her helmet. “Oh gosh, sorry, hi.”
“Hi!” Kristi smiled, and there were the dimples again. She was wearing an aggressively purplish lipstick, and Robin made a valiant effort not to look at her mouth for too long. “Robin, right? From the video store?”
“Yeah.” Robin leaned against the bike rack nonchalantly. “Yeah. Have you watched Seven Samurai yet?”
“I have actually, yeah, but I was thinking I’d watch it again Friday night before I have to give it back.”
“Oh, I wasn’t trying to hound you about returning it or anything. It’s all yours for the week.” There was an awkward little pause. “So, was it as good as the first four times you’ve seen it?”
“Good enough to give it a sixth go!” Kristi glanced at the bike rack. “You bike home?”
“Yeah. You drive?”
“Nah. Walk. I live super close. What way’s your house?”
“East.”
“Mine too.” Kristi shifted a little awkwardly. “If we’re headed the same way, you wanna head home together?”
“Sure!” Robin said eagerly. She reached to unlock her bike. “I’ll walk with you till we get to your house.”
They headed off. The wind shook red brown leaves from the branches of the trees, and the ones on the sidewalk crunched under their feet. Robin pulled her bike alongside her, staying half a step behind Kristi while she walked home. For a little bit, they were quiet. Robin tilted her head to look at the pins on Kristi’s denim jacket– counterculture bands she‘d only sort of heard of.
“So,” Robin said, breaking the silence, “what do you think of Hawkins so far? Still the boonies?”
“Not the boonies. Still super small though. But big? I mean, not big, just spread out. The spaces are bigger. There’s more trees. Less lights. Everyone lives in a house and the houses mostly look the same. None of the streets are numbered. There’s less to do.” She looked thoughtful. “I’ve overheard some girls complaining that there’s nothing to do now, and that there used to be a mall here? And it exploded?”
“Burned down. Terrible accident. Chief of police died.” Robin spat out the Official Story she’s repeated a couple dozen times. Sometimes, when she had trouble sleeping at night, she’d try and convince herself it was the truth. “I actually worked there last summer. Before it burned down, I mean.”
“Oh. Bummer.”
“Yeah. I don’t really miss working at Scoops Ahoy though.”
Kristi turned to look at her, walking backwards a few paces. “Wait, you worked at a Scoops Ahoy? Like, the one where they wear the outfits?”
“Yes. Don’t laugh. It was mildly humiliating.”
Kristi laughed anyways. “Oh my god, that’s so funny. You in that stupid little sailor hat.”
“I looked great in that hat.” Robin laughed too.
“I wish I could’ve seen you. That would have been a sight.” Kristi turned back around, still smiling brilliantly.
“What classes are you in?” Robin asked. “I haven’t really seen you around.”
Kristi told her. Their classes were in different parts of the building at different times. Like ships in the night, they’d just kept missing each other. “I was in Orchestra, back in New York, but I didn’t want to try and audition or anything here. It’d be weird.”
“Really? What do you play?” Robin was very pleased to discover that Kristi played music, even if it wasn’t in band.
“Viola. I started in seventh grade. Never great at it, but I like to think I’m competent.”
“I’m in the band. Alto sax. I also know some stuff on the piano.”
“I took piano lessons as a kid but hated them. I never practiced.” Kristi paused. “I guess you could say that music wasn’t… my forte.”
“That was terrible.” Robin said flatly. “Awful. I can never speak to you again.”
“Ohh noooo!” Kristi cried dramatically, putting her hands over her heart as if she’d been grievously wounded, “Oh how I rue my terrible joke!”
Robin burst into laughter, stopping walking, and Kristi stopped too, bent over with giggles. Robin looked at her, the way her skin glowed in the afternoon sunlight. Kristi looked up and caught her eye, still giggling. She stopped laughing and smiled. Robin looked away quickly, bit her lip. They started walking again.
They stopped in front of a neat suburban house nearly identical to the suburban houses next to it. “This is me.” Kristi said, turning to face Robin. “See you tomorrow.” Sort of a statement, sort of a question.
“See you tomorrow.” Robin gave a little wave as Kristi entered the house. Then she got on her bike and rode home. She’d taken a detour of a few blocks from her usual route home. She didn’t care at all.
---
She walked home with Kristi the next two days. When her mother had asked what was taking her so long, Robin explained she’d befriended a new girl at school, who’d just moved here from New York City. Her mother said it was very nice of her, and uncharacteristically outgoing. Robin had just rolled her eyes.
On Saturday, she was working with Steve in the video store, stomach twitching. It didn’t make sense for her to be nervous about seeing Kristi, as she’d seen her the past few days, but there were butterflies anyway. It didn’t help that Steve kept making little jokes about finally getting to see Kristi. Every time the bell on the door jingled, Robin looked up from the copy of Pet Semetary she was only half reading, eyes wide, only to settle back to her book when it was inevitably not her.
When Kristi did come in, she put the book down entirely. Kristi’d cut her hair. The dark waves that had fallen down her back now stopped at her chin, curling up more with less weight to pull them down. Somehow, she only looked more beautiful. “Hey!” Robin called. “Nice to see you.”
“Back at ya.” Kristi put Seven Samurai down onto the counter. Robin didn’t bother giving the tape the typical examination to see if it’d been damaged. She was sure Kristi had been careful. “Just as good the sixth time, if you were wondering.”
“Glad you didn’t suddenly start hating it.” Robin said. “I like the haircut, by the way.”
“Thanks. It was an impulse on the way over.” Kristi reached up a hand to adjust her curls. “My mom’ll probably flip. She says my hair’s my best feature.”
“I like it. It draws attention to your face. You’ve got a great face.” Robin wanted to kick herself. That was a terrible compliment. She was glad Steve was in the back and hadn’t witnessed that.
Kristi laughed and smiled. Her lipstick was dark red today. “Thanks. You’ve also got a great face.”
Robin wanted to say something but didn’t know what she’d say. Luckily, she didn’t have to. “So, I’m thinking about renting something else. Got any recs? What’s your favorite movie?”
“Have you ever seen The Apartment? It’s hilarious. It has Shirley MacLaine. And Jack Lemmon. It won Best Picture.”
“I’ve been meaning to, but I’ve never gotten around to it. I’ll give it a go.”
Robin pointed her to the shelf it was on. Just then, Steve emerged from the back. As he settled to his place next to her, Robin nudged him with her elbow and nodded at where Kristi was looking at the shelf.
“She is pretty.” Steve whispered, and Robin nudged him harder. “I like the hair. She definitely does use products though.” Robin stepped on his foot.
Kristi went up to the counter. “Got it– Oh, hello!” She greeted Steve, who gave her a salute. “You’re Steve, right?”
“That’s what it says on my name tag.” Steve winked. Robin felt a passive urge to disembowel him.
“I’m Kristi. I’m friends with Robin. She’s talked about you. It’s nice to meet you. Are you really friends with a bunch of fourteen year olds?”
Steve looked at Robin, eyebrows raised. “Well, it sounds a little weird when you put it that way. It’s not like Robin isn’t also kinda friends with those fourteen year olds.”
Kristi giggled. “Good to know. How much for this?”
Robin rung it up. “Five dollars and 18 cents.” Kristi handed her the money, Robin handed her the change. This time, their fingers didn’t touch.
“Great.” Kristi rocked back and forth on her heels a moment. “So, see you Monday?”
“See you Monday.” Robin gave a tiny wave. Kristi left the store.
“Oh my god.” Steve said next to her. “You’re super into her.”
“Is it that obvious?!” Robin whirled to face him, frantic.
“Well, you act way different around her. You’ve got big moony eyes…”
“Shut up! I don’t! I don’t, right? Do you think she knows? Shit!” Robin dug her nails into her palm.
“Hey, calm down!” Steve said. “I was joking. Mostly.”
“She can’t know about… that.” Robin bit her lip. “What if she hates me?”
“Calm down. Calm down. It’ll be fine. She clearly doesn’t hate you right now. And she’s from New York, right? So she’s probably super progessive. I’m sure she wouldn’t hate you.”
“And if she did?”
“If she did, fuck her!”
“Steve.”
“No, I mean it, fuck her! You’re really cool and smart and funny, and if somebody decides to hate you just because– because of who you like, that means they’re the sucker.”
Robin took a deep breath. Let it out. “Thanks Steve. You’re a dingus, but you’re a pretty good friend.”
“Thanks, I think.” Steve smiled. “And I think she– I don’t think it’s impossible she might like you back.”
“Really?” She looked at him.
“Really. She’s gonna watch that dumb old movie you like.”
Robin elbowed him again. “Several people consider The Apartment one of the best movies ever made, you loser.”
Steve laughed. Hesitantly, Robin smiled.
---
Through the next few weeks, Robin walked with Kristi every afternoon. They talked about practically everything– she learned Kristi was an only child, that her favorite food was curry, and that she was sad there was no “authentic” Indian place in Hawkins. She’d moved here because her grandma was here, and she was getting old and “sorta demented, but not bad enough to put her in a home, just bad enough mom wants to watch her”. She liked cold weather better than hot, but loved warm weather when she could go swimming. She liked punk music, but had once been to a punk show and had her face smashed by a flying elbow, and never gone back. Movies were really her greatest passion, and she wanted to go to film school some day.
In turn, Robin told her about herself. She had two older sisters, both at Indiana State. She hated soda but was addicted to desserts, spring was her favorite season, and liked basically any music you played her. She didn’t know what she wanted to do as an adult, maybe “be a translator, or something.”
“Wait,” Kristi had said, “you know four languages?” Robin had nodded. “You must be some sort of super language genius, or something.”
“No way.”
“I’m not kidding! You’re probably a genius, and you have no idea because you’re in Hawkins Indiana and you’ve never bothered taking a language class. You just taught yourself? Out of dictionaries?”
“And movies. It’s not that impressive.”
“You’re a genius.”
It felt good to have someone to talk to on the journey home. Good to have someone to talk about movies and books and art with. Robin had been up to Chicago a couple of times to see museums, but Kristi had lived in New York City. Basically the holy grail of American art outside of California.
The more time she spent with Kristi, the more that she liked her. Liked her. The more that Robin liked Kristi, the more afraid she was of losing her friendship. She privately resolved that she would never, ever tell Kristi about her feelings.
It was just hard. When the light caught Kristi’s short hair, when she tossed her head back and laughed, when she said something particularly clever about a movie, something Robin never would have thought of, it was hard not to open her mouth and just say something stupid, like “I really wanna kiss you.” But she didn’t. She had too much to lose.
---
It was about a month after she’d first met Kristi, on another Saturday, another dull midday shift. The bell jingled, but Robin was too engrossed in reading Ender’s Game to look up until Steve poked her. It was Kristi, making her weekend trip to the Family Video. She headed straight for the foreign film section, and quickly came to the counter, holding last week’s film in one hand, and Ikiru in the other.
“Kurosawa again, huh?” Robin asked as she checked in the old movie and checked out the new. “I haven’t seen that one.”
“Me neither.” Kristi said, sounding a little off. “I hear it’s great.” She bit her lip. “Hey, wanna come over to my house tonight and watch it?”
Robin’s hand slowed in the cash register. “Sure.” She said. She looked at Kristi’s large dark eyes. “Sure, that sounds great.”
“Eight o’clock? You know where I live.”
Robin handed her the change. “Yeah. I’ll see you then.”
Kristi smiled, whatever tenseness she’d had in her vanishing. “See you then!” She left, holding the VHS like it was something very precious.
Robin looked at Steve. “I’m going to her house.”
He nodded. “You’re going to her house.”
“We’re gonna watch a movie.”
“You’ll be sitting next to each other.”
“We’ll be sitting next to each other. Oh my god.”
He gave her a thumbs up. “You’ve got this. You know Italian, you don’t even have to watch the screen.”
“The movie’s in Japanese, dingus.
---
At eight o’clock, Robin biked up to Kristi’s house. It looked a little different in the darkness, and Robin had to check all the mailboxes to differentiate Kristi’s house from the near identical ones on either side. She put up her bike, and headed for the door. She took a deep breath and pushed the door bell. ‘You’ve faced off against the soviets and a monster from another dimension,’ she told herself. `you almost died. You can do this.’
The door opened to reveal a pleasant looking middle aged woman. “Hello Mrs Rodriguez.” Robin said. “I’m Kristi’s friend Robin, uh, we were gonna watch a movie?”
“Oh Robin, yes, come in!” Tina Rodriguez was a very friendly person. “Kristi’s said so much about you! Now, Luis and I are going out to see a movie ourselves at nine, but I’m sure I can trust you two to not get into any mischief while we’re gone. The den’s just through the kitchen.
“No worries.” Robin smiled. She made her way through a neat little suburban kitchen into a neat little suburban living room. Their were pictures of Kristi and her parents on the wall, and in the middle of the room, Kristi herself was sitting on a plump, dark red couch, facing a TV that was against the wall.
“Oh hey!” Kristi said. “You’re here!” Robin smiled and went to sit down on the couch. Kristi got up and stuck the tape into the VCR.
They watched the movie. It was pretty great, but Robin had trouble focusing when she could feel Kristi’s shoulder against her own, burning through two layers of fabric, making her feel itchy and hot and hyper aware of her own body, the inches separating their ankles, their heads close enough they were breathing the same air. Half way through the film, Kristi laid her head on Robin’s shoulder. Robin didn’t move, barely let herself blink, afraid to break the magic of the moment. In the dim white illumination of the television screen, Kristi was transcendentally lovely.
The movie was about a man who was dying, who worked as a sort of dull beaurocrat, and in his last months tried to figure out how to make life worth living. Robin realized, at the end of the film, that she was crying, just a little bit, a few tears having snuck down her cheeks when she wasn’t paying attention.
Kristi looked at her as the last frames of the film were replaced by a scratchy black and white screen. “It was a good movie.” She said.
“Yeah.” Robin wiped her eyes. “Yeah it was really good.”
Kristi’s gaze was very dark, shadowed by the blackness of the room. She bit the edge of her lip for a second. Her eyes lowered to Robin’s mouth. Robin didn’t know if she was breathing. “If you knew,” Kristi began, “if you knew you were gonna die. And you did something you really wanted, something that would make your life worth living,” she moved an inch closer, “what would you do?”
Robin kissed her. It was sort of clumsy, and awkward, and she could feel her heart in her chest, pounding like drums in a marching band. Kristi’s lips were salty like the popcorn they’d been eating, and her mouth was hot against her own. After a second, she pulled away. “I’d do that, I guess.”
Kristi smiled with her movie star teeth. “Yeah. Yeah. Me too.” And then she leaned in to kiss Robin again.
It wasn’t like any movie Robin had ever seen– two girls in a dark living room, the TV scratching static. Still, it was pretty good, she thought. She reached for the remote and turned off the television. She smiled against Kristi’s mouth.