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Football practice is nearly over the first time Chrissy Cunningham sees her.
She’s wearing the boxy, heavy marching band uniform, including the ridiculous hat with the chinstrap and the floofy feather thing sticking up from the top, and she’s struggling with an unzipped backpack spilling her homework all over the parking lot and a case for some sort of musical instrument.
She twists to grab the edge of her bag and misses, fumbling her instrument in the process, and then it’s like watching a disaster in slow motion. Papers are flying, limbs are flailing, and she hits the asphalt of Hawkins High parking lot hard.
Chrissy hears the rip all the way from the bleachers and winces.
She’s still laying on the ground by the time Chrissy makes her way down from the top of the bleachers. As she gets closer, she can hear some of the most creative swearing she’s ever heard from a girl and Chrissy can feel the blush bloom across her cheeks.
Chrissy doesn’t swear. It’s not ladylike, her mother’s voice says in her ears, and you’re a lady, aren’t you Christina?
“Um,” Chrissy interrupts the stream of profanity by leaning over the other girl and into her line of sight, “Are you okay?”
She squeaks.
“No! I mean, yes! I’m – I mean, I’m great, just uh–” the girl says, words tumbling out of her mouth like she’s not in control of them as she scrambles to sit up. Unfortunately, in the process of doing this, her sleeve gets caught under her wrist and what was a small tear at the shoulder becomes a huge gaping hole.
“Son of a–”
“Stop!” Chrissy says firmly, with a sudden amount of authority that she has no idea where it came from.
The girl freezes, mouth hanging open.
“It’s just–” and then Chrissy doesn’t stutter, because ladies don’t stutter, she just loses her words for a second somewhere in this girl’s wide brown eyes, “You’re going to make it worse if you keep pulling on it like that.”
She gulps, but drops her hands away from her sleeve.
“Oh, yeah, I guess you’re right. Sometimes it just feels like – like my hands have a mind of their own, you know? Gotta tug on every loose thread.” She laughs awkwardly and flails her hands around like an uncoordinated attempt at jazz hands and Chrissy has to press her lips together so she doesn’t smile too big.
“Here, give it to me,” Chrissy says, gesturing with her open hands.
“Give what to you?”
“Your jacket.”
“My what?” It’s not a shriek, but the girl’s voice is definitely pitchy and shocked and her face turns bright pink.
Chrissy crouches down next to her, tugging the edge of her skirt so it falls perfectly around her knees without even a second thought. You never know who might be looking, who might catch you looking less than one hundred percent perfect.
“I have a sewing kit in my locker,” she says, absently starting to pick up the still-scattered papers and assemble them into neat piles. “Let me see the tear and if it’s not that bad I can fix it now, or I can take it home. I have a sewing machine.”
She gapes at Chrissy, mouth opening and closing not unlike the goldfish that she’d won at the State Fair when she was six.
“You want – you’re going to help me?”
“If you give me the jacket, yes.”
“But you’re a cheerleader!”
Chrissy’s shoulders hunch a little defensively before she consciously forces herself to relax. “And you’re in the marching band. And there’s a game on Saturday that we both need to look our best for.”
“Right. Of course! The game.”
There’s a flurry of movement as she struggles out of her jacket, managing to knock her hat even more off-kilter, so that the feathers are now drooping down into her face. She blows half-heartedly at them when they tickle her nose and Chrissy has to stop herself from reaching out to brush them away.
Luckily, the jacket is then deposited in Chrissy’s open hands, so she can’t do anything crazy. Can’t touch anything she’s not supposed to.
Fabric, clothes, needle and thread. She knows these things. They’re safe and easy and a perfect skill for a perfect young lady to have.
You never know when you’ll need to make, ahem, adjustments, Christina, her mother had said the other night, when Chrissy had been diligently sewing a dress for her cousin’s new baby while her parents watched the news. Her mom hadn’t been subtle when she eyeballed the can of soda on the table. It was a Diet Coke, but Chrissy hadn’t been able to finish it anyway.
“So what’s the verdict, doc?”
The girl’s voice jolts her back to the present, closer than Chrissy expects as she leans into her space to look down at the rip.
It’s – it’s not good. She managed to rip out nearly the entire thread that held together the thick pieces of wool. The thread she has in her sewing kit could hold it together for an hour, maybe, but it’s not strong enough to last an entire game, not when she knows the band will be out marching during halftime.
“I’ll need to take it home,” Chrissy says, carefully folding the jacket up so as not to rip it further. “I don’t have the right kind of thread here and it’ll look better if I use the machine. Is that okay? Do you trust me with your uniform until Saturday?”
When Chrissy looks up from the jacket, the girl is – she’s only inches away. She’s staring at Chrissy with a wide-eyed expression, cheeks lightly dusted with a blush that just accentuates her freckles. Her lips are parted, just the hint of a pink tongue visible when it darts out to lick at her lips and suddenly it feels a thousand degrees warmer than it should in Indiana in November.
“Yeah, I trust you,” she says quietly and something in Chrissy’s chest catches.
There’s a moment when Chrissy forgets – for a second they aren’t in Indiana, they aren’t sitting on the ground in a parking lot, there isn’t football practice happening less than a hundred yards away – there’s only the two of them and Chrissy –
She almost does the most unladylike thing of her life.
A car horn blares.
“ROBIN! LET’S GO!”
Chrissy startles and nearly falls over herself, managing to catch her balance only barely, thank goodness. But the girl does fall over again, this time squawking indelicately as she scrambles up, snatching up her mess of papers and still-open bag and a now-scuffed instrument case.
The horn blares again, and Chrissy whips her head around to see Steve Harrington of all people leaning out of the driver’s side window making impatient gestures at Chrissy’s new – new friend.
A friend named Robin, apparently.
“I’m coming!” Robin yells back.
Chrissy stands up, primly adjusting her skirt hem again with one hand and clutching Robin’s jacket with the other one.
“I can, um, call you? When it’s fixed and all,” Chrissy offers.
Robin has a little bit of that dazed look back on her face and Chrissy wonders if she always looks this way. It’s kinda cute, which is a thought Chrissy doesn’t look at too closely.
“Yes, yes you should – you should call me. Anytime! Or you know, whenever. It’s good.” Robin nods emphatically and only barely doesn’t throw her hat off her head.
“Okay,” Chrissy nods back, slightly less enthusiastically, if only to keep her hair looking nice. She smiles though, when Robin just keeps staring at her, until she finally says, “Could I have your number? So I can call you?”
“Right!” Robin nearly yelps. Then she’s running over to Steve’s car and throwing open the back door to shove her stuff inside. She knocks her hat against the roof of the car and Chrissy hears another few colorful swears as she wrestles it off her head and tosses it into the car as well. But then she’s jogging back over to Chrissy, hair wild, eyes bright, and a ripped piece of paper clutched in her hand.
“Here!”
Chrissy takes the paper and pretends not to notice the way their fingers brush together.
“Thanks.”
Robin sputters a little bit. “Why are you thanking me? I should be thanking you! This is – you’re really just a total lifesaver, you know? I can’t sew and I definitely can’t afford to buy a new jacket and Mr. Hayes would kill me if he found out I’d ruined another uniform –”
There’s a story there, and Chrissy finds herself curious to know more about how Robin has apparently ruined more than one band uniform, thinks she could probably listen to Robin talk for hours and not get bored, but her rambling is cut off by her impatient ride.
“C’mon, Robin, Dustin has been waiting for us for like an hour already–”
“Shut the fuck up, I’m coming, alright?” Robin casually flips Steve off over her shoulder and Steve laughs and Chrissy feels her heart pound.
If she doesn’t swear, she’s definitely made a rude gesture like that. Not where anyone else could see.
“Anyway, um, thank you again, so much! And like I said, just call anytime, but after 8 would be best because sometimes I work late! Thank you, Chrissy!”
And then Robin is off, jumping into the passenger seat of Steve Harrington’s car, which whips out of the parking lot and is down the street before Chrissy manages to tear her eyes away.
She feels a little like she’s been hit by a force of nature – like her insides have been turned around and knocked sideways by a twister or a hurricane or something.
Hurricane Robin, Chrissy thinks to herself, and this time she doesn’t stop herself from smiling.
It’s not a bad feeling, just – different.
Good different.
Her steps feel lighter when she heads back up to the top of the bleachers to sit and wait for football practice to finish. And if she’s a little distracted when Jason drives her home, well it’s not like he actually wants to hear her thoughts anyway. He’s satisfied just to hear himself talk, while Chrissy pretends like she isn’t running her fingers over the edges of Robin’s jacket, ducking her head just to catch a whiff of her scent.
It’s not very ladylike, but who needs to know, anyway?