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Chrissy waits until 8:05 on Tuesday night to call Robin.
It’s barely been a day, but she’s eager to hear Robin’s voice again, to tell her – I stayed up way too late to finish it, but I found thread that’s the exact right color, you can’t even tell there was a rip, do you like it? Do you like – ?
Well.
Chrissy twirls the cord around her finger while she listens to the phone ring. If she leans over, she can just glimpse into the living room where her mother is working on a cross-stitch, the words purify us from all unrighteousness picked out in red thread while her father sits on the couch next to her and watches the evening news.
She’s not doing anything wrong. There’s nothing wrong with calling a friend, even if it’s a little bit later than is normally polite.
Still, she ducks back into the kitchen so she’s not directly in her mom’s line of sight.
“Buckley residence.”
“Hi Mrs. Buckley,” Chrissy says quickly, “Is Robin there?”
“Of course, dear—” There’s some rustling, a half-muffled phone for you Robin!, and then a series of thuds before an out-of-breath voice comes on the line.
“Steve, we literally just spent five hours trapped in video rental hell together and if you’re calling to talk to me more about you-know-what, I’m going to sneak bleach into your fancy ass shampoo—”
“This isn’t — um,” Chrissy interrupts Robin’s rambling even though she’d really like to know what you-know-what is, “It’s Chrissy. Cunningham. From school?”
There’s a strangled noise from the other end of the line.
“Chrissy! Yes, I know who you are, I just — I didn’t expect you to call. So soon, I mean.”
“Oh, well…”
“Not that it’s a bad thing! For you to call! It’s actually a great thing! A cool thing. Because we’re, you know, cool. Things. People.”
Chrissy giggles. She has no idea what that means.
“I mean, you’re definitely cool, head cheerleader and all. Way cooler than me, so the fact that you’re even calling me at all is like totally insane—”
“But it’s okay, right? I didn’t want to call too late, but you said…”
“Psh, don’t worry about that,” there’s a rustling noise and Chrissy wonders if Robin is waving her hands around while she talks, like she did yesterday, big arcing movements to make her points — beautifully unselfconscious in how she takes up the space around her.
“—I just got home from work anyway, like I said. And oh my god was today the longest day ever, I swear Steve was just in a mood and would not stop with the whining, honestly I should get a raise for putting up with him—”
Robin’s words are threaded with warmth though, even as she goes on to complain about a boy that Chrissy used to think of as perfect, but apparently underneath that crown he used to wear he’s much less than perfect.
It’s just — it’s a little crazy to think of King Steve like this, like just a normal guy, despite everything.
They call her the Queen of Hawkins High, the same way they used to call him the King, and the weight of that title sits heavy on her shoulders every day. Last year, she watched Steve Harrington’s terrifying fall from grace, watched the school gossip mill chew him up and spit him out, going from beloved basketball star to walking the halls friendless and alone. It had been a sobering reminder of how tenuous it all is, that everything she’s worked so hard to get right could crumble so quickly.
But listening to Robin tell stories about this version of Steve — the after-high-school, real-world version of Steve Harrington — maybe it’s not all so dire. Maybe life goes on and there’s light at the end of that tunnel after all. She can almost see it now, and it’s shaped like a clumsy girl wearing a torn marching band jacket, with a voice that isn’t angelic in the slightest for all that it is definitely holy.
“—and then he snorted Cherry Coke straight out of his nose and all over my favorite pair of pants!” And Chrissy finds herself laughing so hard she’s breathless, making all these undignified noises, but it’s okay because she can hear Robin snorting on the other end of the line and there’s tears in Chrissy’s eyes but she isn’t crying.
She hasn’t laughed this hard in — years, probably.
Chrissy leans against the kitchen counter, finally managing to catch her breath and wipe the tears from her lashes. She’s just about to say sounds like you have a lot of wardrobe mishaps when there’s a throat being cleared behind her.
Her mom is standing in the door of the kitchen, lips pursed and eyebrows raised.
Chrissy’s laughter dies.
“You’ve been on the phone for over an hour, Christina,” her mom tuts, gesturing at the clock that reads 9:18. “Don’t you have homework to finish?”
It’s not really a question.
Robin’s giggles are still dancing in her ears when Chrissy ducks her head, letting her hair fall like a curtain between her and her mother’s disapproving stare.
“Robin — I have to go,” Chrissy mumbles quietly.
“Oh, okay, well —”
“I’ll talk to you later.”
She hangs the phone up quickly, before Robin can say anything else and it’s incredibly rude but Chrissy can admit that Robin’s voice is a temptation she’s finding difficult to resist.
One more word could be her undoing, a swift tug on the fraying thread that’s barely holding her together.
Would it be so bad? To fall apart?
Her mother clears her throat again and Chrissy leaves the kitchen as fast as she can without actually running. She doesn’t let herself think about it.
–
An hour later, after she’s finished her math homework and pulled on her pajamas, Chrissy looks up from turning down her sheets and sees Robin’s jacket neatly folded on her desk. She realizes then, suddenly – they had talked for an entire hour and Chrissy hadn’t once mentioned the jacket, even though it was the whole reason she’d called.
Her lips twist.
If she was Robin, she’d probably be saying a few of those colorful swears right about now.
She’ll just have to find her at school tomorrow. Or call her again. And it’s not like that would be the worst thing in the world, after all. It might even be…nice, to hear more of her stories. Maybe even share some in return. Maybe she’ll use the other phone this time, the upstairs one, that isn’t in earshot of her parents.
And maybe she falls asleep thinking about the sound of Robin’s laughter ringing down a telephone line, hoping she’ll get to hear it again soon.