Chapter Text
The girls had wrapped themselves in Vickie’s quilt. A gift from her grandmother, she said, it had been found in a box with only her name Sharpied on one side, spared by the rubble that used to be her house.
“My mom was saving it for when I moved out.”
Through the strands that had fallen loose from her stubby red ponytail, daylight wavered in her eyes. She was staring down at her splayed fingers with a quiet determination, her fresh nail polish drying over a mosaic: the soft pink stripes of a baby blanket, the gingham of a favorite church dress, the scraps of plaid left over from a doll’s peacoat.
Robin gathered a corner of patchwork, studying it over her knees.
“They’re supposed to look like flowers.” Vickie’s careful finger traced around the seams.
“Oh!” She heard herself—the smile in her own voice—and swallowed the lump in her throat. They were sitting on the floor of her childhood bedroom. She was one of the lucky ones. “That’s—”
“Too sad.” She smiled back, brushing the hair out of her face with her palms. “I know.”
Her heart thumped in her chest. “No, no, I wasn’t going to say that.”
“You can.” Vickie took a sharp breath, steeling herself to catch her gaze.
Seaglass, she thought. A cloudy sky.
“The funny thing is I feel happiest here. I don’t know why I’m talking about it.”
Robin hadn’t noticed herself gripping the quilt tighter until there was no space left between them, the smell of her own White Rain shampoo wafting, overly sweet, from Vickie’s hair. She really had to concentrate if she wanted to find their boundary lines, where one of them ended and the other began: Vickie’s arm looping around her, Vickie’s head resting into her, Vickie breathing between heartbeats.
“Then stay,” she offered.
“Thanks for holding onto my things,” Vickie whispered, skipping the answer entirely. There was a brightness to her voice that shined through as she shifted, the cold moving in to take her place. It seeped through Robin’s gym shirt and sunk into her skin, so she listened for the brightness.
“When all of this is over—” She laughed at herself. “If it’s ever over…”
“It will be.” Robin rubbed up and down her back. Expecting the familiar—warmth—she was shocked by that lingering chill. “It will be,” turned into a mantra. She couldn’t stop. She knew somehow that if she stopped, everything would.
A draft crept through the window and clung to her sweat-damp pajamas. One of her legs was twisted in her bedsheets, the other hanging off the side of the mattress. She blinked, unsure if her eyes were opening or closing until she could make sense of light and shape again. Gone was her desk in the corner and the laundry piled on her dresser, the books on her nightstand, the box of Vickie’s things. Her hand searched the empty space beside her.
The dead silence of morning ended with a hum, waking her up a second time before crescendoing into a buzz. It built on itself as steadily as the ice coating the windows of her room, the living room, the kitchen.
The living room. She let her coffee mug warm her aching fingers as the plow hummed and roared past her building, leaving rattling walls and hazy darkness in its wake.
The temperature in Indianapolis was about to hit a historic low. According to the news anchors, the city was trapped inside a brutal polar vortex: a term so dramatic that it should have made her laugh. If they thought polar vortexes were brutal, they ought to try a portal to Hell sometime. Then talk to her.
Her younger self—the one who saw the humor in this—probably would have been quicker to question her own internal dialogue. Was the plural vortexes or vortices, and would she have to remember? How many more of them was she expected to live through? But here she was, just cold. The heat on her palms wasn’t doing much. She reached for the remote and clicked. And clicked. The floor trembled once, twice more.
“We could have moved anywhere.” She was talking to the footsteps that came up slowly behind her. Once they stopped, she swiveled herself around. “You know?”
Her friend Steve, looking a little puffy-eyed, shook out his bedhead. The glow of the TV screen turned him blue, then red, then invisible. By the time the light had filled up their tiny living room again, he was smiling.
“Carolina.”
“So it’s a little cold,” he scoffed.
“I can see your breath.”
He squeezed himself beside her and huffed, open-mouthed, until she batted him away.
“And you look like you stuck your finger in a socket,” she added, reaching for her coffee. It had already cooled, instantly twisting her smirk into a grimace.
Steve was staring at the TV, absently working a hand through his hair. Thick and chestnutty, it had officially grown longer than she was used to seeing it. Her recent offers to trim it had only been turned down. Given her own attempt at bangs last summer, though, she wasn’t offended; she was still too embarrassed to have them evened out by a professional, grown out as they appeared to her untrained eye. Maybe it was noticeable enough, and surely they would be able to tell. If they were good at their jobs they wouldn’t stop there, advising that she dye the mousiness away or suggesting a perm or some kind of routine that would help her achieve presentability.
On screen, the weatherman waved broadly across the upper half of the state—Fort Wayne to Muncie, Hawkins missing between them—before hovering dead center over their heads.
Steve cleared the gravel from his throat. “Looks kind of like a spider.”
They had to have seen this map at least once a day. Whether she had come to the same conclusion or not, as groggy as she was, she saw it. Red highway lines spoked out from their city in every direction, eight spindly legs with feet in different states.
“We’re in the belly of the beast then.”
He nodded sagely. Resting his eyes.
“So, Carolina,” she repeated, forcing down another sip. “We’ll just take that leg through Cincinnati. Then West Virginia and—”
“Wait.” He yawned, stretching an arm across the back of the loveseat. “Which Carolina?”
She leaned back and shook her head. They were all hollow words anyway.
“You ever been?”
Again, her hair frizzed against his sleeve.
“Me neither.” Judging by his expression—lips drawn to the side and nose slightly scrunched—he wasn’t sold on the idea.
Steve had been hesitant to leave their hometown. He had to be convinced there was no reason to stick around, but sometimes she wondered if he ever really had been. Convinced to leave with her, yes, but convinced that this was the right thing to do? Even when the youngest of their friends had left for school, even when his family had split apart and ceased to be, and even with her parents selling the house before another tragedy could strike, they couldn’t talk about Hawkins without him shrinking in his place. They couldn’t talk about moving—out or on—without him looking uneasy. Robin could count on him to keep her grounded.
She rose lazily to her feet. “All I know is there’s a great big world outside of Indiana.” And their apartment was small: filled with things from other people’s garages or stolen from Steve’s house, less arrangement than accumulation.
Five winding steps brought her to the kitchen, drywall separating them. “Ready for coffee?” she asked, taking his muffled reply as a yes.
On her way back, she flicked up on the light switch and shivered. Finally, she could see that he wasn’t blue or red, but mostly gray, the shadows of his face matching his well-worn sweatsuit. “Alright.” She handed him his mug and settled into her spot again, grateful that it was still holding onto some of her heat. “Where’d you go?”
He groaned into his drink.
“You got in pretty late, young man. Do I need to have a talk with someone?”
The coffee seemed to be working for him already. Some color had returned to his cheeks.
“Well?”
His laugh was sheepish. All rasp. “No, actually. Seriously. Ow!” He swayed forward when she pinched his arm.
She waited for his drink to stop sloshing before scolding him. “‘Let’s go out together next time, Robin!’”
“We were talking about down town.”
“You weren’t downtown?”
He flopped back again, squishing her into the sofa as he did. “I would’ve been on the news,” he reasoned. “‘Man found frozen to death.’ The guy just said! It’s a polar vertex.”
“Vortex.”
“Exactly! Shit, when I went past the bank, it was like twenty below.” He puffed out a breath. “That’s when I said screw it and came home. You didn’t miss anything.”
Last night was open for interpretation then. She could guess he was at the dive on the corner, Monty’s, or walking off his late shift, circling the blocks between home and work. Anywhere else would have required some storytelling, which she couldn’t blame him—certainly tired and possibly hungover—for avoiding.
“Admit it.” Robin rolled onto her knees. “A nice, mild winter is sounding pretty good right about now.”
He watched her out of the corner of his eye, lips quirking. “Living up to your name.”
“Was that a bird joke?”
He held his mug close, letting the steam kiss his nose.
“It doesn’t have to be the Carolinas. If we saved up we could, you know, migrate to Costa Rica! Or-or Greece, or… no?”
He was making that face again. Same as earlier, same as five years ago. “Maybe,” he quietly relented, scratching at the faint stubble on his chin. “When we win the lottery.”
“I just have to get out of here. I have that feeling again, like if I stay any longer I’m never going to leave.” She watched herself coiling split ends around her finger, the skin around her nail pinched red. “I dreamed about Vickie last night.” Without facing him, she could see his arm bend to support his head, taking the listening more seriously than she wanted to take the explanation. So she laughed. “Who am I? Before you know it I’ll be another one of those sad old guys attached to the barstool like a– like a fungus or something. Completely absorbed in some high school game on TV because there’s nothing better to do and nowhere better to be. ‘ I wouldn’t’ve made that play!’ ‘Course not, champ, how’s about another brewski?’
“God! I bet she hasn’t thought about me in years. Why would she?” If Hawkins was just a memory to be grieved, she hoped that Vickie no longer did. “I don’t even want her to.”
“First of all,” Steve interfered, “as one of those sad old guys…”
Robin covered a smirk then gently shoved him with her elbow.
“And B: are you sure it’s even a distance thing?” He was thinking of his next words when she finally looked at him, his eyes scanning the water stains on the ceiling. “Are the Carolinas really far enough? Is Greece? I don’t know.”
“That’s comforting.”
“I’m just saying,” he went on, nudging her with his knuckles, “ice ages end.”
She chewed on her lip until the skin started to peel. Sipped her coffee.
“Am I making sense?” he tried.
“Obviously,” she spat. Her smile was barely hidden behind her mug. “Let me be pissed off about it.”
He said he was in the city for a rock concert. Steve had never heard of the headliner, but he listened and followed along as attentively as he could. Words jumped over every explosion of laughter and music that would announce another patron’s exit, bobbing in his throat and dancing in the glow of his lighter.
“Next time they’re in Indy,” his new friend told him, “you have to see them. You have to. Promise me!”
A college grad from Illinois, freshly brokenhearted and a self-proclaimed punk, he said he finally had enough time to figure out what he was supposed to be doing. He looked a little too young to know, Steve had dizzily thought—and maybe a little too conflicted. Through the mess of long, black hair, his face was something out of Hollywood, his crooked, toothy smile a defining feature among otherwise perfect symmetry. Over his holey sweater—itself covering a band shirt that had very briefly exposed his sinewy arms—he wore a colorful puffer jacket that was at least one size too small.
“I’ll keep an eye out!”
“For sure, keep an eye out,” he echoed, grinning a half moon as he peered past him, down the frost-dusted street.
Steve could feel the pull of time. It came in the form of a dull ache that he had forgotten about until now, successfully numbed over the course of the night only to be brought back by a bitter gust of wind. As he shuddered, it spread from muscle to muscle, up his spine and into his head. He drummed up a question and let it roll off of his tongue: “What’re they called again?”
That did the trick. The Enders or The Enters, he reminded him, his eyes shining with pure glee. “They’re local! Not to me, to you. I heard them out in Chicago and—” Ashes flew as he mimed, boom. “Like you’ve never seen, man. Love at first sight. You seriously haven’t heard of them? The posters are all over the place!”
The tang of exhaust hung stagnant in the air. Steve hopped the blood back into his toes and strained to laugh. “I’m not really from Indy,” he said, laughing again after it earned him another glance. He shook his head, watching knees sway. “My town blew up!”
And that was his time. A yellow cab was pulling up to the curb. He watched the punk stamp out his cigarette and moved aside to let him crouch into the backseat.
“Oh!” He tapped a goodbye onto the roof. “Have a nice trip back!” Too eager to escape the cold and reclaim his seat at the bar, he ignored whatever he thought he heard behind him as he shuffled his feet over the icy sidewalk. Through the picture window, he could see the bartender tracking his graceless progress.
“Hey!”
Before he could retreat inside, a hand caught him by the shoulder, propping him upright as quickly as it had knocked him off balance.
“Hey.” He had to repeat himself, softer now that the distance was gone. “I don’t feel great leaving you here, man. How are you getting home?”
Steve smacked his lips together. Smiled thinly. In what was meant to be a show of gratitude—what probably only resembled a first and final tightrope act—he matched him, holding him at arm’s length. Focusing hard on the space between his eyes, gripping tight into the down-packed sleeves of a soon-to-be stranger, he remembered dancing in a dark gymnasium. He remembered taking a healthy step back, just in time for the chaperones to see he was leaving room for Jesus.
See?
“Only a block away,” he said, patting. “I’m good to–”
“Hell, it’s on the way. Let me drop you off!”
He was close enough to smell the tobacco on his breath. He could see his canine teeth, one slanted and one chipped. He thanked the nodding driver and slid into the backseat.
They didn’t share enough interests for a proper two-sided conversation, a fact that was bound to become apparent once they were far enough away from the throng. (Who do you listen to? Well, I liked that Chili Peppers song from the Coneheads movie.) More than once, Steve had hoped they would stumble out of the bar and find themselves downtown, a world away. He wouldn’t have had to search for signs between the talk of heartbreak and self-discovery, and he certainly wouldn’t have had to worry about seeming vapid. (Do you want to love me for a couple of hours? Can I rest my head here?)
But they had met at Monty’s, so company for company’s sake was nice enough. Nice still, Steve thought, even as the chatter was being replaced by the crunching of tires. He meant to tell him that while he watched his reflection twiddle with his coat zipper. He hadn’t stopped listening in case he was wondering, or in case he had more to say.
As the cab rolled to a stop, lights blinked for Steve’s attention.
“Holy shit,” he muttered, dragging his finger along the foggy glass to a rotating display of numbers. Time—3:30—and temperature: “That say twenty-one?” He narrowed his eyes, trying to focus as the bright lines twitched and glimmered, doubled and tripled. “Or negative twenty-one?”
A whistle answered him. “See?”
He turned stiffly in his seat.
There was a struggle to maintain that signature grin now, teeth chattering despite the hot air blasting from the front seat. “Beats walking.”
With a sigh of relief, Steve dug for his wallet. They were turning down his street. “I think you saved my life.”
“Anytime!” A gloved hand reached backward, palm up.
Chuckling low, he clumsily pressed the cash into the driver’s fingers before searching the dark beside him. He found the puffy-sleeved arm and squeezed. “Glad I met you.”
“You too, man! Next time I’m in town, alright?” No longer illuminated by the warm neons of the city, he could be heard shuffling bills: counting and predicting.
Moving without him, Steve’s foot landed in a snowbank. He kicked himself free to prop the door open a second longer. “What’s your name, by the way?”
There was a smile in his voice. Like the red tail lights, burning behind his eyelids long after they had beamed across the snow, only the impression of an answer remained.
Coffee churned in his stomach as he refilled his mug. An empty can of Campbell’s sat in the sink, an artifact from the night before.
Steve laughed under his breath. He couldn’t recall that choice, but he wasn’t surprised by it—operating on autopilot of course, reaching for the familiar. Chicken soup was safe. It always had been. Whenever he came home from school to an empty fridge, he could expect to find soup in the pantry. When he couldn’t stomach anything else, he knew the soup would always taste the way he remembered it: a little salty but otherwise inoffensive.
Robin was channel surfing when he sunk back into his side of the couch, only the bottom of her face and the remote poking out of her blanket cocoon.
He folded his legs into his chest, sitting sideways to watch the snow fall in cotton ball clumps. “Are you going in today?” he asked.
“No,” she sighed. “Thank God.” Though they had only been at the pizza place for a year, she was already a candidate for a management position. “And I hope you aren’t.”
Steve worked delivery. “I’m thinking of contracting a mystery illness.”
The blanket pile rocked back and forth as she nodded. “Movie day it is. I have to return next weekend, so you’d better take a look.”
She didn’t need to ask. He was already sifting through the stack of tapes under the coffee table. Seven Samurai, Double Indemnity, Amadeus, plus a few thrown in just to humor him: Wayne’s World, Die Hard… “Ha!”
In his periphery, she leaned over to take a look. “Oh, yeah.”
“And you wonder why you had a dream about Vickie.” He waved the copy of Fast Times at Ridgemont High in his hand before sliding it her way.
“I wanted to see if my opinion’s changed,” she mumbled.
“Has it?”
The blankets budged around her shoulders.
Vickie. He hadn’t thought of her in a while, but he really had liked Vickie. He saw her fitting right in, quickly catching up on the inside jokes, adding on, giving them fresh punchlines to work with. And selfish reasoning aside, to say that she brought Robin out of her shell would have been an understatement. Vickie—sweet, lovely Vickie—had taken a wrecking ball to it. When she was around, his friend laughed harder and smiled wider. She wasn’t so hard on herself. She was excited for the rest of her life to begin.
“Hey.” Steve tapped at her with his foot. “What was it about, anyway?”
She turned slowly, raising her brow. "Fast Times?"
“Your dream.”
Having cycled through the same few channels enough times, she settled on an infomercial and dropped the remote between them. She thought for a moment. Huffed. “I don’t remember all of it. I don’t even know if it was Vickie or someone I made up to be like her. We were at my house, kind of sitting on the floor of my room? Just talking, I guess.”
Steve waited for more. He nursed his coffee through her silence.
“That’s it,” Robin said.
“That can’t be it.”
But she was laughing. “Well, what do you want me to say? My life is boring, my dreams are boring…”
He shook his head.
“Yes, it is. I should know, I wanted it that way.”
—People who have the ability to see the future.
They both turned, greeted by the smiling face of a television personality: familiar but unplaced. She gestured to them through the screen. To see your future!
“We could’ve used that,” Robin joked, mirroring Steve as he nodded his agreement. “A little mystical guidance.”
He pitched his voice high and spoke with his hands: “Too late for you, you sorry sacks of shit!”
A bright yellow nine-hundred number floated into frame. Robin’s turn as ventriloquist.
“Don’t bother calling now,” she chirped. “It doesn’t take a psychic to know you’re doomed!”
They were halfway through Wayne’s World when he asked the question. “Have you ever heard of the Enders?”
Robin peered over her bowl of popcorn. He was lying flat on the floor, his hands folded over his chest. Not even watching, she thought. What did I pick this movie up for? “The who?”
“Or the Enters maybe. Local band.” He swiveled his head and winced. “You’re the music person here.”
The two of them had been best friends for a decade. Most days, they knew each other better than they knew themselves, and yet Steve lived under the assumption that Robin was a music expert because she had played the French horn in high school. She rarely listened to the radio. She didn’t bother with MTV. She didn’t even have a favorite band, and for as long as they had known each other—a whole decade, nearly a third of their lives—she never did.
She dropped a piece of popcorn into her mouth and let it melt on her tongue. “Nope. Why?”
His hand reached upward, sprouting for her attention. She offered up a handful and listened to him munch away.
“Met this guy last night,” he went on, “who swore they were the next big thing. And I had a really dumb thought.”
“Related to the band or in general?”
“The… The band."
She smirked. He walked right into that one. “And?”
“I thought, you know what, in a perfect world that could be Eddie Munson’s band. Maybe he found a way out and started a new life and that was, like, the universe trying to drop a hint.”
Robin’s brow was knit so tightly, she had to smooth out the creases with the back of her hand. This was the first time she had heard Eddie’s name since they left Hawkins. They had barely known him when he was alive. Steve was still thinking about him.
“A hint about what?” She asked to prove she was still listening, despite her struggle to follow. “Just that he’s alive and in Indy?”
“Yeah.” But the answer was hesitant. She didn’t have to wait long for him to elaborate: “That he wants someone to know it, too. I think I would want that, you know?”
“I don’t think I would.” It came out faster than she could stop it, and whenever this happened, she had a habit of letting the words keep coming. They would flush themselves out for better or worse. “If I had to start over, I would start over completely. I’d have to! And if I were Eddie…” Accused of murder, the entire town against him even now, “I mean, think about it. He’d really have to.”
He hummed in agreement. They returned to the movie, watching as they had before: halfheartedly.
“I did tell you it was dumb,” Steve said. “For the record.”
Robin laughed airily. “I was just surprised to hear that name again.”
“I was surprised I thought of him.” His hand floated into view, blocking the screen. She filled his palm and he went on: “Haven’t stopped since, either. That’s another weird thing about Hawkins, I think.” Getting stuck there, he didn’t say. He didn’t have to.
She supposed, though, for Steve it might have been slightly different. He wasn’t stuck if he didn’t think of it that way.
Robin reached for the remote and paused the film. Her voice would have been too soft to hear. “I get what you mean.”
All throughout her dorky teenage panic, Steve—only one year her senior but far wiser in the art of flirtation—had helped her decipher Vickie’s secret codes: the way she looked at her was more than a look, the movies she mentioned were more than movies, her flustered laughter was more than laughter. She wasn’t crazy.
“Me and my Vickie dream,” she said. “You and your…”
“I know.”
“What would you do if it were his band?” She peered over the popcorn bowl.
He was smiling, eyes closed. “I don’t know,” he answered. “Make a fool of myself, I guess.”
“I don’t even know what to say,” Robin admitted. “I’m in shock.”
Steve scoffed. “No, you aren’t.”
“This is literally the first time I’m hearing about you and Eddie Munson.”
He was glaring now.
“What?” she laughed again. “Do you think I some kind of sixth sense or—”
“Forget I mentioned it. Sorry.”
For once, the words caught in her throat. The last of her humor vanished with a squeak. “Steve,” she tried, setting the popcorn aside to lean forward. She hugged her legs and teetered at the edge of the couch. From this angle, she could see the blue city through the blinds. It was just past noon but still dark, the vast, gray cloud hanging heavy over their block no longer spitting snow at least. “Steve, come on, please. I didn’t know it was serious! I really didn’t.”
A quiet chuckle from the floor surprised her. He rolled onto his side with some difficulty, head resting in his hand. “It wasn’t serious,” he said. “We barely talked.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. Remember?” When he scoffed again, she smacked his shoulder with a throw pillow—lightly. He didn’t seem to be moving too well today. Her big mouth should have considered that sooner, she realized. What did I say? “The sad old guys at Monty’s?” “Fungi,” weren’t they? “Vickie and I didn’t talk much before I knew I liked her!”
“Yeah, well I don’t think I knew at all. It’s weird.” That word again. He watched her slink down from the sofa to lie across from him, his lips pursing into a smile.
She smiled back.
“This is fun,” he joked.
“I’ll be honest,” she said, “snow days are a little different than I remember.”
“Back when we lived in the moment, you mean?”
“Not even,” she laughed. “But personally, I’d take those worries over these ones. Finishing the homework I put off all day, trying not to fill up on junk food while my parents are at work…”
Steve let out a contented sigh.
“The kinds of things that have nothing to do with anyone but me,” she continued. “I wish someone would have told me it wasn’t going to last. I’d have eaten more junk food.”
The phone rang, stopping that train of thought. Steve only had to threaten to move before Robin budged him back down.
“You should take something for that,” she advised on her way out. It was more of a note to self: something to bring back from the kitchen while she was thinking of it.
She let it chime a third time before picking up.
“This is Robin!”
A woman cleared her throat, her rasp still strong as she asked slowly: “Is Steven Harrington there?”
There were only a few people in the world who insisted on calling him Steven, she knew. But this wasn’t his mother. The voice was too timid; pitched higher despite its temporary frogginess. “Can I ask who’s calling?”
“I’m sorry. My name is Donna, his—” She sniffed. “His father’s wife. I’m at the hospital with him now.”
Her mouth ran ahead. “Oh my god, what happened?”
“Could you…”
“Yes, sorry, yes. One second?” A faint Thank you answered as she set the phone down on the counter.
Steve was already sitting up, brows raised expectantly. But with Robin frozen, only stepping aside to let him hobble into the kitchen, he steeled himself and greeted dead air.
“Oh,” Donna said, “it’s good to hear your voice!”
There weren’t many scenarios that would have warranted a call from her. He jumped to the first conclusion. “Is Dad alright?"
“He’s stable,” she assured him, as steadily as if she were reading from a script. He wondered if she had made this call a few times already. “We had a bit of a scare earlier. His heart,” she remembered to explain, “but yes, he’s alright. Gosh, you sound just like him—”
“Should I come visit?”
“—over the phone.”
He watched his roommate as she paced, lingering closer when it was Donna’s turn to speak, offering privacy when it was his.
The call ended so quietly, so quickly, that Robin was surprised to see him upon her next rotation. He was zipping his coat at the front door.
“You’re going?” she asked. “Is he—?”
Steve shrugged, lacing up one of his snow boots. “Guess I picked the right day to play hooky.” His eyes followed her again, darting into the kitchen, rummaging through drawers. She was briefly hidden by the fridge door before she reappeared with a water bottle.
He thanked her, then pocketed the next offering. The Advils rattled in his pocket as he searched for his keys.
Robin squeezed past him to grab her jacket from the rack.
“What’re you doing?”
She looked at him like he had just grown a second head.
A normal drive from Indianapolis to Hawkins would take an hour and twenty minutes tops. Steve was driving slowly enough to get them there in twice the time. With Robin as his co-pilot, there would be no helping this.
“Did you feel that?”
Steve glanced at her. Two pigtails poked out from under her knit cap. She was gripping her seat so tightly, the tips of her fingers matched the fields of snow that skirted the highway.
“That felt like ice,” she said, gritting her teeth. “We’re gonna spin out.”
“We’re not gonna spin out. And look, we’re the only idiots on the road.”
She chewed her lips red, frantically centering her attention on a thin wall of evergreens. Beyond this, a penultimate exit would have taken them into farmland. “Did you know most accidents occur within a fifteen-mile radius of a person’s home?” she asked.
“No kidding.”
“It’s true!”
“Wild! Hey, you know what would really help us? Statistically?”
She looked at him sidelong.
“If you stopped clawing at the upholstery.” Within seconds of her letting go, he patted at the empty space and cooed: “The mean lady doesn’t mean it, baby. Are you alright?”
She gagged. “That’s sick.” But in truth, she was glad he still seemed to be in good spirits. Her anxiety was probably a decent enough distraction even if he’d never admit it.
Steve’s car was a luxury sedan that had been gifted to him on his sixteenth birthday. He did his best with upkeep, dedicating at least one morning a week to squeegeeing windows and dusting the interior, so it must have killed him that no amount of deodorizing could mask the smell of pepperoni and garlic trapped in the seats.
It ran fairly smoothly on the highway, considering the conditions, but Robin knew it would be chugging uphill once they reached Hawkins. That would be the real test.
“Thanks for doing this. I can’t remember if I said that already.”
Her mind was still calculating the possibilities of disaster when she realized he was speaking to her: the human, not the hunk of metal. She couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m not doing anything.”
Their eyes met in the windshield’s reflection.
“Don’t be stupid,” he said.
As expected, the engine roared and sputtered into town limits. Steve’s fingers tapped away to the radio as he pumped the gas pedal, unfazed. Robin wouldn’t have been surprised if he still navigated this route in his dreams.
This sloping road had been constructed sometime in the sixties, connecting Hawkins to the interstate and eventually funneling traffic toward its crown jewel, Starcourt Mall. Like much of their hometown, nothing was left of the mall but dead ends and dwindling memories. Robin sighed as they passed it: an island of snow and dirt in a sea of asphalt. Scraggly overgrowth poked through the cracks in the blacktop, outstretched in wait of sunlight. With the building gone, they could see straight through to downtown.
Funny, she thought. Not the downtown we meant, universe. And it was with this thought that she immediately felt a twinge of guilt. Just in case Steve might have read her mind: “I know you’re freaking out on the inside. I’m with you, though, good or bad.”
He nodded, his eyes stubbornly fixed on the street ahead. They passed the fire department, the police station, and the abandoned Family Video before he answered “Sure,” and nodded again. “Yeah.”
She tried to put herself in his shoes. Pretty much everyone had to make a trip like this at some point in their lives, but given that her parents were still quite young, at least time and probability were on her side. At least Melissa and Richard lived just outside of the city, which meant she wouldn’t have to worry excessively about icy highways or the awful words too late. At least they paid attention to their health. They had hobbies, too—Melissa with her record collecting and Richard with his nature walks—and friends, and each other. They were happy, in other words. The same could not be said for the Harringtons.
If she were him, she wouldn’t have shouldered any of the blame. She would have disappeared from their lives a long time ago.
At the furthest edge of the waiting room, Robin trapped Steve’s arms in an iron grip. “I’m acutely aware that my natural state is apprehensive,” she conceded, “but I feel the need to remind you that this is still Hawkins. What’s our code word?”
He raised his brows.
Her voice dropped to a whisper: “In case one of us sees something weird.”
Steve’s eyes wandered past her. An elderly man sat alone at the other end of the room, leaning over his cane. The receptionists lounged behind plexiglass windows, one of them popping her gum. Cartoons were playing on the wall-mounted TV, the volume set too low to hear.
“Uh, I don’t know,” he answered quietly. “‘Jinkies.’”
Robin let him go. “Fine,” she said with a huff. “This is our meeting place.”
“Got it.”
“Right here.” She pointed to the beige-green carpet beneath their feet. “That’s where I’ll be.”
He held her by the shoulders, rocking her gently on her heels. “Take a walk,” he suggested. “Get a snack! I’ll find you when I’m done.”
“Oh, yeah? How?”
He stopped his attempt at soothing to tap his temple. “Rob-intuition.”
Rolling her eyes, she pulled him into a hug. “See you later, dingus.”
1986
When Steve had woken up in a cold hospital room barely remembering his own name, his first question hadn’t been What am I doing here? or Who’s in the other bed?
He reached for whatever it was that was moving front of him: soft, blue fabric. Someone’s sleeve. “Soup?”
The older woman answered in two distinct tones, melody in the right ear and harmony in the left: “Let me see what I can do.” The sound of her footsteps decrescendoed down the hall until the subtle beeping and whirring of machines were all he could hear. The melody, the harmony.
Moving sluggishly, he plugged his nose and held his breath. If he closed his eyes, he would be back in the lake.
Let’s not do that.
Steve focused instead on the face he had noticed between the yellow cubicle curtains. He was struggling to make sense of its geometry. Parts seemed to be missing, and it wasn’t until he remembered to exhale that the pieces fell into place one by one: his long, wavy hair had been pulled back, gauze bandages wrapped around his forehead and clung to the weeping wounds on his cheek.
“Ed—” His throat burned. “Hey, Eddie?”
There was no reply. He was sleeping so soundly that Steve found himself relaxing in kind.
“Jesus, am I glad to see you.” He never actually opened his mouth, but the thought was so clear that it must have been heard. Eddie’s eyes, dark and round, were now glimmering under the fluorescent lights. “You told me you’d hang back,” Steve reminded him. “If you’re gonna stick around then you’ve gotta follow the plan, you know.”
“Sorry, man.”
“Better be.”
His smile was a dazzling white. The sight of it remained even as Steve blinked; as he gave in to the beginnings of sleep.
“Hey.” He heard himself this time. When the darkness closed in around them, the fire in his throat returned. It forced a cough that sent a shockwave down his spine.
Not drowning, he reminded himself. That’s done. He allowed the lingering sense of danger to pass with a slow breath.
“How’s Henderson holding up?”
It was the nurse that answered him. “Dustin, yes?”
Steve shivered awake. He watched her shuffle sideways through the room.
“It’s your lucky day, Mr. Harrington.” Rolling a tray up to his cot, she scooted a lidded cup into his reach. “I hope you like chicken noodle!”
He nodded against his pillow as he waited for her to step past the gap in the curtain. “He’s okay, then? I mean,” he tried again, making an effort to sit upright, “he’s here somewhere?”
She was quick to adjust his cushioning for him, unintentionally blocking his line of vision. Fran, her name badge read. Steve didn’t know any other Frans, but somehow she looked like one with her round, rouged cheeks and smiling eyes. Friendly Fran.
“Oh, he’ll be just fine,” she assured him. “He has some other friends keeping him and his mother company—and such nice girls, too! I bet you know them. They said their names were Nancy and…?”
“Robin?” he offered.
“That’s right!”
The lady was good, he thought. He was breathing more freely now. “And Max? Little redhead, kind of a wiseass?”
Steam billowed from the cup as she popped the lid. His stomach growled, interrupting her silence.
“No…” she replied after a moment. “Tell you what, why don’t I check for you?”
“Thanks.” He kept his eyes on her as she opened the door. A draft barrelled through the small room. “Her name’s Mayfield, Maxine.”
Fran smiled, tight-lipped. He tried not to read nervousness from it.
“And the Sinclairs! They’re a brother and sister, Lucas and Erica. Uh, please.” Remembering his manners. He wasn’t the only one fearing the worst today, after all, and she had been nothing but kind to him. She had even brought him soup. “Sorry.”
“Don’t you worry.” She winked over her shoulder before disappearing into the dark of the hallway.
Now his attention could drift back to the yellow curtains, his eyes straining for the shape of a grin, a shadow, a rustling under the sheets. He searched for signs of life that he knew he would find there, refusing to blink his certainty away until he had no choice. Eddie’s bed had already been made.
Only the cheery Muzak of an opening elevator followed him down the dim corridor. Room 202, 204, 206… Nothing moving in his periphery, nothing sinister waiting for him around the corner. And he was really looking.
The door to 208 had been left open a crack, letting in a strip of cold, gray daylight. A woman dressed in black sat pin straight beside the foot of the bed, a newspaper covering her face as she mumbled through an article.
Steve knocked lightly on the doorframe.
“Oh, come in!” The paper crackled in her rush to greet him, her arms twitching at the sides of her velvet skirt as she considered a hug. In the end, she swept her fingers through her dark bob and smiled up at him. “Welcome back.”
He had to laugh as he thanked her. Donna was about forty years old—ten years younger than his parents—but the combination of her petite stature, soft-spokenness, and chic fashion sense gave the impression that she was much younger than she was.
That college student, his mother used to call her.
“Alright?” he asked. Then, through the side of his mouth: “Need a break?”
Her smile warmed from politeness to relief. She gave his arm an appreciative squeeze. “I’m alright.”
With that, their focus shifted toward the bed. His father was a strapping, broad-shouldered man, but here he seemed extraordinarily small: swallowed by cloth and shadow. Steve’s eyes had to adjust before he realized they were meeting his darkened glare.
“Hey, Dad,” he breathed. “How are you feeling?”
He had never seen his father dressed in anything less than business casual, and so his attention wasn’t drawn to his face at all. Rather, Steve found himself staring at the sagging skin under his chin and reflecting on the fact that he had never seen the rest of his neck either. His Adam’s apple jumped when he cleared his throat.
“Peachy,” he deadpanned. “Make yourself at home, pull up a chair.”
Steve overlooked his sarcasm to hand him a card from his jacket. He had remembered to pick one up from the hospital gift shop, weighing his options between sincerity and price. As soon as his name had been written and the envelope had been sealed, he had forgotten what it read on the inside.
“Let’s see.” His father was gracious enough to remind him, though. His downturned eyes, deepening his age lines as they squinted, still possessed a hawklike sharpness as he held the card out at arm’s length. In a painfully slow monotone, he recited: “ May lots of little things combine so you will soon be feeling fine. Love … Well, isn’t that nice.”
“That’s very nice,” agreed Donna.
Shoot me, thought Steve. He forced every last one of his facial muscles to grin. “Forget it! I mean, hey, you look great. I’m sure you’ll be out in no time.”
The old man was smirking like he had him in the crosshairs, one finger ready on the trigger. But just as his son accepted his fate, he relaxed against his pillow and folded his hands over his chest. “Don’t bullshit me,” he said. “That’s all everyone’s been doing since I got here.”
“Steven.” Donna had pushed over a second chair for him, forming a triangle between the three of them. “I can catch you up on what we know so far.”
“What’s there to know?” his father grumbled. “It was a heart attack.”
Donna nodded as Steve turned to her for confirmation, her lips drawn into a slight frown. “All the unnecessary stress. I worry that the business is just too much for us to handle.” She wrung her bony hands over her lap.
Steve could recall meeting her for the first time, baffled to find that his mother’s description of her had been so wrong—baffled, that is, because Donna must have been in love. Why else would she choose an angry old man, his dying business, and his cursed town?
“But that’s neither here nor there,” she went on. “What I thought you should know is that he saw something before it happened.”
His eyes flickered between them: her sincere concern, his aggravated molar-grinding. “So… what does that mean?” he asked after a pause, easing back in his seat. “ Actually saw something?”
“This is ridiculous.” Both wife and son flinched as he tossed the get-well card onto his nightstand. “I’m not crazy!”
“Your heart!” she warned through her teeth.
“Dad,” Steve tried, “that’s why I’m asking, okay? I want to know.”
His father looked him up and down, the veins in his forehead bulging.
“No bullshit,” he promised.
This was another new sight: the tide of frustration was receding with the blood in his face, leaving him ghostly pale. His eyes, suddenly glassy, searched his son’s with an earnestness that chilled him to the bone.
What have I done? The thought came to Steve in a voice he barely recognized, from another time; another, bloodthirsty Hawkins. And still, against his better judgment, he was dragging them right back into the fray.
The corner of his father’s lips twitched. His hand lifted shakily to point. “It was in the pool.” Out there, down below, just under the surface of memory.
Steve could hear Donna swallowing dryly as he asked: “What was it?”
“The pool is closed,” she quickly offered, her palms smoothing out a wrinkle in the sheets. “I should have known something was wrong. When he said he saw steam I thought, ‘Well, maybe the cover got torn last night.’ Then, ‘Maybe I’m just not seeing it.’ I should have just…”
His father focused on his hands, quietly steadying his breath. At that moment, he looked more to him like a guilty child than the man he had grown up fearing.
“A body, he said.” His wife was still watching him when she answered, tearily waiting for him to find her there. “He told me someone had drowned.”
The waiting room was almost exactly how Robin remembered it. Having dreaded her childhood checkups and the needle jabs those often entailed, it was easy to associate the greenish brown carpet and plastic foliage with captivity and freedom alike. Torture and reward. A bowl of lollipops at the front desk beckoned to her then as it beckoned to her now, something sweet to take her mind off of being here. She suspected that they might have been the same lollipops.
And it was all very strange. She knew before entering that Hawkins Memorial had been torn apart and put back together sometime between the year of her measles shot and the year of Henry Creel (and of Vickie, Watergate, and Eddie Munson). Her memory was a little hazy now, muddied by exhaustion and short-lived relief, but she came to the conclusion that she must have been in another wing during her last visit. There, waiting in the eye of the storm for Steve to wake up, she could smell fresh paint mingling with antiseptic. Everything was blue and white. The stiff chairs, the glossy walls, the linoleum floors, even the people crowding the narrow halls in demand of an explanation. The cracked skin of her hands appeared lifeless under the harsh fluorescent lights.
She wondered if it was just this waiting room—an uncanny dream in sepia—that had remained untouched and unaltered through the years. And how? And why?
She chewed on her thumbnail, wondering why she was wondering at all. Nothing about Hawkins had to make sense. As much as an unanswered question could make her skin crawl, she wasn’t owed anything.
Except, maybe—
Her eyes lingered on one of the receptionists. She was balancing a phone on her shoulder to clack away at her keyboard.
When had Vickie stopped calling? After a year? After a few months?
Worlds collided the day Robin left home. In a way she hoped it never would again, it felt wrong to see her best friend, her girlfriend, and her parents all gathered together in her new apartment, too wrapped up in their self-assigned jobs to notice their work was nearly done. It felt made up. It felt like a finale.
Melissa Buckley, sitting cross-legged on the rug that had just been carried in, was freeing trinkets from their newspaper wrappings. She had a story for each one and a captive audience in poor Vickie.
"Oh," she chuckled, leaning to share her next discovery. “This was her favorite!”
Vickie held the little teddy bear in her hands, grinning wide as she petted between the ears. “So cute!”
“You remember, don’t you, honey?”
Robin knelt across from them, hands sifting uselessly through the box.
“We called him Potty Bear.” Her mother’s laugh turned into a snicker as she took the toy back, clapping its felt paws together: “You can do it, Robbie!” Behind her round lenses, her eyes were smiling, radiating pride.
Robin covered her face before she could see Vickie’s reaction. It could be heard anyway, a sniffle, a snort.
“Why did I invite you?”
“Because,” she answered matter-of-factly, “I’m your mother and you love me, and who else is going to embarrass you in front of your friends?”
Peeking between fingers, her eyes met Vickie’s tranquil blue. She could read her mind, which was no real feat. She had already heard her say it before, loud and clear. We know and that’s enough.
But if she were writing this series finale, Robin thought, the truth would have to come out. That was inevitable. Vickie was here because she loved her, after all, and in this case love was Chekhov's gun. Why introduce love to the plot without calling it what it is? Why give up on the narrative now? So with one hell of a loose end finally tied, everyone would hug, Steve would make some stupid joke, and at exactly the right time—she would know, when she watched it back, how long to show them all hugging and laughing—the credits would roll over the smiling faces of the people who mattered most. Their happiness would be frozen in perpetuity.
She couldn’t decide if that was a comforting thought.
Steve was in the kitchen testing the landline at the time. His voice was a low murmur under the clinking of plates being stacked into cabinets. Robin could picture her father on the other side of the wall trying his best to get the job done without being too much of a distraction, then her friend assuring him that he wouldn’t be.
The coiled lead of the telephone cord was too short, so she could only see a slouched shadow. “Anyways,” she heard him saying, “I’ll try you later.”
Something moved in the corner of her eye. She recognized Steve’s gait before she had fully turned toward the hall. “That was fast.”
Though he had to shuffle a bit awkwardly, his head angled low to appease a painful stiffness, he was moving at a pretty good clip. He whispered something under his sharpened breath.
Her brow furrowed as she tried to read his lips.
Now he was close enough. “Jinkies,” he huffed. “Shit, shit—!”
“Sorry!” She had pulled him aside too quickly, forcing him to dig for the bottle of ibuprofen in his pocket. Jinkies, she remembered. His stupid code word. “You’d better be serious,” she warned.
He tossed a pill back, swallowing hard enough for her to hear as he walked ahead. Ignoring her muttered confusion, he just waved her along. They weren’t safe until they were back in his car, the doors slamming on the outside world.
The silence was immediate but brief, his voice landing somewhere between laughter and lament: “The asshole and that god- damn house!”
She had to muster all of her composure. Clearly, his was momentarily unavailable. “Steve,” she said, fighting back a tremble, “you’re officially freaking me out, okay? I’d really appreciate a little—”
“A body in the pool.”
It took her a moment. She tried to read the expression of his profile as he shifted into reverse. “Your dad said that?”
“Or he was seeing things.”
“Okay.” It shocked her as much as him when she sighed. “Okay! Well, I mean, what if that’s what it was?”
He let go of his breath in turn; swept back his uncombed hair. “Nothing.”
“Not ‘nothing,’” she answered. “It’s still scary. I’m just saying… What am I saying?” She could see his reflection lifting an eyebrow.
This is still Hawkins, she had told him, and true as that was, Steve hadn’t seen anything. Neither had she. The waiting room had been practically empty for the half-hour they were there; no news had been good news for years.
“I guess I’m saying,” she went on, “he’s had a hard couple of days. He’s doing alright now, though?”
Steve was baring his teeth, bobbing his head from side to side as he considered. “Yeah?”
“Maybe it was just—”
“Nothing,” he repeated, looking both ways as they reached the street.
“A coincidence.”
There was no traffic. He could turn right and they would be on their way home. If it was something, it would be far behind them soon.
Hopefully.
Except…
“Hey, Steve?”
He jerked the steering wheel to the left. “A quick check,” he agreed. “We came all this way.”
1986
“Are you sure he’s cool with this?” Vickie’s eyes went wide when she poked her head through the garden gate. “I mean…” Her silvery laughter mingled with the chirping of crickets. In the dusky ebb of twilight, the swimming pool radiated electric blue. “Wow.”
“Oh.” Robin snorted, leading her over the manicured lawn. “Trust me, the place is ridiculous inside and out. I believe his words were, ‘Use it or lose it.’”
That was exactly what Steve had said, in fact. He spoke of “Harrington Manor” as if its presence was always slightly in doubt, though she had noticed that the concept of moving had been taken more as a natural progression than a plan. It was a step that every functioning twenty-something took.
Vickie laid her beach towel down beside Robin’s, revealing the striped one piece she had been wearing underneath. It didn’t have the triangular shape of the average swimsuit, Robin noticed right away. She could imagine her excitement when she came across the perfect vintage addition to her wardrobe.
“I feel like I’m getting away with stealing,” Vickie said. “I can’t believe it’s still—”
“This hot out? I know.”
“I was sweating my butt off at work! When I got back to the car my hair was actually dripping.” She wandered over to the pool steps and sat. When she looked over her shoulder, Robin couldn’t wipe the smile off of her face in time. That didn’t seem to matter. “Gross,” she realized. “I don’t know why I needed to tell you that.”
“It’s fine!” Robin assured her, her voice reverberating off of the garage wall. Hopefully, she thought, the dark had masked her cringe. Hopefully, if she got far enough away… She meandered toward the deep end. “I’m just glad you didn’t have to see me earlier. It was disgusting! I felt like– like the Blob. ”
“Nooo!”
It was a small miracle. The Blob? Robin thought. You really expected a Blob joke to land? And yet Vickie was giggling away. It pained her to speculate, but that laugh had to mean something. Anything less than something would just be cruel, and that wasn’t Vickie.
“Cheesy movies are the best.”
“Don’t get me started,” Robin said. “Seriously. I’ll make you wish you never admitted that.”
But Vickie waited. Back and forth, her eyes followed her as she paced.
“Well,” she went on, “ House on Haunted Hill is a classic! Do you like Vincent Price?”
“Who doesn’t?” She angled her head back, searching for stars through the gap in the trees. “I want to be Vincent Price, honestly. Did you know he’s like, a really good cook?”
“Do you want to be a cook?”
“Not necessarily,” she answered. “But maybe! I think it’s interesting how he’s not just one thing. He collects art, likes gourmet cooking, was great in The Fly..."
“Psh,” Robin interjected. “And you’re fashionable, a brilliant clarinetist, and a cheesy movie connoisseur among about a million other things that make you cool.”
Her smile was slow to fade, her eyes calm in the rippling glow as the distance began to close between them again. “Just so you know, you’re no Blob. Far from it!”
Robin tested the pool with her foot, sighing gratefully—for the water, for the reassurance, for her balance maintained. “Thank you.”
She had been toying with the idea of confession for a while. As much as she would have liked to believe that she had faced death enough times to grow a backbone, she knew courage had nothing to do with it. Quite the opposite: the uncertainty of their situation was starting to manifest as a real sickness. Her stomach was constantly in knots. Her palms were always clammy. She owed Vickie—owed herself!—and yet it was never the right time or place. The sickness lingered.
She would have liked to be in a bustling city far from Hawkins. Paris, let’s say. They could see the Eiffel Tower from where they stood, the display of a pâtisserie wafting sweetly from the corner, taxis honking their way through a roundabout. It would be night and fireworks would be exploding overhead, boom-boom-crackle I’m in love with you, by the way. That would be the best case scenario. If Vickie didn’t love her back, then she would still have the lights, the Tower, the pastries, the noise.
They were at Steve’s house. They were just trying to cool off. For the first time in a while, a confession couldn’t have been further from her mind.
Vickie was watching Robin’s leg kick currents, her freckled skin lit green. Her gaze stayed there long enough to inspire self-consciousness.
She freed her foot and wiggled her toes dry. “Vick–”
“Rob–”
They laughed.
“You go first,” Robin said. She caught her sheepish grin just before her hands moved to sweep her red hair back. Her bangs bounced back into place, hiding her eyes as she looked across the water.
Then it hit her. A wave of nausea. Robin’s lips froze shut, refusing to let it win.
“I feel really rude asking,” Vickie admitted, “but are you and Steve, like…”
Unfreeze. Unfreeze, dammit. Her jaw dropped open. “Dating? Are we dating?”
Vickie nodded.
When her stomach flipped again she found herself back in time, speeding downhill, her old bike wobbling beneath her as she lifted her feet off the pedals. Her cackle echoed through the night. “No! God,” she cried, “no, no! We’re just friends. And anyway, he’s with, uh—” She sifted through her memory for the details of their last conversation. Lacy, Macy, maybe Stacy… Steve’s dating life wasn’t even remotely relevant, but she had been asked about him enough times that she had begun to rely on easy excuses. “He’s with someone.”
“Oh!” And sure enough, through the blue haze, Vickie smiled.
“Why?” She would later hope that this didn’t come across as a demand, though essentially it was. Why now? Why here?
Then again, her crush had bravely countered, why not?
Before Vickie could fully muster a breath—she had to muster a breath—Robin saw the end approaching. For better or worse the words tumbled from her mouth: “That’s alright, you don’t have to answer! Actually, I’ve been meaning to tell you something for a while since we spend so much time together now, you know?” She swiped her palms against the back of her shirt, walking the edge of the pool like a balancing beam. “But I don’t even like guys like that. Or at all, like generally speaking!” It won her another wide smile, a light guiding her out of the dark.
“Then can I ask you something else?”
Their eyes met.
“Please do.” She would talk herself out of Vickie’s good graces eventually.
“Have we been dating?”
Robin’s heel turned suddenly. She couldn’t catch herself in time, squealing with laughter as she tumbled into the drink. She heard her name being called just before the splash, and again when the surface world muffled in her ears.
“I’m so sorry!” Vickie’s grin was frantic when she reemerged, close enough to fill her chlorine-blurred vision. “Oh, God, that was my fault! Are you okay?”
Robin anchored herself with her elbow, one hand brushing the wet hair out of her face. She had never felt better.
Steve’s sedan lurched over a patch of black ice, jostling them in their seats. Robin tugged down on the strings of her hat.
He could see that another thank-you was in order. “I swear on my life we’ll go wherever you want next time. A nice beach with, you know, sand.”
“As is the wont of beaches,” she reminded him.
“Babes in bikinis,” he added, easing up once it had earned him a wary smirk. To this day, it amazed her how quickly his panic seemed to run its course. He waved a hand, conjuring words. “They’re hot and they’re in need. In need of Coppertone, Robin! What are you gonna do, ignore them?”
She shook her head slowly, eyes out the window.
“Help, Robin!” It would have been a decent Mickey Mouse impression. “We can’t– reach– our backs—”
“Enough!” she yelped. She turned in time to catch him shrugging, then to see the smile fade. “If nothing else, you’ll feel better you checked.”
“Or worse.” The levity was all in his voice now. “As long as it’s not the third thing, right?”
Her tongue clicked against chattering teeth. “Not on my watch.”
They twisted through the trees that bordered the backyard, the ice-crusted ground crunching beneath their boots. Offsetting the oppressive blockiness of the executive home was an amoeba-shaped pool and the overgrown thickets by which it was surrounded. As Steve and Robin approached it, they could see that the cover was sinking in the middle, creating a glassy pond on top.
Moving in tandem, they peered over the edge.
“Anything?”
Robin hummed, squinting her eyes at a clump of dead leaves. Maybe in a certain light it could have been mistaken for a face. Her own reflection quivered underneath. She turned her attention to the shrubs behind her next, pushing aside their twiggy branches with the toe of her shoe. “Negative.”
Disappointment wasn’t the feeling. When the ones in the know had said Hawkins could be allowed to heal, of course Steve had wanted to trust them. He still did. “I wish he’d just leave.”
“It’s a lot of house,” Robin noted. “Why doesn’t he?”
“Stubborn.” He turned over a garden rock with his heel, checking underneath. “Probably figured Mom would come around eventually.”
“Pretty, uh… confident.”
He laughed mirthlessly. His mother had been pushed to the brink of her patience. “Pretty delusional.” The rock dropped back into place with a thud. At odds with the most reasonable hope he could have—that Hawkins was making a full recovery—he wanted his father to see its ugly truths for himself. He wished that he didn’t.
Guilt, he realized. That was the feeling creeping up on him.
They poked around the perimeter of the yard until they were losing daylight. The woods cast a cold, blue shadow over everything, chilling the air and forcing a surrender.
Key turning. Headlights glaring. The car grumbled sluggishly to life.
Moving to coax warmth, Robin’s fingers searched the glove compartment. “What do you want to listen to? Looks like we’ve got some Thriller, some Queen… Is this a new one?” She plucked the cassette from the pile and held it up to the window to read.
Steve kept his eyes on the road.
“I think it’s new,” Robin decided, popping it out of its case and into the player.
The song wasn’t new at all. As soon as she heard the rat-a-tatting of cymbals, she was transported back in time: kids with boomboxes, long summer days, her open apartment window. But Steve was quiet.
“All good over there, buddy?”
When he did look over, he was half-smiling. There was a sad, tired acceptance in his eyes that she couldn’t help but return.
“It’s always gonna be like this,” he said, “isn’t it?”
They would probably always be waiting for the apocalypse. They would probably never be able to explain why. So, he thought, they would just carry it around with them wherever they went: to the Carolinas, to Greece, to the end of one ice age and the start of another.
Robin reached out and patted his arm.
“Do you ever wonder if we’re in the Twilight Zone or something?”
Dance music filled the resulting pause, one line repeating over a whining synthesizer. Make my day, make my–
Robin snorted. “Are we not?”
“Good point.”
“Sometimes,” she went on, tapping her foot to the beat, “I think we’re in the wrong timeline.”
“Like…” He narrowed his eyes, his face briefly illuminated by the lights of a passing car. “Like none of this is real.”
“Oh, I think it’s real. I just think that for every decision you make, there’s some other version of you that made a different choice.” She sat back. “And every time that happens, another reality branches off in another direction. There’s a reality where Hawkins is just some town in Indiana. But we wouldn’t have known each other in that Hawkins.”
He glanced at her, mouth drawn into a pout.
“Even scarier,” she agreed. As the theorizing came to an end, she hummed with the stereo.
“This tape’s old,” he told her. “I picked it up after we moved.”
“Not that old.”
He freed a hand from the wheel, counting on his fingers: “Ninety, ninety-one, ninety-two…” His hand was splayed open by the time he was done. Five years. It didn’t seem to bother him, though, as he lip-synced. He bobbed his head to the rhythm, his gravity-defying hair flopping over his forehead and reminding her a bit of a cockatoo.
That number didn’t really bother her as much as it could have, either, as she watched him return to his normal self. Soon, they were both singing along.
“I hadn’t heard that since—”
The cymbals started up again. All eyes landed on the radio display.
“A remix,” Steve guessed.
Robin tapped to fast-forward. Cymbals.
He cried out just before her fist could slam into the top of the dashboard.
“What! I thought it would—”
“No!” He was wagging a finger at her. “She’s delicate. ”
“Right.”
“No more music.”
But the song played on as she thumbed the dial. The car refused to respond even to his touch, leaving him speechless as reality set in.