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To her friends and the vast majority of the people in Hawkins Robin Buckley’s life was great.
In fairness the aspects of her life that Robin openly shared were pretty great. She had friends for the first time in years, she had her amazing Platonic soulmate Steve “The Hair” Harrington who always took her to work and school when she still went just because she’d complained once on a cold January morning about how long it took her to cycle from the poorer part of town where she lived to the school and Family Video. Even though Robin had just barely graduated he still drove her around though he liked joking about the grades she’d gotten and how he was better than her at English, history and PE (not that the last one was particularly surprising). To be fair though everyone jokingly bullied her for her English grade as “How did someone with so many words manage to fail English”. It wasn’t her fault though realistically as she’d run out of time on all her assessments apart from languages, music and Biology because she couldn't keep her attention on her exam paper and she rambled on all her English questions. Her mother had been quick to call her a disappointment and she had been quick to cycle to the Wheeler house because she was always welcome there especially by Mrs Wheeler not that Robin knew why.
But much of Robin’s life was shit. She’d had no friends in high school and so couldn’t stay at anyone’s house when her mother was drunk or particularly abusive. She’d joined band to get away from her parents.
Despite almost flunking school Robin had almost always been present for her classes. Not because she particularly liked school but because half the time it was the only time she was fed as her parents often prioritised booze and cigarettes over food. She’d turn up early for breakfast club as well. Food was a bigger issue now though as she didn’t have school to rely on so her pay checks went on whatever food she could stretch out over the week and then she’d stay round Nancy’s or Steve’s when she couldn’t quite manage it.
But by far the worst part of Robin’s current life is the ABA therapy. It was rare to be diagnosed autistic and a girl in America let alone Hawkins and her mom didn’t hesitate to remind of that, making Robin feel more alone than ever. Immediately after the diagnosis, desperate to be raising someone “normal”, Melissa Buckley had enlisted Robin ABA therapy. Robin had always hated it especially as ABA in Hawkins was just badly physical abuse with a licence and a cost. She had to go four times a week and as it took place in Hawkins hospital she always visited Max afterwards. Robin preferred it when there was no one else there because then there was no one to ask her why she looked like she’d been crying or why she was acting differently or covered in bruises but Nancy was there more often than not. The first few times Nancy had tried to use her investigative journalism skills to work out what had happened but Robin would just deflect or make jokes or even more worryingly completely shut down so Nancy stopped asking.
Robin would also see Vickie a lot due to the other girl being a candy striper. Vickie would usually ask what Robin was doing there and Robin would say that she was visiting Max even if she was on a completely the wrong floor and walking in the wrong direction. Robin and Vickie’s relationship had been suffering lately as Robin kept missing dates due to crawls and she was pulling away from Vickie (and everyone to be fair) because the effort of pretending to be fine all the time was burning her out.
Due to all this she ended up spending a lot of time at Nancy’s house because Nancy didn't expect her to be okay all the time and didn't pressure her when she wasn’t. Not that Robin mentioned where she usually was to Vickie as she didn’t want Vickie to get the wrong idea. Besides, her relationship with Nancy was purely platonic even if she did have a fat crush on Nancy a few months before, but Nancy was dating Steve now and Robin refused to hurt the first person who’d ever made her feel safe.