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Robin wasn’t sure when exactly she’d started skipping meals. She knew how it’d started, but she didn’t know when.
So, how did Robin “reminds all her friends to eat breakfast and lunch” Buckley go from three meals a day to one, maybe two at most?
Good question!
The simple answer is that she simply…forgot. No one was home to remind her to eat breakfast, so she didn’t. No one was home to remind her to eat lunch, so she didn’t. And it’s not like that was a constant issue! Usually at least one of her parents was there to remind her to eat in the mornings, and they sent her to school with lunch, so they’d know if she didn’t eat.
And, okay, yeah, sure, sometimes Robin gave most of her lunch to her friends, or just threw it away when a teacher wasn’t looking, but only sometimes, and she still ate!
She had dinner every day!
And when her parents were around, she had breakfast! And she had lunch on the weekends! …when she was at home!
Except, lately, her parents were home less and less. Off drinking or getting high or some shit.
Robin hated it when they came home drunk.
So there were no reminders. And she’d convinced them that she would just eat school lunch, so there were no packed meals.
She never once ate that school-made food.
At first, it wasn’t even a problem.
She’d skip breakfast, take her Ritalin, and tell herself that she’d when she got to first period. First period became fourth period. Fourth period became after school. After school became dinner.
And she never worried about it, because if it ever got too bad, surely she’d know, right? Surely she’d feel it, feel the hunger that came from only eating once a day, if that. Right? Right.
And she never felt it.
So she was fine.
…right?
She did notice things about herself that had changed, though.
The way her hands shook more than they used to—and they did. A lot. But now, it seemed…permanent. More real. Less anxiety induced. Sometimes she’d find herself unable to write because they would just shake, and shake, and shake, as if comically terrified.
And she got dizzy. The world turned when she stood up or sat down. It flashed when she moved too fast. It spun, randomly, with no common denominator between the instances, so no way of just avoiding it.
Robin was good at avoiding things.
She had less energy. She was always tired before, but not like this. This was exhaustion settled deep in her bones. Her limbs felt heavy, she yawned constantly, sometimes she just—couldn’t keep her eyes open.
At some point, her parents started to get suspicious.
Not in a concerned, sit-down-and-talk-about-it kind of way. More like—like glances across the room when Robin nearly dropped something, or frowns and furrowed brows when she pushed food around on her plate during dinner before eventually saying she was full.
So she adjusted.
She ate slower. Left a bowl in the sink and moved the cereal box around so it looked like she’d eaten breakfast. Compressed the food on her plate so that it seemed mostly eaten. Ate a third of a protein bar, pressed it into a ball with the wrapper covering up the rest of it, and threw it away with a napkin covering it up ever so slightly.
And that worked, for the most part, at least.
And then she got a job at Scoops Ahoy. Most people assumed that she just ate some of the ice cream when she got hungry, or the bananas for banana splits, or any of the other shit they had stockpiled in the back room.
And she let them. She let them, because that was so much easier than having them worry over whether or not she looked malnourished was related to her eating habits.
Then King Steve “The Hair” Harrington showed up and was assigned as her ‘shift buddy.’
And for the first time in a while, she had…stability. Routine.
Every week, two or three times, a group of freshmen would come in. They’d order ice cream. They’d eat it in the back room. And Steve would let them out through the door that connected Scoops Ahoy to the movie theater. Steve was basically their mother—or, at the very least, older brother. And Robin found herself checking in with them everyday to make sure they’d had breakfast and lunch.
She started packing food for the day to give to them—usually the redhead with the skateboard, Max, because their parents were drunks and their stepbrother was a piece of shit, so the kid was malnourished as hell.
Nobody really noticed how weak Robin had become until her and Steve had been kidnapped by the Russians underneath Starcourt Mall.
When they threw her into a cold, dark room that was barely even a room and more of a large closet and she crumpled to the ground. When they tied her hands to the wall, above her head, not even bothering to try and stand her up.
She tried calling out for Steve, but he wasn’t there. He wasn’t there. She was alone.
Robin hated being alone.
Alone with her thoughts that always spiraled until they just kept going on and on about how horrible and useless and broken she was until she was curled up in a ball on the floor with her hands over her head rocking back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and trying to get it to shut up.
Eventually, the Russians came in to interrogate her. Well, interrogate is a loosely used term, honestly—it was more them smacking her around and demanding answers.
They yelled in a language she didn’t know. When she didn’t answer—couldn’t answer—they would hit her across the face, pull her io by her hair, punch the wall beside her, and ask again. And again. And again.
At first, she’d been sarcastic. She’d joked. She’d made fun. She’d made them mad.
But after about—what, an hour?—she was huddled in the corner, eyes wide, shaking, bracing for the pain, mumbling sorry’s every time they asked a question that she couldn’t understand.
A punch to the face. A kick to the ribs. A cattle prod because why the fuck not???
She mostly disassociated.
They would leave, they would come back, she would hurt, repeat. She flinched every time the door open, shrinking back into her corner.
At one point, they tugged her out of the not-a-room, leading her by the rope tied around her hands as if they were walking a fucking dog, and brought her into a room where they tied her to a chair, left, and returned with—
“Steve?” She whispered, her voice hoarse.
“Robin! Robin, you’re okay! Are—are you okay?” He squinted, furrowing his brow to inspect her.
“Worry about yourself, dingus, you look like shit,”
Steve lip was busted open, and one of his eyes was swollen shut.
“Fuck you, I look awesome,”
One of the soldiers hit the wall with his baton, and Robin tensed, snapping her mouth shut. They tied Steve to the chair behind her, in that way in movies where two people are tied to chairs but the chairs are attached or something?
“Fuck, I chose a bad week to skip food—”
“I’m sorry, you WHAT?”
They got high off truth serum, apparently, so that’s fun.
What’s not fun is sitting on the floor having Steve lecture her about bad eating habits while they’re locked inside the mall with Dustin, Erica, Nancy, Max, and the rest of the Party.
“Wow, Steve, didn’t think I’d ever see this side of you,” she joked weakly.
“Robin, please, I—” he inhaled, pinching the bridge of his nose, which made him wince. “This is serious, Robin. It—you can’t just…not eat, it’s dangerous,”
“I know, I know, I just—I’m not hungry, okay? I’m not hungry, and I forget, and then suddenly it’s been months and I’ve only eaten once a day, and—“ she snapped her mouth shut. Shit. She said too much.
Steve’s eyes widened more than should be humanly possible, and she looked down at her hands. Shaking. Always shaking.
“It—it sounds worse than it is,” she tried, but her voice was unsteady. “Okay, Steve? It’s not—it’s not as bad as you’re probably thinking right now, I swear, I—I’m just a forgetful idiot, c’mon, that’s—that’s common knowledge, Stevie!” She laughed nervously. “That’s why I’m friends with Mama Bear Ste—”
Steve slammed his hand down on the floor, and she flinched, shrinking away from him. “Goddamnit, Robin, this isn’t a joke!”
The hushed conversations the others were having around them stopped, and she could feel their eyes turning toward them.
Steve cursed under his breath, reaching out to her, but stopped when she cringed away from his hand.
“Shit, Rob, I—I’m sorry, I didn’t—I’m not—” he took a deep breath. “I’m not…mad at you, okay? I—I’m just—I’m worried, Robin,”
“Okay, everyone, mind your own fucking business,” Nancy’s voice rang out, and the kids all muttered and returned to their quiet conversations. She crouched down next to Steve and Robin, setting her shotgun aside on the floor. “Hey, Steve and…Robin? You’re Robin, right?”
She nodded numbly.
“Right. Robin, can you tell me and Steve why you’ve been having trouble eating?”
Robin shrugged. “There’s not much to tell. I either forget, or I’m just not hungry. And it’s not like I never eat—I have dinner pretty much every night,”
“Pretty much every night?” Steve’s brow furrowed. “Rob…”
“I know, Steve, I know, I just—” she clenched her hand into a fist. “I’m just…I’m never hungry anymore, Steve, and I—I don’t know why and I feel even more broken,”
“You’re not—fuck, Rob, you’re not broken, okay? You’re—you’re not. And that’s my best friend you’re talking about there, so, kindly, shut up,”
She smiled up at him, her eyes definitely NOT watering, and lunged to hug him. His arms wrapped around her, and she nuzzled her face into his neck as he rested his chin on her head. “It’s gonna be okay, Rob. You’re gonna be okay. We’ll figure this out, I promise,”