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The thing about Vickie Dunne is that she has no business being this good at the clarinet.
Robin Buckley learns this on the second day of sophomore year, when Vickie walks into the Hawkins High band room with her copper hair curling softly around her face, her sheet music tucked in a folder covered in pastel stickers, and then proceeds to play like she’s auditioning for a chair in the state symphony.
And Robin, who has been crowned not only First Chair Horn for three years running, but also the ‘most talented pupil her band director has ever seen’ decides instantly and without hesitation that she hates her.
Not real hate, not actual bile or resentment. Just the kind that flares when someone threatens the one thing you’re confident about.
Vickie doesn’t look like a threat when she sits down the first time: soft cardigan, quiet smile, freckles dusted across her cheeks, posture just a little too careful to be accidental. But then she lifts her clarinet and plays through a warm-up scale with this infuriating ease; smooth tone, clean transitions, steady breath like she’s not even thinking about it.
Robin’s jaw actually drops.
Vickie glances over at her with polite confusion. “What?”
Robin snaps her mouth shut. “Nothing.”
But it is something.
It’s war.
⸻
By October, everyone in the band room knows: Robin and Vickie cannot be within ten feet of each other without turning everything into a competition.
Breathing exercises? Robin will outlast her.
Scale drills? Vickie will outrun her.
Pep rally rehearsal? Robin plays louder.
Winter concert auditions? Vickie plays cleaner.
Their bickering becomes background noise.
“You’re rushing it.”
“I’m not rushing it.”
“You are.”
Or:
“You always push that part.”
“I don’t always.”
“You just did.”
Most notably, their rivalry makes them both better. Mr. Lawrence, their band director, alternates weekly between praising them and telling them to knock it off.
He says once, tired, “If you two ever worked together, you’d be unstoppable.”
Both girls answer at the same time:
“I’d rather not.”
But rivalry has a strange way of shaping people. Underneath the sniping, Robin starts noticing things she doesn’t mean to notice.
Like the way Vickie’s hair starts to fall into her eyes when she’s been practicing too long.
Or how the tip of her tongue presses against the reed when she’s working through something difficult.
Or how she sits up just a little straighter before a solo, like she’s bracing for it.
Robin tells herself she’s just paying attention. It doesn’t have to be anything more than that. But she does spend more time watching Vickie play than she should. And she does get… weirdly satisfied when Vickie nails something hard.
And she does sometimes catch Vickie looking at her, too; quick, assessing, like she’s measuring something.
It almost feels like a conversation. In music, at least, they understand each other better than anyone else.
Not that Robin would ever say that out loud.
_____
Before Christmas, Mr. Lawrence announces a surprise halfway through rehearsal. “We’re aiming to include a special duet for the holiday concert.”
Robin looks up.
Vickie does too, at the exact same moment.
Please no, Robin thinks.
Please—yes, Vickie thinks, before she can stop herself.
“Buckley and Dunne,” Mr. Lawrence says, like it’s the most obvious choice in the world.
Robin inhales wrong and coughs into her sleeve.
Vickie sits up a little straighter. “Mr. Lawrence,” she says, careful, “is that…
He sighs, already tired. “Sit together. And make it work.”
Robin looks over.
Vickie is already looking at her.
Neither of them moves.
Mr. Lawrence claps once, sharp. “Now.”
Robin drags her chair over with more force than necessary. Vickie moves hers too, quieter, controlled in a way that makes the whole thing look easier than it should be.
They sit; neither of them looks at the other.
Robin opens the music first. “This is going to be a mess.”
Vickie adjusts her stand, eyes still on the page. “Only if you rush it.”
“I’m not going to rush it.”
“I mean, you have a habit of rushing sometimes.”
Robin glances over at her. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you.”
Vickie’s mouth curves, just slightly. “A little.”
It should irritate her… it does irritate her.
But there’s something else there too, something she can’t quite name, warm and a little distracting.
Robin looks back down at the music, she focuses very hard on the notes.
⸻
They start practicing.
Their first attempt is a disaster, clashing dynamics, mismatched timing, stubborn refusal from both girls to adjust anything.
But halfway through the second run, something happens.
Vickie shifts her clarinet a little lower and Robin softens her entrance. Their lines thread together, tentatively at first… then naturally.
By the third attempt, they’re actually creating harmony. Not just a technical harmony, but an almost emotional harmony, a harmony that made anyone around them stop talking to just listen. Their sounds weave around each other like they’ve been doing it for years.
Robin feels her chest tighten.
Vickie glances sideways, breath catching just slightly.
When rehearsal ends, Mr. Lawrence approaches them, clapping slowly like a man who has been surprised but refuses to admit it.
“That,” he says, “is what I want on stage.”
Robin feels oddly breathless.
Vickie tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “We can do better.”
“Of course you can,” he says dryly. “It’s you two.”
As he walks away, the room suddenly feels very small. Robin turns to say something sarcastic, but the words stall in her throat.
Because Vickie is looking at her, really looking at her.
Not like a rival.
Not like someone she’s trying to beat.
Something else. It’s something lighter, and arguably more dangerous.
“Good rehearsal,” Vickie says quietly.
Robin swallows. “You too.”
Their fingers brush as they reach for the same music stand.
Both recoil instantly.
Both blush.
Both pretend it didn’t happen.
But it did.
And neither of them is going to forget it.
⸻
After that, their dynamic was different. It doesn’t shift all at once, there’s no single moment Robin can point to, no clean line between before and after.
Just… time. A few rehearsals where they don’t argue quite as much.
A few where they do, but it sounds different.
Vickie stops turning around to correct her as often and Robin stops playing over her just to prove she can.
They fall into something that just works.
Which, somehow, makes everything worse, because Robin can hear it when they’re in sync. She notices the way Vickie adjusts without being asked, the way she listens, the way she expects Robin to meet her halfway.
And Robin does.
Always without thinking about it, without deciding to.
That’s the part she doesn’t like.
That’s the part she definitely doesn’t think about when she’s lying awake later, replaying the way Vickie said her name during rehearsal or the way she was looking at her when she thought Robin wasn’t paying attention.
_____
And so, without either truly acknowledging it, Their band room détente had been slowly turning into something else… something that finally caught up with them the week before regionals.
The band room was half-dark, lit only by the emergency bulb humming over the trophy case. Rehearsal had ended twenty minutes ago, but Robin hadn’t left. She was seated cross-legged on top of the old risers, twirling a broken reed between her fingers like it owed her an apology.
She told herself she was here to get more practice in, to guarantee a perfect performance at regionals.
She was absolutely lying.
She heard the door click open before she saw her. Vickie’s footsteps soft, the kind you only make when you don’t want to be heard.
“You’re still here?” Vickie asked, surprised to see Robin sitting on the risers.
Robin shrugged. “I Didn’t feel like going home yet, I thought I’d get some more practice in.”
Vickie walked in fully, letting the door fall shut behind her. The metal latch echoed.
She set her case on the table. “I figured you’d be out celebrating your victory.”
Robin blinked. “Victory?”
Vickie gave her a too-innocent look. “You beat me today.”
“Oh.” Robin’s face warmed. “That wasn’t— I mean, you missed your third-measure run. You never miss that.”
Vickie exhaled slowly, then sat on the edge of the closest chair. “I was… distracted.”
“By what?” Robin asked, trying to sound bored rather than terrified.
Vickie didn’t answer immediately. She glanced at Robin’s hands first, like she always did, then her mouth curved into something small and dangerous.
“You.”
Robin’s heart fell straight through the risers.
The air in the room changed, like someone had taken the lid off the feelings both of them had been keeping airtight for months.
Robin swallowed. “You’re kidding.”
“Do I look like I’m kidding?” Vickie asked softly.
Robin couldn’t breathe. “Why would I distract you?”
Vickie huffed a laugh that wasn’t really a laugh. “Because you’re loud. And competitive. And smart. And you don’t shut up, ever. And when you play, you look like you’re trying to beat the entire universe.”
“That’s… bad?” Robin whispered.
“No,” Vickie said, voice steady now. “It’s not bad.”
Robin blinked hard, pulse skittering. “You’ve hated me. All year.”
“I didn’t hate you,” Vickie said. “In fact, I was trying not to like you.”
That did something to Robin, something irreversible and inconvenient.
“I was trying not to like you… ,” Vickie repeated. “Because every time I looked at you, I—” She shook her head, almost frustrated. “I didn’t know how to handle it.”
Robin felt the floor tilt. “Handle what?”
Vickie stepped closer. Close enough that Robin could see the flecks of gold in her eyes.
“Handle wanting you to look at me the way I look at you,” Vickie said quietly.
Robin froze.
Her brain didn’t, it sprinted.
“That’s ridiculous,” Robin said faintly.
Vickie raised a brow. “Is it?”
“Yeah,” Robin said, but it came out like a question. “Because you don’t— I mean, I didn’t think— you never—”
“You really don’t see it, do you?” Vickie murmured.
“See what?”
Vickie took the last two steps separating them. She stood below the riser, face tilted up at Robin, close enough for Robin to feel her breath.
“That I am… embarrassingly obsessed with you,” Vickie said. “In a way that makes absolutely no sense and perfect sense.”
Robin’s mouth dropped open.
For once, she had no words.
Vickie’s gaze softened, like she wanted to reach out but was waiting for something — some kind of signal.
So Robin gave one.
She set the broken reed down, climbed down the riser slowly, and stopped so close their shoulders nearly brushed.
“Vickie,” she said, and her voice cracked like a glass under pressure. “You can’t— you can’t say stuff like that unless you mean it.”
“I mean it,” Vickie said. “Do you?”
Robin’s laugh came out shaky. “Do I what?”
Robin looked at her, really looked, and everything she’d been swallowing for months rose like a tide she couldn’t push back.
Vickie inhaled.
Robin’s fingers moved first, brushing Vickie’s wrist, barely there. Vickie’s breath hitched.
Then Vickie stepped in, closing the last inch between them, and Robin didn’t think. She just leaned forward, forehead to forehead, the contact soft and dizzying.
Vickie whispered, “Say it.”
So Robin did.
“You’re really good at playing the clarinet.”
Vickie exhaled with something like relief and humor all at once. And slowly, carefully, she lifted her hand and cupped Robin’s jaw.
Their lips met in the kind of kiss that wasn’t explosive, but inevitable. Months of sniping and tension and rivalry collapsing into something warmer, softer, infinitely more dangerous.
When they finally pulled apart, Vickie was smiling in this small, stunned way.