Chapter Text
So the door handle came off again. That was the third time that happened in the past two weeks, but at least on the brighter side, Robin didn’t manage to break the entire door off its hinges this time around. So maybe she was starting to get the hang of the super strength part.
Who was she kidding? Her alarm clock, or what was left of it, was buried inside a nice little crater within her nightstand after she smashed the thing a bit too hard when it went off in the morning. And now the door handle was again in her hand. There were also little bits of wood attached to the screws, so she couldn’t even blame them for being faulty.
Nope, that was all on Robin. She had once again pulled the entire thing off. And if she wasn’t in a hurry enough already, the handle was stuck on her hand. Again.
Great, today is just great, that fucking spider-
It was her go-to curse nowadays. That fucking, stupid, radioactive or alien or whatever spider that bit her and turned her into an even bigger freak. That made her hands sticky for no reason, and now she had a door handle stuck on her hand like she was already running late for school, and no matter how much she pulled, it wouldn’t budge.
“Oh, come on,” Robin mumbled, giving it another pull. Nothing; it was as if somebody had superglued it to her hand. How was she even supposed to explain that to a doctor? Uh yeah, I get sticky fingers, and it’s not about shoplifting; they are genuinely sticky.
Change in plans. Clearly trying to yank it off wasn’t helping; worst case, she removed it, and it stuck to her other hand. That had happened before, with a spoon, and it had easily been the most frustrating ten minutes of her existence. Until she finally unstuck it and threw it at the wall, only for it to easily go through the drywall and into the living room. A hole was still there, but she had strategically hidden one entry with a vase and the other with a photo until she could figure out how to fix it. Her mom was yet to find out about it.
Right, door handle. Don’t think about holding. Think about letting it go. That was the only thing that seemed to somehow work. She closed her eyes and tried to relax her muscles. The taste of victory was almost there, as she could feel the brass weighing down in her palm, but it was still firmly attached to her skin.
“Come on,” Robin snarled and tried to shake it off.
Bad idea; maybe she should have done it over her desk and chipped the end of it. At that speed, she was going to need another part-time job just for supplies to fix her house.
Let. Go.
And finally she felt that little strange sensation over her skin. It was like tingling in her palm, which slowly went numb for a moment, then disappeared altogether just as the handle dropped on the floor. Every time it happened, it reminded her why she truly wasn’t interested in examining her palm through a microscope, too afraid of what she might see that could explain the stickiness.
“Jesus Christ, finally,” Robin muttered, staring at it. She was off to a bad start; how was she supposed to go through school like that? Okay, no. One by one, she got it. For now, the door handle could live on the floor as she didn’t want to risk sticking it to herself again. And she could try to fix it after school.
Speaking of doors, Robin now realised she was kind of trapped in the room.
Oh, great, that was just so fucking-
No, no. Deep breaths, she got that. Right, so two options in this situation. She could shoot a string, pull, and try to open it that way. With enough luck, she would just pull the entire door off the hinges and not take the wall with it. However, luck wasn’t on her side today, as previously established. And her mom had been ignorant enough not to comment on all of the destruction her daughter had been doing around, but was likely to start asking questions if there was an excavator-sized hole in her wall.
Or option two: Robin could be a normal person and climb out of the window.
Normal? Nothing about this is normal! Nothing about this town has been normal for about a month now!
No, focus. She had escaped through her window many times before, way before she became… whatever the fuck she was now. It was fine. Besides, her mom already left for work, and she always kept the kitchen window open so some fresh air could come in, and Robin was the one who had to close it every time before leaving for school.
So she opened her bedroom window, threw her backpack out first, and carefully climbed onto the little ledge beneath it. Normally this was the point where she would reach for the drainpipe and awkwardly shuffle her way down while praying that nobody happened to look out their window and see her scaling her own house at seven in the morning.
Instinctively Robin reached for the pipe, then stopped suddenly.
Right… The drainpipe.
The same drainpipe she had nearly crushed flat three days ago, and it had immediately gone on her list of stuff she should be careful with or would otherwise need to add to her shopping list. Her morning had been bad enough already; maybe it wasn’t worth the risk today.
Robin looked down. Technically the ground wasn’t that far. Just two stories. Before, that would have been too high to risk breaking both her legs for school. Now she knew, through several very stupid experiments, that falling was somehow different too. Her body reacted faster than her brain did. Despite her chronic clumsiness, she always stuck the landing somewhat softly. Maybe the only existing plus side in all of the recent changes. Still, probably better not to test that before breakfast.
She could shoot a string, attach it to the roof, and climb down that way? It could hold her weight; she was certain about it. Had been certain about it for weeks now, yet something still didn’t feel right. Because what if she was wrong and just plummeted down like a sack of potatoes?
No, that wasn’t a morning for an experiment, and she was going to be late again if she kept on overthinking it so much. Climbing down, it was.
Robin placed one palm against the brick wall. It stuck immediately.
“Of course that works.”
She added the other hand, then one foot, then the other. For a few seconds she just stayed there, horizontal against the side of her house, then she started climbing down. It was ridiculous how easy that part had become. She didn’t even really need to think about it anymore; her hands and feet simply found places to hold even when there really weren’t any. When she was moving, being sticky wasn’t an issue. She’d never had a problem unsticking herself from anything she was climbing down; it was only items that she had to pry off her skin.
Within seconds, she reached the kitchen window, pulled herself across the wall, and slipped inside.
Perfectly normal morning.
She landed quietly on the kitchen floor, brushed herself off, and immediately grabbed the counter because her stomach growled so hard it actually hurt.
“Alright, food.”
That was another fun little development. Before the spider, Robin didn’t really think about lunch. She could easily get through school on half a sandwich, maybe some chips and whatever she found when she got home. Her mom complained about it sometimes, but then again she usually complained about anything Robin-related.
Now though, her body burned through whatever she ate and her stomach growled approximately an hour after every meal. So skipping lunch was no longer an option she could consider, not if she didn’t want to collapse in the hallway anyway.
Robin opened the fridge and stared inside.
Eggs, leftover pasta, half a block of cheese, milk, and something in a container that had been there long enough that it was no longer identifiable.
She grabbed the pasta and ate half of it directly from the container while making toast, then made two eggs, then ate the rest of the pasta while the eggs cooked, then added three more just in case. The block of cheese disappeared at some point as well; Robin wasn’t even sure when exactly she had eaten it. By the time she finally sat down, she had already eaten enough food to qualify as breakfast for two people and still felt like she could go another round.
Which was anything but great, because not only was she a freak, but she was expensive now. Any money she managed to make from the cinema job all went for food, and that wasn’t enough either. She even cheated and opened the Operation Croissant Fund just to buy herself more snacks. It hurt a bit to do so, but her stomach was growling, and she was shaky, and there was nothing to eat at home, so she bought half of Melvald’s in the aftermath. Whatever, she was the only one of her friends who still cared about that stupid plan anyway, and she had a much bigger fish to fry than her dream journey to Europe.
Maybe she could start delivering pizzas? If she could figure out the string thingy and actually jump and swing around Hawkins, then she would be the fastest pizza deliverer around and might be able to live fully off tips? Sure, but that required figuring out if the strings could hold after a proper jump, and she wasn’t sure she could be ready for that anytime soon.
Lunch also needed changing now. She grabbed the sandwich she had already made the night before, then stopped. Who was she kidding? Every night she made one and lied to herself that it would be enough. No way it was going to be. So she made another, then looked at both of them on the counter. Those were going to last up until 11, then what? So one more sandwich joined the first two.
Then an apple, a bag of pretzels, and three granola bars. Would she be pushing it too much if she brought the entire jar of peanut butter to school as well?
Robin stared into the lunch bag.
That was horrifying.
A month ago, the first sandwich would have come home half-eaten. Now she was considering making a fourth.
Her stomach growled.
“Stop encouraging me.”
She made the fourth, just in case.
Her mom wasn’t going to love the grocery bill if this kept going, but considering she had somehow failed to notice Robin eating roughly double her body weight every week, that was future Robin’s problem.
Future Robin had a lot of problems. But current Robin had school.
She closed the kitchen window, grabbed her backpack, and headed out the front door.
Very carefully. Actually, she barely touched the handle. Thankfully it survived. So that was an improvement.
Huzzah, I didn’t break another door handle. Be proud of me, Mom; I am mastering mutation puberty.
The walk to school was mostly fine. The outside was always easier. There were still too many sounds, but they had room to spread out. Birds, cars, people talking from porches, somebody hammering something three streets away. Annoying, but manageable, especially if she could put on her headphones.
Hawkins High was where the real nightmare started. The moment Robin stepped through the front doors, every sound hit her at once.
Lockers slamming. Shoes dragging against tile. People talking and talking and talking. People shouting. Someone laughing somewhere behind her. A teacher calling after somebody. The fluorescent lights humming overhead. Somebody was kissing behind the corner. Somebody was blowing their nose two classrooms over. Somebody was chewing gum.
Oh God, the gum. And a pencil; somebody was dragging the sharpest pencil in the world in the slowest manner possible. Robin wanted to borrow it and drive it in her eardrums.
Still not as annoying as the sound of clicking pens. And somebody right now was doing exactly that, and Robin had no idea where exactly it was coming from, but she could hear it.
Click.
Click.
Click.
Click.
Robin clenched her jaw.
She had to get to her locker. First small goal; maybe it would be enough to get away from that sound. So one step forward. Then another. Keep walking.
Click.
Click.
Click.
“Oh, my God!” she ended up snarling.
A girl walking beside her glanced over, and Robin immediately looked ahead, like nothing happened. If anything, she was already considered weird enough on a good day before the bite even happened. The girl would likely forget about that by lunchtime.
Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.
And it suddenly stopped. Thankfully.
Despite everything, the weird hearing bit had been one of the worst surprises. At first Robin had thought she just had a lingering headache. Then she’d thought everyone around her had suddenly become obnoxiously loud. Then she’d realized she could hear a conversation taking place two classrooms away. Then, at class, she had to sit through the most annoying, constant drum concert. Only to come to the horrifying realization that she could hear her classmates’ heartbeats.
That was the weirdest one thus far, because it meant that the relaxing thumping she heard at night was her mom’s heartbeat from two doors down the corridor. And in a strange, almost childish way, that was calming to listen to. Here, though, it was a torture.
It also meant that talking to somebody was a complete nightmare, and she easily got distracted before all of this started. Now it was nearly impossible to keep up when she could hear the person’s heart beating and every little grumble and noise. It was one of the many reasons why she avoided people right now. That, and she genuinely wasn’t sure she wouldn’t accidentally send somebody to the hospital.
A week ago, one of the girls from the band had grabbed Robin’s hand to pull her out of a chair, and Robin had almost yanked her arm away in panic. She had crushed an empty soda can without meaning to. Snapped a broom handle. Bent a fork. Buried her alarm in her nightstand. Broken the door on more than one occasion. What exactly was stopping her from breaking somebody’s fingers when she accidentally squeezed too much? Give one of her bullies permanent brain damage if she decided to fight back and accidentally send them across the hall?
Kill somebody?
Nothing, as far as she knew.
Which was fine, because Robin Buckley was already spectacularly talented at avoiding unnecessary social contact.
She made it to her own locker and started entering the combination, desperately trying to ignore the disgusting smacking of lips down the corridor.
Twenty-four. Eleven. Thirty-six.
Click.
Robin pulled the handle, and nothing happened. She frowned and tried again. Still nothing. It seriously decided that today was the best day for a jam. Perfect, yeah, why not?
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”
The hallway was packed, which should have made this dangerous, except nobody was actually paying attention to her. Everyone had somewhere to be, somebody to talk to, something more interesting than Robin struggling to open her locker.
She wrapped her fingers around the handle.
Careful. Just pull normally. Like a normal human being would.
Nothing.
A little harder? Just a tiny bit more pressure.
Still nothing.
Robin sighed and gave it one proper tug. The locker door came off completely, hinges included. And so she suddenly stood there holding the entire metal plate in her hand.
For several long seconds, she didn’t move.
“Wow,” somebody beside her said.
Robin slowly turned her head. The guy at the neighboring locker was looking directly at her.
Well, wasn't that great? That was it then - secret exposed. Whatever the secret actually was.
I’m secretly training to beat up Tommy Hagan with a lunch tray. Also to be a Navy SEAL one day.
“Uh,” Robin only managed to say.
The guy glanced down at the door, then back at Robin.
“You okay?” He asked instead.
Robin blinked.
“What?”
“Your locker broke.”
No shit, Sherlock, aren’t you the bright future of this country?
Robin looked down at the large sheet of metal currently in her hands.
“Yeah,” she managed to nod.
“That sucks,” he barely spoke up; Robin probably wouldn’t have heard him without her super hearing.
“Yep.”
The guy shrugged and went back to looking for something in his locker. Robin just stared at him.
That was all?
People continued walking around her. One girl squeezed past and muttered, “Excuse me,” because the locker door was blocking part of the hallway, and Robin immediately moved it aside.
“Sorry.”
The girl kept going without a word. Nobody cared.
Nobody cared… thank god, thank you for once!
Maybe Hawkins High really was the perfect place to develop unexplained superhuman abilities. She could probably grow eight legs in the middle of the hallway, and somebody would just ask her to move because she was blocking traffic.
Was she going to grow more limbs? If she was turning into a spider, then-
Okay, not the right time to worry about that. Worry about the locker.
Right. Fix it. How the hell was she supposed to fix it exactly? She took the entire thing off with the hinges. Fine, then at least make it look fixed until somebody else could deal with it.
Robin lifted the door back toward the locker, then immediately realised she was doing it one-handed and shifted her grip so it looked more normal. The bottom hinge had snapped completely. The top one was bent sideways.
She tried pushing it back. The metal moved under her fingers way too easily, like she was playing with slightly hardened clay. Robin stopped immediately.
“Nope.”
She hooked the upper hinge onto what remained of the frame and slowly let go. The door stayed. It was crooked, but at least it stayed. Robin took one step back to marvel at it, and because the universe loved her, it immediately slid downward.
She caught it before it could clang throughout the entire hallway.
“You should probably tell somebody,” the guy next to her said, glancing over again.
Yeah, smarty pants, let me explain how I accidentally tore off my locker’s door with my superhuman strength.
“That’s a great idea, thank you,” Robin snarled.
The guy shrugged.
“No problem.”
“I was being sarcastic.”
“Oh.”
Okay, she needed something to hold it for now. Maybe pins she could hammer right into the wall? Was pretty certain she didn’t need a hammer either, just to smack them in place with her hand. Or maybe glue or-
Really? Glue? When she had a perfectly sticky string thing coming right out of her wrists?
Robin wedged the door back into place and looked around. The guy next to her was once again busy with something in his locker, and there was nobody on her right side. So she moved closer, obscuring the view and aimed right at the hinges.
It was weird to shoot the string web. There wasn’t much thinking or any special spell-like movement with her wrist involved. She just aimed and flexed one specific muscle in her arm; she wasn’t even sure she could intentionally flex it before the spider bite. Wasn’t sure if normal people could control it the way she could now, and it wasn’t like she could properly conduct an experiment without accidentally shooting a web in front of somebody.
Also, there was this weird thing that her aim was much better if she held her middle and ring fingers down and left her other ones extended, as the I love you sign in ASL.
thwip
One hinge was secured.
thwip
And now so was the other. Robin grinned a bit, testing the movement. In no way did it open like a normal door, but the web was strong enough to hold it for now. She was going to need to return in a few hours, when the webs eventually dissolved to reapply, but for now it could stay like that. With enough luck, the door wasn’t going to come down and echo throughout the entire school in the middle of class.
Right, time to suffer through class now. What was the first one? Maths, oh, perfect. Robin really loved listening to Mrs. Walkin and her arrhythmia…
By lunch, she looked and felt like complete shit. There was just no nicer way to put it. Her hair was a mess, she had a headache sitting right behind her eyes, she had already eaten two sandwiches and one of the granola bars, and the band had been so loud that she had spent ten minutes in the bathroom afterward just sitting inside a stall with her hands pressed over her ears.
As much as she loved it, maybe it was time to reconsider if she could keep going through this every rehearsal. She had no idea if she would eventually get the hang of the hearing thing or if it would stay like that for the rest of her life. If it stayed, then in no way could she continue. Playing in the school band used to bring her so much joy; it made it feel like she was a part of something, made it easy to interact with the others. Now it was just suffering through it and desperately hoping the clock could move faster.
Could sell the trumpet and use the money to buy more food.
God, that was pathetic. She sounded like a drug addict now. A food addict. Could she even be considered one, when she was easily burning through everything she ate and didn’t gain any more pounds? The most weight gain was when she woke up after the bite and found her body was suddenly a lot leaner than ever before, something she could easily hide for now under her winter clothes. She wasn’t ripped in any way, just much more muscular for sure. But that was all, and despite everything she was eating and barely making any changes to her routine, she was still not gaining any weight.
She was just so freaking hungry right now.
At least Mr. Hauser’s classroom was quiet.
That was probably why she had started spending every lunch there instead of just some of them. She had eaten there before, sure, especially when the cafeteria got annoying, but lately it had become less of a preference and more of a survival strategy. It meant no surrounding noises all the time and an even lower risk of accidentally hurting somebody. That, and it was awkward to see the Odd Squad all together in the cafeteria. They had barely reacted when Robin started pulling away. Now she wasn’t even sure if she could sit with them, although there was always an open spot for her on the band table.
Robin stepped inside the classroom and dropped her backpack beside her usual desk.
“Hey,” she tried to sound more cheerful, truly tried.
Mr. Hauser looked up from a stack of papers.
“Hello- oh, Robin, you look awful.”
Well, he wasn’t wrong now, was he?
“I didn’t sleep much,” she tried to shrug it off, but Mr. Hauser looked anything but convinced.
“Again?” he raised an eyebrow.
“I mean, yeah? Just a bad week.”
Bad month, to be exact.
“You sure it’s only about sleep?” He pressed on further. “Anything bothering you?”
He was bound to catch up with her deteriorating state sooner or later. Out of the entire school staff, Mr. Hauser appeared to be the only one who paid close attention to his students.
“I think it’s the leftover from the virus I went through,” Robin mumbled. It wasn’t exactly a lie. But it wasn’t like she could just tell him the truth.
Yeah, Mr. Hauser, I am just going through very much unexplored biological mutations and slowly becoming a spider. I genuinely fear I would start laying eggs or grow more limbs. Mind if I go hang from the corner of the ceiling?
“Oh, sorry to hear that,” he offered back, and it sounded actually genuine. “You know you can go home if you aren’t feeling well, right?”
Yeah, let me go home so I can wreck the house even more. I prefer to destroy school property far more.
“Nah, I’m fine,” Robin shrugged. “Besides, I have physics today. I've started developing a weird interest in it, believe it or not.”
That also wasn’t a lie. It wasn’t because she was transitioning from a language nerd to a science nerd, but if her plan to swing around town was going to come into effect one day when she was brave enough, she needed to know more about certain topics. Parabolic movements, momentum, accelerations, tension, the whole pendulum thing. Otherwise, she risked slamming into a building.
Surprisingly, that got a small smile out of Mr. Hauser, as he looked back at his papers. Robin sat down and started unpacking what remained of her lunch.
Two sandwiches, an apple, the bag of pretzels, one and a half granola bars. She was so hungry she could eat everything right now, but that would mean having no food left until she got home. Did she have any coins in her bag for the vending machine? Man, she should have taken the peanut butter jar.
For about ten minutes, everything was fine. The classroom was probably the quietest place she had been in the entire day. Her food was good, or maybe she was just hungry. Maybe the day was finally improving.
Then Robin reached sideways to pull the empty chair beside her closer. Her hand closed around the wooden backrest, and she tugged as lightly as possible. Before she could even comprehend, a piece of the chair came away on her hand with a loud crack.
Mr. Hauser looked up. Robin very slowly placed the piece back against the chair as if there was even the slightest chance that would make it look normal. There was a long, very awkward pause, and Robin wasn’t sure if that was her own heartbeat going haywire in her chest or Mr. Hauser’s.
“Old chair,” she mumbled.
Hauser looked at the broken piece, then back at her.
“Very old,” he said, nodding slowly.
“Basically prehistoric.”
“I think that chair has been here since before I started teaching.”
“See? It was waiting for an excuse.”
Hauser stood, walked over, and picked up the broken piece. Robin kept eating as if nothing had happened.
Because nothing had happened, right? It was an old chair bound to break at a certain point. Didn’t the school have termite problems in the summer? Maybe they had eaten through it, and it just happened to come loose in her hand? It was possible; why wouldn’t it be? Just this once, in front of her favourite teacher, she needed something to be normal.
She needed to be normal. She wanted her old life back; she wanted that spider to have never bitten her. She wanted to not feel so hungry all the time, to not break stuff so easily or be sticky or shoot webs out of her wrists. She wanted Hawkins to be normal and for people to not bully the kid that somehow came back from the dead and was constantly pale and jumpy now. She wanted Barb to be back because no matter how much she lied to herself that Barb had just run away, the truth was that Robin herself wasn’t certain of that. And even though they were no longer the friends they used to be, she just needed to see her in the school halls and feel normal again.
Robin just wanted to be normal again. Was that really so much to ask?
Hauser examined the break through and through, then put the broken wood on his desk. However, instead of returning to his chair, he leaned against the edge of it and looked at Robin, crossing his arms. She knew he was watching because the hair on her neck stood up.
“What?” She asked, her mouth still full.
“How are you doing?” He said in a low, raspy tone.
“I’m eating lunch,” she tried to shrug it off.
“Robin,” Mr. Hauser narrowed his eyes. “You know that wasn’t what I asked.”
Robin frowned. There was something different in his voice. It wasn't an annoyance or his carefully curated, student-friendly joking voice. He sounded concerned, actually concerned about her. And not like a question, not like the time he asked if Steve Harrington was bullying her or if she needed support from the teachers because of the Tommy situation.
Crap.
“I’m fine,” Robin tried.
Hauser didn’t answer immediately. Robin took another bite of her sandwich. And he just continued watching her, which was unnerving.
“You missed almost a week of school last month,” he said suddenly.
“I was sick.”
“I know.”
“Violently sick,” Robin specified. “It was a very bad virus.”
“And then you came back.”
“That is generally what people do after being sick.” Robin shrugged and slowly lowered the sandwich.
Hauser ignored that.
“You’ve been eating lunch here every day since you returned.”
“I thought-” Robin tried, but her mouth went dry. Had she overstepped? Was she annoying him with her presence every day? “I will find another spot, sorry.”
“No, it’s not about that.” Mr. Hauser gave her a small, sad smile, and Robin wanted to disappear. Or turn invisible. Can she even do that? “You are welcome here whenever you want. But why are you suddenly avoiding the cafeteria so much? Is somebody giving you problems during lunch?”
“No, no, it’s fine. It’s just very loud there,” Robin shrugged. It wasn’t a lie. She wasn’t lying to him; that place could be loud enough for a person without super hearing to be annoyed by.
“You’re in band, though.”
“Yeah, starting to reconsider that decision,” Robin grimaced, biting her tongue. She shouldn’t have said that. Not when Mr. Hauser’s face suddenly went blank, and he slowly took a seat next to her, while Robin avoided looking at him.
“Is it connected to why you’ve left rehearsals early on multiple occasions?” He asked carefully.
“I had headaches.”
Once again, not a lie.
“You look exhausted all the time.”
“Wow, thanks.”
“Robin.”
There was the teacher voice again. And it wasn’t the bad teacher voice; Robin would have even preferred that. No, he cared. He was worried, and he cared, and Robin had spent her entire life with no adult actually caring about her, not even her mom, not really. What was she even supposed to tell him?
Hauser folded his arms again.
“And apparently your locker fell apart this morning.”
Robin’s head snapped up.
“How do you know about that?”
“Teachers talk,” he just shrugged. “Kind of hard to miss when something like this happens. So, did it?”
“What?”
“Fall apart?”
Robin stared at him.
“Yes.”
“On its own?”
“It’s Hawkins High. Have you seen this building?” She tried to sound cheerful enough to dismiss it. But was stupid enough to knock on the desk, and thankfully it wasn’t hard enough to break it, but it rattled unnecessarily loud for some reason.
Dammit, control that fucking super strength-
Mr. Hauser almost smiled before his expression settled again.
“Something happened to you.”
Robin didn’t answer. For a moment she considered pretending she hadn’t heard him, which was a particularly stupid idea considering hearing things had become one of her many new problems.
“I got sick,” she eventually reminded him.
“I know you got sick.”
“Well, there you go. Mystery solved.”
“No.”
Robin looked at him.
Mr. Hauser leaned forward slightly. “You got sick, disappeared for almost a week, then came back acting like someone had replaced you with a very tired copy.”
“That sounds like the opening to a terrible science fiction book.”
“I’m serious,” Mr. Hauser said, voice flat.
Robin’s smile disappeared.
“You used to bring one sandwich for lunch,” he continued. “And half the time you didn’t finish that.”
Robin slowly looked down at what remained of her food. Two sandwiches had become one and a half somewhere during this conversation. The apple was gone. So was half the bag of pretzels. One granola bar wrapper was already sitting beside her elbow.
Mr. Hauser nodded toward the food. “Now you come in here with enough food for a picnic and eat like someone’s going to take it away from you.”
“I’m growing,” Robin shrugged. “Puberty is still a thing, you know?”
“You’re sixteen.”
“Last I checked, puberty continues until the early 20’s. People still grow even at sixteen.”
“They do, of course,” Mr. Hauser frowned ever so slightly. “But usually not into lumberjacks.”
Robin almost laughed, then realized he still looked worried.
“The hunger started after you were sick, didn’t it?” He asked slowly.
Robin hesitated. That was probably enough to answer.
Mr. Hauser sighed quietly. “Have you seen a doctor?”
Every muscle in Robin’s body immediately tightened, and she had closed her fists or risked accidentally shooting a web.
“Not really,” she shrugged.
“Robin.”
“I’m fine.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because I am.”
“You’re exhausted, you’re eating three times what you used to, you’ve been complaining about headaches, loud noises suddenly bother you enough that you’ve been leaving band rehearsals, and you barely spend time with anybody anymore.”
Robin looked away. That last one hit harder than the rest. She hadn’t thought anyone had noticed. Apparently Mr. Hauser noticed everything. And kept track of that information.
“I do spend time with people.” Even Robin didn’t believe the lie, not in the way her voice wavered.
“When?”
Robin opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
Okay, rude.
Mr. Hauser continued before she could invent somebody. “You stopped sitting with the band kids after you were sick. I see Kate, Dash, and Milton around all the time, but you don’t seem to hang out with them either. You avoid the cafeteria. You leave school almost immediately after classes unless you have rehearsal, and now you’re talking about quitting that too.”
“I like being alone,” Robin mumbled.
“I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with wanting to be alone,” Mr. Hauser said. “Believe me, I know. Social interactions can get a lot sometimes; we’ve talked about that before. I’m saying there’s a difference between wanting space and avoiding everyone because something’s wrong.”
Robin picked at the edge of her sandwich wrapper.
He was getting way too close. Not to the spider part, obviously. Nobody was ever going to guess the spider part because that would require accepting mutant spider biology as a logical explanation. But aside from that, he was close enough.
Mr. Hauser watched her for another second, then his expression shifted slightly.
“Is this about Barbara Holland?”
Robin blinked.
“What?”
“Barb.”
“No,” Robin shook her head, only to realize that her answer had come out too fast. And Mr. Hauser noticed that too; of course he did. She sighed and rubbed at her forehead. “No. It’s not about Barb.”
They had talked about her before. Not much, and Robin had never exactly volunteered the part where she and Barb used to spend entire summers together when they were younger. Mr. Hauser probably just thought Robin knew her from school, which technically wasn’t wrong.
They had known each other. Before high school happened and everything got weird in the normal way. Different friends, different circles, different versions of themselves. Barb got Nancy Wheeler. Robin got band and books and figuring out how to be alone without looking lonely.
They just stopped talking. That was all there was. At least that was what Robin told herself.
And now Barb was gone. She wasn’t dead, at least that. Authorities treated it as a runaway, as there had been no body found and they couldn’t just declare her dead. Robin refused to let anyone talk about her like she was, no matter what.
“She ran away,” Robin said, although there was less confidence behind it than there used to be.
Mr. Hauser didn’t argue. He never did, actually. That was probably why Robin had told him in the first place.
“Maybe,” he said quietly.
“She did.”
“Okay.”
Robin looked away.
Barb had run away. She had to have. Maybe she got sick of Hawkins. Maybe she got sick of Wheeler constantly sucking face with Harrington. Maybe she got sick of everybody and just left. People did that. People disappeared all the time. It wasn’t like Robin herself wanted to stay around in this godforsaken town.
Except Will Byers had disappeared too. And they had found his body and even held a funeral, something Robin didn’t know about, because she was busy burning through a fever and being only semi-conscious at that exact period of time.
Then Will somehow came back alive. Also something Robin barely paid any attention to at the moment, because she was busy sticking to objects and breaking doors in her house and finding out what amount of food would be enough for her to not pass out.
But she had also spent the past month waking up with the horrible feeling that something in Hawkins was very wrong, even if she could never place what exactly it was.
So yes, Barb had probably run away.
Hopefully run away.
Robin swallowed.
“But this isn’t about her,” she finally managed to croak out. “I swear it’s not; it’s something else.”
He studied her again, but thankfully didn’t push.
Robin was grateful for that. Because Barb was part of it, maybe. There was something fundamentally wrong with Hawkins, and she knew it. That something had changed, and everyone else was pretending it hadn’t, or maybe they were yet to notice it. But what were the chances that everything happened at the same time? The spider, Will, and Barb disappearing at the same time. Seriously, what were the odds?
“You said you haven’t been sleeping,” Mr. Hauser continued. “Could that explain some of this?”
“Maybe.”
“Or the hunger could be medical. Thyroid problems can cause changes in appetite. Diabetes can too. There are plenty of things that can make someone tired and hungry all the time.”
Robin stared at him. He was actually trying to diagnose her. And that was almost funny, especially when she tried to imagine a doctor’s appointment.
Yes, hello, I’m constantly hungry, I barely sleep, noises are painfully loud, I can bench press my bed, and if you give me a tongue depressor I might accidentally put it through the wall. What do you think, doc, diabetes?
“I’m not diabetic,” Robin chuckled.
“How do you know?”
“I just know.”
“Have you been tested?”
“No.”
“Then you don’t know.”
Robin groaned and rubbed both hands over her face. At least they didn’t stick.
“Mr. Hauser, I appreciate the concern, but really, I’m okay,” she made one desperate attempt, even if she knew it would work.
“Robin, listen, I respect you a lot,” Mr. Hauser said carefully. “But I don’t think you are. And I am not sure if you are just lying to me or if you are not also lying to yourself.”
Dammit, he wasn’t going to drop it so easily. Robin knew what to do when adults were annoyed with her. She knew what to do when teachers thought she was difficult, sarcastic, antisocial, dramatic, or just plain weird. She knew what to do when her mother complained about the way she talked, the way she walked, the way she existed altogether.
She had absolutely no idea what to do when an adult cared.
Then Mr. Hauser frowned slightly, like he was remembering another detail.
“And there was something else.”
Robin’s stomach dropped. There was something in the way he said it that she didn’t like.
“What?” She barely mumbled.
“The PE incident.”
Robin blinked.
“What PE incident?”
His expression changed. Only slightly, but Robin caught it. His heart rate also elevated for a moment.
“You don’t know?”
“Know what?”
Mr. Hauser hesitated, which meant that was not good.
“What happened?” Robin straightened in her chair.
PE incident? What PE incident? Think, Robin. What did you do? What did you break?
“Well, there was a complaint from a parent two weeks ago,” Mr. Hauser said carefully.
Robin’s heart started beating faster.
“What kind of complaint?”
“One of the students in your PE class got hurt.”
Robin just stared at him. She genuinely had no idea what he was talking about.
Then something clicked.
The ball.
Oh.
No.
She remembered that.
It had been maybe a week after she returned to school, when everything was still worse. The same day she also sneezed hard enough to shoot webs out of her wrists for the first time and genuinely thought she was hallucinating. She had also bent a fork in the morning like it was made of rubber.
And in PE, they had been playing dodgeball. Someone had thrown the ball at her. Robin caught it, then threw it back. It had been a normal throw, completely normal, she could swear. But the boy had dropped almost immediately.
Robin had assumed she hit him harder than expected, sure, but nobody stopped the game. He got taken to the nurse; somebody else picked up the ball and class continued.
“Andy Clint, yeah. What happened to him?” Robin asked quietly.
Mr. Hauser’s eyebrows pulled together.
“He bruised his ribs.”
Robin stopped breathing. For half a second, the classroom seemed to tilt.
“What?” She barely managed to murmure.
“He was fine,” Mr. Hauser said quickly. “Nothing broken. But his parents complained because they thought the throw was dangerous.”
Robin could hear her own heartbeat now.
Too loud. Way too loud. And way too fast.
“No.”
Mr. Hauser frowned. “Robin?”
“No, I didn’t-”
She swallowed, or at least tried to. Her mouth had gone completely dry.
“I didn’t throw it hard,” she barely managed to choke out.
At least she hadn’t thought she had. She remembered the ball leaving her hand. Remembered Andy falling. Remembered people laughing because getting nailed during dodgeball was normal.
She hadn’t known. She genuinely hadn’t known. She had been so scared of accidentally hurting somebody, never realizing she already had done so.
Mr. Hauser watched her carefully.
“Robin, it’s alright. The school dismissed it almost immediately. That’s why we didn’t involve you.”
Robin looked at him.
“What?”
“We told his parents it was an accident. Their initial reaction was very normal. Every parent is concerned and demands answers when their child gets sent to the nurse with bruises. But his dad did seem to come around when we specified that Robin Buckley, the possible perpetrator, is in fact a girl who couldn’t have possibly thrown the ball hard enough to cause such an injury. It was all dismissed within minutes.”
Yeah, a girl who can easily pull doors off their hinges without even thinking about it.
Robin felt sick.
Of course they had dismissed it. Of course Andy’s dad had calmed down after learning about her.
Robin Buckley? Skinny band kid Robin Buckley? Robin Buckley, who looked like she would lose a fight against a strong breeze?
Clearly impossible to have hurt somebody with a dodgeball in a game designed for people to get hurt. So the kid had gone home confused and with bruised ribs, and everyone had unanimously decided he was exaggerating, including his own father. Because Robin couldn’t possibly have done it.
Except she had.
“Oh, God.”
“Robin?”
She stood too quickly. The chair scraped backward, and Mr. Hauser immediately stood too.
“I didn’t know.”
“I know,” he tried to sound calm.
“No, I really didn’t know.”
“I believe you.”
“I thought it was normal.”
Her hands were shaking, and it wasn't hunger this time.
“I threw it normally. I swear, I just-”
“I know, I believe you. We all do.”
“What if I had thrown it harder? What if I throw it harder now?”
This entire situation was such a thin wire, and Robin was currently carelessly dancing on top of it. What would happen if she forgot? It wasn’t like she kept remembering to be more gentle when opening the door.
What happened if someone grabbed her and she reacted without thinking? What happened if she shoved someone away? She used to jokingly shove Milton all around; what if she did it now and sent him flying? She could do that, and was certain she could.
What would happen if she got angry? What happened if Tommy kept annoying her and picking up on her, and she got frustrated enough to stop thinking for a moment and accidentally end up breaking his skull instead of just his nose?
Or what about her mom? They still lived together, and despite their rocky relationship, Robin loved her. Of course she did; that was her mom no matter what, and she was all Robin had left. What happened if Robin broke something around the house because she couldn’t measure her strength and somehow ended up injuring her in the process?
Her stomach twisted.
Mr. Hauser stepped closer, then stopped before getting within arm’s reach. Robin noticed that too and almost laughed because apparently now even he was being careful around her. Or maybe that was just in her head.
“Sit down,” he said gently.
“I’m fine.”
“You look like you’re going to pass out.”
“I’m not.”
That part was probably true. Robin had discovered she was surprisingly difficult to knock over nowadays, especially if she had eaten and wasn’t on the verge of collapsing from malnutrition.
Still, she sat. Mostly because her knees suddenly felt unreliable. Mr. Hauser took his seat again. For a little while neither of them said anything. Then he spoke.
“I don’t think you hurt him on purpose.”
“I know,” Robin stared at the floor.
“Do you?”
She didn’t answer.
Mr. Hauser sighed.
“This is exactly why I’m asking what’s going on.”
Robin squeezed her fingers together, then immediately relaxed them when she realized what she was doing.
“I don’t know,” she shook her head.
“You keep saying that too.”
“Because I don’t!”
The words came out louder than she intended. Mr. Hauser didn’t flinch, but Robin did.
“I don’t know,” she lowered her voice and stared down at her hands.
They looked normal. That was almost insulting. Nothing about her felt normal anymore, but anyone looking at her would just see Robin. She still had the same face; same hands; same freckles; same everything. She was a bit leaner, sure, but that was yet to be noticed by anybody, and it was winter, and Robin now changed for PE in the toilets instead of the locker room because she truly had no idea what lie to tell if somebody suddenly asked how her back was muscular out of nowhere, when she was just plain skinny at the start of the school year.
She was exactly the same on the outside.
“I just woke up one day, and everything felt different,” Robin said slowly.
That was close enough to the truth. Mr. Hauser stayed quiet, and Robin appreciated that.
“I thought it would go away.”
It hadn’t.
“I thought maybe I was still sick, or tired, or I don’t know. But it keeps getting worse. Or maybe not worse.”
She frowned. That wasn’t right either, because some things were getting easier. She could control the sticking better. Could sometimes remember to be careful with her strength. The webs barely frightened her anymore.
“I’m getting used to it,” Robin admitted.
Mr. Hauser tilted his head. “Used to what?”
Robin almost laughed. Everything and yet nothing she could actually tell him.
“Being different.”
Mr. Hauser watched her as Robin leaned back in the chair and stared toward the ceiling.
“I feel like there’s this whole other version of me suddenly sitting there. And she can do things I couldn’t do before.”
Very true.
“She’s… I don’t know. Better, maybe? Or not? I’m yet to establish that.”
Stronger, faster, stickier.
“She feels like someone I don’t know yet.”
Mr. Hauser’s expression softened.
Robin swallowed.
“And I don’t know if I want to know her.”
That was probably the closest she could ever get to saying it out loud. Because that was the problem. The spider happened a little over a month ago. It had been dead in seconds after it bit her. Whatever it had done was done.
The problem was that Robin had spent the last month finding pieces of someone new. Someone who could climb walls. Someone who could hear across buildings. Someone who could accidentally bruise another person with what felt like a normal throw.
Someone who had spent multiple evenings secretly testing white strands from her wrists and discovered they could hold her entire weight without an issue, and that was so terrific and so terrifying at the same time.
Robin had tested them first from barely a foot off the floor. Then higher. Then from the ceiling. She had pulled on them with both hands, hung from them, wrapped them around furniture, and even tried to see how much weight they could support before giving out.
She still hadn’t found the limit. The strands just never snapped. Not once.
And eventually, because Robin’s brain was determined to make everything worse, another thought had appeared.
Swinging around on them.
At first it had been stupid. Just one of those random ideas that entered her head and should have immediately left again.
Except that one didn’t. She kept thinking about it, obsessed over it.
A strand attached high enough, her weight underneath it, momentum carrying her forward. Release at the right point, fire another one, repeat. It wasn’t flying exactly, but it was probably the closest she was ever going to get. It meant not touching the ground at all if she got good enough.
Just Robin moving through the air because she could. Because her body could. Because of the thing she had spent the last month wishing had never happened to her. And that was where it became frightening for an entirely different reason.
Robin wanted to do it. She really, really wanted to do it. But the thought of standing somewhere high enough to try made her stomach turn. She had never liked heights. At least she was pretty sure she hadn’t. That opinion had become slightly harder to defend after she started climbing onto the side of her house just because it was quieter up there, or jumping from her bedroom window without giving the landing much thought.
But swinging was different. Swinging meant trusting the webs. Trusting her body. Trusting all of this. It meant stepping somewhere there was nothing underneath her and believing that the new Robin would somehow know what to do.
That part scared her more than the height. Because if she did it and loved it, then what? What happened if there were parts of this she didn’t want to get rid of? What happened if being different wasn’t entirely terrible?
Robin had spent a month wanting her old life back.
Swinging felt dangerously close to admitting she might want something from the new one too. And maybe that was why she kept thinking about it. Maybe she needed one thing that wasn’t a broken door or a headache or another meal she couldn’t afford to keep eating.
One thing that felt good. There had to be at least one thing that could be hers and hers alone. Something that belonged to her.
“I think there’s a new Robin out there,” she said, quieter now. “The problem is, the old Robin is too scared to meet her.”
Mr. Hauser was quiet for a moment.
Robin immediately regretted saying any of that.
Great. Fantastic. Now her favorite teacher thought she had finally lost whatever remained of her mind. Maybe he was trying to figure out whether this conversation required a guidance counselor or somebody with one of those nice white jackets that tied in the back.
Instead, Mr. Hauser leaned back slightly. “Maybe you should.”
“Maybe I should what?” Robin frowned.
“Meet her.”
Oh.
Robin looked away. “That’s easy for you to say.”
“I didn’t say it would be easy.”
“Well, good, because it isn’t.”
“I gathered that,” Mr. Hauser said slowly. “But what do you have to lose?”
Robin picked at the corner of the sandwich wrapper again. “What if I don’t like her?”
Mr. Hauser considered that for a moment, then shrugged. “Then you don’t.”
Robin looked at him. That wasn’t particularly inspiring.
He shrugged again. “What do you want me to tell you? That every change is good and you’re going to wake up tomorrow completely comfortable with yourself?”
“I mean, that would be nice.”
“It would also be a lie.”
“Right. Forgot you were a terrible motivational speaker.”
“I teach English in Hawkins, Indiana. Inspirational speeches aren’t included in my contract.”
That got a quiet laugh out of her. Mr. Hauser smiled, but only for a second. “Change is frightening, Robin. Especially when you didn’t ask for it.”
Well…There was something he had absolutely no idea how correct he was about.
“But frightening doesn’t necessarily mean bad,” he continued. “And different doesn’t necessarily mean worse.”
Robin glanced down at the broken piece of chair sitting on his desk.
That part was highly debatable.
Mr. Hauser followed her eyes. “You said there’s a new Robin out there.”
“Unfortunately.”
“And you already know she’s there.”
Robin frowned slightly.
“So?”
“So maybe you’ve already done most of the difficult part.”
That made her look at him. Mr. Hauser leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.
“Think about it. You know something has changed. You’ve acknowledged it. You’re curious enough about who you’re becoming that you’re sitting here talking to me about it, even if you’re doing everything possible to avoid telling me what actually happened.”
Robin went very still, but Mr. Hauser raised a hand before she could start panicking.
“I’m not asking.”
Okay, good. She relaxed slightly.
“If there’s something you need help with, I want you to tell me,” he continued. “And I still think you should see a doctor.”
Absolutely fucking not.
“But if this is something you need to work through yourself first, then I can respect that too. As long as you are safe.”
Robin stared at him. Adults weren’t usually supposed to say things like that. Usually they wanted answers immediately.
What happened?
Why?
Who was involved?
Tell me everything so I can decide what you should do about it.
Mr. Hauser, on the other hand, waited. He was willing to wait for her and be there to catch her if she needed to.
Robin swallowed. “So what am I supposed to do?”
“I don’t know,” he shook his head.
“Seriously?” Robin just stared at him.
“What?”
“I came to you for wisdom.”
“I’m pretty certain you came here to eat your lunch.”
“We should have already established that’s the same thing.”
Mr. Hauser actually laughed this time before his expression became thoughtful again. “I don’t think anyone can tell you exactly what to do. Not if this really is about figuring out who you are now.”
Robin’s fingers went still against the wrapper.
“But I do think you’re making it harder on yourself by expecting to understand everything before you do anything.”
Okay, that one landed unpleasantly close. Because Robin had calculations hidden underneath her mattress, even though her mom hadn’t been in her room for years now, and she herself wasn’t sure who she was hiding them from. But there were many of them. Pages upon pages about everything she figured out might be involved in her plan. Weight, distance, angles, tension, momentum. How much force the strands could withstand. How far she might travel before needing another anchor point. She had spent hours trying to mathematically prove to herself that something she already knew she could probably do was safe.
It still hadn’t made her brave enough to try.
“You’re Robin Buckley,” Mr. Hauser continued. “You could spend the next five years thinking through every possible outcome and still invent six new ones on the way. So maybe the answer is to stop trying to know how it ends. You keep talking about this new Robin like she’s standing somewhere far away and you need to know exactly who she is before you go anywhere near her.”
Robin hadn’t thought about it like that.
“But you can’t,” Mr. Hauser said. “You can’t stand still and somehow discover who you’re going to become. Eventually you have to start moving forward.”
Robin stared at him. Move - it was such an easy word. So much harder in practice.
“And what if I move in the wrong direction?” She asked quietly.
“Then you turn around.”
“What if I screw it up?”
“You probably will.”
“Wow,” Robin blinked.
“Everyone does.”
“Still terrible at motivational speeches.”
“Let me finish speaking.”
Robin gestured for him to continue. Mr. Hauser thought for another second before speaking.
“You’re waiting for certainty. I understand why. Certainty feels safe.”
Robin almost laughed at that. That was exactly what she wanted. A guarantee. A piece of paper from the universe stating that if Robin Buckley attached one of those strands to a building and stepped into open air, it absolutely, definitely, unquestionably would not end with her becoming a red-stained pancake on the pavement.
Unfortunately, the universe had been very uncooperative about providing one.
“But you’re not going to get it,” Mr. Hauser said. “There is never a right time for anything. There are only possibilities open to be explored. You said you want to meet this new Robin.”
“I think I do.”
“Then meet her. Just one step. That’s all it takes.”
Robin frowned.
“One step?”
“The first one. Whatever that means for you.”
Oh.
Mr. Hauser couldn’t possibly know what that meant for her. Robin wasn’t entirely certain she knew either. Not until that exact moment.
“Do something the old Robin wouldn’t,” he added, and Robin was certain her heart had one hard beat. “Take one chance. Make one decision without already knowing exactly where it’s going to take you.”
Robin said nothing for a moment.
“And then?”
“And then you make another.”
“That’s your advice?”
“More or less.”
“That sounds incredibly irresponsible.”
“I’m an educator,” he tried to sound more serious suddenly. “Please don’t tell anyone, because my exact words can be interpreted in way too many different ways.”
Robin laughed. Mr. Hauser smiled too, but his voice remained gentle.
“You don’t have to change everything today, Robin. You don’t have to decide who this new version of you is supposed to be. You don’t even have to like her yet.”
Robin looked down at her hands.
“But if you really want to meet her, sooner or later you’re going to have to take that first step.”
She could almost imagine it. A strand attached somewhere high. Empty air underneath her. Her feet leaving solid ground.
Robin’s mouth had gone dry. Mr. Hauser had absolutely no idea what he was encouraging. Maybe that was for the best.
“And what happens after the first step?” she asked.
“I have no idea.”
Robin looked up as he shrugged.
“Maybe it works. Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe you discover you were completely wrong about what you wanted.”
“That sounds reassuring.”
“Or maybe you get to the other side and finally meet the person you’ve been so afraid of.”
Robin went quiet. The other side. Something about that lodged itself inside her head. What even was the other side in this plan?
Mr. Hauser continued.
“And if you fail, at least you moved.”
She frowned. That wasn’t really the outcome in her case. In her case, if she failed, then… Well, it wasn’t going to be pretty in any way.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“But what if moving was a mistake?”
“Then you would at least know,” he leaned back. “And that’s still more than you’d know if you spent the rest of your life standing in the same place because you were afraid to find out.”
Robin stared at him. That was horribly reasonable. She hated when he did that.
Mr. Hauser smiled.
“You don’t need to know where you’re going to land before you start, Robin.”
Her heart skipped. Okay, that was getting ridiculous now.
“You just need to be brave enough to take the first leap.”
Robin’s eyes narrowed slightly.
Leap.
Mr. Hauser clearly meant it metaphorically, obviously. There was absolutely no possible way he could mean anything else. Unless he could read minds. Who knew maybe she wasn’t the only freak around.
“The first leap,” she repeated.
“Whatever that looks like for you.”
Oh, Mr. Hauser, if only you knew.
Robin looked toward the classroom window.
For the first time in weeks, the thought of swinging didn’t immediately make her stomach turn. Well, it still did. But there was something else underneath it now.
Excitement. Maybe she didn’t need another test. Maybe she didn’t need another page of calculations. Maybe she didn’t need to know exactly what would happen.
She knew the strands could hold her. She knew her body had changed. And she knew she wanted to try. That had to count for something.
Robin looked back at Mr. Hauser.
“Okay.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Okay?”
“Okay.”
She took another bite of her sandwich, mostly because her stomach had started complaining again.
Mr. Hauser watched her suspiciously.
“I feel like I should clarify that I am not encouraging you to do anything dangerous.”
Robin nearly choked.
“Nope.”
“Robin.”
“Totally understood.”
“I mean it.”
“Nothing dangerous. Got it. And I mean, what dangerous thing can I do? Play my trumpet at night so the chief of police comes over to tell me to shut it, or he will arrest me?”
Mr. Hauser stared at her. Robin smiled innocently and took another bite. For some reason, he suddenly looked less reassured than he had before the conversation started.
Robin couldn’t imagine why.
She already knew where she was going after school. She just needed somewhere tall enough.