Archive of Our Own

It's a videotape that changes Robin's life.

It's her turn to rewind all the tapes customers returned unwound, despite the passive-aggressive signs by the counter and printed on rental receipts, a task she cherishes. A chance to be alone in the rewind cave next to the manager's office, Marty in the front of the store dealing with all the customers, just her, the fuzzy whine of the VCR on the table and the security camera feed on the tiny TV next to it, forever taping over the single security tape they keep in its VCR.

As Robin puts her fourth copy of Romancing the Stone - this one so well-handled the text on the front is gone – into the VCR and hits rewind, she watches Marty wander around the store on the security feed. It's been dead all day, only the mountain of last night's returns and a few action hero cut-outs to keep them company. Marty is a nice enough guy, but he likes documentaries too much and he isn't Steve. If Steve was here, she'd probably leave the door to the backroom open so they could talk shit, but now it's shut tight, sealing Robin in her cozy little cave.

On the security TV, a shadow sweeps across the floor; the door opening. It's followed by the hump of two shadows. After a moment, two girls walk into frame. High school girls, maybe college. It's hard to tell. One with dark hair and one with blonde under a baseball cap, backs to the camera. Marty comes into frame too, nervously pawing at his Family Video vest.

Robin puts her head in her hand, not that interested in watching Marty strike out twice.

"Knock 'em dead, Marty," she mutters as he greets the girls, as Romancing the Stone whirs its way back to the beginning.

The girl with dark hair lifts her arm up, scratching her face or fixing her make-up. Marty, the weirdo, watches her do it, transfixed. Downright drooling. The girl must be drop-dead gorgeous for him to turn into a caveman in one second flat.

He lifts his hand to his mouth and Robin looks away, grossed out. Literally wiping the drool away; her esteem of Marty drops into the toilet. She turns to the old Terminator poster on the wall. It's slouchy from old tape and its occupation as a hiding spot for the cigarettes employees smoke to squeeze a few more minutes out of their breaks. The red corner of the package is visible through a tear forming in the paper. It's almost time for a new poster. Robin might suggest Nightmare on Elm Street. The red of the cigarette pack would blend in nicely with Freddy's sweater.

She looks back at the video feed. The dark-haired girl is facing the camera now. Between the cheap camera and tiny TV, it's hard to tell, but Robin can see she's pretty enough, arms full of video tapes, hair tucked behind her ears. Not pretty enough to stop Robin in her tracks, but Robin isn't a pig the way Marty is shaping up to be.

He's still there too, standing in the exact same spot, staring where the girls had been standing. He's crossed passed pervy into gross, sort of wrong. A nasty tingle goes down Robin's spine. She should get up and go out there, intervene on someone's behalf, but her thumb stays glued on the rewind button, her eyes on the screen.

The second girl, the blonde in the cap, comes into frame in front of Marty. She has a bunch of chips and candy with her. The dark-haired girl joins her. Between them, they jostle around their snacks and videos until the dark-haired girl can get a hand free. She raised it to point straight at the camera. The three of them, the girls somber and serious, and Marty, like a dog, look up at the camera. At Robin.

The tape thunks in the VCR, and Robin yelps. She pulls her finger off the rewind button and covers her mouth, even though the rewind room is at the back of the store and there's no way anyone up front heard her.

She half-stands and then sits again, helplessly looking at the TV. The girls are still in frame but Marty is gone. She jolts when she hears a sound, the EMPLOYEES ONLY door to the back hallway opening, Marty's sneakers on the tile as he walks past the bathroom, towards her hiding spot.

Robin doesn't have time to do anything; the door doesn't have a lock and both the door and the chair she's sitting on are too rickety to jam together. So, she's just sitting there, staring at the door with a fear she doesn't grasp when Marty opens it.

She's blinded by the light for a moment and all Marty is to her is a hulking monster outline like the ones she sees in her nightmares.

"What the hell?" she says. It comes out as a whisper.

Marty stares at her. He's standing up straight, but he seems so limp, spit bubbling at the corner of his mouth, hands flopped against his thighs, swaying gently in an imaginary wind.

"The tape," he mumbles. "I need the tape."

He lifts one of his hands to her and Robin recoils, shoulder bumping against the security TV.

"What are you talking about?" she whispers. "What's wrong with you? What's going on?"

"I need the tape," Marty mumbles. He leans forward, bending like seaweed in the sea toward her.

"Don't touch me," Robin says, suddenly on the edge of tears. The static from the TV screen tingles on her neck. She fumbles around on the table, unable to take her eyes off Marty to look at what she's touching. The table, the table, her empty bag of chips, the VCR. She finds the eject button by touch. Pushes it so hard the tape squeals as it emerges.

She holds it out to Marty, trembling.

"The tape," he mumbles.

Robin mashes the tape against his fingers. "Take the fucking tape."

Slowly his fingers grip the tape. His face doesn't register that he's received anything, still star-gazing straight through Robin. He drops his hand to his side and backs out of the room, hitting his shoulder on the doorframe. The same dead look on his face. It's all she can see until he finally turns around to go back through the EMPLOYEES ONLY door.

Robin snaps back to the security TV playing the horror movie she finds herself in. The girls are still in frame, bored-looking, not talking. The one with all the snacks juggles things around in her arms to scratch her nose.

Marty shambles back into frame with them. He holds out the tape to them, and the girl with the tapes takes it. The other girl finishes scratching her nose and then gestures off-screen. Marty ambles away again and Robin holds her breath tight.

He comes back with a plastic bag, stamped with FAMILY VIDEO over and over in red ink. Holds it open like a gentleman for the girls to dump everything into, save the tape Robin gave to Marty. One girl takes the bag and the other keeps the tape. She cracks the top like a bird of prey busting open some helpless creature, worming her fingers in to get at the tape inside. She rips it out, disemboweling the VHS, intestines of tape trailing as the girls leave the frame.

Robin can't take a breath until the shadow swoop of the door opening and closing, and then it comes out of her in a sob. On the screen, Marty is just standing there, staring in the girls' wake.

Robin puts her head in her hands, holding it there with her fingers in her hair. She tells herself she hadn't seen anything. No pretty girls, no tricks, no Marty looming over her like something from the Upside-Down. Nothing. It wasn't real.

She sobs again, the sound sliding down her baggy shirt collar to her chest, where it belongs. That isn't real either. She closes her eyes tighter, squeezing them until everything is static like the end of a tape, and when she opens them, the frame on the TV is empty. No girls, no Marty, just the dingy carpet at the front of the store.

Fear shakes her fiercely. What if they come back for Marty, do something to him? Make him do something to himself? She bolts up, sneakers squeaking on the hallway tile. Bursts through the EMPLOYEES ONLY door so hard it bounces off the wall, tapes on the shelves nearby shuddering.

Marty, standing behind the counter, turns around at the sound.

"Whoa," he says, making a face at her, "What's your deal?"

Robin stops in her tracks, slapping the rebounding door out of the way so she can see Marty clearly.

He looks totally normal, standing there in his dorky vest, about to lecture Robin about almost denting the wall for the hundredth time in his ongoing bid to be Assistant Manager. Regular dumb expression. He looks like Marty.

"You don't – what did they say to you?" Robin sputters.

Marty squints at Robin. "Who? There's no one here, Buckley. Store's been totally dead. Did you fall asleep back there again."

"No," Robin retorts automatically. "There was…" She glances around the store. There are enough tapes and snacks around you wouldn't know if a bunch of each went missing. Even the normal amount of dust is drifting peacefully through the air.

Marty puts a hand on his hip, a gesture he uses to seem more adult and promotable than the rest of them. "What are you talking about?"

Robin's eyes go hot and a mixture of fear and shame clots up her throat.

"Nothing," she says. "I'm…I'm going on break."

She leaves the Employees Only door wide open as she went back to the office. The Terminator poster sustains a deep wound as she yanks the cigarettes out from behind it.

The first cigarette she smokes in the alley burns her dry mouth, sour as shit on her tongue, but it gives her something to focus on for the two minutes it lasts. She lights a second cigarette right off the first, and smokes it just as fast. This one turns her jitters from adrenaline into ones from nicotine. Sweet, smoky relief.

The urge to act normal catches up with her as she contemplates smoking a third cigarette, along with a wave of nicotine-nausea. She decides against it, grinding the butt out on the wall and heading back to the rewind cave, stowing the cigarettes and re-taping up Arnold as best she can. There are a bunch of tapes waiting for her to rewind them, next to the empty Romancing the Stone case.

Robin collapses in the chair, closing her eyes. She finds the rewind button by touch and presses it. The VCR groans and clicks. Robin opens her eyes.

She pokes her finger at the VCR, lifting its door, knowledge dawning on her as she peers into its dark, empty mouth.

On the security screen, nothing special is happening. Everything special that had just happened is on the tape, the one tape they use for the security camera, looping over and over itself.

Robin hits eject on the security TV VCR so hard she knocks something off the back of the desk. When the VCR dutifully spits up its tape, a bit beat-up, no text on the front, she gasps.

It's as warm as a helpless little creature in her hand, smelling of hot plastic and secrets. Robin presses it to her forehead.

"Please," she whispers. "Please tell me you got all that."

*

She goes up front again, where Marty is, still Marty.

"Your turn to rewind," she says, hiking a thumb over her shoulder.

"Alright!" Marty pumps his fist – not very adult of him, and abandons her. When the EMPLOYEES ONLY door is safely shut behind him, Robin goes behind the counter, where she can see the door and all of the windows and sits on the stool behind the register. She sticks one hand under the counter, feeling around until she gets to the bat Steve brought in ages ago and stashed behind the half-finished candy and cheap books the staff hide there to entertain themselves. She wraps her hand around the smooth wood and straightens up to stand guard, the now-full case of Romancing the Stone jammed into the waistband of her jeans scraping her spine up.

*

At home, Robin watches the tape again with all the reverence and fear she'd had when she'd found the magnet from the strip club on the side of the highway, the one she'd hid between her mattress and the box spring and only looked at when her mom had left the house.

Lights off, kitchen chair under the front doorknob, on her knees on the threadbare carpet in front of the living room TV. The shadow of the door opening, the girls coming into frame. Marty joining them, ready to talk their ears about of documentaries. The girls not saying anything, not even looking at Marty when they...hypnotized him. One girl leaving. Coming back, with snacks. The moment they all made eye contact with Robin through the camera.

The hairs on her arms stand up. She's not there now, she tells herself. No one can get her. Marty hadn't gotten her. He'd only come for the tape, and he hadn't even gotten the right one.

This was the part she'd missed, when Marty had come into the back for the tape. On the TV, the dark-haired girl points to something out of frame, and they both smile. The dark-haired girl mimes shooting a gun, her forearm the long barrel like she was an action star. Out of the frame, there's a Rambo cut-out in the corner by the door; it scares the shit out of Robin each time she has to close by herself.

The girls gesture more, signs between them Robin can't decipher, until Marty returns with the plastic bag and the tape. This part again. The blonde ripping the guts out of the copy of Romancing the Stone Robin had surrendered, before everyone leaves the frame a final time. Robin in the back losing her mind.

She rewinds the tape and plays it again, shuffling so close to the TV she can hear the static on the screen, feel it fizzle against her face.

*

It takes her weeks to work up the nerve to do something about it. She paces around her room thinking about it, unable to look at the incriminating gap under her mattress where the tape is stowed or the TV the same way again. Any time it's her turn to do the rewinding, she lets Steve or Marty or Jennelle do it and stays up front stocking tapes. Watching. She stands in the same place it happened on the grubby carpet, sometimes playing Marty's part, trying to be him, sucked into a spell.

More often she stands with her back to the camera. The girl never said a word when she did it, just lifted her hand into the air, up to her face. But Robin know what the girl did with her hand at her face and ends up just pressing her cold fingers to her guilty-hot cheek, full of shame at how badly she yearns for the knowledge of what it was, what she did that gave her such power.

Steve is her friend, has driven her to school and saved her life, but he doesn't know anything. She opens her mouth a hundred times to say Let me tell you about this fucked-up crazy thing I saw to him while he's counting cash or mooning over Demi Moore but the words won't come. She might as well tell him about a bad dream.

One night, when Mom is working overnight and Robin's alone in the house, pacing the hallway between her bedroom and the living room, unable to get the tape and put it in the TV but also unable to leave it alone, she thinks she hears the sound of the VCR growling and nearly flies out of her skin. She bangs her elbow on the wall and yelps in pain and fear, skidding to the living room.

The TV is dark, no tape running in the VCR, no girls, no sound. Robin grinds her fingers into her eyes and goes to the kitchen. She dials the phone with shaking fingers, cramming herself into the nearest corner, back to the wall, to wait out the ringing.

"Hello," she says when one of the Wheelers picked up, trying not to sound like she's teetering on the edge of hysteria. "Is Nancy home?"

*

Nancy comes over early enough that the dawn is still grey and watery, Robin's mom's coffee cup still warm in the sink after her nightshift, the door to her bedroom freshly closed.

Robin meets Nancy at the door so she won't knock, the cold, dewy air freezing her toes on the step. Nancy waves at Robin as she closes her car door. She looks soft and tired in her jean shorts and big pink sweater, like she's just waking up from a sleepover, instead of hauling ass to Robin's house at daybreak.

It makes Robin feel even more insane than she already does. She shifts from foot-to-foot on the step and doesn't wave back.

"What did you tell them?" she asks as soon as Nancy reaches the bottom of the steps. "Your parents?"

Nancy rubs her eye. She doesn't have any mascara on but her eyelashes are still dark and thick.

"That you wanted to go to the mall in Indianapolis."

Robin scoffs. "I hate shopping malls."

Nancy rolls her tired eyes good-naturedly. "I know that. My parents don't."

"Mmm." Robin keeps shifting. The concrete is rough and freezing under her bare feet. She assumes that to Nancy she looks like shit. She didn't sleep at all last night, watching the clock in her room drag through the minutes, haunted by imaginary VCR noises.

Finally, Nancy puts her hand on the railing and her foot on the bottom step.

"Well," she says. "Are you going to invite me in?"

"Right," Robin says, shaking herself viciously. "Right, right. Come in."

*

After the tape finishes playing, Nancy puts her hands on either side of the TV like she wants to shake it and says, "I don't understand. Is there supposed to be sound?"

"No," Robin says, too loud. She puts her hand over her mouth, glancing down the hallway.

"What the hell, Robin?" Nancy whispers. Her thumb, resting on the ridge where the TV screen meets the casing, is turning white. "What the hell happened?"

Robin glances back at the hallway again, but no sign of Mom. Maybe she had a pillow over her head; sometimes she sleeps like that, like a cartoon character. She grabs Nancy's wrist. "C'mon."

She brings Nancy to her room, and is immediately crushed by embarrassment at the underwear on the threadbare carpet and the unmade bed Robin can barely stand to sleep in since the incident. It isn't neat and sweet like Nancy's pink bedroom.

But if she sees the dent in the wall from the doorknob or Robin's crooked Poltergeist poster, Nancy must not mind. She sits right down in the old kitchen chair with the short leg in front of Robin's desk and clasps her hands between her knees.

"What happened?" she asks. "Please tell me."

The relief that Nancy is ready to believe her is so heavy it makes Robin's knees weak. She nearly collapses onto the edge of the bed she hasn't made in a week and tells Nancy everything.

It comes out like a flood, words gushing and crashing into each other, snagging and tangling like sticks in the mud. She starts crying when she has to tell the part about Marty looking straight up into the camera. It still feels so real, she's right back there, in the video cave, not sitting on her own sunlit bed.

I don't know, she repeats – sobbing it – even as she tried to keep talking, even when there wasn't anything else to say.

She covers her face with her hands. "I don't know," she says into her own palms, shaking. "I don't know."

The mattress beside her depresses. Nancy's bare leg touches hers but before she can thrill in hot fear about it, Nancy wraps her arms around Robin and pulls her in.

"It's okay," Nancy murmurs into Robin's greasy hair. "It's okay. We'll find out, I promise."

Robin cries again, this time into Nancy's shoulder, until her eyes are dry and her lungs ache. Nancy doesn't say anything else, not about Robin's story or her soaked sweater, just holds onto Robin until she's finished.

Then she lowers Robin down onto the mattress, hauls Robin's legs around until Robin wriggles up to put her head on the pillow. She tucks Robin under the twist of the top sheet and blanket as best she can while Robin can't help at all, so exhausted she just lies there like a shipwreck on the beach.

She stays at least until Robin falls asleep, stroking Robin's hair and looking out the window at the sunshine, chewing on her lip.

*

Robin stumbles out of her room in the late afternoon. Four-thirty, she thinks blearily, looking at the clock by the kitchen, how did I go back in time? It was after six when Nancy got here.

Nancy's gone though, or hasn't arrived yet. Robin rubs her eyes as she walks down the hall. She slept so hard she didn't move, didn't dream. The last thing she remembers is Nancy's hand in her hair and the sun on Nancy's beautiful thinking face.

There's no sign of Nancy in the living room; the carpet is too threadbare to leave shoe or knee impressions. Just the VCR and the TV. Mom's there on the couch, watching the local news affiliate.

"Robin," she says, surprised. "Did you just get up?"

"Yeah," Robin croaks.

"Wow," Mom says faintly. She shakes her head at the TV. "Teenagers. Do you have to work today?"

Back to you, Susan, the TV says.

"No." Robin flops down next to her mom on the couch. The urge to curl into her mom and go back to sleep is strong. She ignores it, combing her hair back from her face, wiping at the old drool on her chin. "Do you?"

"For once, no," Mom says.

Thank you, Kevin, from the TV

Did you see Nancy? Robin wants to ask. Do you know what she did while I was sleeping? Did she hate my room? When did she leave?

"Can we have pasta for dinner?" Robin asks.

And now: the weather.

*

Robin doesn't hear from Nancy for long enough that she gets nervous, more nervous than she already is about Nancy. She phones the Wheeler house after a few days, but whoever answers says Nancy's out. Library or somethin'. Must be Mike who says that, but Robin isn't paying attention.

The next time she and Steve are working together, she asks, "Have you, uh...seen Nancy lately?" She scratches her cheek.

Steve's flipping through some body-building magazine he found under the counter. He never brings his own books or magazines in, just poaches from everyone else.

"She came in a couple of days ago," he says, puzzling over some over-tanned, greasy meathead with pecs the size of personal pizzas.

"Oh yeah?" She tries to sound cool and casual, but her heart is thumping in her chest.

Steve must be deaf to her heartbeat because he just says, "Yeah," and flips the magazine around so the centrefold tumbles free. His eyebrows jam together as he looks at it. "She didn't rent anything. Just snooped around. Spent way too long in Thrillers. Nancy stuff."

Robin looks over at the Thrillers section. The tapes, the dusty shelves, and then, above it, the camera, the black lens and the red recording dot.

*

Robin's lying on top of the bed she hasn't made in forever, trying to think about nothing but worrying about how quickly dawn is coming when something pitters against her window. Instantly her heart is squeezed with fear – those girls have found her – they knew about her all along, knew she was hiding like a rat in the office, that she gave them the wrong tape, that she's memorized their every move, flicked her fingers in the mirror and looked at her own eyes, waiting for the life to leave them. They know all about how much of a relief and a disappointment it is when she can't feel any magic when she does it.

She digs her fingers into her dirty sheets and slams her eyes shut like a child. Can't see me if I can't see you. Nevermind that she's still wearing yesterday's shirt and panties, ready to jump out of bed and pull on her jeans and run for it if she needs to, bra be damned. But she can't move now.

Still a coward, she thinks, flinching as something else tinkles against the glass. There's a pause where she doesn't breathe at all, but then something else taps the glass, steadier than a pebble, in a rhythm.

She opens her eyes just enough to see the window through her eyelashes. At the very bottom of the pane of glass a fingertip smudges, wavers, taps again. Tat-tat-tattattattat.

She's not so far gone for Nancy that she really recognizers a single finger, but there's something about the rhythm that has hope replacing suspicion. She slides off the bed ungracefully but quietly, crawling across the floor with her arm hair standing on edge, and peeks over the sill.

It's Nancy, balancing on one foot on a bucket so she can reach Robin's window, holding on with every finger except the one she's tapping on the glass with.

Robin! she mouths when she catches sight of Robin, the syllables dramatic and obvious. As if Robin wouldn't know her, hasn't been looking for her for days.

Robin slams the window open, not giving a single shit about the creak-crash of it, and reaches down into the clammy night for Nancy to pull her up and in. Nancy's not as graceful as she looks, and Robin is so tired her brain is melted marshmallow, so they over-balance and tumble down onto Robin's messy floor.

"Are you alright?" Robin blurts. In her panic, she paws at Nancy's arms, her shoulders, pushes the hair back from her pretty face even though it wasn't in any danger; she landed on top of Robin.

Nancy bugs her eyes out and looks at Robin's closed door.

"Shh!" she whisper-hisses. "Is your mom home?"

Robin freezes, clutching Nancy's t-shirt sleeves again. Suddenly it feels like Nancy weighs a thousand pounds, all of it pressing against the length of Robin's body. The insides of her knees are warm from Nancy's hips. Her panties and Nancy's shorts are the only things keeping them from touching there.

They wait in silence, pinned in their incriminating tangle on the floor, until Robin remembers.

"No," she whispers, heart dropping, blood boiling in her cheeks.

"Oh," Nancy replies, levering herself off Robin's body but still kneeling between her knees. She scratches her cheek pink and then gets up. She offers Robin a hand but Robin's too embarrassed to take it. Instead, she wiggles around on the ground like a worm until she can drag herself onto her bed.

Tugging the hem of her shirt down as far as it will go, which isn't far enough, she cloaks herself in indignancy when she asks, "Where have you been?"

Nancy rubs her cheek again and then shakes herself.

"Research," she says. "Trying to figure this thing out."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Robin asks. "I could help. I want to help."

"I went to the video store."

Robin shakes her head. "I wasn't there. Steve told me about it."

It sounds so pathetic and yearning to her ears, she can't imagine how to sounds to Nancy.

Nancy doesn't answer for way too long, looking everywhere but at Robin. At the clothes spilling out of Robin's closet onto the floor, at her messy, unslept-in bed, at the papers on the desk, Robin's shameful, shame-filled, abandoned attempts at a diary, a place to make sense of this. Everything bathed in the beautiful gold dawn light. Robin could cry again.

Signing, Nancy sits next to Robin on the bed. She doesn't keep a plausible distance, just plunks down close enough that her warm thigh is against Robin's exposed, goosefleshy one. She plays with her own fingers, hunching over.

"You were so upset," she admits, whispering even though she knows Robin's mom isn't home. "I didn't want to hurt you by making you deal with it anymore."

Robin covers her face with her hands, only avoiding flinging herself back onto her bed by the thread of her panties.

"Nancy," she groans, the word moist in her palms. Her nipples tingle at the sound, even though she's not, they're not -

"I am dealing with it," she says, opening her hands to let the words out. Not well, she thinks. "I can't stop dealing with it. I haven't slept in weeks."

"Oh," Nancy says. She rubs Robin's back and Robin bows her shoulders to feel it more, to hide her hard nipples. "Really? Robin, I - "

"I'm fine," Robin says. Liar liar, if you had pants on they're be ashes. "Have you found anything?"

"I think they're..." Nancy pauses for long enough that Robin's stomach churns. "Stealing."

Robin takes her hands off her face so she can see the screwed-up look on Nancy's face. "Stealing? Stealing what?"

Still grimacing, Nancy pushes a finger against the edge of her eyebrow. "Nothing special, as far as I can tell. Food, liquor," she cuts her eyes to Robin, "video tapes."

"What?" Robin says. It's so dumb she has to stand up, forgetting her t-shirt and panties. "They're just...stealing junk? They can, they can...do that, and they're just doing dumb teenage shit?"

Nancy holds up her hands, empty of any better explanation.

*

If this wasn't real, if it was a movie, they'd have a drink. Something gross and adult. Scotch probably, in heavy, real, glass-glasses.

But this is real and Robin's exhausted and there's nothing so fancy as Scotch in the house, so they go to the kitchen and Nancy makes toast while Robin sits at the kitchen table with her head in her hands, still in her t-shirt and underwear. She's so tired she almost falls asleep there, comforted by the sounds of someone taking care of her: the whoosh and jangle of every single cupboard and drawer being opened, the hum of the old toaster, the tap of a plastic cup on the countertop, the scrape of a butter knife on bread.

"Here," Nancy says finally. Robin lifts her head out of her hands to see Nancy in front of her looking like a dream: hair up in a ponytail, baggy sleeves pushed to her elbows, plate of toast in one hand, cup of apple juice in the other.

"I could kiss you," Robin says accidentally.

Nancy rolls her eyes, but when she sits across from Robin and puts the breakfast down, she's biting her lip.

Robin bites into the toast and instantly feels better. It's just toast, a bit burnt from their bad toaster and covered in melted margarine, but she appreciates it so much it's like a magic potion, curing her ills. Nancy doesn't say anything while Robin eats, but she takes a sip from the cup before Robin can get to it. She licks apple juice off her lips and hands the cup straight to Robin.

"Thanks," Robin says, wetting her toast-dry throat. Nancy's mouth would taste like this, her brain offers as she swallows. She coughs harshly, covering her mouth with her wrist.

"Wrong pipe," she croaks and presses her knees together under the table, sealing her bare thighs together, as if that will stop any further thoughts. She crams another bite of toast in her mouth, chewing it brutally.

"How did you find them?" she asks, still chewing.

"I followed them."

"What!" Robin coughs again, crumbs to blame this time, not her feelings. "From where?"

"The gas station on Larch. Behind the school."

"How did you know they'd be there?"

Nancy shrugs, hunching her shoulders. It's unlike her, normally she's proud of her genius when it hits her. "It's near the video store. I heard that…it seemed like the place."

Robin raises her eyebrows, toast crust in her hand. "It just seemed right? That's it? No mountain of research, no hours in the library?"

The discomfort disappears. Nancy makes her ugh face instead. "I tried that first. Obviously. But there's not really anything like this when you look up hypnosis."

Robin abandons her chewed up toast crust, dusting her hands off. "Did you try witches."

"Robin."

"Come on! Like it's not a valid guess."

"Would you call Carrie a witch?" Nancy retorts.

Robin's mouth drops open. "Since when have you seen Carrie?"

Nancy flushes like a teacher caught her with a cigarette in the bathroom. "You...you told me it was good."

"And you watched it?" For a moment, Robin forgets about all the shit, the sleepless nights and jumpiness and tapes. She's just so delighted that Nancy listened to her when it didn't involve a life or death decision. "What did you think?"

"It was...it was sad," Nancy says. "She just wanted to fit in. She didn't want to be different."

"Right," Robin agrees. "Just because she had one thing different about her doesn't mean she deserved to be tortured."

Nancy shakes her head sadly. "She wasn't a witch, Robin."

"I guess she wasn't." Robin leans over the table. "But these girls might be. Nancy, Nancy, you know I'm right. At least, we have to call them something." A nameless fear is a powerful one, able to fit in any space you give it. Robin understands what a witch is. The general store sells them as Halloween decorations. They're not so scary. Robin can handle a witch.

"Fine," Nancy says. "Witches."

"Perfect. Now how are we going to find these witches. Any more bright intuitions?"

Nancy looks at the table. "I have an idea where they might be next."

*

This is supposed to be a reconnaissance mission – they're wearing all-black, for god's sake – but Nancy is ruining it by refusing to see reason.

"You can mix Cherry Coke with milk," Robin hisses to her. "What's going to happen if you do, you get arrested?"

"Maybe," Nancy says, totally irrationally, so annoyed she's shaking her head hard enough to dislodge a couple of curls from her ponytail. "It's gross, Robin."

Robin leans closer, tapping her finger on the glass of the cold case they're standing in front of as she talks.

"Living is gross, Nancy." Tat-tat-tattattattat on the glass between Robin's finger and the 2% milk. "I'm saying we can do it. This is the whole point. We can do whatever we want—"

The bell above the door jingles, and they both spin around to catch three girls come in.

"Shit!" Robin whispers as Nancy yanks her behind the nearest rack of chips. They both crouch down automatically, as if it'll be some fucked-up monster abomination walking into the Gas N Go. Nancy even puts her finger over her lips as footsteps squeak across the linoleum. Thankfully, there's no cameras in this store to see them acting so foolish, teetering on the edge of blowing their cover. There's only a big funhouse mirror behind the counter catching them crouching.

The crowd of footsteps breaks into three, heading down different aisles. Two soft rubber slaps of sneakers, one heavier – boots, if Robin had to guess. The boots and one pair of the sneakers start coming down the aisles, one an aisle over, one in the aisle with them.

Robin makes a complicated hand gesture to try and convey all that, and also that it's stupid to be hiding behind potato chips in a convenience store in the first place, in all black, in fuckin' July. But Nancy has a nosy mom and younger siblings so she has ears like a bat and heard the boots and sneakers for herself, and she rolls her eyes at everything else Robin is trying to tell her. She makes an up-up gesture with her hands, then braces the gesture in the air. Slowly, cool.

They stand up as slowly and casually as they can while dressed in their recon outfits, not at all casually wide-eyed, Robin clutching one of Nancy's arms for dear life. Just two gals, Robin thinks hysterically, kneading Nancy's arm, looking for snacks. Totally normal, totally cool.

Just like they heard, it's two girls in the aisles and another one over by the Slush Puppie machine near the front. Exactly who they're looking for, but Robin's stomach still turns at the sight of them.

They look so normal. The girl in sneakers in their aisle has frizzy brown hair to her shoulders. Her sneakers used to be white, but now they're so scuffed they're grey. She's examining the shelf of crackers, toying with a box of Ritz. Across the shelf from her, in the next aisle over, is a girl with long red hair and a pale mouth. Robin can only see her face, but she must be the one in the boots.

Boots glances over at Robin and Nancy. She's got dark circles under her eyes, the kind Nancy gets when she stays up too late talking about things. She looks them over impassively, flicking her eyes down at their black sweaters and turtlenecks, a hint of a smile on the corner of her mouth. And then she looks away, down at the shelf in front of her. She starts picking things up, quick and precise, stuffing them into her half-unbuttoned flannel. Candy bars, boxes of Hot Tamales and Junior Mints disappearing into her shirt.

Across the shelves from her, Sneakers starts doing the same, picking up the Ritz, and then another box, stacking them under her arm before she makes her way to the chips, where Robin and Nancy are.

Robin stands up straight, grabbing the first bag of chips her hand lands on. Doritos. She waves them frantically at Nancy.

"L-look," she stutters. "We should get some. They're on sale for the 4th. Two-for-one. Cool, right…Laurie?"

No one's voice should wobble so much talking about potato chips, but panic is rising in Robin. They never discussed code names, but she had to say something. They can't just stand here and stare. Robin's already done that before, and if it didn't help at all then, then it won't help now.

Nancy's face immediately goes pissed-flat as she squints at the Doritos and at Robin's sweaty face.

Laurie? she mouths with distaste, but before she can say anything, Sneakers is right there beside them, looking straight at Robin.

She nods at the chips to say You're in my way, but Robin is frozen. The girl looks just like anybody. She could have been in Robin's English class, in band with her. She could have walked the stage at graduation in front of Robin and fit right in. But she didn't.

The chip bag crinkles in Robin's drenched hand but she doesn't move. Her legs are stiff. She can smell that the girl doesn't have deodorant on, see her nostrils flair in annoyance at Robin still in her way.

Nancy tugs on Robin's sleeve right as Sneakers lifts her free hand. She holds two fingers up in a closed peace sign and ticks them twice at Robin.

It's like being slapped with a giant hand, a wailing wind, a crashing wave. Robin slams into the fridge behind her with a shuddering thud. Nancy comes with her, fingers tight on Robin's sleeve. A gaspy yelp comes out of Robin's mouth. Maybe that's what gets the clerk at the front to finally look up from his newspaper.

He takes in the scene: two girls in the aisles ransacking all the candy and chips like it's their jobs and two girls in spy-black up against the cold case like they're pinned there.

"What are you up to?" he calls just as the third girl, a blonde with glasses, holding the biggest Slush Puppie Robin's ever seen, steps in front of the counter. She's got on sneakers too. Blue ones.

"I see you. Tell your friends they have to pay for all that," he says as she sets her giant cup on the counter and brings her hand to her face. She must be staring at him because his eyes flick in discomfort from her to her friends and back to her. He frowns.

"You deaf?" he asks, "because I said – nhn."

His mouth drops open and his eyes go dull. Not dead, but it's like the guy's soul just took off on vacation. He lifts his hand to his face, index finger curled like a hook. He presses his hand to the side of his mouth, dragging his hooked finger down. His lips smear open, showing his teeth, his limp tongue. He does it on the other side of his mouth and then back, again and again, staring vacantly at the girl in front of him.

Robin looks at the mirror behind the clerk. In its fisheye curve she can see Slush Puppie's face. Disdainful eyes behind her glasses, her hooked finger rubbing her blue lips, a snarl on her mouth and in her eyes.

A chill races down Robin's spine, through her arms. She grabs Nancy's wrist, awed and scared shitless. She knew it was like this, this isn't even her first time seeing it, but it's still a nightmare to witness.

Rustling breaks her out of her sweaty reverie. It's Boots and Sneakers, filling their pockets and shirts with candy and snacks again, double-time. When they've got all they can handle, they make their way to the front of the store where Slush Puppie has stopped rubbing her mouth in order to take the wad of cash the clerk is handing her. His hand hangs in the air after Slush Puppie's got the money and her cup.

Sneakers stares him down for a moment, and then she looks back at Robin and Nancy. Smiling, she holds a finger up to her mouth. Shh.

The bell dings as the three girls leave the store. It breaks the spell. Robin slumps on the glass, dropped by the giant hand holding her there. Nancy leans on her, warm against Robin's adrenaline chill. Outside, a car starts.

Nancy jerks to her feet, stumbling up the aisle Boots was just in.

"Wait," Robin croaks, weak-kneed but trying to keep up. They have a mission. She takes Sneaker's aisle, kicking aside a cracker box Sneakers dropped, and meets Nancy at the front of the store, near the counter. The clerk makes a jerky here gesture with his empty hand. His eyes are half-closed and he's drooling a wet bib onto his shirt.

Robin shivers as she runs by, following in Nancy's footsteps. They burst through the door, the bell dinging hectically, as a car pulls out of the parking lot.

"Wait!" Robin yells as the car drives by, all the windows down so Robin can meet Boots' pale eyes as the girls get away. "Just talk to us!"

*

"We can't go!"

"We'll just follow them for a while." Nancy's knuckles are tense on the steering wheel and she's leaned forward like an old lady, peering at the rapidly-disappearing taillights of the girls' getaway car.

"Nancy, that girl almost killed me - killed us - with two fingers. Two! And she didn't even have her nails painted or anything." Nancy's not driving fast, barely creeping out of the parking lot as they argue, but Robin's holding the doorhandle even harder than Nancy's holding the steering wheel. Her palm is sweating, the metal of the handle hot in her freezing hand. Sneakers didn't even have to catch her breath after she threw them against the freezer. Two fingers. Jesus.

Nancy pauses at the mouth of the parking lot, left blinker ticking like a clock, each tick a moment less with the girls' car in sight. There's no knowing when they'll see those girls again, if they lose them now.

Robin doesn't even want to look at the car, in case they can do long distance curses. She doesn't think so, there's something about the eye contact, but she doesn't know. She doesn't know anything. She looks over her shoulder, at the bright lights of the Gas N Go. She can't see the clerk moving around inside. Is it worse if he's coming around, seeing the mess the girls left in the aisles, thinking about calling the police while they idle here like idiots, or is it worse if he's still standing there, slack as an empty sack, waiting for someone else to walk in and find him.

"Nancy," Robin yelps. "We can't stay here! Someone's gonna call someone."

"Well!" Nancy throws up her hands, her fingers curled into helpless claws without the stability of the steering wheel. "You don't want me to follow them! Where are we supposed to go?!"

"I-I-I!" The door handle rattles under Robin's hand. She's freaking out, she knows that, can hear how her voice sounds like Steve's when he's the one flipping out about something. "I don't know! Let's just go home! I want to go home!"

In the distance, the girls' car turns off the road and is gone. No one should know they were here, but Robin and Nancy do.

As the light winks out of sight, Nancy slams her hands down on the steering wheel. She flicks off the blinker, shaking her head in frustration.

"We don't know what we're doing," Robin says meekly, already sorry for yelling. "We need to make a plan. My mom's going on a trip. We have time to figure it out."

It's both true, and a peace offering to Nancy, who has plans in her bones. What they saw here tonight has Robin believing in the need for a plan. She'd never forgive herself if Nancy got hurt in there.

Nancy gives her a cold look, but she knows Robin is right. She sets her mouth into a calculating thinness and flicks the other blinker, the right one, the one that will take them home.

*

Mom's home and awake when Robin unlocks the door, both a surprise. She's in her pajamas, watching TV on their tiny TV, splashed in flickering light, the sound up too high.

"Mom," Robin says, unable to keep the adrenaline burn-out wobble out of her voice. Any more than two fingers and maybe Robin wouldn't be seeing her mom right now.

"Hi, honey," her mom says. She turns the volume down a few notches, but only glances at Robin. Robin must look okay, because she doesn't seem concerned. "What were you doing?"

Robin puts her keys in the dish by the door, trying to pull her stomach up from her feet and fan back the heat behind her eyes. She takes a breath. It's loud, echoing in her head. The urge to scream and cry and tell her mom everything rises up her throat like puke.

"I was just out with my friend Nancy," she says slowly, not trusting herself to speak. She faces the closet to take her shoes off, grateful to put her back to the TV's light.

"You two do anything fun?" Mom asks, turning the TV volume back up a notch.

Robin shakes her head even though she's sure her mom's not looking at her.

"Just went to get snacks," she mumbles, rubbing her sleeve over her damp face.

*

She paces around in her room in the dark for a while, too keyed up to sleep, even though exhaustion is weighing on her brain. Finally, when she's worn her socks warm on the carpet, the TV shuts off and the floor creaks as Mom goes to bed. Robin stops pacing and holds her breath as Mom comes down the hall. She's off the edge, but she can't face her mom right now. It's too much, too big, too unbelievable.

Luckily, Mom doesn't even slow down at Robin's door. She probably has work early tomorrow and nothing totally nuts happened to her tonight.

Robin inhales when Mom's door closes, but she doesn't move until she hears the double creak of Mom getting into bed and rolling over.

She flicks on the dusty lamp she has on her bedside. The light flickers a few times but then holds.

Robin paces another lap from the window to the door, past the mirror she has up on the wall. Her face is blotchy and her eyes are still wild. She would have seemed crazy if she said anything to her mom, babbling about witches who love stealing candy and videotapes.

"Fuck," Robin whispers, turning away. She lifts her hands to her face, to cover it, and her shoulders ache. She drops her hands, hesitantly picking up the hem of her sneaky black shirt.

It hurts to pull it up, especially all the way to her neck, and it even hurts a little to turn her head to see herself in the mirror, see the black-purple landscape of bruising between her bra straps, proof that it was all real.

*

In the sleepless, blurry morning, Robin calls Nancy.

"How did you know?" she asks as soon as Nancy picks up. She knows it's Nancy by the way she inhales before she says Hello. Knew it would be her before the call connected, somehow.

Nancy's inhale stifles into a sigh.

"Know what?" she asks in a quiet, stiff voice.

"You knew," Robin says. "You didn't even hesitate. You knew they'd be there. How?"

Silence.

Robin digs two fingertips into the corners of her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose. Her knees are shaking and her armpits are sweaty.

"Nancy, you have to tell me. You have to fucking tell me how you knew!"

"Robin - "

"Just fucking tell me!" Robin yells. She sounds so ugly, standing in the sun-warm kitchen in her underwear, bruises throbbing on her back. It's all so ugly.

"I heard them," Nancy says, and hangs up on her.

*

She doesn't call Nancy again, and Nancy doesn't call her back. She goes back to bed, entombs herself in blankets against the sun, and covers her face with her hands. She sleeps or something like it until it's dark outside. Mom is watching TV when Robin finally gets up and dressed. Robin watches with her. Some rerun. Then the news, where no one says anything about witches. A sitcom with a grating laugh track after that. Another episode, or a different show. The set looks the same. Same white stairs in the background.

At some point, Mom goes to bed, balancing the remote on Robin's thigh. "Don't stay up too late," she says, patting Robin on the shoulder. Robin mouths something back, but it's lost in the laugh track.

She stays up until the channel goes off, playing static instead. Then she turns the TV off.

*

She gets up. She goes to work. Sits at the counter with her hand under the counter clutching the baseball bat. When it's her turn to rewind tapes in the back, she smokes inside and pushes the rewind button so hard her thumb aches. When people speak to her she answers, but she doesn't hear what she says. Her ears are full of static.

The days loop like that, playing and then rewinding. The bruises on her back turn brown, then green. Her mom leaves on her trip. Robin's in charge. She doesn't call Nancy.

At the video store, Steve gushes about some movie, brings the tape to the counter like he's a customer, tells Robin he's renting it for her.

"/-/-/-/-," she says, taking her hand off the baseball bat to grab the movie. She puts it under the counter, slides her hand from it back onto the grip of the bat.

"Tell me what you think." Steve smiles at her.

"/-/-," she says.

*

The phone rings in the morning. She answers it, whispering /-/-/-/.

"Hello? Hey, uh, is this Robin?"

"Yes," she gets out. Her brain aches, between the eyes. Too many feelings, too many tears.

"It's Mike."

It takes Robin a second to connect the name to the voice to the person. She clears her throat. "Uh, hi?"

Mike clears his throat too. "Hi. Uh, sorry to bother you, but is Nancy at your house?"

Cold grips Robin. She looks around reflexively. Coffee cup on the counter, old magazine in the basket. Dust motes floating in the sunlight.

"No."

"Oh," Mike says, and makes a contemplative sucking sound with his mouth.

"Is she supposed to be?" Robin asks. "Is something going on?" She's been so turned-around by the witches and Nancy she hasn't considered the Upside-Down or any other shit they have to deal with.

"No," Mike says slowly. "I just...haven't seen her around much. She's been...with you, so I thought maybe...she would...be there." He pauses, sniffs. "I don't care. Just...my mom's asking."

"I'm not sure where she is," Robin says. "Probably at the library or something." She tries to smile. "Nancy stuff."

"Yeah," Mike says, like he's convincing himself. "Nancy stuff."

*

The phone rings as Robin's drying her dinner plate, surprising her into nearly dropping it. It hasn't rang in days, since Mike called. This morning, the skin between Robin's shoulder blades was a putrid yellow-green and Robin had forced a smile at herself in the mirror.

She wipes her wet hands on her thighs and picks up the receiver.

"Hello?"

Silence at the other end.

"Hello?" She taps her thumbnail on the plastic. The phone is second-hand. Sometimes it connects badly.

An inhale, so soft Robin barely hears it, but feels it crystal clear in her throat, her nipples, the prickles at the back of her neck.

"Nancy?" She clutches the receiver, cups it with her other hand. "Nancy, are you okay? Where are you?"

A sigh, almost a sob.

"Nancy, please," Robin says, driven to tears by the ghost of Nancy's voice. "I'm sorry," she blurts. "I shouldn't have yelled. I was just so fucked up about it and scared. It wasn't your fault."

Silence, so loud and big it threatens to crush Robin's heart.

"Nancy..." Her voice wobbles pathetically. She could barely handle the witches. She can't take Nancy hating her and humiliating her on top of it. If Nancy never speaks to her again...

The tears are hot on the tops of her cheeks when the tapping comes through. Tat-tat-tattattattat, fast, to the point. Like a single finger on windowglass.

"I don't get it," Robin sobs, head hung low.

Tat-tat-tattattattat, again. Then a slower, thicker sound, thumping. An airy, frustrated grunt. Then Nancy hangs up on her.

The dial tone is what really gets Robin crying. She presses her forehead to the wall next to the phone and cries, still holding onto it, onto Nancy, until the operator comes on, tells her hang up and try again.

*

She runs. Away from the dangling phone and the black TV and her unmade bed. Her body can't stay there for a moment longer, so she runs, sneakers pounding on the grass, pavement, and dirt, blinded by tears. In front of her is a dark smudge, no stars, no lights, no road.

It's a long way to the Wheeler house. Nancy lives on the other side of town, the good side, where good, normal girls live. Not different, fucked-up girls like Robin. It'd take Robin forever to get there, even if she runs.

She runs, gasping, pawing at her face, but the tears keep coming, chilling her cheeks, dripping down her neck. In the distance: a blur of lights. The gas station, or something.

Eventually, her breath runs out, her lungs on fire, legs sore from slipping on the gravel on the side of the road. She bends double, anchors herself on her knees. Her brain is swimming. The lights in front of her bounce and glow, climbing up the road, her sneakers, over her hands on her knees, dazzling her when she glances up. It's like a million stars through her tears. The car stops. Robin doesn't move, blinded. Someone gets out of the car, silhouette sharp against the blaze.

"Nancy?" Robin croaks, and the shadow rushes her, envelops her in its arms. It is Nancy. Robin knows her perfume, faded to the smell of her skin. They hug each other tightly and Nancy says something but Robin's heart is beating too fast, her breathing too loud, for her to hear it. She only feels Nancy's lips moving against her neck, forming words.

*

Nancy gets her into the car, buckles her in like she's an overtired kid, and starts driving without ever saying where she's going. She holds Robin's hand between their seats though, so Robin can live with the silence. She rests her heavy head on the window and looks out at the stars. They get brighter as Nancy drives, leaving Hawkins' lights behind them. Eventually leaves eclipse the stars as Nancy turns off the asphalt road onto a dirt one. Robin looks across her shoulder at Nancy, but Nancy doesn't look back, concentrating out the windshield as she drives one-handed. She squeezes back when Robin squeezes her hand though.

Even the trees clear off after a few minutes, and the car's headlights catch on the windows of a little cabin. It looks like Eleven's hideout, sort of, although every cabin now looks like Eleven's cabin to Robin. Nancy parks the car and turns it off, sealing the cabin in darkness again.

Robin sits up, rubs her crusty eyes with her free hand. "Woods around here seem to be full of places like this."

She senses Nancy shrug, but Nancy doesn't say anything, just squeezes Robin's hand one more time before she lets go so they can get out of the car.

Robin follows Nancy up the steps to the cabin. They must be a ways from town, she thinks as Nancy digs in a pocket for keys. It's so quiet, the night so dark, the stars so bright. It's even darker inside the cabin when Nancy guides her over the bump of the doorframe, until Nancy produces a flashlight from somewhere and turns it on. It shows Robin half a woodstove, wood stacked next to it and the ratty arm of a green couch, before Nancy guides the light away to a table. On it are a trio of white candles, a book of matches, a school notebook, and a pen.

Nancy gives the flashlight to Robin, warm from her palm, and goes to light the candles. She places them around the cabin: on near the sink on the counter, one on a table near the couch. The third she leaves on the table. The circles of light cast by the candles overlap enough to light the room, reveal it to Robin. There's a double bed in the far corner, the woodstove in the middle of that wall, the couch in the opposite corner. A counter near the door, cupboards above and below, and a sink with a single plate in it. The table beside Robin, with two chairs. Behind it on the wall is a cracked open door, candlelight finding the white linoleum and ceramic toilet of a bathroom.

"Cozy," Robin says. She clicks the flashlight off, and then nervously, back on again. "What are we doing here?"

Nancy sighs. Robin finally gets a good look at her. She's wearing jeans and a big sweater under her windbreaker. Hair abnormally flat, no makeup on to hide her dark circles and dry lips. She bites her lip and looks at Robin with dark, sad eyes.

"You could have..." Robin starts, and then stops, when her throat gets tight. She clears it forcefully, smoothing the tears down with a joke. "If you wanted to have a sleepover, you could have just asked."

Nancy smiles, but her eyes don't get any less dark and sad. She comes to Robin, takes the sweaty flashlight from her and turns it off. She takes Robin's hand again, mindless of the clamminess, and guides her to the table, pressing her gently into one of the chairs. She sits across from Robin, tall white candle between them like they're on a fancy date, and opens the notebook to a clean page. She writes in it for a second before turning it around to face Robin.

I found the witches, the page says, in Nancy's neat, girlish, practiced writing.

"No," Robin says, as the chill of understanding creeps in, freezing the sweat on her skin, closing her throat again. She's sitting down, but she has to hold onto the table edge for balance.

"Why?" she asks. "Why, why, why?"

Nancy takes the page back, writes on it and turns it back to Robin to say: I needed to know. I had to. You don't understand

Robin's mouth trembles, filling with screams. "You went without me? I thought we were…"

Nancy doesn't look at her, writing on the page between them without turning it towards herself. Her penmanship suffers for it, shaky and childish now, but even though she wishes she couldn't, Robin can still read it.

ʎɹɹos ɯ,ᴉ

*

Robin makes Nancy tell her, from the moment they last saw each other until now. She can barely wait for Nancy to finish writing something before she yanks the page out from under the pen so she can read it. It's a mess; there's so much Nancy says - writes - that she can't remember, it just happened, she doesn't know, she was just there. Robin makes her go back over things, and then immediately skip ahead with another question. The hundredth time Robin reads I don't know, she shoots up from her chair, rattling the table, making the candle wobble dangerously. Nancy grabs for it, still holding the pen, and glares at Robin, but Robin doesn't care.

"I don't fucking believe you," she says, way too loud. Nancy flinches and lowers her pen to the paper, but before she can say anything, Robin snatches the pen out of her hand. "No!" she shouts. "Stop fucking around, Nancy! This isn't funny! Your family is looking for you and all you're doing is pretending like you figured it all out." Robin spins around, throws the pen across the room; it clatters under the bed. Robin turns back around and keeps going, really yelling now. If anyone was close to this cabin, they'd hear her. "Is all this shit so you can laugh at me? Stupid, crazy Robin, thinks witches are real? Thought she saw something on a tape but she's really just nuts? You can't even make up an interesting story for this shit! It's all I don't know or I just knew. Bullshit. Nothing happened to you and you're not a fucking witch!" She leans over the table. "Say something, Nancy! Fucking say something! Say something, say something, say -"

Nancy jerks her index finger into a hook next to her lips and it's like the hook spears into Robin's tongue, trapping it in place. Nancy drags the hook down to her chin, and it's like the hook sinks into Robin's brain. Every thought she has blasts away under a jet-engine tat-tat-tattattattat. Nancy makes the motion on the other side of her mouth, and Robin, without meaning to or wanting to, crooks her finger in the same gesture and clumsily mimics it. Together they hook the sides of their mouths, and every time, Robin feels less and less angry, less worried, less like Robin. Everything fades except for Nancy's wide, horrorstruck eyes.

*

The light is what wakes Robin. It's the warm pink of the inside of her eyelids, fluttering with darkness. She opens her eyes and it's blinding, makes her blink a bunch. She thinks it's headlights at first for some reason, until the shape resolves into something smaller: the porchlight in front of her front door. She's at the bottom of the steps, looking up at it.

She sways on her feet, looking around in a daze. It's nighttime, late night when the sky is darkest, and she's cold. The skin on her face is clammy, maybe from dew. She looks down to see her hand outstretched to the door, stiffly holding her keys, the one for the house primed for the lock even though she's not even close to it. She feels like a doll that's been posed.

She brings her hand, still holding her keys, up to her mouth, sluggishly wiping at the corner of it, and that brings her memories to the light. Her hand, and Nancy's, fingers hooked, pulling at their mouths, casting that horrible spell. The sensation of it stealing everything from Robin and how easy it was to let go.

Robin bends over and throws up a mouthful of bile. The wet ground beneath her tides in and out of focus. Her back aches from the unnatural way she's bending at the waist, as if her feet are rooted in place while her upper body sags like an abandoned puppet. Her hand hangs, but her fingers are still holding her house key out for the lock. She shudders.

It's hard work to get upright again, move her stiff doll legs to the steps. She has to haul herself up them by the railings as moths swoop above her head, in love with the porchlight. Fitting the key in the lock is a gargantuan task and a huge relief; finally her hand is doing what it was formed to do. She stumbles into the dark house.

"Mom?" she calls in a puke-thick voice. The only answer is the ticking of the clock in the kitchen. Mom's gone, she remembers.

Getting into the house drained her of all her energy. She gropes her way to the couch, collapses onto the cushion. They groan together, her and the couch. Beside her, the answering machine bleats for attention with its flashing red light. Robin fumbles for it, jams her fingers on the Play button.

"Where are you?" Steve's voice comes out whiny, only partly because of the machine. "Way to no-show, Buckley. I was doing stuff, you know. I have things to do that aren't covering your shifts, man. You're on the schedule for tomorrow at ten. I'm already working so I can't cover for you. So you'd better not be a loser and fucking show up. You hear me? Bye." A tiny pause. "Let me know if you need me to pick you up...Uh, sorry for swearing...This message is for Robin. Robin Buckley. Bye."

Robin and the couch groan again, this time as she gets up. She feels her way to the corner, to the even darker gape of the hallway. She makes her way to her room with her shoulder on the wall as a guide. In there, the dark seems warmer, more familiar, although it's marred by another red light: her digital clock scolding her with 2:37 AM.

"Fuck," she says with her sour mouth, scoured throat. She takes her clothes off with limp limbs and goes to the bathroom nude. The light stings when she turns it on. She shields her eyes with her hand and finds, etched in skipping pen ink on her palm: I didn't mean to. I'm sorry ♥ .

Robin's stomach heaves but nothing comes up stopped by her heart in the throat. She spits her mouthful of reflexive saliva on her palm and scrubs at it with her thumb. It's not enough to get it off. She turns on the water and pumps out a huge amount of hand soap over Nancy's apology. She scrubs her hands together under the hot water until the words are gone, the only magic she can do herself.

*

She makes it to work on time only thanks to further scolding from her alarm clock. The lights are on and the door unlocked, Steve already there, fiddling with this month's cardboard cutout: Han Solo.

"Getting all the work out of the way?" Robin asks.

"I'm almost done," Steve says without turning around, pinching Han's shoulder delicately to fine-tune his position. Satisfied that he's done his duty for this shift, he turns and frowns at Robin. "Jesus."

Robin waves him off, heading behind the counter. She reaches under the counter to touch the bat under there for comfort and luck. "Don't remind me. Some kinda flu," she lies. "One day thing."

Steve's followed her behind the counter. "You puke?"

"Yeah."

"Gross," Steve says, but puts an arm around Robin's shoulders, easily pulling her up against his warm side. It's the kind of gesture that would normally last barely a moment, but Steve doesn't complain when Robin leans on him for a while.

*

Hardly anyone comes into the video store for the time they're working, and Steve handles whoever does come in, generously shooing Robin to the stool behind the counter. In the hours in between customers, they don't speak much. Steve reads a comic he's embarrassed to be seen with, won't admit he keeps stealing from one of the kids, scrapes it off the counter like it's shit on his shoe when the door chimes. But he reads it with a level of absorption Robin only ever sees him apply to his hair or girls he likes, hunched over counter like one of the kids, hands clasped in his lap except for when he has to turn the page.

Robin loves him, watching him read, chewing on the inside of his cheek, moles churning. He's her best friend and she loves him, but she doesn't say that, keeps the words to herself.

*

Steve drives her home after their shift ends. He doesn't offer; he insists, holding the passenger door open until Robin's protests of wanting to walk home die and she gets in. His misplaced chivalry is embarrassing. It's summertime, won't be really dark for hours, Robin walks home by herself all the time.

"Don't puke in here," he tells her as he starts the car though, and she has to laugh, which encourages him. "You want to go out for burgers?" he asks as he reverses out of his parking spot. The car's headlights make the video cases visible through the window shine, like big eyes.

"No thanks," Robin murmurs. "I'm going to crash as soon as I get home. Sleep it off."

Steve shrugs. "Your loss."

The drive is more easy silence, just the sounds of the car on the road and oldies on the radio, music Steve would normally never allow. But maybe he thinks it's soothing for Robin, so she doesn't complain. He even pulls up right next to Robin's place, instead of letting her out at the bottom of the road. When Robin opens the car door, she can step right out in the pool of light from the porchlight she left on all day.

"I looked at the schedule," Steve says, leaning way over so he can still see her. "Your next shift is on Saturday."

Robin hears him loud and clear. What he means is, I love you too, not that he would say that to her. She smiles.

"I know."

He contorts himself further in the seat to catch her eye. "You want me to pick you up?"

Robin shakes her head. "No, that's okay. Thanks though."

"Call me if you want me to."

"I will." She closes the door and they wave at each other through the window before he drives off. Robin fishes her keys out of her pocket and lets herself in without looking at her hand or the keys, and tosses the keys on the table as soon as she can. She shakes her hand out before locking the door behind her.

She's tired even though they just sat around the video store all day, and it's too early to go to bed, birds still twittering outside, kids playing way off in the distance. Robin flops on the couch, curls up still in her jacket, and turns the TV on, lets the light and the sound wash over her until she's more asleep than awake.

-erios! Now fortified with more vitamin B-

"I said what I...Oh, Alfred!"

Eau de ----. Now available in His and Hers Scents.

Sunny...A real scorcher...

-eeler, a local ---teen year-old, has been missing for ----. Carl Lombardo is on scene at the family's home. Carl, what can you tell us?

*

Robin wakes up sweating and sore. She blinks and is blinded by the sun. She covers her eyes with her hand and tries to get out of bed, only to nearly roll of the couch.

"Christ," she mutters, struggling out of her jacket. The remote thuds to the ground. Once she's free from her jacket, Robin fumbles for it, turns the TV off in the middle of whatever morning show is playing. She stumbles to the kitchen and sticks her mouth under the tap, slurping water up obnoxiously, and then lets it run over the side of her face until she can't breathe. She's scrubbing the kitchen towel over her face when the phone rings.

She stares at it, towel cupped under her dripping chin, for two more rings, but somehow she knows it'll just keep ringing. She answers it with her hand wrapped in the towel, like it might try and bite her if she touches it.

"Hello?"

"Robin." It's Steve, sounding worried.

"I'm fine," Robin tells him, shoulders slumping now that she hasn't heard any tapping. She leans on the counter.

"No," he scoffs. "Not you. Did you see the news last night?"

"No," Robin says. "I fell asleep on the couch."

"Nancy's missing," Steve says. His voice has the same hollow pang that rings in Robin's chest, but for a different reason. "Apparently her family hasn't seen her for weeks."

"Really?" Robin chokes out, thinking about the backpack in the cabin in the woods and feeling sick.

"Yeah. But like...haven't you seen her? You guys have been hanging out."

Robin looks at the calendar. It's on the wrong month. Robin hasn't flipped it to the new month. Weeks.

"Not," she says, "not for a while."

"Was she...Did she say anything? She must have said something."

Robin's stomach flips. "No," she mumbles, unable to say either a lie or the truth.

*

There's no food in the house. No more juice, no more bread, hardly even a scrape of margarine left in the tub. Mom's gone and Robin's been too fucked up to think about it or care. But today, her stomach is empty for more reasons than Nancy, and she can't bear the thought of waiting around for the phone to ring - the police or the Wheelers, which is worse? - so she heads out.

Halfway to the grocery store, she passes a telephone pole with a poster stapled to it, corners flapping in the breeze. Nancy's graduation photo on it, with MISSING written above it, and the Wheeler's phone number below. She's very pretty in the photo, softly smiling, looking beyond the camera. To the future! the photographer had said to each and every one of them.

Robin walks faster, but when she turns onto Main Street where the grocery store is, every telephone pole has the poster on it, fifty Nancys gazing hopefully past Robin. Robin tips her baseball cap brim down and doesn't look any of the Nancys in the eye.

The grocery store isn't busy but Robin acts like it is, swiping bread and peanut butter and cereal off the shelves, tossing them into the basket. Milk too, cheese, celery that Mom's voice in her head tells her to buy. She lingers over the tiny baskets of strawberries, rolling her wallet around in her hand. They're big and red, smelling summer-sweet, and she hasn't spent any of the money mom left for her yet.

"Excuse me," a woman finally says, spooking Robin, who grabs a basket and turns away, holding the brim of her baseball cap down again.

She pays for it all with her mom's money and walks home on the side streets, watching her sneakers on the sidewalk. She watches her sneakers go up the steps to her front door, and stop in front of a thin bouquet of yellow wildflowers, the kind you'd pick on a hike in the woods, held together with a scrunchie. She glances around, but no one's there as far as she can see. She picks them up carefully, cradling them in her arm. When she lowers her face they smell sun-soaked and sweet. The scrunchie is silky when she strokes it, and she imagines it's still warm from Nancy's hair.

*

No one calls, not even Mike. Maybe Steve told them she didn't know anything. Guilt eats at Robin when she looks at the silent phone on the kitchen wall, but other, stronger emotions eat at her when she looks at the yellow flowers in a water-filled Coke bottle on the kitchen table, so she doesn't call anyone. Nancy made her choice, the way Robin wishes she could.

She's lying on the couch, listening to the clock tick down the seconds until she has to go to work again, and her mom coming home, when someone knocks on the door. She gets up on an elbow to see who it is. A dark shadow leans over to the frosted side window, trying to see in. Robin goes haywire with fear for a few seconds, cops, witches, and monsters in her mind. The person knocks again, not pounding, but tapping with urgency. A familiar rhythm.

Robin's at the door, yanking it open, before she knows it. Outside, huddling close to the door, dressed in her reconnaissance black clothes, is Nancy, knuckles raised to knock. There's no magic on Robin's part; she just grabs Nancy's arm and pulls her inside, slamming the door shut behind her.

*
She closes her bedroom door behind them so hard the shades on the window rattle and the mirror on Robin's wall shivers dangerously. She pushes Nancy down to sit on the bed, realizes what she's doing, and removes her hands from Nancy's shoulders like they're burning hot.

"Sorry," she says. "I just, just didn't want anyone to see you." She shakes out her hands and starts to pace. "What are you doing here?"

Nancy opens her mouth and then closes it self-consciously. She blushes, holding up her hands: one flat like a piece of paper, the other writing on it.

"Shit, sorry," Robin says, turning to her desk. She picks up the notebook she started using a diary, pen in the spiral spine, and starts to hand it over before she thinks better of it. She flips it open and rips out all the pages she's already written on, dropping them on the desk.

"Old math stuff," she says weakly in explanation, giving Nancy the notebook. She doesn't miss Nancy raising her eyebrows a little, but just paces away from it, toward the closet, while Nancy opens the notebook to a new page and writes on it. Robin paces back in time to see what Nancy has written.

I'm leaving

Robin stops in front of Nancy. Her knees go to jelly and she lets them, sinking down onto the carpet in front of Nancy. She braces her forearms on Nancy's knees so she doesn't topple all the way over.

"Why?" she asks, looking up at Nancy's face. She's so pretty, even when she's frowning down at Robin in sadness. The prettiest thing that's ever been in Robin's room. So pretty Robin almost hates her, hates how much it makes sense, how she already gets it. In misery, she lowers her face, pressing her forehead against the rough denim of Nancy's jeans. The notebook darkens the air around her as Nancy rests it on her head to write down what they both know.

I can't stay here, Robin reads when Nancy taps her head to get her attention. Everyone is looking for me and I can't tell them. They wouldn't understand. I'm different now.

"Why did you come here?" Robin asks, resisting the urge to dig her cheek back into Nancy's thigh, let the seam leave a mark so deep it won't leave like Nancy. "Why didn't you go to Jonathan?"

Nancy's smile is so sad. You understand. He doesn't, she writes. And then, I came to say goodbye.

"No, Nancy," Robin moans. "No. You can't go." She holds Nancy by the hips, as if that could make Nancy stay. "You can't leave me here like this."

Nancy puts the pen and the notebook down, pets Robin's hair back from her hot, desperate face. Her fingers and palms, so full of power, are cool and wonderful. No one's ever touched Robin like this, looked at her like this. Not her mom, not Steve, not even Tammy in her dreams.

"Nancy," she says. "You have to take me with you." Nancy starts to shake her head but Robin does it harder, shuffling closer, until she's tight to Nancy's legs. Nancy cups her face tighter in return. "Nancy," she begs, all she can do to make Nancy understand her. "Please, take me with you. I don't want to be like this anymore. Make me like you. Please, you have to do it because I..."

She doesn't say it. Can't say it because Nancy has pulled Robin's face to hers to kiss her. Robin's mouth trembles against Nancy's and her heart thunders in her ears. Nancy's mouth is magic on hers, soft-lipped but firm with intention. Robin feels both like she's burning up, cheeks blazing against Nancy's hands, but also like she's underwater, swaying like seagrass. She lets go of Nancy's hips just wrap her arms around Nancy's back, holding Nancy in her arms.

It's a few seconds of kissing but it's both an eternity and a blink until Robin has to break it off to breathe. She misses it as soon as their lips separate. She doesn't let go of Nancy and Nancy doesn't let go of her. They look at each other, spellbound.

*

Nancy drives them in an unfamiliar car to an unfamiliar house at the edge of town. She lets Robin into the yard by prying back a loose board in the fence. It looks totally abandoned, junk in the yard, lightbulbs removed from the porch, paint peeling on the door. The creaking of the steps spooks Robin, same with the darkness in the window, but Nancy just takes Robin's hand in one of hers and pounds on the door with the side of her free fist.

Nothing happens aside from Nancy's hammering on the door for long enough that Robin glances around, nervy. This is a murder house for sure. Another thing Hawkins has too much of, just like cabins.

Fed-up, Nancy wallops the door twice more before reaching for the knob.

Screw this, Robin's mind supplies, in Nancy's voice.

The door is unlocked; Robin sees the knob turn under Nancy's palm, sees the door open a few inches, enough to see the front hall of the dark house. Robin also sees the door slam shut with a giant clap and a gust of air that reminds her so much of being shoved against a convenience store freezer door that she screams.

Nancy doesn't scream. She scowls, rattling the now-locked doorknob furiously. After a few seconds of that, she jerks her hand off the knob, mouth open as she looks at her palm, thoroughly pinked.

A face suddenly appears in the window beside the door. Robin's so wound-up she screams again, even though it's just a girl. A girl with sunken eyes and long red hair, snarling at them through the glass. Boots.

Nancy sees her and huffs, like a wildcat. She pounds on the door again with her hurt fist. The girl in the window shows her teeth for a moment before looking behind her. Her expression softens, slips into deference. The door unlocks, and Nancy shoves it open before the girl can change her mind, charging in. Robin, tethered to Nancy by her sweaty hand, follows.

It's dark inside, dust on the air, a pile of coats and shoes on the floor. Through the kitchen door down the hall, there's a three-legged chair in the middle of the floor, and empty places where pictures used to be above the staircase. By now, Robin knows an abandoned house when she sees one, and this house is abandoned. Makes the handful of teenage girls standing in the doorway to the living room look even stranger.

One of the girls, blonde, wearing glasses, makes a flat-handed what? gesture at them, at Nancy. The last time Robin saw this girl, she had just hypnotized the convenience store clerk into a drooling stupor with the power of just her hand against her blue lips.

Nancy gestures impatiently to Robin.

"Hi," Robin says. Slush Puppie grimaces, as if hearing Robin speak is distasteful. She makes the what gesture again, which Nancy counters with her own gesture, done more forcefully.

Four pairs of judgemental, distrustful eyes slide to Robin.

"Um," Robin says, cringing at how pathetic her voice sounds, echoing in the empty house. "I...I want you to make me like you."

The girl in the centre, short-haired and bare-armed in a skimpy tank top, wearing too many rings, hangs her tongue out of her mouth like a hyena, showing it to the other girls, who smile meanly. Robin gets it, even without words. Yuck. She snorts and points to the open door behind them.

Robin steps backward, but she can't go far. Nancy is planted in the hallway. She snaps her still-pink fingers, and for a second, the air feels...tinkly, like a piano has just been played in the room, notes lingering on the air but not in the ear.

The girl with short hair doesn't like that. She shakes her head mockingly at Nancy - uh-uh and raises her hand too, clapping it closed, as if she's catching a ball. The tinkles die, and the air turns thick and stifling.

"Uhh..." Robin starts to say, but doesn't get anywhere in her sentence before the girl tips her fist back and forth and an earthquake hits Robin's mind. It only lasts for a moment but it's enough of a stun for the girls to surround them. From there, no magic is required. It's four on two, and no matter how they look, these aren't typical teenage girls. They're scrappy-strong and savage, scratching and pinching as they shove Robin and Nancy out onto the dusty porch. The door slamming behind them closes with the finality of a bank vault.

*

Back in the car, safe in the passenger seat, Robin massages her temples. She already checked underneath her nose and her ears - no blood, but a light throbbing remains.

"What the fuck, Nancy," she groans. "Let's get out of here."

Sitting in the driver's seat, keys in the ignition, hands on the wheel, Nancy shakes her head. Her knee jiggles. She reaches over Robin for the glove compartment, getting out her notebook and a pen.

They have something we need, she writes.

Robin glances in the passenger-side mirror, unwilling to even turn her head to look down the street towards the house in case one of the girls is watching. "What?"

A box

"A box? For what?"

Nancy touches the end of the pen to her lip, thinking before she writes: They made me use it.

Robin raises her eyebrows. "It does something?"

Nancy nods. She plays with the pen in her hand, rolling it between her fingers nervously.

"Well, they're not just gonna give it to us," Robin sighs.

*

The house is even creepier at night, the dark door and windows giving it an anguished look, the debris in the yard and on the porch ominous shadows that Robin fears tripping on as they creep through the hole in the fence.

The urge to talk is a physical need, like being thirsty for Robin, knowing she can't. Does Nancy feel it too, Robin wonders as they slink against the siding of the house to the nearest window, or is Nancy's body already used to life without words? How does her tongue feel? Does her mouth ache to hold Robin's name in it?

"How do you know they're gone?" Robin had asked in the car, fiddling with the hem of her reconnaissance black turtleneck.

I just know, Nancy wrote, messy in the moonlight, and then made a chagrined face at the poor answer.

Robin thinks she gets it now, at least a little. Even from the outside, the house feels hollow, the air dull and dusty, drained of all the girls' power.

Nancy snaps her fingers and Robin snaps to, expecting more ghost-piano on the air, but Nancy just wants her attention. She's got her back to the wall and her knees bent. When Robin looks at her, Nancy nods to the window above her and laces her fingers together. Robin puts a foot into Nancy's palms and wobbles into her hoist. The window on the windowsill is dry and splintery, paint flaking as she gets a hold, but the window opens enough for her to get her head and shoulders through. Nancy hoists her further and Robin slithers onto the dusty kitchen floor.

There's a back door; Robin tries it, but it won't budget, even though the deadbolt's not turned. She pokes her head out of the window.

"I can't tell if the door is old or magic-locked," she whispers down to Nancy. "C'mere," she holds her hands down for Nancy to grab, manages to get her through the window without dumping them both on the floor.

They creep through the house, searching for the box Nancy says they need. It's empty, Robin keeps telling herself, but that doesn't make the bony old furniture or strange shadows any less spine-tingling. Even the candy bar wrappers and half-crushed soda cans from the girls are reminders of what they're up against. They walk the whole of the lower floor and end up near the stairs. Nancy shakes her head at Robin and points to the second floor.

Robin cringes. "Okay." And then, when Nancy holds a finger up to her mouth: "Sorry."

The stairs groan and creak under their sneakers. Robin refuses to imagine what would happen to her leg if it broke through one of the steps, focuses on how Nancy's curls swish over the back of her neck instead. She doesn't breathe until Nancy stops on the landing and Robin bumps into her. Her hair smells like apples.

Nancy makes room for Robin so she can see the hallway in front of them: two doors on each side of the hallway, an open door at the end that Robin can tell is a bathroom.

Robin points to herself and then to the closest left door. Nancy nods, and does the same gesture for herself and the doors on the right. The faster they do this, the faster they can get the hell out of here. Robin opens the first door on the left. It was a kid's room once upon a time; there are dancing crayons painted on the wall and the bed in the corner is very small. The backpack tossed onto it isn't new, but it has a Led Zeppelin patch on it, and the clothes inside could fit Robin, not a child. She rifles through it, but there's nothing box-shaped in there. She opens the closet, but all it has in it is an empty light socket and some dried moth carcasses on the floor. Under the bed is a bust too.

From the hall, she hears Nancy exit one room and go into another. Robin stands up and dusts herself off. She goes into her second room too. This one is the master. There's a big bed in the middle and a buckling vanity at the side. Someone's recently used their hand to wipe the dust on the mirror away.

The closet has drawers and shelves built in. Robin check them all. One of the drawers has a pack of crumbling cigarettes and a lighter in the back. Robin takes the lighter, puts it in her pocket.

Under the bed, Robin finds a cardboard box with soft sides from too much handling. She pulls it out. She flicks the lighter on with one hand and opens it with the other. The flame shines off the tangle of black inside. It's piles and piles of tape pulled from VHS tapes. How many petty crimes this represents, Robin couldn't tell.

She shakes it, trying to see the bottom, but that just makes the loose tape in it writhe in the light.

"Be brave," Robin says under her breath, and sticks her hand into it. She immediately hits something solid, fingertips catching on a broken tape reel. She shoves it to the side and keeps rummaging. After a second, her fingers touch something else. A corner.

Robin stows the hot lighter in her pocket and picks the box up with both hands. She dumps the tape in a snaky heap on the floor.

"Nancy!" she whisper-yells once she gets into the hallway, box cradled against her chest. "Nancy!"

Nancy appears in the doorway, and grips the doorframe once she sees what Robin has. Her eyes are wide and white in the dark.

"This is it, right?" Robin asks, although she knows. She can feel it. The box is heavier, fuller-feeling than it looks. She can sense the potential in it.

Nancy nods quickly, eyes glued to the box. She stares at it, rubbing her fingers together nervously at her side.

"Let's go," Robin says, and Nancy blinks.

They hurry down the stairs as fast as the wood will let them, and head for the kitchen. Footsteps on the porch freeze them in their tracks. They're out in the open, in the hall between the living room and the stairs. If someone comes in, they'll be spotted immediately. Another set of feet come up the porch stairs and Robin's blood bangs in her veins and her body goes numb.

Nancy grabs her by the arm and rips her into the kitchen, flattens her up against the fridge and covers Robin's mouth with her hand.

Everything is still and silent, the fridge behind Robin's back, the air in the room, the box digging into Robin's breasts, Nancy's heavy hand on her mouth, absorbing her wild exhales. Robin glances over; the kitchen window is barely ten feet away, promising freedom. She jerks her head toward it, but Nancy presses her hips harder against Robin's and clamps her hand tighter over Nancy's mouth.

The feet move, but the front door doesn't open. After an eternity, someone says, "Doesn't move an inch. It's like the knob is glued in place, dude," and Robin's never been so relieved to hear a guy say something stupid in her life.

Another voice says, "There's probably not even anything in there. It's just an old house. Let's go."

Still, Robin's heart pounds as loud as the guys' footsteps off the porch. Keeps pounding even after, as she clutches the box and stares into Nancy's eyes and breathes into her tight hand.

*

Once they're safe in the car again, Nancy delicately takes the box from Robin and holds it in her lap. She doesn't turn on the interior light, doesn't write any messages to Robin, just starts the car and drives.

It just felt like a cardboard box when Robin touched it, looks like a dinged-up box but Robin's eyes keep sliding to it. It was so special they had to break into the witches' hideout to get it. It's part of what made Nancy what she is now. It has the power to change Robin too. Her heart is beating faster again. She touches the skin around her mouth, where Nancy's fingertips where. Her lips, warm from Nancy's palm.

It's not the triumphant getaway Robin imagined. Distracted by her thoughts, she only clues in to where they are when Nancy hits the gravel and pulls up in front of Robin's.

Robin puts her hands in her lap so she won't touch her face anymore or reach through the cage of Nancy's arms to touch the box. "Are we...Are we gonna do it here?"

In the shadow of the moonlight, Nancy shakes her head. She digs up her tiny reporter's notebook and pen. Robin turns on the overhead light and watches Nancy gingerly balance the notebook on the box and write. It's strange how Nancy's nearly enveloping the box in her lap, but there's an avoidance in the cartoonish circle of her arms around it and her straight back, sucked-in stomach.

Nancy hands over the pad. When you're ready

"I am ready," Robin says. Her heartrate is almost normal again.

Think about it. HARD. I'll come back in THREE DAYS.

"Nancy –"

Nancy flips the notebook closed. Conversation over. She stows it in the cupholder and shifts the box over on her lap, like it's a bothersome cat.

"Three days," Robin repeats. "And you promise you'll come back? You're not just going to abandon me to hang out with a bunch of petty thieves?"

Nancy rolls her eyes and pretends to slice her neck. What she'd do if that was her only choice, Robin guesses. But she softens and nods earnestly. She taps the clock in the car, which says 11:04PM, then holds up three fingers.

"Got it," Robin says, and turns to let herself out of the car. Nancy's hand on her shoulder stops her.

They kiss, Robin's body half in, half out of the car, Nancy crunched over the box in her lap. It goes on for a long time, deeper and deeper, until Robin's heart can't take it anymore.

*

Three days will be forever, Robin thinks, taking her clothes off in her dark, hot room. Her mouth is tingling from toothpaste and the memory of Nancy's kiss. Just in her t-shirt and panties, she cranks her window open a few inches. There's a soft breeze, but that isn't what stirs goosebumps on her arms and tightens her nipples.

Robin's bedroom is still a mess. She kicks through the clothes on the floor toward her unmade bed. She'll have to pick everything up. To pack, and so it's clean when she...

Not now, she tells herself. It's too much. Don't think about it yet. She sits down beside the hump of the kicked-down blankets, then lies down beside it. She demurely folds her hands over her stomach, over the warm arousal smouldering there. She presses her hands down into it, and the fire spreads. She closes her eyes, pressing her tongue against the backs of her teeth, tensing her mouth. Nancy's palm had been warm and damp on her lips, no give like her mouth when they kissed. Her fingers had almost hurt for a second, when she'd pressed down that second time.

Robin scoots further onto the bed, worming up on her shoulders and heels until her head hits a pillow. Then she flips onto her stomach, sticking her head under the pillow and her hand into her panties. The fire in her flares as she snuggles her clitoris between two fingers. When she exhales, it's damp and hot, trapped under the pillow with her.

She masturbates thinking about the fear she felt in the house, and Nancy, and the power she's on the edge of having. Rubbing her pussy with the vee of her fingers, she thinks about what fingers are capable of. Touching her hand, her mouth, making her...

Her face is wet from her own breathing, her fingers soaked from herself. When she comes, she groans into the sheets, but there's no one but her to hear it.

*

Now that they're all Robin has left, the prospect of three days feel long in a way they haven't since Robin was a kid. She wakes early with nothing to do but wait. It's summer, so there's not much on TV, and no point renting anything now.

She slowly goes through her clothes, picking out the ones she likes the most and some things she wonders warmly if Nancy would like to see her in, and sets them aside. Everything else she shoves into her drawers and closet to be forgotten about. She makes the bed but then decides that it looks too much like she's dead, so she rumples it again. Arranges herself in the mess and lies there for a minute before masturbating, fantasizing about fingers and freedom.

That night it's hot. The air is syrupy when Robin sets off on foot - backpack full of dirty clothes - for the coin laundromat in town. It can't wait until Mom comes home, and if she asks Steve to drive her, he might ask questions she can't answer.

At the laundromat, she practices being silent. Easy enough to do with only the owner in there, and he's got his feet up, eyes glued to his little TV. Still, Robin takes care to only nod at him and mind what her hands are doing. She wouldn't want to curse him by accident; he hasn't done anything to her. She'll have to learn how to control herself.

She folds her clean clothes as small as possible and tucks them down in her backpack before heading back the way she came, walking on the shoulder of the road. It's partly cloudy, the stars winking in and out of existence, brightening as she gets away from the centre of town. Looking at them makes Robin feel small and powerless. She flexes her hand at her side to chase the feeling off.

A car roars up on her, headlights blazing. Someone yells at her from the passenger side - something mean from the tone, but she doesn't catch the words. She startles and her first thought is of the girls, come to get her. But somehow she knows it's not them. It's just some dumb kids, summer-wild. The car keeps speeding down the road. Robin wraps her hands around her backpack straps and keeps walking, feet on the road, thoughts in the stars.

*

Mom comes home on Saturday. Robin meets her at the door, just about to go to her shift. Her last shift, she thinks, guilty and excited.

"Good to see you're alive," Mom murmurs, cupping Robin's cheeks and kissing her between the eyes. "Did you have enough to eat?"

"Y-" Robin has to clear her throat. "Yeah. I went to the store." Talking feels strange, like putting together a puzzle made of pieces with no colours.

"Good. Where are you going?"

Robin holds up her Family Video vest. "To work."

"Oh. When will you be back?"

"Ten?"

Mom frowns a bit. "That's late. I thought we could have dinner together. Maybe tomorrow?"

Robin holds her vest closer. Her face burns, secrets and the shame of holding them. "Mm," is all she says.

Mom doesn't notice Robin's evasion, too used to hearing the blanket Mm answer. She holds open the door for Robin, strokes Robin's hair once as Robin crosses the threshold.

"I'll see you later," she calls.

A little choked-up, Robin just waves her hand back.

*

The video store is busy, kids and families preparing for Saturday night. Marty's in with her, but there's too many customers for them to have to hang out. Robin's grateful for that; she hasn't felt right about Marty since the day with the tape, no matter how normal he seems, back to nerding out about the new releases and eying pretty girls.

All she does is rent videos to people and put tapes away, but Robin's exhausted when they close up. Too much talking. Her tongue is flabby on her mouth. Vestigial, she tells herself. Like an appendix. But she needs it a little longer. She takes off her vest in the store, shoves it under the counter next to Steve's old bat. Someone else can have it, if they want it.

It's closer to 10:30 when she gets home. It's dark inside but the TV's on, volume so low it just sounds like humming. Mom is stretched out on the couch, asleep, bathed in the flickering of the news. Robin glances at the TV. Something about a broken water main. She turns the TV off, sound and light fading to nothing.

Mom doesn't stir until Robin puts a hand on her shoulder. It's warm, and her sweater is soft.

"Mom," Robin whispers.

"Mm?" There's the slightest movement, Mom pressing her shoulder into Robin's hand, like they're magnets drawing together.

"Go to bed." Robin rubs her mom's shoulder, thinking Last time last time lasttime.

"Mm," Mom hums again, but rises. Robin keeps her hand on Mom's shoulder, guiding her through the dark living room to the hall. Past the bathroom, past Robin's almost-clean room, to her own. At the threshold, Mom stops, sways, and turns to rub Robin's hair back from her face.

"Thanks, honey," she mumbles.

"Mom," Robin whispers, drawing her soft, tired mother into her arms. They're the same height, faces fitting into each other's necks. "I love you," Robin says, speaking up so she'll be heard.

"Love you too," Mom mumbles, squeezing her once - so briefly - before she lets go and fades into her room.

Robin leans in to catch the doorknob and close the door.

"Bye," she whispers to the wood.

*

The clock in the kitchen says 10:47pm when Robin finishes putting some foil-wrapped sandwiches into her backpack and zipping it closed. Mom sleeps like the dead, but Robin still creeps on light feet over to the phone, dials it with her breath tight in her chest.

It rings twice.

"Harrington residence," Steve says, sounding like his mouth is full of chips.

"Steve," Robin exhales.

"Buckley, hey," Steve says. "Bit late. Everything alright?"

Robin's alone in the kitchen, but she waves off like he's there to see her signal to stand down. "Sorry, yeah. It's cool. I didn't look at the time."

"Mmm," Steve says, and Robin can almost see him dropping his guard. "Well, whaddidya want to talk to me so bad about?" A pause. "Is it about Nancy?"

Yes. "No." Robin puts her back to the wall next to the phone. It's cold through her shirt, a balm to her lie. Her ears buzz softly with more shame. "I just...Just finished watching it. Y'know, your movie."

Steve says the title of some movie Robin's never seen a second of, let alone heard of.

"Mm," she hums noncommittedly.

"Alright!" Steve says, immediately pumped, Nancy forgotten for a second. "What did you think?"

"It was great," Robin lies. "Really -"

"Fuckin' ruled, right?" Steve breaks in. "Exciting. I haven't ever seen an explosion like that before!" He goes on for a minute, describing everything Robin didn't see. "And I mean..." He lowers his voice, conspiratorially, sensual. "Her."

"Wow," Robin agrees, rubbing her hot eyes. "It was the best. You're quite the movie connoisseur."

Steve makes a pleased sound. "I am, aren't I?"

"It's almost like you work at a video store."

Steve snorts. "Yeah, with a big idiot."

"The biggest," Robin gets out.

Steve takes a breath to insult her some more, but leans away from the phone. Faintly, Robin can hear someone else talking. Steve comes back after a moment, using his getting off the phone tone.

"Sorry, I gotta go. Talk to you soon?"

"Yeah."

"Let me know if you need a ride somewhere."

Robin looks at the clock. 10:56pm. Her ride's almost here.

"I will," she says dutifully.

"Alright. Bye."

"Bye." Robin sets the phone gently on the hook, holds her hand there a while, Steve's voice echoing in her mind.

*

The car ride is both an eternity and a blink. Nancy has the radio on, playing "Today's hits," per the DJ. Robin doesn't speak. No words feel right. Nancy taps her fingers on the wheel and keeps glancing at Robin. It's not until they get out of the car at the cabin in the woods that Robin realizes Nancy was driving a different car than last time. As they climb the steps to the cabin door, Robin wonders if the owner got their car back, or if Nancy just left it somewhere.

Robin feels a little better once Nancy's lit all the candles in the cabin and everything is cast in a low, homey glow. She sets her bag down with a thump. Nancy smiles gently at her and gestures to the bed in the corner.

It's way past midnight, but Robin says, "No way. I feel too crazy to sleep right now. Are you tired?"

Nancy shakes her head and circles her finger beside her ear. I'm crazy too, Robin takes from that. She goes to the table, her notebook open to a fresh page.

Let's practice, she writes.

"Okay," Robin says. "Practice what?"

Nancy holds up a finger and then goes to the bed. Robin doesn't have time to blush before Nancy kneels down and pulls the box out from under the bed. She dusts it off and heads to the rug near the fireplace. She kneels there too and gestures for the spot in front of her.

Robin joins her, mimicking her posture. Nancy sets the box on the floor between them and spins it so the open side is facing Robin. She holds up her right hand, nods at Robin. Her face is very serious.

Lifting her hand to mirror Nancy's, a new tickle of apprehension squirms in Robin's stomach. Different than running away, running away with Nancy. Magic is real. The kind of magic that makes you an honest-to-god witch. She - Robin Buckley - is signing up to be a witch.

Nancy takes Robin's raised hand by the wrist and guides it down to the open side of the box, which now seems less like a box and more like a black mouth, ready to bite Robin's hand off for the crime of stealing. Robin's fingertips disappear into the box, followed by her knuckles, her palm, all the way to her wrist. She holds her breath and closes her eyes.

She expects something. Heat, cold, sticky breath. But all that happens is her hand hits the bottom of the box. She spreads her fingers out, bracing for a surge of magic. But nothing happens. She cracks her eyes open. No swirling lights, no smoke. Just Nancy, not even looking at Robin, really. She seems to be considering the lit candle on the table.

"Nothing's happening," Robin whispers. "Am I doing it wrong?" She tries to pull her hand out but Nancy holds it there, presses it down against the dry cardboard.

Stay, Nancy mouths, enunciating hard enough that Robin hears her top and bottom teeth click. You have to stay. Hold on.

Robin feels around in the box, but there's nothing to hold onto. She can't even tell if the air in the box is a different temperature.

"Nancy, I -" Nancy lets go of Robin's wrist and Robin pulls her hand out immediately. She surveys it to see if there's any damage. No change but a little dust on her fingertips, and it doesn't tingle or anything when she wriggles her fingers. "It didn't work."

Nancy shakes her head at that, gets up to get her notebook. Put your hand in again. Hold it there. Keep it in there, no matter what.

"Okay." Robin rolls her sleeve up to really give it her all before she puts it in again. The inside of the box still just feels like the inside of a box. She holds it there until her legs tingle, which is exciting for a second until she realizes it's just her legs starting to fall asleep. She pulls it out. Nancy raises her eyebrows.

"Sorry. My legs are falling asleep."

Nancy snorts as Robin moves around, changing to cross-legged. She pulls the box onto her knee.

"Again?" she asks.

Again, Nancy writes.

*

Every time she puts her hand into the box, nothing happens to it. No matter if she puts her hand in all the way to the back, if she makes a fist, or the peace sign vee she's seen Nancy and the girls make. It's just a box, nothing magical about it. About Robin. Not when Nancy makes her take deep, circular breaths. Not when Nancy kneels in front of Robin and holds Robin by the shoulders and stares deep into her eyes. But Nancy keeps tapping her pen on Again until Robin's bored and the floorboards underneath the window are catching the sunrise.

Eventually, Robin can see the blur of the morning sun through the thin curtains on the window and she doesn't even need to be told to put her hand back in the box. It's just there, has been there for ages. Maybe Robin has been sleeping with it in there the whole time.

She doesn't take her hand out of the box; Nancy takes the box off her hand.

"Again?" Robin asks. It's weird to look down and see her hand at the end of her wrist, not the box.

Nancy shakes her head and takes Robin by the non-magical hand, pulling her to her feet.

*

Robin holds the box in her lap while Nancy drives. She lets the sun shine into it, but it's still just a box inside. There are tiny holes in one side, pinpricks letting light in, Robin rests her head on the window and her hand inside the box, force of habit, stroking her thumb over one of the little holes idly.

*

There's no stealthy option under the morning summer sun. They take the front steps, Robin holding the box like she works at the post office. Nancy raises her fist to knock on the front door but before her hand gets within an inch of the wood, the door swings open and the redhead, Boots, barrels into her. Nancy and Boots hit the railing with a dangerously creaky thud and tumble to the porch floor. Both of them inhale, but no one cries out.

"Hey!" Robin yelps as they tussle, scratch, and push. From inside the house, Robin hears pounding footsteps coming this way. "Shit, Nancy!"

Nancy's underneath Boots, but she manages to clamp her hands around Boots' fingers, immobilizing them. A flash of triumph hits her face, but is wiped right off when Boots headbutts her. Nancy's nose is bloody when Boots lifts her face.

More witches appear in the doorway, faces lit up when they see Boots on top of Nancy, Nancy's blood in her red hair. A blood, no glasses, not Slush Puppie, comes out into the porch to pin Nancy down so Boots can hit her again. In the doorway, the girl with short hair, the one they all listen to, rubs her fingers together and the air around them gathers, makes Robin's eyes burn. Voices whisper hotly in Robin's mind.

"No! Bonnie, no!" Robin screams, and all the girls freeze, except for Nancy, who struggles, blood oozing over her top lip and down her cheek. Boots – Bonnie – looks horrified. Robin doesn't understand how she knows that Bonnie is her name. She just heard it.

Robin grips two opposite edges of the box.

"Bonnie, let her the fuck go," she growls, "Or it's bye-bye box." She starts to pull, until the box is straining at the seams under her fingers.

The blonde pushes at Bonnie's shoulder but Bonnie doesn't move, still holding Nancy by the collar. Their leader, rage in her eyes, crafts a hook out of her finger.

But Robin's seen that trick before. She slams her eyes shut and pulls even harder. A corner of the box gives a little, and something cold and powerful starts to slip out alongside her fingers.

"I fucking mean it!" She yells. "It's breaking!" She pulls again, and this time, the tear is audible. Robin sees stars behind her eyelids.

Someone claps. It echoes. But Robin isn't thrown into space, doesn't explode, or lose her mind. She cracks her eye open to see the leader her fingers and point at Blonde and Slush Puppie, scrambling away from Nancy, who sits up woozily. Blood drips from her nose onto her shirt.

"Nancy!" Robin starts to go to her but Nancy holds her hand up to keep Robin back. She gets up slowly, hands and knees, and then pulls herself up with the railing. She points at the box, then at Robin, then at the leader.

Leader her eyebrows incredulously and snorts. She makes a gesture, waving her hand around on her wrist by her head. All this trouble for her? it suggests.

Nancy wipes her nose on her sweatshirt sleeve, leaving a bloody smear across her cheek. She nods definitively.

Eyebrows still raised, the leader looks to Robin.

She's full of fear and adrenaline, but she's come so far and there's no going back. This is almost within her grasp.

"Let's do it," she says.

The girl shakes her head ruefully but beckons to Robin with her open hand and a little mocking bow: Your wish is my command.

*

The girls sit on the couch. Robin kneels on the floor, set the box down in front of her. Leader claps in polite mocking at how well-trained Robin is. Nancy paces alongside Robin.

Leader wiggles her hand at Robin, and nods at the box.

Robin looks down at her hand. Raggedy nails and a little bruise on the back of it she hasn't seen before. Hovering above the box, side with the tiny holes in it facing up, one of the corners crumpled and burnt.

She puts her hand in, and every girl sitting on the couch save for Leader smiles. Things start to appear, from pockets and between the couch cushions: a lighter, a sewing needle, an X-ACTO knife. Nancy stops pacing.

Robin turns to see Nancy put her hand over her eyes, starts to ask what's going on, when Leader brushes her finger over Robin's cheek.

The pain that comes is like nothing else. Robin broke her arm when she was nine and it hurt so much it made her quake with nausea until the nurse at the ER gave her something to make it stop. She's had sunburn on her shoulders that bubbled and peeled in big flakes and made sleep impossible, which was its own kind of pain. The pain of twisting her own front tooth out after it had been loose for days and putting her tongue right in the livewire hole to taste the blood. The cramping pain of fear in the Upside Down. The pain of her feelings for Tammy, and for Nancy. All of it meaningless in the shadow of the pain of her hand in the box.

She looks around wildly, like an animal in the slaughterhouse chute. The girls are still on the couch, gently sawing their implements in tune with the pain soaring through Robin. She looks down: her hand is alone in the box, burning, stabbed, split open, forever and ever.

It's every nerve lighting up, frying in her body. Lights and terror. The apocalypse. Her soul peeling away from her insides inch by inch. It's a pain beyond words. She screams and screams until she can't hear herself anymore.

Nancy's hands on her face change the shape of her cheeks. The touch shocks her throat into aching submission. Nancy's palms on her soaked cheeks feel like the sound of angels' harps, like a heartbeat heard through a warm chest, like the last bell on the last day of school, like the crackle of a radio when she'd been straining to hear it. She opens her eyes.

Nancy is right there, nose to nose with Robin, her breath on Robin's scream-empty mouth. She draws in a deep breath, and Robin, trained by this morning, matches it. They exhale together, lips brushing. The pain is still radiant, pulsing like lava in Robin's arm, but she imagines her breath as snow, as ice, cooling the pain down to stable black rock.

Sensing the change, Nancy's eyes well up.

Yes! she mouths with relief. Yes. She and Robin draw in another deep breath and the pain abates further. Still holding Robin's face, Nancy looks to the witches and she can't help but grin. Robin knows she can't. She can hear Nancy's joy loud and clear.

*

The table in the witches' squat house has a shaky leg; it rattles when Robin puts her elbows on it. Nancy, sitting so close their hips bump, steadies Robin with a hand on her shoulder. The girls take seats at the table, Leader at the head. Bonnie, with her sallow, sulky face, sits opposite Robin, the others around.

There is no food, no plates, no cutlery, no napkins. But everyone, including Robin, lifts their hands, and together, they feast on the bounty of magic. Arms swooping in rhythm, knuckles knocking, strumming invisible instruments, bodies swaying to no music but their own. The sun shines a slice across the kitchen; Robin can hear it, taste it, sings it in her heart. She can hears the girls too - their blood and bone, their histories, what brought them here, their real names. If she could speak, she could tell you all about them. But they remain secret, Robin sworn to it, no voice to say any more.

They writhe and weave and eat until there's nothing else to do but stop, and then they do, in unison. Palms to wood, chins to chests. Then it's over, they're free, and Robin is one of them now.

*

The entire drive, not home but to the closest thing Robin has to home now, is silent. They must not speak, cannot speak any longer. But no one puts on the radio either, no one taps their fingers on the window or the steering wheel, blows out their breath, or scratches pen on paper.

Robin's brain buzzes the entire drive, worse than the time she and Holly Martin and Kelly C. got their hands on three and a half coolers at Holly's house in the eighth grade. This is different than alcohol though, breathless and huge and right under her skin. What have I done? circles her skull like water above a drain, with nowhere to go. She opens her hand, still faintly throbbing, and a new sensation pulses there.

She remembers being tossed by a peace sign in the convenience store, and she mimics the gesture unconsciously. Magic flashes in her fingers, white-hot, and she crushes her hand into a fist. Wants to stuff it into her mouth and scream.

The forest where Nancy's stolen little cabin is seemed so quiet yesterday. But now Robin can hear it screaming: animals living and dying, plants creeping up toward the sparking sun. Robin has to cover her ears when she gets out of the car. She can hardly stand the rustling crunch of leaves underfoot. Nancy takes her by the elbow and leads her into the cabin, where it isn't so loud, the wood muffling the world outside.

Gently, Nancy takes Robin's wrists, lowering her hands so Nancy can hug her. Robin sags into Nancy's arms, clutches at her. She can hear Nancy too, her body and her magic, the edge of her thoughts, but it's veiled, in another room from Robin, warmer and friendlier than the woods. Robin holds on and listens to that instead of everything else, letting Nancy rub the back of her neck in soothing strokes, until she's limp and exhausted.

Nancy puts her to bed. Tugs Robin across the floor like she's a doll. Turns down the covers and urges Robin to sit, pulls her shoes off and lifts her legs onto the mattress.

Robin makes herself small, hot and cold like she's got a fever, even though she's in a sunspot, the sun muted by the window but still warm and whispering on her skin. She doesn't settle until Nancy gets in with her, pulls the covers over them, and presses up against Robin, their bodies curled together like quotation marks at the end of things to remain unspoken.

*

When Robin wakes, everything is quieter. She can still hear the world outside, but it's easier now in her brain. Far away, only a hum. She can think again without freaking out. The bed is soft and warm and she has no idea when she is. Nighttime. There's a haze of moonlight coming in the otherwise black room, letting her see Nancy's face when she opens her eyes. Nancy is looking at her, eyes soft, covers pushed down so the light pools in her collarbone and drips down the sagging collar of her shirt.

What now, Robin thinks, and opens her mouth. Nancy puts a palm on Robin's cheek and smiles softly, sadly at her. She shakes her head, and she's right. There's no place in Robin's mouth for the words. She breathes, and wets her lips with her tongue, but nothing comes out but an airy puff. It's strange, but this is how Robin is now. She'll have to unlearn the habit.

Nancy gets up on an elbow to look out the window at the moon. Her movement pushes the blanket down, and Robin realizes just how warm she is when fresh air touches her arms. Suddenly, she's aware of how clammy she is in her armpits, between her legs, even under her breasts. She shoves the blanket down, kicks her way out, lies on her back in the moonlight and fans her face.

Nancy touches her arm, grips her wrist, and when Robin looks at her, Nancy points to the bathroom, pretends to wash her face with an open hand. Robin nods.

*

There are already two candles on the bathroom counter. Nancy lights them and the room warms with light. She turns on the flashlight, and balances it in the soap holder before turning the shower on. Robin looks at her hand while Nancy tests the water and tugs the curtain closed. There isn't a mark on it that wasn't there before.

Okay? Nancy mouths, enunciating with her eyebrows up as steam starts to fill the room.

Robin nods, and then mouths Yes back. She bites her lip and then mouths: I think, which isn't the half of it.

Nancy touches Robin's cheek again before turning to the mirror. In the wavering light, Nancy finger-writes Stuck with me now in the steam on the glass. She turns around, leaning on the sink, her hands on the edge. She's smiling, but it's tenuous, nervous the way Robin feels. She's holding on tightly to the sink, anchoring herself.

Yeah, Robin is aching to say, but she can't. The best she can offer is her bravery: she peels her t-shirt off, shaking it off one wrist onto the floor. Nancy watches, openly looking in the way Robin has never dared, drinking in the span of Robin's belly, the length of her arms, the fit of her old bra. It makes Robin shy, but wish she wasn't. It'd be better if she could flaunt it, the way some of the girls in gym class had, twirling and laughing while Robin changed her shirt with complicated crossing arms, looking without looking, in case anyone noticed her looking and saw what she was.

Nancy takes off her shirt too. She has a pink bra on above a soft stomach Robin wants to rest her head on, and shoulders Robin knows have held the weight of the world on them. Her fingers go to the button on her jeans and Robin looks away before she remembers she doesn't have to. When she looks back, Nancy's already kicking her jeans off. She has on pink panties too, with tiny white flowers on them. They look new. Robin wonders if Nancy paid for them or if someone gave them to her, handed a pack over and then forgot they ever did it after Nancy was gone.

Hands going behind her back for her bra clasp, Nancy raises her eyebrows at Robin. Robin fumbles for her jeans, drags her own underwear down a bit with them, and then sets her shoulders and takes everything off in one push. She gets out of her bottoms and pulls her bra off like it's burning, and then forces her hands to her sides, although she can't stop the nervous twitching of her fingers.

When she dares to look at Nancy's face, Nancy is looking at her body, her breasts, her pubic hair between her jutting hip bones. It's like she can see inside Robin there, which makes Robin's body pulse. Nancy gets out of her own panties and bra, and they stand opposite one another, the air heavy.

Nancy's perfect. She has pink nipples and brown pubes, like a painting. She's even shaved her legs sometime recently. Robin's never seen another girl's body like this, openly, invitational . Only ever in her own mind, and even then it was a patchwork of pieces she'd seen in real life and in movies, nothing real. But Nancy is right in front of her. When she turns around to get in the shower, there's a mark on her ass from her new panties, a red line from the elastic. None of the girls from Robin's dreams ever had that, or old blood still smeared above their lip and across their cheek from fighting to protect her.

Robin follows Nancy into the shower and closes the curtain behind her. Inside, it's dark, the candles and flashlight muted by the curtain, and the cubicle is small with two fumbling bodies in it.

They take turns wetting their hair, Nancy pouring shampoo into Robin's palms from the same bottle she uses. They wash their hair together, slowly dancing around each other in the small space, brushing past each other to rinse. The air smells like apples. It feels so normal and so not Robin can hardly stand it, watching Nancy soap her body with a bar of soap, thinking, My turn next, hardly sure what she means. Soaping her body with the same bar of soap that Nancy uses makes her ache. Robin douses herself in tinny shower water, clenching her thighs together as the water trickles over her pussy. Her nipples are hard, but so are Nancy's.

Finally, Nancy stands with her back to the spray, haloed by the steam, her hair soaked, water streaming over her shoulders, down her breasts and belly, her wet-dark pubes. The blood on her face is dripping pale pink around the bow of her lip and down her neck.

Carefully, Robin reaches out, past Nancy's shoulder, to the spray. She wets her fingers and presses them to the blood on Nancy's face. Softens the remaining crust of blood and urges it away. She keeps wetting her fingers and stroking Nancy's cheek and upper lip until they're clean.

Then she cups Nancy's face with her hand and strokes Nancy's lip one more time before she kisses Nancy. There's no one to see them, no one to stop them, so Robin kisses Nancy deeply, wetly, the passionate way she's only ever dreamed of. Leans the slick length of her body against Nancy's with every intention in the world. Marvels at the strength of Nancy's tongue, the edge of her teeth, the tense muscles of her thigh against Robin's. The huff of her breath into Robin's mouth, the edge of a sound only for Robin to hear.

The water above them sputters, the tank protesting at the end of its endurance. They keep kissing each other's' mouths and necks until the water chills, freezing the crowns of their heads and their shouldertops. Then it's a rush to get out and reach for towels without letting go of each other. Robin can't laugh, can only make and dry huffing sound, but she's full of joy and sure she can feel Nancy's joy too like new blood in her veins.

They scrub the water off their burning bodies and squeeze it out of their hair. Nancy bends over to shake hers out and the candlelight casts a shadow between her legs. Robin can just make out the shape of her pussy, the lips and how they part, and she drops her towel to take Nancy's hand.

They leave the candles burning in the bathroom, scuffing across the dusty floor with their clean feet to the bed. The covers are still pushed down from their sleep, a crumpled U. They fill the empty space again, bodies layered down, Robin on top of Nancy. Their kisses are wet and untidy, noisy in the quiet room.

When she can bear to part from Nancy's mouth, Robin pushes up onto her elbows, which presses her hips down against Nancy's. Pleasure squirms though her, a glancing blow that she chases, trying to find a place to rub against.

Fleetingly, she's jealous of the boys who've seen Nancy like this, dark eyed and open-mouthed, breasts pale in the light of the moon. Who humped at her until her pussy was sore. But they're different, not the one who's here. It's not them Nancy is pulling down to kiss more, wrapping her strong damp leg around Robin.

Robin has thought of this a thousand times, with the women in movies, with Tammy and others. But she's never done it, doesn't know what to do but the things she does to herself.

She manages to slip down onto her side without losing Nancy's leg over her hip. Uses it as leverage to pull Nancy onto her side too. Kisses her and kisses her for bravery while she reaches under Nancy's lifted thigh to touch her.

Nancy's still damp and water-warm there. The hair crinkles under Robin's fingers until the part of her lips, where she softens and slickens.

Wrenching her mouth away, Nancy turns her face into the pillow. Her lifted thigh clenches a beat against Robin's wrist. But she doesn't push Robin away and when Robin presses her fingers gently between her lips, her pussy draws in, like a mouth taking a breath.

Robin strokes the sticky softness of Nancy without putting her fingers inside. She doesn't want to fuck it up. She's never done that to herself, doesn't know what it's supposed to feel like. Instead, she slips her fingers up, finds Nancy's clitoris with the space between her knuckles, and rubs her like that, the way she masturbates herself.

It works. Nancy lifts her mouth, a breathy, guttering sound gushing out of her. She holds onto Robin, digging her fingers into Robin's bicep and heel into Robin's back, and moves her hips into Robin's hand. Robin feels like she's full of molten gold inside. Her fingers on Nancy like magic.

They writhe in the sheets, bodies bridged together and undulating, until Nancy's hips go crazy against Robin's fingers and she makes a choking sob. Robin feels it all though her fingers, the pump of pleasure in Nancy's body into hers though her two fingers. She doesn't stop rubbing until Nancy's hips still and her leg over Robin sags.

Robin removes her hand, but not before gently investigating lower down one last time. The flesh around Nancy's entrance is soaked and hot. Nancy doesn't move at all as Robin explores but the sensation makes Robin shiver, her nipples tight points and her own pussy burning.

There's not enough space in the bed for her to flip onto her belly, so she turns onto her back, Nancy's leg still weighing on her belly, and gets her hand on herself. The same way she was just touching Nancy. More magic. She digs her heel into the mattress and whimpers.

Beside her, Nancy stirs. Kisses her shoulder, buries her face in Robin's neck to kiss her pulse. Sucks there to make a mark before getting up on her elbow to watch.

Robin can't look at her. Just the knowledge that Nancy can see her whole body, the feverish way she's touching herself, has her lifting her hips into her hand.

When Nancy bends over to take one of Robin's nipples into her mouth, Robin scrabbles at Nancy's thigh with her free hand. It's not, but her nipple might as well be connected to her clit with a golden string, both of them twanging. She lifts her hips higher and opens her mouth, groaning, the sound faint, her body desperately butting up against the magic sacrifice she's made.

Nancy kisses her open mouth, paints her tongue over Robin's in a way that makes Robin think helplessly of Nancy's face between her legs, her tongue in place of Robin's fingers.

She's never come on her back, always masturbated on her belly for the pressure and ability to hide under the covers in case someone came in without knocking. She doesn't know if she comes; the sensation different, but still melting gold and good beyond words.

When she can feel her fingertips again, she grapples Nancy down on top of her with her cramping hands, holds her close, kisses her, sucking the hungry breath right out of her mouth.

*

They eat the sandwiches Robin packed, still sitting in bed. They got dressed again in their damp clothes, but Robin can see Nancy's nipples through her shirt, her bra too wet, abandoned on the bathroom floor. She keeps touching the sheets, fingers in a wrinkle of where they just were. She's not tired at all but Robin wants to suggest they go back to bed and stay there until the sun comes up, or for forever.

Nancy catches her eye and seems to know what she's thinking because she smiles wryly. But when she's done her sandwich, she gets the notebook and writes, Let's go outside.

Robin goes to the bathroom and washes her hands in freezing water by guttering candlelight. She looks at her face in the mirror. It's the same face as two days ago, as that fateful day in the video store, but when she smiles at herself it seems different.

The steam has long dissipated from the bathroom, but above Robin's head is the ghost of Nancy's fingers on the mirror. Stuck with me now. How pretty Nancy had looked, face dewy with steam, hopeful and brave.

She never said it. She vigorously shakes water off her cold hands and turns the flashlight on the counter off before blowing the candles out.

Nancy's by the door, zipping up her windbreaker. Robin finds the white of the notebook on the table and the pen beside it. She writes with purpose and brings the notebook to Nancy.

YOU'RE SO PRETTY

Nancy looks at it for too long, longer than it takes to read it. Her mouth shapes the words and even in the dark Robin thinks she can see the blush. Imagines she can feel it warm against her face when Nancy leans in to kiss her. Nancy makes the joyful huffing sound that means she's laughing against Robin's mouth.

*

They leave the notebook and the flashlight in the cabin when they go outside and start walking. It's so late it'll be morning soon, the light from the moon turning everything blueish-grey. They walk through the woods until they reach the base of a grassy hill. They climb to the top and Nancy lies down in the cold grass and Robin lies beside her, taking Nancy's hand in hers so she doesn't lose her in the tall grass and the moonlight.

Above them, clouds soar across the sky. The moon is big and bright. Soon they'll have to leave, find somewhere else to go, leave Hawkins and their speaking selves behind for good. But for tonight they can stay here, where it's quiet but not too quiet. The trees and the breeze are no longer screaming at Robin, but she can still hear a bone-deep rhythm and whisper. She plays with Nancy's warm, magical fingers as she listens to the world speaking to them in silence and power.