Chapter 34: CONCERT NIGHT
The highway stretched ahead like a promise, empty and endless in the fading afternoon light.
Robin had claimed the passenger seat of the Camaro like she owned it, feet propped against the dashboard despite my protests, radio dial spinning under her fingers as she searched for something worth listening to.
"This is a test," she announced, settling on a station playing something with heavy bass and synthesizers. "If you complain about my music choices for the next two hours, I'm making you drop me at the next gas station."
"Your car, your rules."
"It's not my car."
"You're in it. That's close enough."
She laughed—that sharp, surprised sound I'd been hearing more often lately. The Robin from the band room, the one who'd interrogated me about my secrets and promised to figure me out, had evolved into something more comfortable. Something that felt dangerously close to friendship.
Or maybe something more than friendship. I wasn't ready to examine that too closely yet.
Indianapolis was two hours away, home to a venue hosting a band Robin had been obsessing over for months. When she'd mentioned the concert in passing—tickets she couldn't afford, a show she'd probably miss—I'd bought two without thinking about it.
That had been a week ago. The look on her face when I'd handed her the ticket was still burned into my memory.
"Quiz time," Robin said, turning to face me with that evaluating expression I'd learned to recognize. "Name three songs from their first album."
"'Electric Dreams,' 'Neon Shadows,' and 'Midnight Static.'"
Her eyebrows rose. "You actually listened."
"You actually doubted me?"
"Most guys would have bought the tickets and shown up knowing nothing. Figured they could fake it."
"I'm not most guys."
"No." She was quiet for a moment, watching the Indiana countryside blur past. "You're really not."
The silence that followed wasn't uncomfortable. We'd gotten past the awkward stage somewhere between our third band room meeting and her revelation about the Hawkins investigation. Now we could sit together without filling every moment with words, could let the music and the road carry us forward.
It was nice. Normal. The kind of thing I'd missed without realizing it—simple human connection that didn't involve powers or prophecies or the weight of knowing what was coming.
"So," Robin said eventually, "you ever going to tell me what's really going on with you?"
"Thought we had a truce about that."
"We do. Doesn't mean I've stopped wondering." She shifted in her seat, pulling her feet down from the dashboard. "You know things about this town. Things you shouldn't know. Things even I couldn't find in months of research."
I kept my eyes on the road. "Maybe I'm just observant."
"Maybe. Or maybe you've seen things." She paused. "Done things."
The words hung in the air between us. I thought about the quarry, about the nights spent pushing fire through my palms until my body screamed for rest. About the wrongness that pulsed beneath Hawkins like a second heartbeat, growing stronger every day.
"I'll tell you," I said. "Soon. When the time is right."
"And when will that be?"
"When you're ready to believe something impossible."
Robin was quiet for a long moment. Then she nodded, once, and reached for the radio dial again.
"Fine. But tonight isn't about impossible things. Tonight is about music and terrible diner food and forgetting that this town is deeply weird."
"Deal."
The venue was exactly what I'd expected—a converted warehouse on the outskirts of Indianapolis, packed with teenagers and twenty-somethings who'd driven from across the state to see the band. Robin's eyes lit up the moment we walked in, taking in the crowd, the stage setup, the energy that hummed through the air like electricity.
"This is amazing."
"You haven't even heard them play yet."
"Doesn't matter. The energy—can't you feel it?"
I could. Not in the way she meant, but I understood what she was talking about. A crowd of people united by shared anticipation, shared excitement, shared love for something that existed purely to bring joy. It was different from the wrongness I sensed near the lab, different from the cold dread that accompanied thoughts of what was coming.
This was warmth. Human warmth.
We pushed toward the front as the lights dimmed. Robin grabbed my hand without seeming to realize it, pulling me through the crowd until we were close enough to see the stage clearly.
The band was good. Better than good—they had that raw energy that separated live performance from recorded music, that willingness to improvise and experiment that made every show unique. Robin knew every word, singing along without self-consciousness, lost in the music in a way that made me forget about everything else.
I watched her more than I watched the stage.
She caught me looking during the third song. Our eyes met, and she smirked—not the defensive smirk she used as armor, but something softer. Something that said she'd noticed, and she didn't mind.
Neither of us looked away.
The show lasted two hours. By the end, we were both hoarse from singing along to songs I'd only learned to impress her, both sweating despite the cool night air, both grinning like idiots.
"That was incredible," Robin said as we pushed back through the crowd toward the exit. "Thank you. For the tickets. For coming."
"Thank you for dragging me to it."
"I didn't drag. You volunteered."
"Same thing."
The parking lot was chaos—hundreds of people trying to leave at once, cars jammed in every direction. We found the Camaro and sat inside without starting the engine, letting the post-concert high settle into something quieter.
"Something big changed for you," Robin said into the silence. "Before you came to Hawkins. Maybe before California. Something happened that made you different."
I stared at the steering wheel. The question she was asking had answers I couldn't give—not fully, not honestly. But she deserved something real.
"Yeah," I said. "It did."
"Want to talk about it?"
"Not yet. Not all of it." I turned to face her. "But you're right. I'm not who I used to be. The person I was before... he's gone. Dead, maybe. And whoever I am now—I'm still figuring that out."
Robin studied me for a long moment. Whatever she saw seemed to satisfy her, because she nodded and reached for the radio.
"Okay. When you're ready."
The drive back was quieter than the drive out. Robin dozed in the passenger seat, and I let myself enjoy the simple peace of the highway at night—the rhythm of the road, the hum of the engine, the knowledge that for one evening, nothing had been required of me except to be present.
We stopped at a diner around midnight, both of us hungry enough to eat whatever was on the menu. Robin ordered a burger and fries; I ordered three burgers and didn't bother explaining.
"Your metabolism is insane," she observed, stealing a fry from my plate.
"I work out a lot."
"That's not how metabolism works."
"It is for me."
She stole another fry. I let her.
By the time we reached Hawkins, it was past two in the morning. The streets were empty, the houses dark, the whole town sleeping through the encroaching danger it didn't know was coming.
I pulled up outside Robin's house and killed the engine.
"Tonight was good," she said, not moving to get out. "Really good. Let's do it again."
"Anytime."
She smiled—genuine, unguarded, the kind of smile she rarely showed anyone. Then she leaned over, kissed my cheek, and was out of the car before I could react.
"Goodnight, Billy."
"Goodnight, Robin."
She disappeared inside. I sat in the Camaro for another minute, processing what had just happened, before finally starting the engine and heading home.
The wrongness pulsed beneath Hawkins. The crisis was coming. But tonight, for a few hours, none of that had mattered.
I drove home grinning.
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