Chapter Text
Getting ready to leave for college was everything that Nancy Wheeler had dreamed it would be, which is to say it was an absolute nightmare. How did she have so much stuff, and yet none of it was the right stuff? It seemed completely illogical that a person should have to sort through a lifetime of stuff and pack it, only to turn right around and go shopping for more. What was the correct way to decorate a dorm? Was there a correct way? What if her roommate already had a trash can and a bulletin board and a color scheme, and she arrived first, rendering Nancy completely and utterly redundant?
(That was her greatest fear. Redundancy. Irrelevancy. Whatever you want to call it, Nancy was terrified that she’d leave her hometown and suddenly she wouldn’t matter anymore.)
Nancy’s parents were no help, of course. Her mother, Karen, had gone to an all-women’s college (her only option, at the time), the kind of place a girl went to “kiss a few girls and turn out a lesbian or otherwise strengthen her resolve to settle down with a man and start a family.” (Her mother’s words, of course. Karen had not elaborated, leaving Nancy to assume she was in the latter group, based on her personal family dynamic, but this assumption had still not been confirmed.)
And her father, well. He’d started college on some kind of sports scholarship, as Nancy assumed all men did, only to get drafted into the army. Nancy didn’t know much beyond that. Nancy didn’t know a lot of things. For example, she still didn’t know how her parents had met. What kind of bullshit parents don’t tell their kids how they met? Nancy hoped to God that it was scandalous. Something to make Karen and Ted Wheeler the tiniest bit interesting.
Anyway, all of that is to emphasize that Nancy was going it alone with the college preparation. The cherry on top was that Jonathan had bailed on her, so she was also going alone. She should have been moping about their breakup, but Nancy did not like to mope or sulk or brood or anything of that type, so instead she chose to be irritated. She had planned out all the logistics of packing, driving, unpacking, and all those plans were contingent on having Jonathan along with her. That was what couples did, after they’d been together for a while. They divided the boring tasks for an otherwise exciting adventure and commiserated about them. Nancy had been excited to reach the commiserating stage with Jonathan.
Nancy managed to finish packing, finish shopping, and stuff her life into the back of a car by herself, all with two days to spare. She was quite proud of that. Two whole days to wander around, tie up loose ends, view Hawkins through rose-colored lenses before she left it behind forever.
Two whole days to brood about how she had to do this alone.
It was only a fifteen-hour drive to Boston. Less than a day. She could do it. She had fought monsters in the Upside Down. She knew how to use no fewer than four types of guns. She could easily drive fifteen hours by herself, probably straight through, and definitely with a break.
The problem was that Nancy didn’t want to do that. It felt weak to admit, but she wanted someone along for the ride. Her mom said she would do it, except that she’d have to fly back, and she had an irrational fear of planes. That was for the best; Nancy didn’t know what she and Karen Wheeler would talk about in a car for fifteen hours. She eliminated Mike on principle—who took their little brother to college and then abandoned him on a plane?—and didn’t even consider asking her father. God, fifteen hours in a car with Ted Wheeler. Nancy had been to hell and being in a car with her father still sounded worse.
She could have asked Steve, but she wasn’t interested in fueling his fantasy of a future together, especially not since his dream involved driving around. He would assume it was, literally, a test drive, and Nancy couldn’t do that.
“I don’t know why I told you all that anyway,” Nancy said. She snapped a VHS case closed and then opened it again, closed it again. She had been doing that for oh, five, ten minutes.
Robin Buckley stared at her with a bemused smile and reached out a hand to take the video back. All Nancy had intended to do was pop into the video store to return some movies she’d found while packing, but before she’d even taken the movies out of her purse, she’d ended up telling Robin all her woes, except for the part about her fear of redundancy. That, she had enough sense to keep to herself. Even when Robin had interrupted to say she needed to reshelve some returns, Nancy had followed her around the store, whining about how she had to go to college by herself.
“You must think I’m some spoiled rich girl,” Nancy said, handing the video to Robin.
Robin shrugged and reshelved the movie. “You said it, not me.”
Nancy bristled at that. Her hands went to her hips of their own accord. Sometimes Nancy felt like a puppet, being pulled around by invisible strings, an invisible hand. “You could have denied it.”
Robin held her hands up in surrender. “Whoops.”
“Okay, whatever, I just need to return these movies and then I’ll leave you alone,” Nancy said. She took them from her bag and set them on the counter.
Robin stepped back behind the counter and tapped some keys on the computer. “These are overdue.”
“Oh. Right. Okay, how much do I owe?” Nancy asked, already fishing in her purse for coins.
Robin leaned closer to the screen and squinted. “Twenty-five dollars,” she said.
Nancy looked up, mouth open. “Are you kidding me? Twenty-five? The fee is five cents a day!”
“Right,” Robin said, looking away from the computer. “Two movies, both 250 days late, five cents a day…twenty-five dollars. Cough it up, Wheeler.”
Nancy swore under her breath and slapped a twenty and a five on the counter. She resisted the urge to compliment Robin on her mental math. “I know, I’m rich, what’s twenty-five dollars to me, right?” Her tone was rude, she knew that, but she couldn’t help it. She was stressed.
Robin laughed. “We should charge you more for keeping these gems off the shelves.” She pointed to the movies, both low-budget horror flicks from the 1970s that were already making a resurgence as cult classics. “Do you know how many weirdos have been bugging me about checking these out? A lot. And to think, they were in Nancy Wheeler’s pretty little hands this whole time.”
“Mike picked them for family movie night,” Nancy said defensively, pointedly ignoring Robin’s comment about her hands.
“Sure he did,” Robin said with a smirk.
“Well, this has been fun,” Nancy said. She turned towards the door and looked over her shoulder. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to get ready to drive to Boston alone.”
“Wait,” Robin called after her. “I’ll go with you.”
Nancy froze. Slowly, she turned around. “What?”
“I said I’ll—I’ll go with you.”
Nancy narrowed her eyes. “Why?”
Robin shrugged. “I, well, it could be fun? And you really don’t seem like you want to go alone. I know we’re not like, friend friends, but…” She trailed off and picked up in a new location. “You know I’ve never left Indiana? Really, not even for a day. I went to Indianapolis once, on a field trip. Aside from that, it’s just been Hawkins, day after day, for eighteen years. Oh, except for that one time you and I went to Pennhurst. Imagine that! The one time I get out, it’s to a mental hospital. Pretty fitting, if you think about it, I guess. Anyway, I just, I’ll go with you. I want to go with you.”
Nancy listened to Robin and imagined being trapped in a car with her for fifteen hours. She would probably talk the entire time. No, not talk. Ramble. Like a lost hiker who doesn’t even care that he’s lost, or a poorly plotted book. Nancy knew there was a non-zero chance that she would end up ditching Robin at a gas station, but she also knew that somebody who talked too much was preferable to somebody who couldn’t hold a conversation, i.e., her parents. And Robin was right. She didn’t want to go alone. So, Nancy took a deep breath in through her nose, smiled tightly, and said, “Okay. Yes. You can…drive to college with me.”
Robin pumped both fists in the air. “Sweet! This is gonna be great. Two girls on the road, not getting murdered.” She snapped and shot finger guns at Nancy.
“I certainly hope not,” Nancy said, although she had of course considered the possibility. She took a few brisk steps back to the counter and pulled her notebook and pen from her bag. She tore off a page and began scribbling notes on it.
“Whatcha writing?” Robin asked, leaning on her elbows.
“An itinerary. And a packing list. We leave in two days. I’ve already mapped out where we’ll stop for gas along the way. I plan to bring food along. We can stop at one restaurant. I’ve already made a reservation at a hotel, so we don’t have to drive through the night. It’ll be two days of driving, approximately seven and a half hours each. We’ll alternate every two hours so we don’t get too tired and…shit.”
“What’s wrong, Wheeler? Forgotten a crucial detail about somebody’s status as an unlicensed driver?”
“Maybe, and will you stop calling me Wheeler? I’m not a boy on a sports team.”
“I’ll consider it.”
Nancy clicked her tongue. “Fine. I’ll have to do all the driving. I was planning to anyway, so this doesn’t change much. I suppose we’ll have to stop and…sight see.”
“You say like it’s a death sentence.”
“We’ll be driving through rural America. There are a lot of ways to die out there.”
“I’m mostly worried about the boredom, honestly.”
Nancy finished writing, read her notes, and handed the page to Robin. “Study it. Look at some maps. Pack light, but not too light.”
“Got it, bring everything I own and burn this note.” Robin winked.
“Two days, Buckley,” Nancy said as she once again headed for the door. She tugged it open. “And if you change your mind, it's fine. I really don't care."
"Right, that's convincing. Hey, don't let the door hit you on your way out."
Nancy tried to look both nonchalant and stern. "Two. Days."
And she did let the door hit her on her way out.