eight

PJ reached Scoops Ahoy without incident about twenty minutes ago. She had torn the back room apart, looking for her car keys but they were nowhere to be found. Then, it hit her. "Oh fuck!" She groaned, slapping herself upside the head. Her keys were in her sweatshirt pocket. The sweatshirt that was down in the vent in the Russian base. The sweatshirt that she only bothered to take the gun out of before throwing it to the side. "Fuck!" She mumbled to herself, leaving from the front of the store and heading slowly in the direction of the movie theatre. She was trying to come up with ways to get the door open and unlock it from the inside so she could Hotwire the car and they could get out of there-but her only solution would be to break open the window, which would draw way too much attention.

••

"Do you remember what I said about Click's class?" Robin asked Steve, her voice soft. "About me being jealous and, like, obsessed?"

"Yeah." Steve nodded.

"It isn't because I had a crush on you." She explained. "It's because...she wouldn't stop staring at you."

"Mrs. Click?" Steve asked, confused.

"Tammy Thompson." Robin corrected. "I wanted her to look at me. But...she couldn't pull her eyes away from you and your stupid hair. And I didn't understand, because you would get bagel crumbs all over the floor. And you asked dumb questions. And you were a douchebag. And-and you didn't even like her and...I would go home...and just scream into my pillow."

"But...Tammy Thompson's a girl." Steve said.

"Steve." Robin's voice was barely above a whisper.

"Yeah?" He asked, still confused. She just looked at him, tears welling in her eyes, and he finally understood what she was trying to say. "Oh."

"Oh."

"Holy shit." Steve sat back. He couldn't believe it. PJ was right. When Steve first started working with Robin, PJ thought she was like her-that she liked girls-but Steve didn't see it. So they made a bet-a stupid, ten dollar bet about whether or not Robin liked girls. And Steve had just lost.

"Yeah." Robin let out a breath. "Holy shit." She shrugged, expecting backlash. The sat in silence for a moment, and Robin began to worry that she'd lost him. "Steve...did you OD over there?"

"No, I just, uh...just thinking." He said. The thoughts of the bet faded from his forebrain as the endless amount of times that PJ had asked about Robin. It was clear to Steve PJ's feelings for Robin, even if she'd never explicitly said that she liked her, she had been writing songs about her and talking about her non-stop all summer.

"Okay." She nodded.

"I meant yeah." He shrugged. "Tammy Thompson, you know, she's cute and all, but...I mean, she's a total dud."

"She is not." Robin defended.

"Yes, she is. She wants to be, like, a singer." He argued. "She wants to move to, like, Nashville and shit."

"She has dreams."

"She can't even hold a tune. I mean, she's practically tone-deaf. Have you heard her?" Robin laughed. "All the time. No, you know, if musicians are your type, I happen to know someone who would be totally interested."

"Oh, yeah, who?" Robin asked, thinking this was a joke.

"PJ." Steve said, and Robin's smile fell.

"What?"

"Yeah, PJ's like, way into music." He nodded. "And she wants to be an artist-not a generic singer like Tammy Thompson."

"No, like, she's into girls?" Robin asked.

"Oh yeah, totally." He nodded. "You know, she's actually the one who made me realize how cute Nancy was before we started dating. I always wrote her off but PJ wouldn't stop writing love songs about her for like two years so I finally took notice. She was all on board, too. Gave her an excuse to be near her. Then, Nancy broke my heart and I think PJ became a little disillusioned after that."

"But...you said...she was interested..."

"Yeah." He nodded. "She's been trying, and failing, to write a song about you all summer. Says it's 'too hard to capture your beauty with words' or some shit. I just think it's because Dustin's not around to critique her work. She works best when he's around." Before Robin could ask anything else, the door slammed open-it was Erica and Dustin.

•

PJ was nearly back to the movie theatre when she saw the large group coming from the theatre-but also the guards stopping everyone to check something. ID or tickets most likely. She spied the group of four in crowd, and locked eyes with Steve. They ran away so she ran back, pushing past people to get down the stairs before starting back in their direction. She saw them all run and duck behind a counter, so she rushed over and jumped behind it too, landing with a thud and a lot of pain-but they were all back together.

"Hey, you good?" Steve asked, pulling her against the wall. She hissed as he did so, her leg was still bleeding pretty bad, and the pressure she'd put on it from running didn't exactly help the pain.

"Alive." She nodded. "You still drugged?"

"Puked it all up." He said, and they fell silent when they heard the Russian men talking into their radios-the voices echoing amongst the silent first floor of the mall. PJ shifted slightly, taking the gun out from her waist band and holding it front of her. They could hear footsteps coming closer and began to panic-PJ worrying she might actually have to fire the gun when a loud car horn began to blare. They all jumped, but the guards were distracted and weren't coming any closer to their counter. The display car to their right was blaring the alarm and flashing the lights, seemingly out of nowhere, like a malfunction. They heard the car crashing across the food court, the men yelling, and body's hitting the floor. The car crashed with a loud thud and the glass all shattering. PJ put the gun down as they all got up, peering over the counter to see the guards were dead and the car was wrecked. Looking above where the car was was Eleven, soon joined by Will, Lucas, Max, Mike, Nancy and Jonathan. Dustin, Steve and PJ all smiled, thankful El had used her powers to save them.

They came out from the counter as the larger group came down to meet them, PJ sticking the gun back in her waistband. She could feel Robin's eyes more on her than anyone else but she tried not to think about it.

"You flung that thing like a hot wheel!" Dustin laughed, running over to hug Mike and El.

"Lucas?" Erica asked, running up.

"What are you doing here?" Lucas asked.

"Ask them, it's their fault." Erica said, pointing at Robin, Steve and PJ.

"True, yeah. Totally true." Steve said. "It's absolutely our fault."

"I don't understand what happened to that car." Robin said, looking back at it.

"El has super powers." Dustin said.

"I'm sorry?" Robin asked.

"Superpowers. She threw it with her mind." PJ explained.

"C'mon, catch up." Steve sighed.

"That's El?" Erica asked, looking at El wide eyed.

"Who's El?" Robin asked.

"I'm sorry, who are you?" Nancy asked.

"I'm Robin, I work with Steve." Robin answered.

"She cracked the top secret code." Dustin said.

"Yeah, which is how we found out about the Russians." Steve nodded.

"Russians? Wait, what Russians?" Jonathan asked.

"The Russians!" Steve yelled.

"Those were Russians?" Max asked.

"Some of them." Erica nodded.

"What are you talking about?" Lucas asked.

"Didn't you hear our code red?" Dustin asked.

"Yeah." Mike answered. "I couldn't understand half what you were saying."

"Goddamn low battery!" Dustin exclaimed.

"How many times do I have to tell you with the low battery?" Steve huffed.

"Okay, well, everything worked out, didn't it?" Dustin asked.

"Worked out? We almost died." Erica said.

"Almost died?" Steve asked, looking at his sister. "I thought you were keeping them safe!"

"I was keeping them safe!" PJ argued. "She was talking about back there when you guys got seen by the Russians!" They all started arguing, but stopped when El collapsed a few feet away. Mike was the first one to her.

"El! El!" He said, getting down on his knees next to her. "What's wrong?"

"My leg. My leg." El cried.

"Her leg, her leg. Okay." Jonathan said as he and Nancy knelt Down. They took off an extremely bloody bandage to reveal a disgusting looking, pulsating slice in her leg. It was nearly glowing red-almost like the gate. Suddenly, something began to rapidly move and shift around, causing El more pain as she groaned and wailed.