Chapter Text
You could feel it every day, 75 people crammed into one high school band room, waiting to be let go by the dictator holding the baton. Dr. Broward seemed to know it, too, because he threw the band his trademark glare and spoke just a few ticks too slow, as if reveling in the power that he held. “Before you all go,” his eyes flicked around the room, section by section, staring down the problem child with each instrument, “I wanted to inform everyone that, even with the boys’ basketball trip this weekend, we will need twenty percent of the band to stay behind and play at the girls’ hockey homestand. I will be taking volunteers, but if we cannot field a sufficient ensemble with those who go willingly, I will be picking at random. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Dr. Broward.” Everyone spoke in the same dejected unison, their eyes fixed on the clock behind the band director’s head rather than on the man himself.
“Wonderful. You’re all dismissed.”
A collective exhale followed as the band’s shoulders dropped from attention in unison, a brief lacuna before the sound of instrument cases scraping over linoleum, the members of the Hawkins High School Marching Band racing to put their tools away and head home for the evening, or on to whatever debauchery they had planned. Robin Buckley unscrewed her mouthpiece from the rest of her trumpet with one hand. With the other, she leaned forward, shaking as she tapped the shoulder of the redheaded girl in front of her.
“Hey, Vickie.” You’ve been staring at the back of this girl’s head for three years and you still don’t know her last name. What kind of a crush is this? Robin wasn’t sure if Steve Harrington was the angel or the devil on her shoulder. He liked to play both roles. Realistically, he was probably a Puck. “Are you playing at the hockey game this weekend?”
The snort of a reply told Robin everything she needed to know. “God, I hope not. Half the reason I’m still in band is for the road trips.”
“Cool. Yeah.” Robin tried to smile, but she couldn’t get the muscles quite right, couldn’t quite hide her disappointment. Vickie turned back around, returning to her conversation with the other clarinetists as they all methodically dissected their instruments, wiping spit off their reeds and applying grease to the more stubborn strips of cork. At no point did she ask what Robin’s plans were for the weekend. That was fine. She was… used to it by now.
Really? Steve’s voice asked once again. You’re sure this is the girl you want to kiss? She had heard the rant out loud so many times it was practically burned into the back of her head. Steve didn’t get it—he could have his choice of almost any girl at Hawkins. Robin had to have a crush on Vickie, because the population of queer women at this school was exactly two. If she didn’t find a way to get with the only other girl who liked girls in town, then she was going to graduate high school having never had her first kiss, and when she got to Wellesley in the fall, she would already be behind. Uncool even among the other nerdy lesbians, a scarlet L on her breast indicating what a loser she was. Besides, it wasn’t like Vickie was a bad option. They had things in common! They both played in the school marching band, so clearly they cared about music. Sometimes they laughed at each other’s jokes. It was practically meant to be.
It’s not like she was looking for a wife here. Just someone she didn’t hate, to help her check off a box before she was surrounded by enough liberal arts lesbians to sink the Titanic.
“Buckley!” Robin’s head snapped up to see Dr. Broward standing over her, clipboard in hand and crow’s feet wrinkled behind his Coke-bottle glasses. “I can count on you for hockey this weekend, correct?”
“Yes sir!”
“Attagirl. I don’t know what I’m going to do when you graduate.”
“Hey, say the word and I’ll tear up that early decision letter. Or, you know, come back over winter break like everyone else.”
The band director laughed, scribbling down a note on his clipboard before departing. A couple others in the trumpet section quirked their eyebrows or cocked their heads at Robin. Was she just sucking up to Dr. Broward in the hopes that she’d, what, win his favor? She already had that—by showing up to every event on time and sober, she was head and shoulders above half the band. Somehow, it was unthinkable that, in a basketball town like Hawkins, Robin might just like hockey more. It had all started her freshman year, when she had been one of the unlucky few assigned to the rink instead of the court. Where others saw a death sentence, she saw a new obsession: there was a beauty in the way that the players moved around the ice, and the unrelenting pace of the game captured her attention better than any of the sports Steve had tried to get her to embrace. Vickie didn’t know what she was missing.
Nancy Wheeler loved this game. Starting from the age that every generically sporty preteen had to select the 1-3 sports that would dominate their life, most of her friends had chosen basketball. She didn’t blame them—this was Indiana. It was basketball country. You did well at Hawkins, you got a scholarship to a great college, you played in the WNBA.
Basketball had never really been an option for Nancy Wheeler. Whatever dreams she might have had were crushed when her height topped out around five foot four, but that was fine. She had her sights set on another game. Some of her earliest memories involved sitting too close to the television during the Winter Olympics, watching the figure skaters perform their routines. She had begged her parents for lessons, showed up at the local rec center with an absurd sparkly leotard. One day, her mom hadn’t looked at the calendar closely enough before driving to the rink, and they arrived just as open hockey was starting. Karen Wheeler made a comment about how well, we haven’t driven all this way just to go back home, so she petitioned the coach to let her daughter join for a spell.
Nancy never looked back.
Last year had been the most important season, recruiters and scouts in the stands to watch Indiana’s Miss Hockey do her thing. Nancy had reaped the rewards: there was a recruitment letter from the University of Wisconsin sitting on her bedroom nightstand. Her dream school. They produced world champions, Olympians, future Hockey Hall of Famers. The hard work was done—this season was just for glory. Hawkins had come so close to winning the stat championship in 2007 only to have it snatched away in double overtime. Nancy wouldn’t let her legacy here be that of the also-ran.
Ask the members of any hockey team their favorite part of the game and a few answers were bound to crop up. The snipers would talk about finding the perfect angle to slip the puck past the goalie. Playmakers would grin from ear to ear as they described weaving through a field of enemies, puck always firmly in their control. The opposite was true on the blue line, defenders’ joy derived from swiping the puck away from those clever dodgers. Nancy, though? She loved the violence, lived for the distinctive crunch that followed when she slammed into her opponent, knocking them off their feet.
She didn’t love what came after.
A harsh whistle pierced her ears and the girls all skated to a halt. “Wheeler!” Coach Knight barked. “Two minutes for boarding!”
It was only practice, but Coach had made it clear during their warmup stretches: what they had in skill, the Hawkins girls’ hockey team lacked in discipline, so the penalty box was open and waiting for anyone who got a little too free with the rules. Nancy made the death march to the box, plunking down on the uncomfortable metal bench and hanging her head in disappointment more than shame. She hadn’t hit Carol that hard. It was the kind of move that most referees would overlook.
Two minutes ticked by like the sands of the hourglass were tinted with molasses. Nancy broke out as soon as she heard the whistle, only to be stopped once again by the end of practice. “Hit the showers, ladies. Big game this weekend.” Her teammates murmured their assent, taking off their helmets and pulling out their braids and ponytails. Nancy was ready to follow, but Coach Knight raised her hand. “Wheels, can I talk to you for a second?”
“Sure, Coach.” Nancy shifted her shoulders forward in discomfort, half from the sweat underneath her shoulder pads and half in anticipation of this conversation. Her skates felt weighted down with lead as she slid over to the bench where Knight was waiting, that disappointed mom kind of look already on the coach’s face.
“I don’t think I need to tell you that you have talent, Wheels. Schools must be breaking down your door looking to recruit you. You made a commitment yet?”
“Yes, Coach. Madison. Wisconsin.”
“Madison. That’s a good team. They play tough. I think you’re going to like it there.”
Nancy knew where this was going. After an incident involving the football coach, everyone involved in the Hawkins Athletic Department had been told to employ the sandwich method when providing criticism. If you started out with compliments, it was supposed to soften the blow of the insults that followed.
“Do you know how many penalty minutes you have this season, Wheels?”
“No, Coach.” She didn’t think about that. Had no reason to.
“So far, you have 44. That’s the highest on the team by a solid margin. Most are for boarding, illegal hits, a couple slew-footing calls. Dirty plays.”
“With all due respect, Coach, I wouldn’t call any of them dirty. All those plays would be perfectly legal if I were on the boys’ team. And, frankly, I don’t think it’s fair that a more physical style of hockey is so taboo just because we’re women. It’s not like I’m going to check a girl so hard that her uterus flies out of her body and lands on center ice.”
Knight sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I’m going to level with you here, Wheels. I respect your feminist crusade. I do. And I support it everywhere else you want to bring it—classroom, newspaper, hell, even take it to the softball team. But here, you have to check your ego at the door, because I am in the business of one thing and one thing only: winning hockey games. If you spend much more time in the box, I think we’re going to have to start talking about that C on your chest.”
Nancy’s coach poked her pen at the letter stitched onto the captain’s jersey, standing brightly against the white field of the sweater. It shouldn’t have meant much. It wasn’t like she was in the NHL, after all. At the same time, Nancy had been the first sophomore captain in Hawkins ice hockey history, boys or girls. It was a symbol not just of her talent but of her leadership, her determination. Her heart was the team’s heart. Stripping her of that letter halfway through the season would be like tearing her own heart out of her chest. Worse, she knew exactly who was waiting in line to take the title away from Nancy: Carol fucking Perkins, who cared more about ogling the boys on the other side of the rink than actually winning games.
So no, they were not going to start talking about the C. Nancy’s blood turned to ice, the color draining from her cheeks as soon as the possibility was floated. Coach Knight was already looking back at her notes, avoiding the captain’s gaze. “Understood, Wheeler.”
“Yes, Coach.”
“Good. Go rest up. How’s your shoulder feeling?”
“It’s good.”
“Love to hear it. Go put some ice on it. You’ve got a big weekend ahead.”