InsaneJournal

The teacher clearly didn't care about the class. It was one of those electives that people took who didn't actually want to do anything, and while Robin was feeling the weight of senioritis, she still cared about music. Probably more than most normal people cared about music. It was disappointing.

Mrs. White left the room, like she always did, five minutes after class started. She'd be back somewhere around the time the bell rang. As soon as she was gone, Robin picked up her book bag and slunk through the back of the classroom to the empty seat next to Bianca. Mrs. White would probably never notice that she had changed her seat from the assigned seating. Half the kids had changed their seats.

"So is this the most boring class or what?"

---

Bianca glanced over at Robin, a slight smile appearing as she sat down next to her. "It's pointless," she agreed, holding up the textbook she was reading, which was not for that class. "I usually use it to get my homework done for every other class."

That wasn't to say she wouldn't appreciate the distraction. When she set the book back down, she closed it. "I don't believe you were ever this bad," she told Robin, before gesturing toward the group of freshmen gathered in a cluster at the front of the classroom. Bianca usually sat up front, but there wasn't a point to it in this class.

---

Robin was a firmly in the middle of the class kind of gal. Close enough to hear, not so close that she couldn't get away with some doodles or reading something else if there was time after a quiz or test or a quiet study session. Having a phone was like having a whole world in your hands, and she could easily get distracted if she'd had one of these in school.

Her other school.

"Yeah, but I didn't have Wikipedia or IMDB or Spotify back then or I'd be just as bad. I am just as bad right now. I have, like, two months till school's over for good for me. Does it even matter what I do right now?"

---

"That's the question, isn't it?" Bianca asked. "People have left, and we don't know if they remember this place or not. Enid doesn't seem to. And even if we stay, are we just going to be stuck in this town?"

She gave Robin an apologetic shrug. "I enjoy learning, so it doesn't bother me. When someone's actually trying to teach." She supposed she couldn't fault her classmates too much for not caring, when their teacher obviously didn't.

"Other than phones and the internet, how does this place compare to home?" she asked, curiously. She wasn't concerned about anyone overhearing, since no one seemed interested in the two of them in the slightest.

---

"That's how small towns work," Robin told Bianca, full of the knowledge that she was never going to get out of Hawkins (unless you counted the Upside Down). She didn't know much about Bianca, except she knew that Wednesday girl (and Enid) and they seemed to go to a school for supernatural people. "They just keep you sucked in until you feel like you can never escape. And that's without a Ghost Line."

"I like learning usually, but it was already March where I was from so I should be at the end of the year, about to graduate. Instead, I'm in this class with a teacher who doesn't care what anyone does." Robin pulled a pen out of her bag, then a notebook and started doodling while they talked. Nothing in particular. Little squigglies. The occasional R in some kind of weird "font."

"Honestly? Aside from location, this town is a lot like mine. Just, you know, instead of just the Upside Down being creepy, everything is creepy." She glanced over at Bianca. "How does this compare to your home?"

---

"It's not too unlike Jericho, except the locals here ignore us where back there they hate us," Bianca answered, then offered a brief explanation. "For being outcasts. This school is a lot different than Nevermore, but at least I have my own space in Pickman. It could be worse."

There was part of her that wanted to say more, but she didn't know how to mention her own abilities, or what she was. She'd only told Katniss because of what she could offer, and the potential use probably outweighed any judgment. It seemed to, at least.

"What is the Upside Down?" she asked instead.

---

>

"It's… a dimension underneath mine. Looks just like our world, but it's always dark, there are monsters flying around and no people. Unless you're there — " she made a face, tilting her head side to side as she talked. " — then obviously there's people there. It's like if Hell and your home dimension had a kid."

And then there was Eleven and her powers. The government who always seemed to be after her and the Upside Down in equal parts. And then the Russians. It was a convoluted mess sometimes.

"There's this guy who lives there. We call him Vecna because of Dustin's Dungeons and Dragons thing. Vecna's basically an undead wizard who can go into people's minds. Do you remember Chrissy Cunningham? The blonde cheerleader who was here for a while?"

---

Even with the weird year they'd had at Nevermore that just so happened to coincide with Wednesday Addams's appearance, the Upside Down sounded terrible as did Vecna. But the name and description didn't sound familiar.

"I don't think so?" Bianca asked.

She glanced around, curious if anyone had taken note of their conversation but everyone in the class seemed preoccupied by something else.

---

"She was head cheerleader in Hawkins. Really nice girl, but ran with the jock crowd. You know how there's different groups in high school. Jocks who are usually the popular kids. The band geeks. The nerds. We didn't run in the same circles, but she was nice. Vecna — murdered her in a really brutal way, all while he put her in a trance of some sort." Robin didn't want to go into detail, and most people didn't want the details anyway. Normal people, anyway, but Robin never considered herself normal. No matter how badly she wished she could stop asking questions she didn't want the answers to, she always did. You can't unring that bell, as her mom used to say. "He has a very specific way of killing his victims, but he was really using them to make one giant gateway into our world from the Upside Down."

What would be waiting for them when they went home? If people could come from any time, did that mean that whatever was going to happen had happened already and that someone could show up and be like, Oh my god, Robin! You're alive! And then she'd really not like to go back.

That was exactly what happened to Chrissy, and now she understood with complete clarity why Chrissy was so freaked out.

---

Bianca's eyes widened at that. You could be dead, and arrive here? She wondered if that applied to anyone else in Dunwich, but didn't know how she'd find out other than asking, and she wasn't going to do that.

"That sounds horrible," she said, not even realizing she'd lowered the volume of her voice, hushed as she considered the repercussions of what Robin had just said. And Robin herself sounded a little haunted, with good reason.

"So is she…" her voice trailed off as she started to ask what that meant for Chrissy now, but then realized it was entirely in poor taste to do so. "I'm sorry, that was rude."

---

"Chrissy was here and disappeared before you got here. I think. I kind of lose track of time sometimes. Days blur, you know?" Robin stopped doodling to look at Bianca, noticing just how blue her eyes were. Otherworldly almost. "But yeah, she was at one of my friend's houses when Vecna put her in a trance. From our side of things, you can't see him. He's in another dimension, so all you see is how their.. body crumples."

Robin paused and lost focus of Bianca's face, remembering the massive "earthquake" that tore through town. Watching those little flecks fluttering out of the gaping hole in the middle of town and into Hawkins. "He needed four victims in four different places to open his gates, and he got them right before I was taken here."

She frowned suddenly, sitting upright and rolling a shoulder as if she had a crick in it. "But yeah, Chrissy said she was in her trance when she got here, so it had to be right before he killed her."

---

By nature, Bianca was guarded. She needed to be, her secrets were what made her, what gave her the life she wanted to live. Even with her powers restricted, she was careful and never too trusting of herself or others.

This extended to her emotions, and her empathy, as letting herself get too close never panned out well for her. Even so, as Robin spoke, the concern in Bianca's blue eyes was genuine. "That's horrifying," she said softly. Both Chrissy's death, that depiction of what it looked like on their side, and to have left without knowing what happened next. That might actually be a good thing, but Bianca's own curiosity would have driven her mad.

---

"My friend — Eddie — he's in Dunwich. We thought he died when we were trying to stop Vecna. Turns out, we walked right into his trap. If we hadn't done what we did, he couldn't rip open his gates." Robin had spent a lot of time thinking of what her song would be if Vecna had gotten a hold of her. Max's was a good one. Kate Bush was a classic. Robin's would probably be something from Stevie Nicks's solo album, something her parents would have eye-rolled at.

She exhaled. "So what about your world? Your world has that Wednesday girl in it, right?"

---

Bianca rolled with the change of topic, but not without noting how heavy that all weighed on Robin. Honestly, her last term at Nevermore had seemed crazy until this conversation, and now she thought that they may have gotten off easy.

And then she remembered what Wednesday had told her about Xavier.

"Yeah, she showed up and things seemed to get worse, but I guess I can't put that all on her. We already had a monster… a hyde, on the loose and I guess the plan to bring this 17th century bigot back from the dead to destroy all the outcasts was already in motion before she showed up. She just ended it." Not before people had died, but it could have been worse if Wednesday hadn't figured out what was going on.

"She's from the future… So I know some things that happen." Bianca's voice trailed off for a moment before she added. "But do you know Katniss? She says there's people here from different versions of her world, so maybe that's the case."

---

"I've seen her on the network. Katniss. She's kind of intimidating."

But most people intimidated Robin. She assumed she was nothing more than an annoyance and the weird girl, and quite frankly, she was both of those things. The only reason she'd come over to chat with Bianca is because she'd mentioned something about school on the network and Robin had taken a chance.

"Maybe it is. Maybe Eddie is from a world where he didn't die, and Wednesday is older than you remember." She paused. All those conspiracy magazines she'd read were funny in retrospect, especially when you put together that not everything in those magazines was just bullshit. Victor Creel certainly hadn't been.

What if all those magazines were just about other dimensions like the Upside Down?

"Okay, so you had a hyde? Like a Jekyll and Hyde thing? And someone brought an asshole from the 17th century back to life? Did I hear that right?"

---

"Katniss?" Bianca asked. She supposed she could see it in how reserved she was, but Bianca hardly found her intimidating. But she also would disagree with Robin's assessment of herself, especially in this class where she'd otherwise be reading and wishing she could skip.

"Yeah, same concept. This kid seemed harmless, but could turn into an actual monster," Bianca replied. "Killed a few people. And yeah, Crackstone. Wednesday could give you more details, but apparently our carnivorous plants teacher was the sister of this student who got killed years before…" She shrugged. "It was a weird year. They dismissed term early after Principal Weems died."

---

"The Principal died too?"

Robin's eyebrows went up immediately. Her English teacher had been a victim of rumors of him being gay (he really was gay), and knowing it was a small town and the way people were, he'd resigned and moved somewhere else. And then there was the flesh monster, made out of people from the town. Who knew how many of those were people she knew?

"So asshole from the past get resurrected — still weird — and a Hyde monster kills people. Is that… normal?"

---

"Not really," Bianca said. "Although the two were tied together by the sister…" She shrugged. "My first couple of years were fairly normal, for a school for outcasts that is. Werewolves, gorgons, sirens, psychics… Anyone who wasn't a normie. It was just a boarding school. Full of drama between students and gossip and everything else you'd expect? Less killing, more backstabbing."

---

"Metaphoric backstabbing, gotcha."

Robin couldn't say she'd rather go back to that kind of life. It was dull and boring to her, even by Hawkins standards. But she also didn't want to die — didn't want her friends to die — even if that seemed much more likely now that the Upside Down was flooding into Hawkins.

Still, she didn't want to think about that. It already happened, or it was about to. Either way, at some point, she'd find out. Like Chrissy had.

"So all of that is real in your world, huh? We didn't have werewolves or gorgons — that I know of anyway. We do have a girl with psychic powers. Her name's Eleven. We call her El."

---

"She's not here, is she?" Bianca asked, thinking psychic powers might come in useful, unaware, really, of Wednesday's. "And yeah, that's all real," she confirmed, noting that Robin didn't mention if there were sirens or not. "Not widely accepted though, which is why we have a school for outcasts…"

She glanced around the room, still no one showing any signs that they were listening or cared that the two of them were talking about the supernatural. "Unlike here, where everything seems to be accepted without question. That kind of creeps me out."

---

"No, she's not here, but things are pretty bad at home, so it's probably best that she stays there to protect Hawkins." Even if they never left, or if something replaced them, having Eleven back in Hawkins would be better for Hawkins.

Robin had left out Sirens because the Weekly Watcher had mentioned them before and she had her suspicions that they just might exist in their world. Just like aliens did, and maybe Bigfoot. When Bianca looked around, so did Robin. She'd forgotten what they'd been talking about and frankly, most people in Hawkins just thought they were weirdos whenever they did talk about things like Vecna and demogorgons.

"People in my world just think we're talking Dungeons and Dragons which isn't helped by most of our group being in a Dungeons and Dragons group. In the 80s. During the Satanic Panic."

---

The idea that they had to protect their own worlds rang true for Bianca, though Wednesday came to mind more readily than her own role, but it was also sort of bullshit. They were teenagers trying to finish school after all. It was such a common theme in books and movies, but Bianca hadn't expected that to become her own life.

"I get that," was all she said in response.

But then she had to laugh at the idea of being mistaken for a D&D group, even in the midst of the Satanic Panic. "Well, that ends," Bianca reassured her. "Mostly, at least. And while we're here, I don't think we have to worry about that much. It's just everything else." Even as she said that, however, she was smiling. She really had no idea what to expect in Dunwich, but somehow it all seemed absurd enough to not worry about at that moment, in the midst of a class where no one was paying them any attention, and the teacher wouldn't be returning for another ten minutes.

"I'm glad you came over here. This class is actually worthwhile now."