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Informationen zum Autor A. R. Capetta (all pronouns) is an acclaimed author of YA genre fiction including The Lost Coast, The Brilliant Death , and the bestselling Once & Future series co-authored with Cory McCarthy. A. R. fell for Stranger Things after being mistaken for a season one Eleven cosplayer at New York Comic Con. You can find A. R. on Twitter @ARCapetta and Instagram @AR_Capetta. Klappentext "The backstory of the Stranger Things's Robin, and her journey of coming into her own personality, interests, and sexuality"-- Leseprobe Chapter One September 6, 1983 The first history class of the year hasn’t even started, and I know exactly how it’s going to unfold, minute by minute, period by period. I have the entire academic year pegged. At least, I swear I do, until Tammy Thompson walks in. Something about her is different. Maybe it’s her hair. It used to be pin-straight and red. Now it’s short, tousled, and redder. It could be her smile. In freshman year, she was semi-popular and at least semi-fine-with-it, but now we’re sophomores and she’s got a grin that says she’s determined to win friends and influence prom queen elections. (Not that we can go to prom as sophomores, unless an upperclassman invites us, an event so rare and special that people in this school talk about it like it’s a meteor sighting.) Maybe it’s the fact that when I see her, music infiltrates my brain. Soft, obnoxious music. Wait. My brain would never play Hall and Oates. I twist around in my seat and realize that Ned Wright is in the back of the room with a boombox perched on his shoulder. He’s turned it down so Miss Click—sitting at her desk, ignoring us like a pro, acting like we don’t exist until the bell rings—won’t confiscate it. When class starts, he’ll slide it under his desk and use it as a footrest. (He’s been doing this since eighth grade. He’s also a pro.) But for right now, Tammy Thompson is strolling across the room on a cloud of “Kiss on My List” and raspberry-scented . . . something. Lotion? Shampoo? Whatever it is, it reminds me of the scratch-and-sniff stickers I collected with a fervor back in middle school. She slides into a seat, and her friends greet her in high-pitched flutters. “Oh my gosh, your hair.” “How was the beach, Tam?” Tam? Maybe that’s the difference—she’s got a new nickname to go with her fresh haircut and enhanced smiling capabilities. “Tam,” I whisper, quietly enough that nobody can hear me under the how-was-your-summer uproar. Miss Click looks up. Ominously. One minute until class starts. If I was a run-of-the-mill nerd, like I’m pretending to be, I would have a stack of pristine, unsullied white notebook pages ready to go. I would have already done a few chapters of the reading to get a jump start. My pencils would all have perfect, identical, weapons-grade points. As it is, I plunge down at the last minute and rummage in my bag, looking for my history textbook and anything that will leave a mark on paper. There’s a graveyard of gum on the underside of the desk. And the perm I let Kate talk me into right at the end of summer—the perm that made my scalp tingle for a week and still makes my head smell perpetually like overcooked eggs—means my hair is big enough that I have to be extra careful how much space I leave for clearance. I almost hit my head on the underside of the desk when I hear her start to sing. Tammy’s voice rises over . . . Hall’s? Oates’s? It’s bold and sweet and, yes, she uses vibrato as generously as I peanut butter my sandwiches, but the point is she’s not afraid. Everyone can hear her. I come back up from my deep dive into my backpack and look around at our classmates, but nobody seems to care that Tam is now singing her heart out in the middle of the room with thirty seconds to go until class starts. And ...
