Bad habit, Robin Buckley

00 (prequel)

June 1 1983
Last day of freshman year at
📍 Hawkins high

Joanne Henderson

The clock to my right showed the time 2:34 and the calendar drawn on the white board read the date 6/1/83–the last period of the last day of freshman year. Tommy H, who is a grade above me— has been pulling on the string of my "tie up shirt", as Tommy started referring to it as, for the past 40 minutes.

I was only slightly worried that he would successfully untie it—i forced my mother to triple knot it. I was about to swat his hand away when I noticed a girl in the back of my French class—Robin, I knew her name. She had chipped black nail polish and fingers covered in tarnished silver rings. Her walk man—clearly old, was acting up. Robin smacked her hand along the portion of the walk man that held the tape until it began to work again.

I had wondered what song was playing, she was so enticed in it—If I looked at her for too much longer I might be tempted to ask her what she had playing- but that would be annoying, and i don't want to be annoying—

I looked back at the clock 4 more minutes of this insufferable, terrible, annoying—

"are you gonna call me this summer" the question—asked by none other than Tommy H. He had tossed a folded up gun wrapper with his number written on the inside on my desk while he asked the question.

I opened my mouth to speak but before I could make a sound the final bell of the school year rang louder than it usually seemed. I started rushing towards the door and on my way out, the girl—Robin, bumped into me.

She mumbled a hushed "sorry" as she barely turned back to look at who she bumped into. This was one of those moments in my life that felt like—it mattered. I just didn't know why yet.

I hope you guys enjoyed—and please feel free to leave comments on my writing style!! Also I promise I don't usually suck this bad lol!

The writing does get MUCH better by abt chapter 6
- *future Grace*