The first thing you notice is the distance.

Not physical: Robin is still here, still showing up to your house after school with her backpack half-unzipped, still kissing you hello when she slips through your bedroom window at night because she likes the thrill. But something in her eyes has shifted. A flicker you can’t name. A tension that coils in her shoulders, in the way she double-checks your locked door even when you’re alone in broad daylight.

You and Robin have been secretly dating for months now; messy, quiet, sacred months full of whispered jokes, scribbled notes passed behind textbooks, late-night drives where she played songs she never shared with anyone else. She was anxious sometimes, sure, but not like this. Not the way she’s been for the last two weeks.

Every time she thinks you’re not looking, she scans the street like she expects something to crawl out of the shadows. She flinches when car lights sweep across the living-room windows. There’s a crack in her voice when she tells you she’s just tired and nothing’s wrong.

Tonight makes it worse. She shows up at your window instead of texting first. Breathless. Cheeks flushed from cold air or panic, you can’t tell. She climbs inside, closes the window behind her, and immediately reaches for you like she needs the reassurance of touching your arm to remember where she is.

Her smile is soft, but her eyes… they’re somewhere else. The silence stretches. She’s pacing your room, running her fingers through her hair over and over. She pauses only when you say her name: quietly, the way you always do when you’re afraid she might break.

Robin swallows hard. Her hands tremble when she sits on the edge of your bed, elbows on her knees. You feel the space between you like a wall. Something has been eating her alive, and she won’t let you in.

She finally lifts her head. “I’m okay,” she says, voice hoarse. “I just… there’s a lot going on. Stuff I can’t explain yet.” Her gaze meets yours, apologetic, almost pleading. “It’s not you. I swear it’s not you.”

The words should comfort you but they don’t. Not when her shoulders sag like she’s carrying something impossibly heavy. Not when she keeps glancing toward the window as if expecting someone — or something — to appear.

You sit beside her, close enough that your knees touch. She takes a shaky breath, and her hand moves like she wants to reach for yours but stops halfway. “I’m trying to figure it out,” she murmurs, barely above a whisper. “I just… need you to trust me for a little while, okay?”

But her voice cracks on the last word. She leans into your shoulder, finally letting herself breathe. Her fingers curl into the fabric of your shirt like she’s afraid you might disappear.

You don’t know about the Upside Down, you don’t know the danger creeping across Hawkins again, you don’t know the reason she’s scared to let you walk home alone, or why she’s constantly checking the news, or why she jolts when the phone rings.

But you do know one thing: Robin is pulling away to protect you from something she refuses to name. And it hurts; the secrecy, the fear, the feeling of being shut out.

The question hangs between you, unspoken but loud enough that the room feels smaller for it.

What’s going on in her mind? And why is she so scared to tell you?