AMARA WASN'T LIKE MOST HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS not just in the sense that her brain was wired differently, but because she never put much thought into her appearance. She didn't wear miniskirts or fishnet tights or ballet pumps. She didn't style her hair into a perm or pile makeup onto her face or perfume her body with heady sandalwood. On a given day she rolled out of bed, attired herself in jeans and a sweater, brushed the messiness out of her hair, and touched up her face with concealer and lip balm if she had enough time. She saw no reason to make an effort to look good because, unlike most high school girls, there wasn't anyone she wished to look good for.

        So upon arriving at school on the 1st of November, Amara was surprised to find that even in her woodland sweater, denim jeans, and still-white converse, she looked far better than most of her fellow peers. Practically everyone in the junior and senior classes was sporting bruised nebulae beneath bloodshot eyes that were definitely not the result of studying late into the night for an upcoming exam. A cluster of girls in the class of '85 had done a good enough job of obscuring their hangovers with makeup; Tina was among them, her face set in a lovesick stupor as she recounted to her friends how great in bed Billy Hargrove was.

        "How are you feeling?" Amara asked Robin as they reached their usual seats in their physics class. The movies they had watched together after the party had done a good enough job of distracting Robin for the time being, but Amara knew that the laceration was still fresh.

        "Better," Robin answered, and she looked like she meant it. "It's just exhausting to live in a world where everyone's too busy judging us to see things from our perspective. You know those movies where there's a neighborhood outcast everyone picks on, who usually ends up dead for plot purposes? We're the outcasts and everyone's been so conditioned to hate us that they never think about what it's like to be us. But at least I've got you, and that's good enough for me."

        Amara usually paid attention in physics, but she couldn't shake the poignancy of Robin's words from her mind. Everyone's been so conditioned to hate us that they never think about what it's like to be us. That had been true in her old neighborhood, where it wasn't uncommon for her to go on a walk without someone purposely crossing the street just to avoid being near her. It remained the truth in Hawkins, where nobody outside of Robin and her family knew that she had autism but still recoiled at the very concept of people who functioned any differently than them. And it was true in the case of people like Nancy who liked Amara but didn't know her well enough to comprehend that she meant it when she said she didn't like parties.

        Now that she thought about it, Nancy wasn't in her assigned seat near the front of the room. Amara hadn't seen her all morning, in fact.

        Three hours and three periods later, Robin and Amara went their separate ways; the former to the band room where she knew that after a night of pretending to be someone she wasn't that dedicating herself to one of her biggest passions was just what she needed, and the latter to the cafeteria where upon catching no sign of Nancy or Jonathan, chose to eat lunch outside. She seated herself in the alleyway near the gym, not caring that the ground was dirty. Clamping the headphones of her walkman radio around her ears, the song that came up when she pressed play was Drive by the Cars.

        Typical, she thought.

        Amara had always loved school despite the treatment she received from her classmates and teachers in Cleveland. She enjoyed broadening her mind and becoming more insightful about the world; she even found English interesting from time to time even though it was one of her trickiest subjects. It was lunch period that she didn't like because it could only be fun if you had people to socialize with, which was out of the question if it wasn't Robin or Jonathan or Nancy. Her life in Hawkins was a push and pull between her instinct to hide what people believed was wrong with her and her desire to form meaningful connections. Amara dreaded a situation where her autism was made public to Hawkins, but she hated having to cut herself off from others because humans were known to detest what they didn't understand.

        After about ten minutes and three songs, footsteps rounding the corner caused Amara to lift her head. She paused her music and removed her headphones upon detecting Steve's downcast countenance. His hair was slightly damp from showering off gym class and his eyes were slightly damp with tears from his official breakup with Nancy.

        "Hey," Amara smiled, gesturing for Steve to sit across from her. "Did you talk to Nancy yet?"

        "Yeah, and I only made things worse," Steve immediately blurted out as if he'd been searching all over the school just to tell her those words, which he had. "She couldn't remember anything from last night and I panicked and asked her to tell me she loved me, which she couldn't. And then I walked away."

        "Oh Steve, I'm so sorry," Amara gasped, though on the inside she was grateful that he was too caught up in his troubles to notice that she was likely amid an identity crisis. When confronted with a personal problem she didn't know how to solve, her instinct was to help someone else through an issue of their own in the hope that it would take her mind off whatever was vexing her. It was for this reason that she had held Robin's hand for all those months of her unrequited feelings for Tammy Thompson while hiding the fact that she had problems of her own.

        "If I'm being honest, I have no idea what I'm supposed to do now," Steve sighed, dragging a hand through his voluminous hair. Amara wondered if like her, it was a nervous habit of his. "It's just, my grades are shit and I probably won't make it into college next year but Nancy was the one good thing in my life. Now I just don't know... "

        "What do you want to do?"

        "I don't know," Steve repeated, thinking deeply. A week ago he and Nancy were sailing on smooth waters, savoring the moments they had to themselves in his car and her room, all sweet words and delicate touches and tender kisses. A week ago he could not have foreseen the decaying of his and Nancy's year-long relationship, which he had believed to be unbreakable. He was still processing the fact that Nancy was no longer an is in his life, but a was. She was his girlfriend. Was his first love. Was, was, was. "I just wish we could start over or something, but I don't know how," Steve went with.

        "Well, I have been told I'm good with relationship advice," Amara's smile was strained as she questioned whether she was saying the right thing. "I mean, I've never been in a relationship before, but in my view, one of the biggest reasons why relationships fizzle out is due to a lack of communication."

        "What do you mean?"

        "Well, from what you told me last night, Nancy's guilty about what happened to Barb," Amara began slowly, wringing her hands together. "And you mentioned that what happened last year only pushed the two of you apart. I'm guessing that you both chose to cope in different ways and lost touch along the way."

        "It's more complicated than that," Steve explained, though he was beginning to understand what Amara was getting at. "Barb's parents think she's still alive because we haven't told them the truth. Nancy suggested it but I told her it'd be too dangerous."

        "So she might have seen that as a lack of empathy on your part," Amara continued, hoping she wasn't being too blunt. "What you could do is, maybe apologize for not seeing what she was going through, tell her you also feel bad about what happened to Barb and that you're always here if she needs to talk, and tell her you love her. Maybe also give her flowers."

        "Should I apologize today?" Steve queried. Now that Amara had guided him on what he needed to do, it was hard for him to think about anything else.

        "Maybe give it a day or two?" Amara suggested. "That way you'll have time to think things over and decide whether or not you actually want to do this."

        "Okay, got it," Steve nodded, standing up. "Thank you so much for this. I'm sorry for pinning this all on you – "

        "It's really no big deal, Steve," Amara smiled reassuringly at him. "I'm happy to help."

        With an airy wave, Steve walked away and Amara was left alone once more. The knot in her stomach had loosened slightly as a result of helping someone she considered a friendly acquaintance even if she didn't believe the odds of mending his relationship with Nancy to be in Steve's favor. Even if Steve had listened to Nancy's unease concerning Barb, feelings were complex and altered regardless of people's intentions. If Nancy didn't love Steve, drunk or sober, there was very little he could do about it.

        Even so, Amara was glad to be of assistance if it meant she could momentarily forget about her own issues.

"BUT WHY IS STEVE HARRINGTON going to you for advice?" Robin questioned later that day while they were doing their homework. They had been assigned a report on the stock market crash of 1929 for their history class and Amara had been partnered with Jonathan. The only downside was that he wasn't in class or anywhere at school, meaning Amara had to start on her own.

        "According to him, I have a better understanding of what's going on between him and Nancy since I know everything that happened last year, so I was able to offer a better solution than someone who didn't know the full story," Amara explained, flicking through the guidelines for the assignment. "Okay, looks like it needs to be four pages long at least, no plagiarism, of course, must be typed... "

        Robin took Amara's preoccupation as a moment to observe her. She'd swept her honey brown tresses into a messy ponytail to keep them out of her face, exposing her clenched jaw. Her shoulders were nearly grazing her ears as she pored over the directions for the report, her eyes refusing to stray from the paper. She was as beautiful as she always was in Robin's eyes, but the lighter-haired girl knew the signs when something was plaguing her best friend. Her posture and the fact that she was busying herself with her schoolwork and Steve's love life made Robin feel awful for not noticing anything earlier.

        "Amara, are you okay?"

        The question caught Amara off guard. Was she okay? She was in the sense that she had a 3.7 GPA and had managed to go more than two years without being expelled from a school. She was okay because she had a loving family and good friends. She was okay because there had been a possibility that she wouldn't be able to even speak, and she was now discussing college options with her parents. She was okay because, unlike in Cleveland, she had avoided being ostracized in Hawkins.

        But was she okay? When she felt obligated to attend a party she had no interest in going to? When she couldn't talk to the so-called nerds because she was worried that even they would judge her? When she had no idea what career she wanted to embark upon because she hadn't expected to make it this far in her education? When she felt the need to diminish her existence due to a diagnosis she didn't choose to have?

        Was she okay?

        "I don't know."

        Robin extended her arm and moved the report guidelines from Amara's hands to her desk. The gesture compelled Amara to make eye contact with her best friend. The light blue spheres she loved conveyed more than Robin could ever say out loud, an affirmation that she was here and was willing to listen to whatever was troubling Amara, just as Amara had done for her the previous night.

        "I just feel so... conflicted," Amara elaborated, her voice barely more than a whisper. "It's like I'm torn between remaining invisible and risking making new friends and hoping no one notices anything wrong with me. And autism aside, I don't like things normal people like. I don't mind being judged for what I'm interested in because I know I'm not the only person who likes sci-fi or doesn't have a love life, but I don't know if anyone else in Hawkins has autism or anything similar."

        "I get how you feel, I really do," Robin responded softly. "The other day I was talking to this really cute girl in band – I think her name was Valerie or something – and I had the urge to ask her out on a date but then I remembered that it's supposedly 'not ordinary' for me to like girls. But I can't be the only gay person in the world. And even if no one else here has autism, there's bound to be at least one other person who would accept you."

        Amara thought back to her freshman year of high school. Until January of 1983, she had kept to herself not because she was inherently a loner but to guard herself against the judgment of her classmates. Befriending Robin had been a risk for both of them; Amara was the first person Robin had ever confided in about her sexuality, and Robin was the only person outside of Amara's family who knew of her autism. And it had paid off; they were there for each other when no one else was and were sometimes all each other had.

        "This world isn't easy," Robin continued, holding Amara's gaze. "It's gritty and painful and if you're not what everyone wants you to be then you're basically worthless. We didn't choose to be like this, to like girls or have a neurological disorder, but that also means that there's no point in trying to be people we aren't. And if there's just one person out there who sees the real you and loves you for all that you are, it doesn't matter that most people won't bother getting to know you. It doesn't."

        "I already have that person," Amara admitted, fighting back tears. "It's you. It's always been you."

        "Same here," Robin replied, grinning for the first time since the Halloween party. "Now c'mere."

        Amara propelled herself forward, colliding with Robin in a mess of tangled limbs and beating hearts and laughter. The world would always be more difficult for people who didn't fit the mold of being white and straight and non-disordered, people that white, straight, non-disordered individuals found easier to cast aside than make feel welcomed. Amara and Robin were prime examples of that.

        But there was a ray of hope for the former; for that day Will Byers had become infected by a mysterious entity from the Upside Down and Dustin Henderson was harboring a peculiar creature he had unearthed in his garbage can. And with Amara offering Steve advice as catharsis for her uncertainty of who she wanted to be, it was only fitting that she would instantly answer the call to once again confront the otherworldly beasts tormenting Hawkins for the second time.

published to quotev: 7/19/22
published to wattpad: 7/20/24

AUTHOR'S NOTE

i was originally going to have amara only offer steve advice on how to get nancy back but having her give advice to steve while going through an identity crisis is the most me thing ever lol