CHAPTER FIFTEEN
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     THE WEEK IS LONG, the silver cat feeds when blue meets yellow in the west. That was what they had translated. After hours of working on it, long after Scoops Ahoy and the mall itself had closed, that was what they came up with. And it made no sense to any of them.

     Lexie wracked her brain, for anything that might sound familiar. Maybe something that someone who was Russian would use to communicate that only another Russian would know. But she hit a wall there, too, because she didn't know much about Russia or things that only a Russian would know.

     "I mean, it just can't be right," Steve was saying as he pulled the gate down and locked the store for the night.

     "It's right," Robin maintained, sounding like she was still thinking about what it could all mean pretty hard.

     "I mean, if you created a secret code, you'd want it to be difficult to figure out," Lexie brought up and Robin pointed to her and nodded in confirmation.

     "Honestly, I think it's great news," Dustin said as he, Robin, and Lexie started to walk away from the ice cream parlor.

     "How is this great news?" Steve asked disbelievingly, following right after them. The neon lights of the mall were still there, but dulled since everything was closed. The hallways were cast in a faint, pinkish red sort of glow. "I mean, so much for being American heroes. It's total nonsense."

     "I'm pretty sure only you and Dustin wanted to be American heroes," Lexie interjected and Robin smirked, letting out a little laugh.

     "It's not nonsense," Dustin told him, ignoring Lexie's comment because it was glaringly true. "It's too specific. It's obviously a code, like Lexie said."

     "What do you mean, a code?"

     "Like a super secret spy code," Dustin elaborated.

     "That's a total stretch," Steve dismissed, sounding unsure.

     "I don't know, is it?" Robin ventured with a shrug,

     "I mean, not everyone has the same setup as Dustin. If I were the Russians, I'd do it in the middle of nowhere, too," Lexie tried reasoning, again not sure how to think like a Russian exactly.

     "You guys are buying into this?" Steve asked incredulously. He glanced over at Lexie, who he had caught up to and was walking beside. "I thought you didn't care about being an American hero."

     "I don't –"

     "Listen, just for kicks, let's entertain the possibility that it is a secret Russian transmission. What'd you think they were gonna say, 'Fire the warhead at noon?'" Robin ventured as if it was obvious. And Lexie had to agree, it kind of was. They knew of pretty much everyone in Hawkins, and there was nobody from Russia communicating via radio all of the time.

     "Exactly," Dustin agreed, looking over at Steve pointedly.

     "And my translation is correct, I know that for sure, so...'The silver cat feeds.' Why would anyone talk like that unless they're trying to mask the true meaning of their message?" she went on.

     "Exactly," Dustin agreed once again. Lexie watched the two of them, honestly believing it, but not really enjoying exactly what that could mean.

     "Why would anyone want to mask the true meaning of their message unless the message was somehow sensitive?"

     "Exactly."

     "So what we're saying is that they might actually fire the warhead at noon?" Lexie asked worriedly. What if they had stumbled onto something further out of their league then they had originally thought.

      Robin nodded. "More or less. I guess that confirms your suspicion."

     "Evil Russians," Dusin said matter of factly.

     Robin started to smile in disbelief. "I can't believe I'm about to agree with this strange child, but, yeah, totally evil Russians."

"So how do we crack it?" Dusin asked as if it was a school project that they needed to get working on soon.

     "Well, I guess we translate the rest and hopefully a pattern emerges," Robin answered with a slight shrug. Lexie looked in between them in moderate disbelief. What were they meant to do with any information of that nature?

     "A pattern. Right, like maybe 'silver cat' is a meeting place?" he suggested excitedly.

     "Or a person," Robin added, getting maybe a little more excited than she meant to given all the talk about the 'strange child' just moments before.

     "Or a weapon."

     "You guys are stressing me out," Lexie muttered, fiddling with the straps of her bag while they speculated.

     "It's probably gonna take a super genius to crack it, but..." Robin was saying before she looked behind at where Steve and Lexie had been walking and stopped. In all of her overthinking about secret codes and Russians, she hadn't even realized that Steve had fallen a bit behind her. She just assumed he was paying attention to something else a little too long and would catch up. "Where's Steve?"

     He was standing next to a toy horse, fumbling around in his pockets for loose change. A few coins clattered to the ground as he searched.

     "Hey, Steve, what are you doing?" Robin called out, furrowing her brows at the sight in front of them.

     "Uh, it's a quarter. I need – do you have a quarter?" he asked absently.

     Without thinking much about it, Lexie reached into her bag and fished out a few coins, walking over to where he was standing by the ride and dropping the quarter into his hand.

     "Sure you're tall enough for that ride?" Robin teased while she and Dustin caught up. Steve ignored her comment as the horse started to go back and forth, carnival music coming out of the tiny speaker as it did so. They just watched it for a moment and Lexie was starting to wonder if he was okay. "You need help getting up, little Stevie?"

     Dustin laughed loudly at her remark but Steve shushed them both immediately.

     "Would you two just shut up and listen?" he quieted, going back to staring at the horse that was still rocking back and forth.

     "Holy shit," Dustin said suddenly, pointing at the machine in realization. "The music." He slung his backpack off of his shoulders and started to dig through it with purpose. "The music!" He retrieved the tape recorder they had been listening to all evening and started to play the message over again. The music in the background of the recording was the exact same one they were listening to at that very moment. Lexie's eyes widened.

     "I don't understand," Robin said plainly, looking at Dustin like he was also crazy.

     "It's the exact same song on the recording," he explained.

     "Maybe they have horses like this in Russia," Robin dismissed, not really seeing the big deal in all of this.

     "'Indiana Flyer'? I don't think so," Steve pointed out, gesturing to the name on the machine. "This code...it didn't come from Russia. It came from here."

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     After they dropped off Dustin, who would not stop his endless stream of words that conveyed what he believed to be the infinite possibilities of what the Russian government could be doing, they sat silently for a moment.

     "I wonder if we're ever going to catch a break," Lexie said, half joking as she sighed and tried to laugh it off. This whole thing was making her extremely nervous. How many times had she walked through the mall? How many times did she walk past a possible spy?

     "But if we figure this out—"

     "Don't say anything about American heroes," she interrupted quietly, looking over at him with raised brows. She had definitely guessed it because he didn't try to finish his sentence. "Are you really going to do this because you think it's going to help you get girls?"

     She was trying not to cringe at herself as she asked. She was also trying not to go bright red or make things unnecessarily uncomfortable.

     "Well, what I'm doing isn't working," he admitted, shrugging but keeping his eyes laser focused on the road like he was embarrassed about it.

"That's because you..." she trailed off, trying to find the words for it.

"Are a loser who couldn't get into college and has to work scooping ice cream?" he finished in a defeated tone. "Because his dad made him?"

Lexie gasped, dramatically, she would admit, but she gasped. She shook her head aggressively, almost wanting to shove him for talking so down on himself.

"No," she firmly denied. "That's the thing. You don't act like you. You're putting on this, like, front and girls notice that. All you have to do is be you."

Steve paused for a second, shifting uncomfortably in his seat as he turned onto their street, his sailor uniform rubbing up against the seat.

"Yeah, and, what if they don't like that, either?" he asked and Lexie swallowed as they pulled up in front of his house. His voice was a little hollow like the reality of saying it was something he didn't quite want to come to terms with. It made her sad when he said things like this, especially because she'd tell him the full truth about everything if she had the guts. He turned the car off and pulled the keys out of the ignition, finally turning to her and looking a little bit miserable as he did so.

"Then they're not meant for you anyway," she told him seriously, working up the courage to look him right in the eyes as she said this. "You don't need to put up a wall, or be an American hero, or do whatever it is you think is going to make you look cooler. You're already all of those things you're trying so hard to be."

He was staring at her in a kind of shocked way, and she was wondering if she had overstepped or made him uncomfortable somehow. A few seconds passed and she was starting to feel like the small space of the car was entrapping her, so she pushed the handle and got out.

The fresh air made her feel a little less panicked, because she could've sworn she was going to lose it if he just sat there and stared at her for any longer. Steve followed her lead and got out of the car, locking it once they both shut their doors.

"Do you mean that?" he asked quietly as he stepped onto the sidewalk where she stood. She was almost kind of shocked that he was even asking. They both started to walk slowly over to her house. He always walked her to the door, especially if it was later at night.

"Of course I mean it, Steve," she replied. "I wouldn't just say that." They reached her door and she noticed that his parents were actually home for once, which was unusual. "I really want you to know that I mean that. Any girl would be lucky to have you."

He was smiling at her and she was trying to match it despite being a little torn up inside. The thing was, she did mean it. But she knew that it would probably break her heart when someone else did get lucky enough to have him.

"See you tomorrow?" he asked and Lexie nodded, trying to get out of her head for a second.

"Yeah. I'll come by after my shift at the station, it's another early one," she confirmed with a little bit of a sigh. "Hopefully, maybe this whole thing with the Russians turns out to be nothing."

"Or maybe we'll save the world again," he countered with raised brows, pointing at her like it would change her mind. She smiled at him and shrugged, using her keys to unlock her door.

"Yeah, maybe," she said offhandedly. She was trying to resist the urge to hug him goodbye or something. Instead, she waved at him and told him goodnight and that she'd see him tomorrow.

Once she closed her door, she took a deep breath and shook her head. Maybe this summer wasn't going to turn out as uneventful as everyone thought it was going to be.