'tis the damn season

Six: Mr. Perfectly Fine (Taylor's Version)(From The Vault)

"Mr. Looked me in the eye and told me you would never go away"

Steve and I haven't spoken since that little blow up this morning. He was out front, taking care of the customers while Dustin, Robin and I stayed in the back, working on the translation. 

We'd been here for a couple hours and I was starting to get hungry, but there was no way I going out to get ice cream if Steve was there on his own again. But luckily Dustin offered to get us food from the Chinese place next door, we gave him some cash, and he left Robin and I to continue working. We had two full lines of the code translated and were working on the third, but we were starting to get restless over hearing the same recording over and over again. It felt like my brain was turning to mush.

"Did we have any classes together in school?" I ask, wanting to take a break from the Russian language.

Robin puts down her pencil that she had been scribbling with, and thinks for a moment.

"I think maybe geography once, but that may have been it. I am a year younger than you," she shrugs.

I nod, agreeing. "I remembered you from one of my classes I just couldn't remember which one it was. I saw you around school a lot," I say, leaning back in my seat.

"I saw you sometimes too. Never with anyone though."

I shake my head, with a small smile. "I never really had any friends. I was terrible at making them. I mostly just hung out with Johnathan and Will growing up."

Robin nods, understanding. "Yeah me neither, except I don't have any siblings. I already have one more year of high school left and never made a friend," she laughs.

I smile at the fact of how similar we are.

"Well I finished high school with little to no friends and turned out just fine. I'm sure you will too," I reason.

Robin smiles at this, shaking her head slightly.

I thought when I heard the door open that it would be Dustin, coming back with our food, but instead it was Steve, carrying nothing but a bowl of ice cream. He didn't say anything, and just set the bowl down in front of me, and walked back out of the room, leaving Robin and I to stare after him.

I look down at the ice cream in front of me, my eyebrows lowering at it. Cookies and cream, with extra Oreos on top.

It was going to take a lot more than a bowl of fucking ice cream to win me over. I stand up, taking the ice cream with me, and throw it out into the garbage next to the freezer. I can feel Robin's eyes on me as I sit back down.

"Okay seriously, what is going on with you guys? Steve won't tell me shit," she asks.

I shrug, not really wanting to go over it again. "We don't get along," I answer simply.

Or maybe it was just that I don't get along with him.

Robin didn't seem to like that answer, as she threw her hands up in the air. "Yeah, I've gathered that, but why? I thought you liked ice cream."

"I do, just not when it comes from him."

I adjust in my seat, knowing I'll have to give Robin some sort of explanation. She didn't really seem like the patient type.

"When I went to school here, Steve and his friends were assholes to me. Made my first two years of high school hell. And now all of a sudden everyones saying he's 'changed, and grown up' and shit and everyone expects me to forgive him."

I seriously have never been one to hold a grudge. I was usually the queen of forgiveness. But for some reason I just couldn't shake this annoyed feeling I had every time Steve was in the room.

"He was an asshole," Robin agrees, trying to lighten the tension in the room I'd created. "And he did grow up, both are true," she adds.

I thought maybe I was going to have to hear the same story from her too, but she didn't say anything more about it after that.

Dustin eventually came back and we ate and worked at the same time. For about an hour Robin went up to help Steve with the rush of people in line. I was surprised that Steve never came back complaining about Robin not doing her job and helping him. It was Robin that offered Steve the help when she went to check on him.

After Robin returned we worked for another couple hours, before finally we had translated the entire code, and written in on the white board in front of us.

Steve came into the back to read what we'd discovered after Dustin ran up to the front to tell him we'd done it. Although the translation didn't really give us any clue as to what the hell these Russians were really talking about. It was obviously some sort of coded message.

'The week is long, the silver cat feeds when blue meets yellow in the west, a trip to china sounds nice if you tread lightly'.

We'd translated the words, and now we had to translate what the words were referring to, which was going to be an even more, impossible task.

****

"It just doesn't make any sense," Robin says, helping Steve to pull the metal door across the front of Scoops before locking it up.

We spent the whole day, from open to close trying to figure out what those words meant. And still had yet to come up with anything. The mall was closed now, a lot of the lights were turned off as the four of us started our way towards the front parking lot.

"I hate to break it to you Dustin but we may not be able to figure out much more than the translation," I say, feeling defeated.

I didn't want to give up right after things started getting interesting, but this task seemed impossible.

"Well maybe we got some of the words wrong, maybe it would make sense if we just—,"

Robin cuts Dustin off right there. "It's not wrong, we doubled checked every word twice. The translation is right, we just have nothing to compare the words to."

It was then that I'd noticed that Steve had been awfully quiet for a while. Robin and Dustin were continuing to debate what to do next, when I turned around to see Steve staring at a little plastic horse ride. It was one of those things in the mall that kids could sit on for twenty five cents and it would move around and play music. My dad never let me on them as a kid, but I had been to the mall with Joyce a couple times, and she always let me.

"What are you doing?" I ask Steve, crossing my arms over my chest.

"Do you have a quarter?" He asks, shifting his gaze from the toy horse to me.

"You want to go for a ride Harrington?" I remark without missing a beat.

He ignores my comment and calls over to Robin and Dustin who were farther down the hallway now. The two of them turn around hearing Steve's voice.

"Do either of you have a quarter!" He yells, seeming almost frantic now.

Dustin runs over pulling out the coin from the front pocket of his jeans, handing it to Steve.

"You need help getting up there Stevie?" Robin asks him, but he ignores her.

The three of us watch, confused as fuck, as Steve puts the coin into the machine, turning it on. The horse starts moving in circles as if its running, while loud fair-like music plays from the speakers.

At first I thought Steve was crazy, but it didn't take long before I understood what he was getting at.

"Dustin play the recording again," I say, both Dustin and Robin not cluing in yet.

Dustin does as I say, and suddenly we were hearing the exact same song, coming from both the toy horse and the recording.

"Holy shit," Robin breathes.

"This code didn't come from Russia," Steve says. "It came from here."