Lyn and Zoey were curled up sleeping together when Dustin bursts into their room. "Get up, Lyn. We have to get to Steve. It's noon already." He jumps up and down on the bed. Zoey woke up first and wiggle out of her owner's arms to run around Dustin. She nips at his ankles. Dustin let out a yip and fell right on top of his sister's sleeping body.
"What the fuck Dustin!" She shoves her brother off of her.
"Don't blame me, blame Zoey. Her damn teeth are still as sharp as ever." He whines as he rubs his ankles.
"That's my good girl. You bite the rude boy for waking us up." Lyn scoops her dog up and gave her kisses all over her face. Zoey eagerly licks her cheek.
"This is no time to be messing around. We need to go to the Mall..." Dustin scolds her.
"I know. I know you miss Steve. I'll get ready after I feed Zoey." She got out of bed with Zoey still in her arms. She carried her to the kitchen before putting her down on the floor to grab her food bowl.
"No, you don't understand. It's not just that I miss Steve. I need him to help me solve the Russian code that I accidentally intercept on my radio when I was trying to contact my girlfriend." He explains the seriousness of the situation to her in hopes that it would make her hurry up.
"Did you say girlfriend?" Lyn gasps.
"I also said Russian code." Dustin narrows his eyes at his sister's priorities.
"I was going to ask about that next." She defends herself, although that flew out her head the second he said girlfriend.
"I'll explain when we get to Steve. So, get ready and I'll feed Zoey." He took the feeding bowl from Lyn. She nods and went into the bathroom to brush her teeth then she went to her room to get dressed.
She stripped out of her cotton shorts and an oversized t-shirt. She slips on a yellow and blue tartan cami mini dress. She picks up her curling iron to give herself loose corkscrews. She gave herself red lips and cheeks.
"Hurry up!" Dustin pounds his fist on the door. Lyn's only response was an eye roll as she applies reddish-brown eye shadow and mascara. She put on an acid-washed jean jacket and white with black stripes Adidas. "Come on!" Dustin whines.
"You're only making me want to go slower!" Lyn screams back making her brother groan loudly. She throws a black leather purse over her shoulder and put her cat-eye sunglasses on top of her head.
She opens her door to see Dustin sitting on the floor with Zoey on his lap. "Finally!" He got up and put his hands on his hips. "I tell you we need to translate a Russian spy sentence and you take an hour to get ready."
"Steve has the closing shift today. It's another hour until his shift starts. And, you don't know it's a spy thing. What if it's two Russian teens who meet at a science summer camp talking to each other?" She teases.
"I don't think that possible." Dustin shook his head.
"Of course it's possible. You need to stop watching movies if you think every Russian is a spy." She rolls her eyes.
"We'll see." He shrugs. He grabs her keys off the counter and ran out of the house.
"Give me my keys back." She ran out after him.
"Come on, if Max can do it so can I." Dustin whine as his sister snatches the keys back. He's been nagging her to teach him since he found out Max could.
"If you want to go to the mall, then get in the passenger seat." She got into the driver's seat. He got in grumbling under his breath.
Lyn and Dustin were walking through the mall to go to Scoops Ahoy when a pair of wedges booties in the display window of Kaufman Shoes caught her eye. "Oh, my god, beautiful shoes and a sale sign, I've got to go." She ran into the stores.
"What? I can't believe that woman. I guess I got to get a Russian to English dictionary anyways." He shook his head at his sister as he went into Waldenbooks. After he walks out with a dictionary in his backpack, he went to the shoe store to get his sister. He was happy to see that she was at the register already.
"Hey, you're never going to believe what a deal I got on this….AH," Lyn yells when Dustin grabs her arm to drag out. "Okay, I get it." She pulls her arm from him, so she could walk like a normal person the rest of the way. Dustin ran up the counter when they got into Scoops Ahoy.
"Hi." Dustin gave Robin who was behind the counter a toothless smile.
"Hi." She nods to him.
"I'm Dustin." He points at himself.
"I'm Robin." She raises an eyebrow that the boy was introducing himself instead of just giving his order.
"Pleasure to meet you… Uh, is... is he here?" He looks around for his best friend.
"Is who here?" Robin smirks, knowing who the boy was once she saw Lyn coming over to stand beside him. This must thee Dustin, Lyn's brother. The boy she heard so much about from both her coworker and his girlfriend.
Steve ran out from the back when he heard the familiar voice. "Henderson! Henderson! He's back! He's back!" He jumps his way over to his best friend.
"I'm back! You got the job!" Dustin waves at the Scoops Ahoy menu hanging above Robin's head.
"I got the job!" Steve pretended to play the trumpet, which was the start of their weird bro secret handshake that ends with a lightsaber fight where one of them kills the other. Lyn smile in amusement when Dustin pretends to stab Steve in the stomach. Steve then pretended that his guts were spilling out. When they were done they stare at each other laughing.
"How many children are you friends with?" Robin asks making Steve sigh and Lyn laugh.
"So, how about I get you something and we can catch up?" Steve waves to the menu.
"Oh sure, I'll have a banana split," Dustin said, not even looking at the menu.
"I'll have a brownie sundae and hurry it up I want to hear about Dustin's girlfriend," Lyn demands.
"What? Girlfriend?" Steve screams.
"Rosalyn!" Dustin glares at his sister.
"That's what you get for holding out on me." She stuck her tongue out at him. "We'll be in the booth I like." She gave Steve a peck before pulls Dustin to her favorite booth.
They didn't have to wait long before Steve came over. He put their orders in front of them. He sat down with a soda in his hand. "So tell me about this girl." Steve put his arm around Lyn.
"Her name is Suzie. She is easily the hottest girl I have ever seen. We have so much in common like science, mechanics, comic books, and fantasy. It's going to be a long-distance thing because she lives in Salt Lake City." Dustin had the biggest smile on his face as he spoke about her. Lyn put a hand over her heart to symbolize how she could feel it melting.
"How hot are we talking?" Steve asks. Lyn smacks him in the shoulder. "What?" He turns to his girlfriend, not knowing at he said wrong.
Lyn rolls her eye, out of everything he said about her that was what he got out of it. "Maybe for spring break I can drive you up there." She offers her brother.
"No, can do. Her parents are strict Mormons. They can't know about us. That's why I made the ham radio so we would be able to talk to each other. We'll see each other next summer at camp. She's hotter than Phoebe Crate." Dustin answers both of them. Lyn bites her lip, doubts of Suzie now filling her head. Even if she was real, Lyn didn't see how this relationship could work. A relationship was more than just a month in the summer and secret conversations.
"No, no. No way. Hotter than Phoebe Cates? No." Steve shook his head, not believe his younger friend for a second.
"Brilliant, too and she doesn't even care that my real pearls are still coming in. She says kissing is better without teeth." He took his face out of his banana split long enough to tell them.
Steve and Lyn exchange a gross-out look before Steve turns back to Dustin.
"Wow. Yeah, that's great. I'm proud of you, man. That's ro... that's kinda romantic. That's like Wow." He stumbles around, not know what to say to that.
"So do you really just get to eat as much of this as you want?" Dustin points a spoon at his dessert.
"Yeah, I mean, sure. It's not really a good idea for me, though. I got to keep in shape for your sister." He leans down to give her a kiss.
"Ew, don't do that in front of me." Dustin groans in disgust.
"He also has to keep it tone for the rest of the ladies that come in here." She winks at her boyfriend.
"Yeah and how's that working out for him?" Robin calls from behind the counter.
"Ignore her." He glares at his coworker.
"She seems cool." Dustin shrug, not seeing why Steve wouldn't like her. His sister was one of the biggest ball busters around and Steve loved her.
"She's not. So, where are the other knuckleheads?" He wonders why the other teens weren't here. He figures they been sticking to Dustin like flies to shit since he just got back.
"They ditched me yesterday." Dustin spat out.
"No." Steve gasps. Lyn's eyes narrow, but she wasn't surprised. Mike and El had been isolating themselves lately. Max was a tomboy but she wasn't nerdy. She probably would get bored with Dustin's inventions. Where she went Lucas would follow. Will wouldn't want to hang around for long if they weren't going to play dungeons and dragons.
"My first day back, can you believe that shit?" Dustin shook his head.
"Whoa. Seriously?" Steve sat up straight in disbelief.
"I swear to God. They're going to regret it, though, big time, when they don't get to share in my glory." Dustin perks up when he remembers the reason he was rushing his sister out of the house that morning.
"Glory? What glory?" Lyn cocks her head to the side.
"So, last night, we're trying to get in contact with Suzie." He began the story. Steve wiggles his eyebrow. His face fell flat when Dustin wasn't looking and shot her a look to say do you believe this shit. Lyn shrugs, she was currently on the fence about Suzie's reality. Dustin looked around the parlor before leaning into them and mutters something silently.
"What?" Steve leans in closer. Dustin whispers louder, but also speaking faster so it was hard to understand him.
"Just speak louder." Lyn rolls her eyes at her brother's melodramatic behavior.
"I intercepted a secret Russian communication!" He yells in frustration at their lack of hearing. Everyone in the ice cream parlor turns to them in shock at his sentence.
"It's for a play, calm down people," Lyn spoke to the room making them go back to their ice cream.
"Jeez, shh. Yeah, okay, that's what I thought you said." Steve calms the boy down. After a moment of silence, he asks, "What does that mean?"
"It means, Steve, we could be heroes, True American Heroes," Dustin told them.
"American heroes," Steve like the way that sounded. At the moment he didn't feel like anything, so even if this was nothing but two Russian having a casual conversation at least for a while he could feel like a hero.
"Just think about it, my sister would never be able to leave you. She would want to do whatever you want and more." Dustin sold it to him. Lyn's eyebrows push to meet together in annoyance at how she was being talked about. Before she could open her mouth to dispel that notion, Steve spoke.
"More?" Steve asks slowly, pronouncing every letter in the word.
"More." Dustin nods his head.
"I like more." Steve leans forward with a dreamy look on his face. Lyn was concerned with what the look would entail for her.
"Mm-hmm." Dustin nods with a smile on his face.
"What's the catch?" Steve looks back at Dustin wanting to know how he could make this happen.
"No catch. I just need your help." He told him.
"With what?" Steve asks.
"Translation," Dustin pulls out his Russian to English Dictionary from his backpack.
Lyn was sitting in the backroom of Scoops Ahoy with Steve and Dustin. They were listening to the recording that Dustin had of the radio inception. She was rubbing her temples, how were they supposed to translate this when it sounded like gibberish to her.
Dustin stops the portable tape recorder to ask Steve, "So what do you think?"
"It sounded familiar." Steve stops eating his banana to tell them.
"What?" Lyn narrow her eyes wanting to know how that could have sounded familiar to him. It didn't even sound like the Russian they heard in action movies, which was now obviously made up shit.
"The music, the music right there at the end." Steve points to the tape recorder.
"Why are you listening to the music, Steve? Listen to the Russian! We're translating Russian!" Dustin scolds him.
"I'm trying to listen to the Russian, but there's music..." Steve was trying to remember where he heard that melody before.
"All right, babysitting time is over. You need to get in there." Robin slams the door and ran in. Paired with her red face and wide eyes, it made for quite a dramatic entrance.
"Come on, Robin. How many days has Steve worked the counter the whole time, you've only gone up there for his breaks and meal?" Lyn put her hand up when Robin went to defend herself. "For the flirty game or not, you know you owe it to him to spend the day up there." She points back to the front that no one was manning right now.
Robin let out a huff knowing she was right, but Steve dealt with Erica better than her. "Hey, my board, that was important data, shitbirds." She gasps when her eyes fell on the dry erase board that once had the score of their flirty game now had the Russian alphabet.
"I guarantee you, what we're doing is way more important than your data." Dustin sighs, mentally taking back what he said about her being cool.
"Yeah?" She walks over to the table.
"Yeah," Dustin said in a duh tone.
"And how do you know these Russians are up to no good anyway?" Robin put her hands on her hips.
"How does she know about the Russians?" Dustin whispers to them.
"I don't know." Steve shrugs.
"One of you told her." He accuses them.
"It wasn't me." He defends himself with a mouthful of bananas.
Dustin turns to his sister. "When would anyone of us have time to tell her? You have been with us the whole time." She glared at her brother for thinking she would do such a thing.
"Hello, I can hear you. Actually, I can hear everything. The three of you are extremely loud. You think you have evil Russians plotting against our country, on tape, and you're trying to translate, but haven't figured out a word because you didn't realize Russians use an entirely different alphabet than you do. Sound about right?" She looks them all over. They each gave her a blank stare not wanting to confirm or deny anything. She glances down before launching forward to grab the tape recorder. But, Steve was able to beat her to it.
"Whoa! What do you think you're doing?" Steve held it close to his chest.
"I wanna hear it." She eyes it in Steve's arms, wondering if she would be able to forcefully take it from him.
"Why?" All three of them asked her.
"Cause maybe I can help. I'm fluent in four languages, you know." She gave a humblebrag.
"Russian?" Lyn raises her eyebrows in wonder.
"Ou-yay are-yay umb-day," Robin smirks at them. Steve and Dustin's eyes went wide in amazement and let out a celebratory laugh.
"It doesn't sound right." Lyn tilts her head in confusion.
"That's because it's Pig Latin." She told Lyn before turning to roll her eyes at the two males in the room, "Dingus."
"Idiot," Steve slaps Dustin with the Banana peel. Dustin looks up at him confused and offense.
"But I can also speak Spanish, French and Italian, and I've been in the school band for 12 years. My ears are little geniuses, trust me." She took the seat across from Dustin. The bell rang making her groan. "Come on, it's your turn to sling ice cream, my turn to translate. I don't even want credit. I'm just bored." She held out the ice cream scooper to him. The bell rang over and over again in the front.
Steve let out a sigh before he grabs the scooper and hands her the recorder.
They were actually making progress with the Russian, well Robin was making progress. Lyn was holding the tape recorder while Dustin wrote down what Robin said to. "Wait, that last part, just one more time." She paced in front of them. Lyn nods her head and rewinds it a bit before pressing play. The Russian with the weird music came out of the recorder again.
"Okay, that word." Robin points back to them. Lyn pushes pause, so they could remember where they left off. "It's pronounced dly-nna-ya," Robin repeats it. She made it sounds more clearly and exotic then it was on the tape.
"Dly-nna-ya" Dustin repeats after her. He sounds clumsy, like a child just learning how to sound out words.
"Which is spelled..." Robin points to the dry erase board.
Dustin hops up and excitedly ran to the board. "D. The... The chair. The chair-looking thingy." He points to the letter.
Robin wrote something down and looks up to smile at them. "We've got our first sentence." They cheer together.
Lyn got up to open the window to tell Steve. "Robin figures out the first sentence." She leans on the window frame to tell him.
"Oh, seriously?" He turns around with an ice cream cone in each hand.
"Hey, Lyn," Max and El call out to her.
"Hey girls… Oh, Eleven, I love the new outfit." She smiles and waves to them. Steve clears his throat. She turns back to him and put on a Russian accent. "The week is long."
"Well, that's thrilling." He sighs at the lackluster of it all.
"I know. But, progress." She shrugs before shutting the window to go back to Dustin and Robin.
Dustin and Lyn help Steve and Robin clean up and close Scoops Ahoy as a thank you for helping them translate the Russian phrase. "The week is long, the silver cat feeds, when blue meets yellow in the west," Lyn repeat the translation as Steve pull the gate down to lock up the parlor.
"I mean, it just can't be right." Steve shook his head.
"It's right." Robin defends her translation.
"Honestly, I think that it's great news." Dustin tightens his backpack straps. It was old, so it got loose a lot. He didn't tell his sister because he didn't want her spending money on him. Lyn side-eye him, she notices he was doing that a lot today.
"How is this great news? I mean so much for being American heroes. It's total nonsense." Steve let out a bitter laugh.
"It's not nonsense. It's too specific. It's obviously a code." Dustin corrects.
"What do you mean a code?" Steve scoffs.
"Like a super-secret spy code." Lyn mocks.
"That's a total stretch." Steve rolls his eyes.
"I don't know, is it?" Robin shrugs.
"You're buying into this?" Steve turns in shock.
"Listen, just for kicks, let's entertain the possibility that it is a secret Russian transmission.
What'd you think they were going to say, Fire the warhead at noon?" Robin points out.
"Exactly," Dustin point at the teen that was back on his cool list.
"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 meaning of their message?" Robin reasons.
"Exactly," Dustin nod along with her.
"Why would anyone mask the true meaning of their message unless the message was somehow sensitive?" She brought up something that made an idea pop in Lyn's head.
"It could be poetry." Lyn turns to them.
"Exactly…. What? You still think this is some Russian man speaking to his Russian lover." Dustin was once again agreeing with Robin when he turns to his sister annoyed.
"Don't mock me, because that would be good news. Not like your Russian spy theory. Your theory could mean something terrible for America and maybe the world." She glares down at her brother. After the last couple of years they had, she didn't want to go through another crazy life-threaten event.
"It's Evil Russian spy. How is the translation, Russian romance poetry?" He scoffs.
"Maybe his lover went on a week-long trip somewhere east and he's at her house feeding her sliver cat. Blue or yellow could represent either of them, maybe it's their favorite colors. He can't wait for them to meet again when she comes back west." Lyn interpreted the poem.
"I can't believe I'm about to agree with this strange child, but, yeah, totally evil Russians. Good interpretation though." Robin agreed with Dustin before turning to compliment the girl.
"So how do we crack it?" Dustin beams up at Robin.
Lyn stops walking with them when Steve pulls her back. "Babe, you got a quarter." Lyn looks down to see that the mechanical horse ride called the Indiana Flyer.
"Seriously, Steve?" She laughs. When she saw that he was serious, she shook her head while digging through her purse.
"Hey Steve, Lyn, what are you doing?" Robin calls when she realizes that two people were missing from their group.
"Uh, it's a quarter. I need... Do you have a quarter?" He points at the horse.
"Are you sure you're tall enough for that ride?" Robin teased. Dustin and she walked over to them laughing.
"Quarter!" He demands.
"Calm down, babe." Lyn hand him the coin he needed. He put the coin into the machine as quickly as he could.
"You need help getting up, little Stevie?" Robin teases. Dustin and Lyn chuckled.
"Shh! Would you three just shut up and listen?" Steve hushes them. They listen to the familiar tune that came out of the machine. It was the same one they had been listening to all day.
"Holy shit…. it's the background music on the tape." Lyn gasp.
"The music!" Dustin took his backpack off to pull out the tape recorder and play it along with the ride.
"I don't understand." Robin was confused about why their minds were blown.
"It's the exact same song on the recording," Dustin explains to her.
"Maybe they have horses like this in Russia." Robin shrugs.
"Indiana Flyer? I don't think so. This code, it didn't come from Russia. It came from here." Steve points down at the ground.
"Why couldn't it have been poetry?" Lyn whines.