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❝ you act like you're all alone out there in the world, but you're not. you're not alone ❞
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Valerie Monroe was, in every sense of the word, a freak. Her hair never curled quite right, and it was always riddled with clumps of frizz. She hadn't the slightest idea on how to keep up with the trends that other girls her age did, and it didn't help her case that she didn't even know how to converse with those girls, much less how to be one of them. Of course, if she had grown at least a few inches past her fifth grade height, that might've helped. She hadn't. At fifteen years old, she remained a mere four feet and ten inches tall.
In addition to her outward imperfections, her inward form never quite matched the standards of most teenagers, either. Every minute of her free time was spent entrapped by words. She often wondered if the linings of her soul had been imprinted on with the rules of grammar and the vibrant strokes of creativity, for every yearning of her soul reflected this. And her classmates had realized this rather quickly. It hadn't taken them long to notice the dollar store novel that was always tucked under her arm, or the scribbled words on her desk that never pertained to the class content, and were more closely related to the dragons and forbidden lovers of some faraway land.
This was how Mike Wheeler and his friends had found her. One afternoon, when she'd almost been through her shift at the local comic and games store, they had walked in: four boys and one girl. Greetings led to conversation and high-pitched pleadings, and before she knew it, Valerie had agreed to write adventures for the group's Dungeons and Dragons games. Week after week, she would attend their sessions to play as their Dungeon Master. Of course, when her high school peers discovered this, it only added to the grounds for the insults and shriveling glares that would be thrown her way. Even Jonathan Byers would hardly talk to her because of the fact that she was friends with his younger brother.
