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. ✧ ・゜. +・o ✧
School, as usual, dragged on, but Alina almost didn't mind today. In science class, when Mr. Clarke spoke about the psychology behind fear, something resonated inside of her, and she remembered all of the times she'd been put in danger in the past year. From nearly getting run over by a car to almost being killed by the Demogorgon to being held hostage at the quarry, Alina had had too many experiences with danger in her short life, and as she gazed around at her fellow classmates, all of whom were zoned out as usual, she realized most of them had never experienced the trauma she had. Perhaps it was why they seemed so young in her mind—they were really acting their age, but what Alina and her friends had gone through had aged them.
She felt a surge of pity for herself, for not being able to experience the childhood that they did. And as she was sitting there, retraining her eyes back on Mr. Clarke, something happened. It wasn't True Sight. It wasn't the headaches or heat flashes she'd been getting recently. No, this was something else. Her mind split, and suddenly she was everywhere at once: burrowing under the ground, standing in a bathroom, looking apprehensively at the steam curling out of a bathtub, scurrying around in a cage shrouded in darkness, and floating in a dark, secluded place, watching. Waiting.
And then Alina Fairgrieves shot back into one mind, and blinked, looking around the class. Her heart was pounding so hard her surroundings were becoming a little fuzzy. She thought for a moment she might be having a stroke or something. But then the fog cleared, and Alina Fairgrieves shakily refocused on class, unaware of the boy back at home now sitting on the edge of his bed, the window open, because the creature that now lived inside him liked it cold. And she was unaware of the fact that this boy knew exactly what was happening to her.
At lunch, Alina sat on the stairs with Max and Dustin, watching from afar as Mike tried to dial her house number. He seemed to understand that Will's sickness was not what it seemed, and that something else was happening. And he seemed concerned, concerned enough that he'd decided to phone him instead of just waiting until the end of the school day. Which made Alina concerned as well. Concerned that maybe Lucas was wrong, and this wasn't over. Concerned that this was just beginning.
