stranger things imagines.

the journal: nancy wheeler.

the journal hadn't looked significant at first.
in fact,
the journal looked so well worn that it might have been one crease away from turning to dust.
but it was the journal that brought the souls of unlikely companions together.
the journal had been y/n's at first,
until it became theirs.
when she was thirteen,
she bought the leather bound journal at a store with the money she earned doing chores.
she didn't know why,
but there had been a calling.
like the pages were made to hold her thoughts in permanent ink.
she didn't actually write in it until senior year of high school.
every time she opened the book with a pen in hand,
trying to gather her rioting thoughts to verbalize them,
she could never get a word written down.
the one and only time she'd gotten a thought to actually materialize on the paper,
she had been tucked away in the shelves of the library with only her own company to enjoy.

"humiliation.
after years of refusing to write in this journal,
i've finally figured out why.
because everything that has ever happened to me has been in the name of humiliation.
and to relive these events by writing them down and forever solidifying them,
it's a terrifying thought.
human memories are unreliable.
you soon realize if you feign ignorance,
people brush off your most humiliating, soul crushing, embarrassing moments as tales of memory fog.
memory fog: adjective/verb to mean confusion, forgetfulness, to miss details.
example: you don't remember the girl that puked all on herself at the party? no? oh...must be my memory fog.
unfortunately this is not a perfect science and is not always reliable.
especially when the entirety of a high school has seen your most shameful moments and stores them away for times where they can bring it up and throw it back at you.
high school means to eat or be eaten.
so if someone has an embarrassing memory of you,
one that is pure mortification,
you keep an artillery of their most awful moments.
vile, isn't it?
but it's the truth and it's what keeps you free from further humiliation.
humiliation is a high schoolers best friend."

the bell beginning the school day interrupted y/n's thoughts.
and she had been so engrossed into her writing,
that the bell startled her and smeared the ink of her final word on that page.
since nobody ever came into the library,
especially not the far back,
y/n tucked it away into the shelf where it posed as a regular book.
it would take an inquiring eye to realize the journal for its truth,
but an inquiring eye in this school?
there's better luck in wringing blood from a stone.
the school day came and went like any other,
then the next morning she found herself in that very same spot;
isolated from others,
left to silence,
with only the journal in her lap and a pen in her hand.
she hasn't even noticed the journal had been touched until she opened it to the introduction page,
and a response laid.

"if this school were bigger,
and the town was less suffocating,
maybe humiliation wouldn't be as scary as it is.
one wrong move and what you've done taints you;
a stain you cannot wash.
though you say your biggest fear is to be humiliated for all to see,
you weaponize this very fear for your own benefit.
does that make you better than anyone else?
aren't you just as vile as them?
using the gaps in their memory to your advantage,
keeping your own weaponry of shameful memories in store?
to beat the enemy is not to join them.
i hope you realize this and find peace,
whoever you are."

y/n scoffs at the entry that's intruded on her personal journal,
though she had quite been asking for it when leaving it behind.
she's lucky this is all that happened.
anyone else might have plastered the page for all to see and laugh over.
so y/n replies,