⁴𝐒𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐄𝐃, 𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐯𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐭𝐨𝐧

001-letters from california

NORMAL.

You'd think Carla Wheeler would have finally found it after moving on from the Upside Down and Demogorgans and the Mind Flayer. That after being over and done with everything supernatural for almost a year, she would have fallen into a routine that was somewhat normal. 

And, she had....almost. 

She'd wake up every morning at six o'clock to get ready for school, usually wasting half of that time with Steve—who chose to stay in bed, stubbornly trying to keep her there, too. At seven o'clock she traveled to Hawkins High, where she'd spend the exact same six hours each day, studying and learning, wandering the halls with Robin or worrying about college in her free time. Then, most nights, she'd spend her nights working at the library, as she had that summer, getting picked up by her boyfriend at nine o'clock to head to his house or her own to repeat the schedule all over again. 

That was Carla's new normal. Monsters and fear had been replaced with school and stress. Late nights spent fighting supernatural creatures had turned into late nights studying for exams, or writing college essays.

However, hidden within the routine schedule that Carla liked to call her normal were small bits of odd. 

The headaches started first. 

Carla doesn't remember when she exactly started getting the headaches. They started off dull; a faint throbbing in the back of her head that she brushed off as extra stress or her body reminding her to drink water. 

But over the past few weeks, they'd grown more persistent and stronger; a constant banging on her skull, only managing to go away during the few hours of sleep she was able to get, returning the second she was jolted awake by a nightmare.

The nightmares had started up again, too.

At first, they had been something of a warning sign to Carla. When her nightmares started up again, so did the Upside Down—it was like the Upside Down teasing her with what was to come, what she couldn't stop from happening. The girl had grown awfully anxious for the rest of the week, almost waiting for a mysterious event to happen, for a phone call from Joyce telling her it was back.

But, that phone call never came; neither did any mysterious event. Despite Carla's constant nightmares about the Upside Down, the supernatural never showed up. Which—after reassurance from Steve—led the Wheeler to brush them all off as simply a bad dream.

She stopped telling Steve about the headaches and the nightmares after about a week—there was no point in worrying him, or telling him for that matter, if nothing was wrong, right? Carla could deal with a measly pounding and little sleep; she didn't need Steve Harrington worrying his ass off about her over that. 

Which is why she doesn't wake him up as she suddenly jolts awake from the third nightmare of the week. 

The Wheeler girl instinctively sat up as her mind escaped its nightmare ridden haze. Screaming and gasps for air had become a past time, stopping after the first few—as if her body was simply growing accustom of the similar images it was tortured with night after night. The only reaction she seemed to received was an uneven rise and fall of the chest; easy to cover up, if Steve ever woke up, too.

Carla looks to the side, letting out a sigh as she registers the time—three o'clock in the morning. Another night of no sleep. After last summer, in which she barely received any rest to support her aching figure, the Wheeler girl had grown used to the heavy feeling of exhaust. It didn't make it any easier to deal with, though.

Realizing she wasn't going to be going back to bed without persuasion from Steve—who she was not about to wake up, after he happened to take the late shift at Family Video in place of Robin, who had pep rally practice—Carla decides to get up. She might take an Advil while she's at it.