[COMPLETED UNTIL SEASON 5]
Ana Thompson always seems to wind up in the strangest predicaments...
A perpetual victim of Murphy's Law, Ana finds herself arriving in Hawkins, Indiana just prior to the events of November 6th, 1983.
And, just prior to f...
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THERE WAS NO HOPE for Friday being a normal day, not when the first thing Ana saw upon arriving at work was Dustin, Mike, Max, and Lucas rifling around in the school dumpster.
"Do I even want to know?" She asked, coming up behind the group and scaring the living daylights out of the children. They each jumped around rounded on her like kids caught with their hand in the cookie jar, or, rather, the garbage bin.
"I lost Dart," Dustin declared in anguish, almost too dramatically, if you asked Ana. His peers seemed less than disappointed with this turn of events. They too, didn't seem pretended by the sudden absence of a trash eating slug.
"Okay..." she petered off, implying the need for their continued explanation. Dustin might have reason to be distraught over his missing, newly acquired pet, but that didn't justify their sudden urge to go dumpster diving.
Mike was the one to fess up finally, with a mumbled, "we think Dart is from the Upside Down."
Well, shit. If Will's episode on the field the day prior hadn't been bad enough, it seemed that whatever looming threat was descending like storm clouds in tumultuous his mind, had also managed to physically manifest.
"What's the Upside Down?" Max questioned the group, looking at each of them wide-eyed. It was a stare none of them bothered to return.
Well, double shit.
While Ana was glad the kids were finally sharing things with her willingly, no more running around and whispering in secret trying to tackle an out of control situation on their own. A part of her was annoyed that the universe couldn't show the common courtesy of imploding her life in sections, instead of all at once.
Wasn't it bad enough that she was trying to deal with a breakup and the burden of an unfortunate secret, without the Upside Down choosing to pop off again too? It was downright exhausting and decidedly unfair.
At least, that's what Ana was arguing internally while half listening to the boys talking through their latest predicament.
"The cold and damp. Isn't that where slugs like to hide?" Ana offered, providing the bare minimum to be considered helpful.
Dustin set his teacher with a firm frown and announced, "Dart isn't a slug," with such undeserved attitude accompanying his stare.
She wanted to argue that the distinction didn't matter, that slugs and pollywogs equated the the same thing as far as she was concerned, but the retort seemed pointless in the scheme of things. So, rather than argue with the teenager, she threw her arms up in agitation. "Whatever. Good luck," she grumbled, and left the children alone to continue rifling through the trash.
Ana had been on her way to lunch some hours later when Lucas, Mike, and Dustin had accosted her in the hallway. They must have shaken Max loose earlier, after refusing to answer her repeated questions about the mysterious Upside Down they kept talking about.
