Nancy

She caught herself looking out the window again, her school book wide open on the bed in front of her, its spine pressed flat against the mattress. Notecards filled with neat, black print were organized by color and stacked in a column.

The evening darkness was cut by a remarkably bright full moon, its light reflecting against every angled edge of shingles outside her window. It was bright enough to confirm, for the umpteenth time, that no one was out there. No athletic romantic interest with a confident smirk and playfully tussled hair.

Nancy reluctantly turned her attention back to her text. Steve's stealthy nighttime visits were a welcome distraction from studying. They were a welcome distraction from everything, really. But in the end, his distractions couldn't change the fact that Nancy's love for him was beginning to feel strained and forced.

When they split up, it was a mostly mutual decision. Steve was far from blindsided, but Nancy could detect his disappointment. And, if she was being honest with herself, Nancy was disappointed too. But, as she explained to Steve, their relationship began and took root in a series of tragedies and darkness.

What they needed to do was start over again from scratch.

"But I'm not ready to start again," Nance had explained, "Not yet."

Instead they managed an impossible cliché. They agreed to stay friends and, oddly enough, kept that promise. Steve was one of her closest friends now. They spent a lot of time together. Even chatted on the phone. The nighttime visits, though, they stopped.

No one was at the window.

But Nancy looked again.

And that's when she realized that she hadn't been checking her window every evening for weeks because she was looking for Steve.

She was still checking for the reemergence of the faceless nightmare. And she was waiting for Barb's corpse to float up from the Upside Down and prove what Nancy's carelessness had caused that night at Steve's house.

Another blank evening sky greeted her through the panes and she shook her head. It's over, she thought. It's over and it's done. It's over.

She applied herself to the notecards – one more exam. School's last day was next week and the summer months promised relaxation and an end to this paranoia.