CARLA HOPPED OFF HER BIKE, KICKING THE KICK-STAND DOWN.

Her eyes narrowed as she rolled her bike up to the police cruiser, confused on why Hopper—who she assumed the car belonged to—was parked in the Byers' driveway.  Was something wrong with Will? Was Joyce in need of some company?  There was only one way to find out.

Carla walked up to the house, and knocked the door, waiting a few moments for an answer.  Joyce, nor anyone else responded, so she rapped her fist against the door again, trying her best to hear movement inside. No answer.

"Mrs Byers?" Carla called, pausing a moment to listen. She sighed and yelled again, "Mrs Byers? Is everything okay-"

The door then flew open, revealing Hopper, just as the Wheeler had assumed.  He let out a relieved sigh, "Hey kid.  Uh, Jonathan's not here-"

"I know, Hop." the Wheeler responded, trying to peek inside the house.  Hopper blocked her view, awaiting an answer.  She tucked her hands in her jean pockets, rocking on her heels with a concerned look, "Is everything okay? Is Will okay?"

Hopper turned to look outside Carla's view and sighed again, opening the door wider so the girl could enter, "Just, come in."

Carla gave a confused look and entered the seemingly normal home. There were no Christmas lights hanging up, or giant holes in the wall. At least the Byers mother was doing alright, unlike the year prior.

The brunette looked over at the older woman, who was sitting on the couch, biting her nails as she examined a scribbled paper intensely.  The drawing looked like mere scribbles, and she wasn't sure what it was supposed to be. 

"Oh, hi, sweetie." Joyce spoke quietly, giving a smile towards the brunette, one that didn't meet her eyes.  She looked back at the scribbled image, flipping it to a different angle. 

"I just, uh, stopped by to check on Will." Carla spoke, walking off toward the hallway where his room lay.  But, Hopper's hand on her shoulder slightly stopped her, and she turned to face him with a confused look.  "Can I not go in, or..."

"She can go see him, Hop." Joyce looked up at the man, wanting the brunette to see the boy for herself.  The Byers could tell the girl was worried for the boy, and wanted Carla to see how he was, even if he wasn't in the right mind.

Hopper let go, and Carla trailed down the hall, stopping at Will's room for a moment.  She could hear the scribbling of pencils, but the rest was silence.  She quietly opened his room door, but his head snapped to her, as if he could sense her arrival. 

His eyes were sunken, and a deep brown—almost black—color, and they seemed very blank, and out of it.  Very different compared to the green and lively eyes that she was used to. The ones that she knew.  

His skin was pale—paler than usual. It was almost a sickly color, to Carla.  It stood out compared to the deep brown hair and eyes, and made him look ghostly.  And it wasn't just his face.  The rest of his chest was the same pale color, and there seemed to be sweat pouring down it.   The fact that he was shirtless showed he had to have some sort of fever, or cold.

He looked awful, the Wheeler had to admit.  

"Hey, Will." Carla spoke up, noticing the silence that had fallen over the room.  Will's eye's didn't leave her, they waited until she was fully inside, behind him before they finally fell back to the drawing in front of him.  

The Wheeler crossed over beside him, peeking at what he was working on.  Instead of something well drawn, like she was expecting from him, he was scribbling sloppily with a purple crayon.  Her eyes trailed to the ground, and found a pile filled with the same things.

"What are you working on?" Carla asked, watching as the boy picked up a brown crayon, and began to scribble around the thick purple line he'd created.  It matched the sheet Joyce had been examining, and she questioned what she'd been doing.  He tossed the sheet on the ground, ignoring the girl.

"Do you feel okay?" the brunette asked, narrowing her eyes at the boy's ignorance towards her, "Will?"

He seemed to snap out of his cold phase, and looked back at her, "Oh, hi, Carla."

"You just dazed off. You feel alright?" Carla put a hand on the back of his chair.

"Yeah, just a little cold." Will responded, picking up another sheet of paper.  A look of confusion crossed over Carla's face.  He was sweating bullets, there's no way he could be feeling cold enough to mention it.

"If you want, I could have your mom start up a warm bath-" Carla began, but got cut off by Will's now cold voice, as he turned his head back to her.

"No, he likes it cold."

Carla narrowed her eyes, and figured he was still out of it, with his fever and all of it.  Will turned back to his work, tossing another sheet of paper on the ground.  Carla grabbed the sheets of paper Will had drawn and left the room, tossing them on to the Byers' womans lap.

"This is more of the same." Joyce spoke, looking at the papers that she'd been tossed.  Carla took a spot behind the couch, leaning forward to look at the sheets herself.   The brunette handed them to Hopper, looking upset.

"Oh, it's nothing. It's just scribbles." Hopper looked through them, his voice laced with sarcasm. The Byers' woman eyes then widened, and she pointed to a spot of the police chiefs sheet of paper.

"Wait!" the woman moved her finger, rummaging through her own pile.

"What? What?"

"Wait. Wait." she placed one of her sheets above Hopper's, and Carla spotted that the black lines on each connected to one another perfectly. "These black lines, see?"

"What?"

"Look, they connect." Joyce repeated herself, "They connect."

"It has to be a big picture." Carla piped up, "Will's drawings, they're all gonna connect together to make one big picture. That's what he wants us to do."

The two adults must have agreed, because both of them began to scatter the images around the carpet, scanning for any similarities between them.  Carla took a seat on the floor, hands skimming through every image.

As Hopper and Carla continued, Joyce rushed back to the room, grabbing piles after piles of drawings.  To connect them further, the Wheeler had gotten tape and the elder woman had started taping everything she could together, creating a bigger picture.

And after about an hour and a half of work, that's exactly what they had. The full, big, picture staring at them.  But, even with everything together....they had nothing.   All the lines had connected to create what Carla would call vines, swerving all around the living room and through the feet of the Wheeler, Joyce and Hopper.

"Does this mean anything to you two?" Hopper breathed, looking from the vines to the two girls.  Joyce muttered a small 'no' and Carla shook her head, leaving the three still clueless. 

Until an image snapped into Carla's mind.

Vines. The lines were vines just like the ones that had haunted her nightmares for the past year, the ones that had terrified her on the day her and Nancy ended up in the Upside Down.  They were an identical color, and it made sense.  Will's connection hadn't gone away.  It was still tormenting him, changing him.

Joyce frowned, "I mean, is it some sort of maze or a road?" She walked forward, trying to think of what her son could have drawn, "I mean, it's sort of forking and branching like....like lightning."

"No, the storm he drew was completely different. He used red." Joyce answered.  Carla wasn't sure what this 'storm' was supposed to symbolize, but she was sure it matched her vine theory. "And this is all blue and it has some weird, dirt color."

"I think it's vines." Carla added her idea, crossing to stand next to the Byers woman. 

Joyce nodded, agreeing with the Wheeler, "He said it was spreading and-"

"Killing." Hopper finished, looking at the two girls with serious eyes. Carla could tell he'd figured something out, and she was ready to hear what he thought about her theory. "He said they were killing."

"Kid, you're right.  They're vines. " Hopper squeezed the girl's shoulder before walking over to get his jacket and hat. Joyce and the Wheeler exchanged a confused glance as Hopper opened the door,  "He's drawing vines."

The chief then left, leaving both girls somewhat confused.

✹✹✹

Both Joyce and Carla were rather confused. 

After about two hours, Hopper hadn't returned from wherever he'd disappeared, and it was starting to worry the Byers woman—probably more than it should.  By now, she'd called the office, and Jim himself about five times each, being met with a, 'No, Joyce. He's still not at the office,' or a, 'Hey you reached Jim. I'm probably doing something incredible right now, and I can't pick up the phone.'

As the Byers woman continued to pace the phone, Carla sat rather patiently on the couch.  She wasn't too worried about the chief.  He knew how to handle himself—and things.  If he was in a bad situation, he would have found help.  

Carla was more worried for Will.  He'd fallen asleep some point after drawing all the images, and had just more recently woken up, looking shaken and somehow more pale than before. He was getting sicker, the older Wheeler knew that.  She hoped Hopper could find a cure.  

But for the time being, having his best friend with him would have to do. Mike had shown up a little after Hopper's disappearance, having known about some sort of monster.  That had put Carla on edge.  There was already a creature on the loose, and this 'shadow monster' definitely didn't sound too pleasing.

To take up time, both girls were now putting the vines upon the wall, connecting them with tape just as they had.  But, as she ended up by Will's room, Carla couldn't help but drop in on the boys' conversation.

"It's like....It's like I feel what the shadow monster's feeling."  Will spoke first, his voice sounding rather fragile. "See what he's seeing."

"Like in the Upside Down?" It was Mike this time.

"Some of him is there-" Will responded, "-But some of him is here, too."

Carla's eyes narrowed. Here as in Hawkins? Or here as in Will?  Carla thought they'd defeated whatever dark chaos had taken over Hawkins the year prior, but based on the Byers' words, it seemed as if not all of it had gone.  Some piece of the Upside Down was still in Hawkins, thriving.

"Here, like, in this house?"

"In this house, and..." Will paused, sounding as if he could start crying then and there. "...in me." The Wheeler froze, listening to the boy's words.  There was part of it living in him.  Everything that had happened to him had to be because of this piece of the Upside Down, of the shadow monster, living in him.

"It's like...It's like he's into Hawkins more and more. And the more he spreads, the more connected to him I feel."

"And the more you see these now-memories." Mike added.

"At first I just felt it in the back of my head.  I didn't even really know it was there." Will went on, his voice getting shakier with each word. "It's like when you have a dream and you can't remember it unless you think really hard. It was like that. But now it's like....Now I remember.  I remember all the time."

Carla felt heartbroken for the boy.  He'd just gotten back from all this trauma and now he was...Carla didn't even know what to call it. Possessed? He was still himself, at least in the littlest of ways...for now, that is.

Now the question of telling Joyce came to mind. Would Mike ever tell the Byers' woman about this? Would Will?  It her think back to the nightmare she'd had, where she'd promised Will that she'd tell Joyce it wasn't him.

"Maybe..." Mike trailed off, thinking of what to say, "Maybe that's good."

"Good?"

"Just think about it, Will." Mike went on, trying to get Will to see what he thought about the whole situation. "You're like a spy now. A super spy. Spying on the shadow monster.  If you know what he's seeing and feeling...maybe that's how we stop him. Maybe all of this is happening for a reason."

"You really think so?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I really do."

The boys then fell silent, and Carla was about to go back to taping drawings when Will spoke back up, sounding rather scared. "What if he figures out we're spying on him.  What if he spies back?"

"He won't." Mike reassured the Byers boy.

"How do you know?"

"We won't let him."

The two then stopped talking, and Carla walked away, back out to the living room.  Joyce was taping up the final few drawings in her hand, looking back at the phone every few seconds.  If this worried her, wait until Will told her about his 'spy sight'. 

"Joyce, do you mind if me and Mike stay here tonight?" Carla approached the phone, warily placing a hand above it. 

Joyce turned to face the Wheeler, giving a small nod. "Yeah, I think Will needs the support. You can sleep in Jonathan's room if you want, he won't be back until tomorrow."

"Oh no, I'll just sleep on the couch." She knew Jonathan wouldn't care if she slept in there, but something told her that Joyce would be up most of the night, and Carla wanted to make sure she got herself asleep at some point, and the living room would be the only way to find out.

Carla then dialed up her Mom, and of course, the woman answered on the first ring with a sweet, "Wheeler's residence, this is Karen."

"Hey, Mom.  Me and Mike are gonna stay at the Byers' tonight, we think Will needs the comfort of friends, he's not doing too good."

"Oh, okay, honey. Tell him I hope he feels better, alright?" Karen spoke as if Will had a bad cold, as if he wasn't connected to some monster somehow.  Carla said a small, 'love you' before hanging up, making her way back to Will's room to tell her brother.

She slightly opened the door, popping her head in.  Both boys were on Will's bed, and their eyes met with hers.  Will's eyes were still the unfamiliar brown color, and he was still sweating bullets—the massive stain on the front of his shirt showing it.   She was right, he wasn't getting any better.

"Mike, we're gonna stay here for the night. Will, if you want him to stay in here, we have a sleeping bag-"

"I'd like that." Will interrupted in a voice that made Carla want to break herself, "Thanks, Carla."

"Mhm," Carla hummed, before shutting the door and walking away from the boy's room.  As she entered the darkened living room again, she noticed that Joyce had gotten anxious again.  She'd finished hanging up the drawings and was now pacing around the phone, hoping that Hopper would return her calls.

"Joyce, I'm sure he's okay." the girl reassured the older woman, "He's probably doing some heroic police things that are helping him find whatever vines led him too.  He'll be back by tomorrow with answers, I'm sure of it."

"Your...Your right, Carla." Joyce weakly smiled, finally moving away from the phone and taking a seat in a chair that was a little away—but still somewhat close, just in case.  Carla then grabbed the sleeping bag from the spare closet, tossing it inside Will's room for Mike to sleep in.   She didn't want to bother the boys.  Will was speaking, and whatever he was saying had to be important, and if she just walked it, she'd ruin it.

Joyce had disappeared by the time Carla returned back to the living room—to her room, the Wheeler supposed.  So, instead of sitting in silence until the Byers woman returned—if she even did—Carla decided she'd call an early night, and just get a few extra hours of sleep in.

But, before she did that, she felt like calling Steve, just to hear his voice.  After hearing that the evil that held over Hawkins the year prior could be back, she felt as if she just needed a bit of comfort, even if it was just hearing the boy's voice.  But, she wouldn't tell him.  If anything, she needed Steve to stay out of this madness for his own good.

The Byers phone was at her ear within a minute, her fingers playing with the numbers, dialing his.  It wasn't too long before the phone picked up with a small, "Hello?"

Carla softly smiled, twirling the chord around her finger, "Hey, Steve."

"Oh, Carla.  Is, uh, everything okay? You sound a little nervous."  Steve questioned, "Or does my voice just make you weak in the knees?"

She lightly laughed before returning to her normal tone. "It's just been a stressful afternoon."  But before Steve could question what had happened, Carla spoke up again.  She didn't want Steve to be a part of this if he didn't have to be. "Anyway, I just wanted to say goodnight.  I'll probably call you tomorrow."

"That sounds great." Steve replied, "Goodnight, Carla."

Carla closed her eyes before making herself say her next words, "I love you."

The line went quiet for a moment, and the Wheeler was sure that she'd stepped over a line.  Sure, he'd said it at school, but that was midst a conversation, it wasn't just the three simple words.  The brunette was about to say something, apologize maybe, but got stopped when the Harrington's voice returned.

"I-I love you too, Carla."

He then hung up, and Carla smiled again.  If the Wheeler was honest, it felt great to hear him say those words to her.  After a year of hidden feelings, and suppressed words, it felt good to have them out in the open.  For her to know that he truly did love her.

She then curled up on the couch, hoping to get a decent amount of sleep.  But, her mind had different plans because next thing she knew, her eyes snapped open, meeting with the slimy vines of the Upside Down. 

mara's misc!

it took me so long to come up with something for carla, but i think the end product is pretty okay.  

since today is basically new years, i just wanted to say a small thank you to all my readers who've been here since day one.  carla has been my main oc since this summer, and i'm so happy to see how far she's gotten since then.  without you readers, who give me motivation to keep going with carla's story, i don't think i would be here.

she's been such a big part of my year, and i'm so happy to have spent it with all of you! thank you and happy new year! let's hope 2023 is filled with motivation for this book!

hope you enjoyed, and see you back in 2023 with chapter ten!