We find Stiles whimpering in bed, but then who is stuck in a locker? Stiles? Don’t stop at the water fountain! It’s evil! What, it could be. Erm, what’s growing in the classroom? Killer vines! It was only a dream within a dream, which Lydia helpfully diagnoses as “a nightmare.”

But what is Lydia doing there? Is it a dream within a dream within a Lisa Frank drawing? She begs him not to open the closet door, which leads to a forest as opposed to a field of glitter. He tells himself it’s just a dream, but waking up is so hard. Finally, he’s back in his bed and off to school. He checks WebMD and decides that he suffers from sleep paralysis, and he’s not even sure if it’s real. Which it’s not! Dream within a dream within a dream within ANOTHER DREAM!

Allison arrives at a hospital and it’s all sorts of abandoned, like the opening scene of 28 Days Later but with 37% more flickering lightbulbs. Oh hello, morgue door mysteriously opening. Dream! Dream! It’s a dream! She’s back in school and super freaked out.

Scott rides a motorcycle thingy to school ad sees his wolfy reflection all over the place. Luckily he runs into Stiles, who tries to calm him down. Turns out Stiles, Scott, and Allison are all seeing things because of that thing. You know, that thing that happened last season. They vow to keep an eye on each other until it goes away.

All day, they see things. In history class when Scott makes goo-goo eyes at the new pretty girl, Kira; in art class, when Allison tries to paint something vaguely splotchy; when…wait, can Scott hear Kira’s thoughts? She’s turning him into a Teen Wolf! Stiles rushes him into a conveniently empty classroom and Scott is able to halt the transformation, leaving himself only with bloodied fingers. Because it hurts, he knows that it’s real. But Stiles explains that you can’t read in dreams, and the chalkboard is filled with gibberish, so this must still be a dream! WILL IT NEVER END?!

So I can’t even begin to guess why, but Allison and Lydia are having a bit of archery practice out in the woods. Allison sucks at archery, but she’s really good at seeing things in the murky forest. I really like her boots. Oh! It’s a dream! It’s nighttime and Allison is hunting banshees in the woods…or shooting Lydia in the face with an arrow. Or, she would have, if it wasn’t for Isaac grabbing the arrow at the last second.

Stiles’s father is the sheriff and is following old leads on bite marks, so this whole werewolf thing is going to get cracked wide open any day now.

Stiles falls asleep in school and everyone is talking in sign language. What does it mean? Probably “Carol Anne, don’t go into the light!” But totally creepy, he wasn’t sleeping so much as writing, “wake up wake up wake up wake up” all over his notebook.

Kira overhears the friends talking about what’s going on, and she starts yammering about hallucinatory states in Buddhism. Then some guy says it sounds like Stiles’s subconscious is trying to tell him something, and how convenient! He knows a bit of sign language! Turns out everyone was signing “when is a door not a door.” When it’s a jar. Ha! The door into their minds is still open from when they went underwater, and that’s not good. They need to close the door in their minds.

Stiles’s dad, the sheriff, explains that a little girl went missing eight years ago after a car accident, and he suspects a werewolf caused a car crash and dragged the body away. And he wants Scott to get a lock on the scent. The next day, the sheriff drives to the missing kid’s house where there’s a coyote problem and starts poking around while the boys sneak in and try to sniff out the werewolf scent. There’s a big old dog and it’s not pleased. In the end, they got nothing. But funnily enough, Scott’s father is trying to get Stiles’s father fired. This angers Scott so much that he goes a little wolfy, but pulls himself back from the brink with the help of his mommy. Aww.

(GIF via Teen Wolf/Tumblr)

Then, Scott wakes Stiles up in the middle of the night to go find the dead kid’s body. After about five minutes of poking around the overturned car, they decide it really was a werewolf. And it’s back, and it’s growly, and Scott runs after it, and he’s a really fast runner. He catches up, and it’s the dead kid, Malia, which is probably really important.

Next week, a shirtless Derek and Peter are looking fantastic shackled to a torture device.

Reprinted from SurvivingCollege.com

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