Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Oh, you're the best friend that I ever had

Been with you such a long time

You're my sunshine

And I want you to know

That my feelings are true

I really love you

JULY 4, 1989 : KANSAS STREET

Mike squinted into the sun. It seemed too bright out to be pedaling to one's doom. Sweat was beginning to seal his shirt to his back, and Mike told himself it was because of the heat and the exercise, and not because of where they were going. 

Richie piped up. “For the record, if that thing kills me, don’t let Eddie take my Atari. I know he wants it.” 

“Richie, I don’t want your fucking Atari, okay?” Eddie said. 

“Can I have it?” Ben asked.

“Sure you don’t want my library card instead, Haystack?” 

“Guys, focus. We’re turning here.” Eddie said, pulling ahead to make the turn onto Kansas. 

Mike wondered if anyone from church would see him, would ask him what he was doing. One of them might say something to his Gran, and she would ask him later over cornbread. He’d say it was something like a race, probably, and maybe she would be happy for him. 

“Can you guys bike any faster?” Beverly called back. She was ahead of all five of them, her shirt fluttering in the wind. 

“Yeah, slowpokes.” Mike put his legs to work with renewed vigor. “Bill’s gonna get himself killed .” 

The look on Bill’s face had scared Mike. It was like he understood something the rest of them hadn’t put together yet; Mike thought maybe he did. He didn’t think Bill was joking when he said that he wanted to kill it. He also didn’t think the clown, or whatever it was, was something you could just kill, like a spider or a sheep. That thing wasn’t made of blood and flesh and a heartbeat. 

Mike didn’t like killing things. 

“If I go any faster I’m gonna get an asthma attack!” Eddie warned. “So maybe calm down a bit! Because if I get an asthma attack I’m gonna have to stop and that’s going to slow us down even more, so-”

“Maybe you’ll breathe easier if you shut up!” Richie said. 

Stan had been quiet so far, and when Mike glanced at his face he could see a certain amount of tension there. None of them were thrilled about this plan, but it seemed to Mike like Stan was the least thrilled out of all of the group. 

“Do you think if Bill dies, they’ll let me have Silver?” Richie asked.

“Stop it!” Stan said. He gripped the handlebars of his bike and his elbows weren’t bent at all. “Stop joking about dying!” 

“Yeah Rich, this is serious.” Ben said. 

“We’re almost there!” Bev called. Mike was nearly caught up with her now. 

“Do you think he’s already inside?” Mike asked. 

“No, I saw him,” Beverly said. Her voice was breathy–she clearly didn’t go this fast often. “I saw him make the corner.” 

Mike wanted to say something– we have to talk him out of this, what do we do if he goes inside? Do you think we can actually hurt it? -but he didn’t want to rock the boat. He already felt like he was in their debt for what they did back in the Barrens—he wasn’t about to question them now. 

Don’t get in the habit of owing people favors, his grandfather would say. Be friendly, always be friendly–be good-natured, Mikey. But don’t get in the habit of owing people favors. 

“Thanks for coming along, Mike.” Beverly said. “I know you barely know us.” 

Mike stopped himself from thanking her for allowing him to come along. This wasn’t exactly the kind of thing he should be grateful to be involved in. 

“Someone has to do something.” He said. 

“I guess I barely know him.” Beverly said, as if realizing this as she spoke. “Doesn’t feel like that, though.”

“Funny, I know what you mean.” Mike said. “Feels like I’ve already known you all for ages.”

Eddie shrieked behind them. “I’m going to hit you if you keep doing that!” 

“No you weren’t, I was being careful!” Mike heard Richie say.

“You’ve never once been careful, you act like a six year old every goddamn day and you’re lucky you’re still alive. If it weren’t for me and Stan you’d be hanging out with the likes of Betty Ripsom in a fucking coffin somewhere-” 

“He’s biking around Eddie in circles again, isn’t he.” Mike said.

Beverly looked at him, smiling. “Probably.” 

“Guys! There it is!” Ben piped up, pointing. 

They turned the corner of Kansas and Neibolt, and there it was, approaching in the distance. 

Looming, dark, and rotting like an animal carcass. Mike was suddenly overwhelmed with that all-too-familiar smell of dead meat, even though the house was still far away. He wrinkled his nose and looked away. They passed the church and Mike didn’t hear any singing. 

“Looks like Havisham manor.” Ben said.

“What the fuck is that?” Richie asked.

“Don’t you guys remember? Great Expectations ? I thought all the seventh graders had to read it.” Ben said.

“Dude, you actually read that book?” Eddie asked incredulously. 

“Yeah, I–you didn’t? ”

Mike had never read Great Expectations, but then again, he hadn’t been a typical seventh grader. It occurred to him that there were so many things they could joke about that he would never understand, would never have the context for. The house was growing steadily closer, and the pit of dread in Mike’s stomach grew in tandem. 

“I think we’re gonna be dealing with something a lot worse than an old lady in a wedding dress.” Stan said. 

“Oh, so you read it too?” Richie said. “What the fuck is this, the Derry book club?”

“Shut up!” Beverly said, pulling over towards the side of the road. 

Silver was there, abandoned in the grass just outside the gate. Bill was standing in front of the steps, looking at the door. 

Mike waited for him to walk in, or for a dark specter to leap out, or for the clown to beckon from inside. Bill simply stood there, like the tin man in the Wizard of Oz . He needs oil, Mike thought. 

He and the other Losers set up their bikes next to Silver, and Beverly marched through the iron gate. 

“Bill, you can’t go in there!” 

Mike looked up at the house, which looked like it might fall apart if a strong wind kicked up. The siding was brittle and dry, vulnerable to rot or, god forbid, a fire. 

As he stared, Mike thought he saw a white gloved hand wave from one of the windows. He looked away before he could see anything else.

Less than half an hour later, all of them were back in front of the iron gate. 

“I can’t ride my bike this, I can’t ride it one handed, I won’t be able to steer it’s going to be–” Eddie said, clutching his arm.

“Come on, you j-just have to get on the back of Silver,” Bill said, pulling up his bike. “We’ll g-get you back to your hous-se and-”

“ Owhowhowhow !” Eddie wailed. He didn’t think he’d ever felt pain this bad, and it made the things he normally took double-doses of aspirin to manage look like a tap on the head. “My mom is gonna kill me!” 

“Then she’ll put you out of your misery!” Richie said. “Get on the bike!”

“I don’t want to go to the ‘mergency room again!” Eddie cried. “Just leave me here… just leave me to die!”  ^[1]

“Okay drama queen, let’s g-go.” Bill had mounted Silver. 

Eddie climbed on the cargo carrier and wrapped his good arm around Bill’s midsection, groaning wretchedly. The metal rack wasn’t made for sitting, and he had to hold his legs weird, his ankles pressed together, to keep them from tangling with the spokes and dragging him to the ground.

“You’re a good man, Big Bill.” Richie said, climbing onto his own bike. “I’ll help you wipe off the slobber if he drools.”

“I am not drooling,” Eddie said, his self-awareness beginning to return.

“Maybe we can just take him directly to the hospital?” Ben said.

“That’s not how it works,” Eddie said miserably. “They’ll just call her… she always comes eventually… and then she’ll be even more mad…” 

“Are you on th-there g-good? I’m g-gonna s-s-start moving now.” Bill warned. 

“Let ‘er roll,” Eddie said. “Thanks, Big Bill.” 

Silver began to rattle down Neibolt and Eddie closed his eyes against Bill’s shoulder, his face twisting up. His arm throbbed horribly. 

“Are you gonna make it to your house? You look like you’re gonna faint,” Mike said. 

“I’m not gonna faint, ” Eddie said, though he wasn’t sure if he fully believed it. 

“‘Ah, my arm!’” Richie said in a floaty, high-pitched voice. “‘Fetch the physician, good sir! I think I shall lose my wits most presently!’”

“Go easy, Richie.” Stan warned. “Last thing he needs is an asthma attack.”

Asthma. Stan was right. If Eddie got an asthma attack on Bill’s bike, would he be able to pull his inhaler out without losing his balance? No, probably not. He’d have to let go of Bill. So his options would be to suffocate, or fall off of Silver and roll across the asphalt. Richie would probably run him over, and then he’d fall on top of Eddie, which could only mean good things for his already broken arm, and-

“You’re gonna be alright, we’re gonna get you home.” Bev was talking to him, holding steady alongside Bill’s bike. “Do you think you can hold on okay?”

“I’m fine,” Eddie muttered. 

“Can you loos-s-sen up a little?” Bill asked. “You’re crushing m-my chest.” 

“Sorry,” Eddie relaxed his arm slightly. Bill’s shirt smelled like a basement, sawdust and spiderwebs and maybe old cans of paint. 

“I’m gonna go home and eat an entire box of fruit roll-ups.” Richie said. “Bev, you have any ciggies?” 

“How are you hungry after that?” Stan asked. 

“I’m resilient.” Richie said. “I have a healthy appetite. I’m a growing boy. ” 

“You can’t smoke on your bike, Richie.” Bev said. “I’ve tried.”

“Maybe you can’t,” Richie grumbled. 

“Worry about Eddie,” Ben said. “He looks like he’s going to fall off any second.”

Eddie groaned. “I’m not.” 

“Ben, are you okay?” That was Mike. “It got your stomach, didn’t it?”

“It’s not that bad,” Ben said, though there was blood dripping onto the shiny metal of his bike. It almost looked kind of badass. 

“Looks pretty bad.” Richie said. “Looks like you triggered one of those traps from Indiana Jones. ”

“Come back to my p-p-place after we finish dropping off Eddie,” Bill said. “We’re not s-sending you home like th-that.” 

“Maybe you can borrow Eddie’s fanny pack!” Richie said. 

“Nice fucking try, Trashmouth.” Eddie said. 

Richie scoffed. “Come on, you have a spare!” 

“We’re almos-s-st t-to your house, Eddie.” Bill said. “Hold on.” 

Eddie leaned into Bill and sighed. “Gross. You’re sweaty.”

“You could use a sh-shower yourself, Eds.” Bill said. 

Eddie heard Mike whispering something to Stan behind him. “Why’s he not want his mom to know?”

“She’s… kind of a lot,” Stan said. “You’ll see.” 

And they would. Eddie felt a pang of embarrassment, the way he always did when people brought up his mother. He didn’t want her to act that way.

He wished they could know the other side of her, the side that hummed while making bacon-zucchini casserole and set Eddie’s laundry folded on the end of his bed, so he’d remember to put it away. He thought if he tried to explain that, though, Richie would say something about how he knew all the sides of Mrs. K, he knew her forwards and backwards and… shit, Eddie was really losing it.

“She thinks he’s some kind of delicate little flower.” Richie said. “Gets so worked up about him.” He paused. “You should see her in bed, though!” 

“Beep beep, Richie.” Eddie groaned. 

“How did it break? What happened in there?” Ben asked. 

“Fell through the floor,” Eddie muttered. “Crashed through something. Could’ve died. Still haven’t taken my meds…” 

He’d have to do it on the car ride to the hospital. He could already imagine his mother’s endless frantic questions, demanding that he explain himself, demanding that he disavow all of the mistakes he’d made, demanding that he move to a monastery in Germany and fucking, Eddie didn’t know, never go outside. He’d shove his pills in his mouth and swallow them hard without any water and there’d be tears pricking the back of his eyes. He wouldn’t answer her questions, and eventually she’d settle into stony silence. He’d pay for that later. 

“There was a- a bunch of s-stuff in th-there,” Bill said. “Before we s-saw th-the clown. It t-tried to divide us.” 

“That’s what it wants.” Beverly said presciently. “To divide us.” 

“I don’t know, showed me a bunch of fucked up dolls of itself.” Richie said. “Maybe we can bribe it with raggedy-anns.” 

“Good luck trying to pacify that thing.” Ben said. 

“Remind me to bring my gun next time.” Mike said. 

“ Next time?!” Stan cried, at the same time as Richie said, “You have a gun? ”

“Eddie, do you know if your m-mom is-s home?” Bill said. 

“Should be,” Eddie said. He wanted to sigh again, but thought maybe that was getting old. 

“She lives a pretty sedentary lifestyle. Like a–you ever hear about komodo dragons? Sit under a light on a rock all day?” Richie said.

“Shut up, Richie.” Eddie shot him a glare.

“I’ll go ring the doorbell,” Mike said, and Eddie realized that Bill was slowing down. They were approaching his house, with its arborvitae and shadowy brick porch. Somehow, he thought he’d rather go back into Neibolt. 

“Don’t try to visit me in the hospital,” Eddie said, climbing off Bill’s bike unsteadily once Silver had stopped. “Cuz she’s gonna flip out and–you’ll see.”

“Good luck, man.” Richie said, looking toward the door distastefully. “Would not want to be you right now.”

“We’ll visit anyway,” Beverly said. 

She’s kind, Eddie thought. Kind of stupid. 

Bill nodded. “We’ve g-got to– to st-stick together.” 

“Yeah, absolutely.” Ben said.

“If I finish my chores,” Mike said, more uncertainly.

Despite the pain, Eddie smiled. “No, you won’t. Don’t do that. But thanks, guys.” 

JULY 4, 1989 : RICHIE’S HOUSE

Richie opened the door to his room and exhaled. He had been mad earlier, mad enough to shove Bill–something he never thought he'd do, not for serious–but now he was just tired. He flicked on the lights and grabbed his radio, turning to his bed, and-

His bed was made.

He furrowed his brow and looked around his room again.

It was… neat.

There was no laundry on the floor. His shades were up and his desk drawers were closed. His dresser was cleared off, except for a smiling picture of himself from the last round of school pictures. He had not put that there. 

There were cardboard boxes sitting on his desk. One of them was labeled “DONATE.” He glanced inside that one and saw neat stacks of t-shirts, a couple of his old action figures. He began lifting things and looking through the second, unlabeled one, finding some of his nicer shirts, a few yearbooks, and–what the fuck was that. 

There was a doll in the bottom of the box. Slightly worn clothes on a white fabric body, beady little eyes and red yarn hair.

He’d never seen it before in his life, but hell if he didn’t recognize it. 

He heard muffled whimpering and spun around. 

His mom was kneeling at the edge of his bed, wearing a nice black dress that Richie thought was new.

For a second he watched her there, head down and crying softly.

Her voice trickled quietly from the figure. “My little boy…”

“Mom…?”

She didn’t turn around, still sniffling. “Can you help me? My son, he’s missing. Something terrible’s happened to him...”

People don’t talk like that, Richie thought. It was jarring. People don’t talk like that, people don’t say things like that, cliche’d things like that. 

“I’m right here,” Richie’s voice hitched with panic. He was frozen in place. “Mom?”

“I lost my little boy!” she cried.

“Mom- I’m- I’m right here,” Richie began to edge around the room, scared to look at her face.

She didn’t react, and he was going to say it again— Mom, I’m here, stop it —when she spoke again. 

“No,” she said, almost sounding confused. “You’re not him,”

Richie took a step back as she began to turn in his direction, dread filling his stomach and weighing him in place. 

“You’re not my little Richie,” She said, her face beginning to twist into a snarl. “You’re a, a disgusting little-”

Richie threw open his closet door and ducked inside, slamming it behind him. He pressed his back to the door and slid almost all the way to the dusty floorboards, his knees brushing against a shirt that he hadn’t worn in so long that it was still on a hanger. 

It was only once he was in there that he realized the lightswitch was on the other side of the door. 

He stared into the darkness, his hands balled into fists, breathing shakily.

The lights flicked on. 

He held his breath. It was just his closet. 

A click, and they were off again.

“Whatcha doin’ in there, Richie?” That was Pennywise. That was definitely Pennywise. He was on the other side of the door. 

“You can’t stay in there forever…”

It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not real.

Real enough for Georgie. 

But Georgie was just a little kid, a nice kid, but a dumb kid, and Richie wasn’t dumb. He wasn’t stupid enough to let this fucker scare him. He wasn’t-

“What if someone goes looking for you?”

The lights flicked on to reveal Pennywise inches from Richie’s face, teeth bared in a horrifying grin.

Richie screamed and kicked where he thought the clown’s nuts should be, ducking as it lunged at his face.

The impact he expected never came.

He looked around his closet frantically, but the creature had vanished. He pressed his knees to his chest and leaned against the door, eyes wide. His heart was like a canary in a cage, he thought it might kill itself throwing its body into his ribs. 

“Richie?” His mom’s voice again, from the other side of the door.

Richie tensed. 

“Are you alright? I heard a scream.” He heard her walk around the room a bit.

The worst part was waiting for it to end. 

Always, always, that was the worst part. 

Pressed up against the door, Richie thought it was gone. She was acting like his Mom, and it would be pretty odd not to answer her if it really was her. 

But he couldn’t be sure.

“Where are you?” 

Richie stood up and opened the door. “In here. Sorry.”

His mom stood in the center of the room with a questioning look on her face. She was wearing a sweater and jeans. 

“Is everything all right?”

He looked from bed to floor to dresser. It was messy again.

“Uh, yeah. Fine.” He swallowed and adjusted his glasses.

“Hon, you’re all shaking!” His mother frowned and leaned down to get a good look at him, but he dodged away.

“There was a spider,” he choked out. “Got scared and fell.”

“Okay,” She said, raising her eyebrows. It was clear she had decided not to press. “Dinner’s in twenty minutes. Wash your hands.”

He watched her walk out of the room, his legs trembling. Stiffly, he slid down the closet door and clutched his legs to his chest, trying to breathe.

JULY 5, 1989 : PASTURE ROAD

Bev had a pep in her step, despite it all. The air was heavy with humidity and there wasn't a breeze for miles, but she was pleased. She had called that morning, and he had agreed to go see a movie with her at the Capitol in a few days, when a few new pictures would start showing. She was hoping they would agree on Catch Me If You Can, which she thought looked intriguing. Her first date, she thought giddily. She wanted to pedal her bike over to his house right then and give him a kiss on the cheek. 

However, as he had told her, stammering, he had to be out of town all afternoon to see a speech therapist.

So Bev was heading off to the Barrens, because she didn’t feel like spending the rest of her day cooped up in her room. She was getting bored of the color of the walls. She thought she might buy some paint if she could get some money, lay down a tarp, move all of her things into the closet and get to work. Something dramatic and stylish would do, like ochre or burgundy or maroon. But none of those colors would go with her bedspread.

Today, if she was still home when her father returned from work, he might ask her to clean the house or start dinner or something else intolerably boring, and she didn’t want to be around for that. When she got home, she would tell him she had been at Lisa Andrews’ house, and hopefully he would believe her. Bev was in too much of a good mood to worry about him right now.

As she rode her bike through the stodgy summer heat, she wondered if Bill felt this way as he left town. She felt electric, zapped with life and energy. She tried not to be too conceited, but she guessed she looked amazing for it, self-possessed and overflowing with that abundant verve of girlhood. She imagined that, with her blouse flowing and her hair curling by her ears, she looked better than pretty, but something more elemental. She felt like the picture of youth and summer and carefree confidence, freckled and strong and unafraid. Bill Denbrough was taking her out on a date, and she felt divine. 

She let herself grin as she dropped her bike on the dirt path that led into the woods, practically skipping to the clubhouse. All of the leaves were like stained glass except better, because they shimmered with the summer air, which wasn’t moving but might at any moment, shifting the kaleidoscope of shining green above her. When she approached their spot, she heard the muffled sounds of arguing from below, rising up from under the trapdoor. She bit her lip playfully and stomped a little around the door. 

“ ShhhhH! ” A hurried whisper from below. 

“Is it Bowers?” That was Ben. 

“Shut up! He’ll hear you!” There was Richie, too. 

She stomped around the clearing again, eventually pounding her feet down in a slow trail towards the hatch. 

“That’s not Bowers,” Ben said. “He’d be taunting us by now.” 

“BOO!” Beverly threw open the door and leapt down, waving her hands. 

Ben shrieked. Richie let out a yelp and grabbed for Stan’s arm–Stan was there, too, pale and startled. The three of them were sitting on the floor around a mess of paper and markers. 

“You guys are such wimps!” Bev grinned, and she and Richie began to laugh. 

“You really got us there, Beverly!” Ben was red-faced and embarrassed. 

“That could have been really bad.” Stan said, sounding like he wasn’t completely convinced she wasn’t secretly Henry.

“What are you guys doing down here?” Beverly closed the trapdoor. It was cooler down in the Clubhouse, refreshing compared to the thick heat of the forest above. “Arts and crafts?”

“We’re trying to make a fortune teller,” Stan said, recovering his nerves. “One of those paper ones?”

“A cootie catcher!” Richie snickered. “For catchin’ cooties.” 

“Richie’s doing it wrong,” Ben said, laughing. He grabbed a crinkled piece of paper from Richie and unfolded it, squinting. 

“Listen here, Haystack!” Richie said. “I know exactly how the cooties are caught! I’ve seen it done! Give that thing back to me-”

“Hold on, hold on ! Let me-” Ben held the attempted cootie catcher away, laughing.

“I saw it at sleepaway camp last year! Give it back! I was almost done!” Richie snatched it back. 

“You’re going to ruin all our paper.” Stan observed. 

Beverly sat down between Ben and Richie. “Give it.” 

Richie handed it over to her with an exaggerated sigh. “As you say.” 

She unfolded the mess of paper and realized quickly what the problem was. 

“Oh, you’ve got to cut off this extra bit here so that it’s a square,” She said. “Do any of you have scissors?”

Stan shrugged. “I didn’t bring any.” 

“I’ll use my teeth! ” Richie said. 

“That’s gross!” Ben laughed.

Beverly folded the piece of printer paper so that the top edge was flush with the side, and then folded over the strip of extra a couple times so that it would tear clean. The paper resisted her hands, already crinkled by countless attempts, but she was patient. She carefully ripped away the strip as the others watched, and then got to work re-folding the fortune teller.

“See, that’s what I was doing!” Richie gestured at Beverly.

“Sure you were.” Stan said. 

“What’d you want it for?” Beverly handed them the complete cootie catcher, briefly demonstrating with one hand the way it opened and closed. 

“You made that look so easy,” Ben said, awestruck. 

“We’re going to bring it to Eddie in the hospital,” Stan said. “To cheer him up. It was my idea.” 

“I don’t know what he’s going to do with it,” Richie said. “Do you think the hospital is where they bring the third grader girls for recess?”

“Do nurses have cooties to catch?” Ben asked. Stan giggled at that. 

“I’m sure they must,” Bev assured him. Ben smiled at her.

Stan grabbed a marker and began to write numbers on the outside flaps of the fortune teller, and he did it the proper way so that when they were folded out the numbers would be face-up instead of diagonal. “It’s the thought that counts.”

“How’s he even going to use it?” Richie complained. “He only has one hand.”

“Oh really?” Beverly grinned. “Should we find him a hook to replace the other one?”

Richie giggled. “‘Yarr, me hearties! Swab the deck and hail the westerlies! There be ibuprofen in that Rite Aid!’”

Beverly and Ben cackled heartily. 

“‘No one messes with Captain Kaspbrak! First mate, bring me my inhalarrr!’” Richie was caught up in his own giggles.

Stan chuckled, having filled the inside flaps of the cootie catcher with more numbers. “It’s time to put the fortunes in.”

“Oooh, ooh, let me do them!” Richie grabbed for the fortune teller and Stan yanked it back. 

“There are eight places for fortunes and four of us,” He said. “Let’s each do two.”

“Let me start,” Bev said, taking the paper and unfolding it enough so that she could write on the innermost spaces.

In one space, she wrote, “You will live to be 100 years old, ” and in the one next to it, she smiled and put, “ You will lose your life savings to an encyclopedia salesman.”

She passed it to Ben. “Do one good one and one bad one. To make it even.”

“And remember, these are for Eddie .” Richie said, snickering.

Ben filled his out, looking pleased with himself, and passed it to Richie, who had barely written one word when he started giggling madly to himself. Eventually he pulled himself together enough to pass it on to Stan, who finished them off and capped the marker with a neat click.

He passed it back to Beverly. “You knew how to make it, so I think you should get to give it a test run.”

“Ben!” Bev turned, holding out the cootie catcher. “Pick a number.” 

Ben grinned. “Uh, two.”

Bev opened and closed the fortune teller twice. “Red, yellow, green, or blue?” 

“Red.” 

There was the number 7 in the red spot, so Bev folded it in and out seven more times. 

“Spring, Summer, Winter or Fall?” She asked.

“Summer!” Ben peeked at the paper creation in her hands. 

She opened the flap under Summer and squinted. 

Then her smile faded. “Richie, that’s not funny.”

“Yes it IS,” Richie grinned. “Read it, read it. I’ll do the curse words if you don’t wanna.”

Beverly frowned. Her hand began to tremble slightly. 

Stan grabbed it from her and read the fortune, only to drop it like a hot coal. “Richie, you didn’t write that, did you?” He asked, his voice a little more strained than usual.

Ben’s smile was long gone. “What is it?”

Richie grabbed the cootie catcher, curious himself. His face went white. It was then that Beverly noticed dark circles behind his glasses. 

“What is it? Let me see,” Ben took it, and Richie let him without any resistance. 

Now they all saw it, and the look of horror on Ben’s face confirmed what Beverly already suspected–he hadn’t written that either. 

There, in red marker that bled slightly through the paper, was the phrase: 

You’ll float too.

Ben opened the other flaps of the cootie catcher, and to his terror all of them said the same thing. You'll float too. You'll float too. You'll float too. 

“What do we do?” Ben dropped it and scooched away, breathing a little faster.

“Stomp on it!” Richie said. “Tear it up!”

None of them did any such thing. Instead, they only stared at it with silent fear, knowing that something else was coming next. 

The fortune teller didn’t disappoint. As they watched, red ink began to spread across the paper, so thick and dark that you couldn’t read Stan’s hard work anymore. Eventually it reached the edges of the paper and began to drip off, and Ben became certain that it wasn’t ink at all–it was blood. Of course it was blood. 

“It’s bleeding!” Beverly cried. 

“I can see that!” Richie replied.

Stan was the first to scramble to his feet, nearly bumping his head on one of the beams. He began to back away, and Ben thought he saw Stan’s mouth moving, like he was whispering something. 

A smell hit Ben’s nose like radioactive grenadine, so sweet as to make one’s mouth pucker, sickening and unnatural. He envisioned that the blood would continue to spill forth, slowly filling the clubhouse–they would try to escape through the hatch in the ceiling, of course, but then it would slam closed and they would pound up against it ineffectually, Ben would take Beverly into his arms as she wept, blood would slosh into his throat and the last thing he would see would be the panic in Stan’s eyes as he–

“What do we do, what do we do?” Richie stood up as the blood began to creep in his direction. “Somebody stomp on it!” 

“I’m going to stomp on it!” Ben said, trying to find his brave face. “I’m going to stomp on it, get ready!” 

The blood was beginning to seep into the dirt floor of the clubhouse, burbling and muddy. Ben would later cover the spot in an old doormat he found in a gutter, not wanting to look at the stain. 

He gulped. What if there were razor blades inside of it and they cut his foot? What if the floor vanished from underneath and he was sucked down like some kind of blood-soaked quicksand? He thought he heard a low giggle from the shadows and he nearly screamed. 

Then he glanced at Beverly, who had a hand over her mouth and was pressed back against the wall with fright in her eyes. 

He stomped on the paper abomination. It squished under his foot as easily as an abandoned twinkie wrapper. When he lifted it, wincing, there was a smear on the bottom of his sneaker and some splatter on his socks, but the paper was no more than a flattened wet crinkle on the floor. It looks like a dead mosquito , Ben thought. They all stared at it for a moment, waiting to see if it would do anything.

“Gross.” Richie finally said. “Bev, is that what it looks like when you use a pad?” 

“Beep beep, trashmouth.” Beverly flipped him off. 

“Let’s get out of here.” Stan said, his voice still shaky.

Ben agreed. He bolted up the ladder, opening the trapdoor and reaching an arm back behind him. 

“Why thank you, kind sir!” Richie said, accepting the help. Beverly managed to climb out before Richie let go of Ben’s arm, to his annoyance, the toothy edge of her boot scuffing the mulch. 

Stan was last, and he held the trapdoor open for a moment, staring down at the bloody mess they had left behind, before slamming it shut decisively. He wiped his hands on Richie’s shirt with the casualness of someone using a dishrag to dry their hands. Richie didn’t slap him away, only muttered, "Thanks a million, old champ," which Ben thought must mean they did it often. 

They covered the trapdoor with leaves and pine needles, as they always did. 

“I guess we’re not bringing Eddie that thing after all,” Ben said once his heart rate had returned to a less frantic pace. 

“No!” Bev agreed. 

“We can’t even pretend to have a nice future.” Stan said, frowning. “Everyone floats up eventually…” 

“That’s dark,” Ben frowned. I think some people sink, he thought.

“Let’s get Eddie a comic book or something!” Richie said. “I told you guys it was a stupid idea anyway. Sorry, Stan.”

Stan glared at him. “I’m not paying for it.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Richie grumped. “I’ve got cash. I’m loaded! ”

“How about we try the bookstore on main?” Ben suggested. “Then maybe we can see if there’s a movie playing!”

Bev seemed to perk up at that, sending Ben’s heart tumbling. “Maybe!”

“I can’t do the movie, but I’ll follow you guys to the bookstore.” Stan said. 

“Alright.” Richie grinned, their brief run-in with terror overcome with ease. They were like Ben’s little cousin, who liked to throw tantrums easily solved by the promise of candy, but different. Different because Ben thought they all knew they were being placated. “Onward ho!”

JULY 8, 1989 EDDIE’S HOUSE

Eddie was out of the hospital two days later when Richie came to finally deliver the comic book. When he, Beverly and Ben had showed up at the hospital, Sonia Kaspbrak had insisted that her son was resting and that they had better get home before it was dark. There was a tone in her voice that insisted they move before she revealed what she really thought of the lot of them. 

Richie could’ve given her a piece of his mind, but he knew she’d only take it out on Eddie. 

So, he resolved to deliver the issue of Spiderman he’d bought for Eddie now that he was home, and now that he knew Mrs. Kaspbrak would be at work. 

The Kaspbrak’s house was small, tucked under some old oak trees that filled the gutters with acorns in the fall. Richie walked up to the front door and rang the doorbell, fidgeting with his shirt buttons as he waited. 

There was no response.

Richie pressed it again, three times. 

“I’m COMING!” Eddie shouted, muffled, from inside. 

Richie grinned and managed to ring four more times before Eddie yanked open the door. The hand that didn’t hold the door was in a cast, which Richie noticed first, but the second thing he noticed was that Eddie had clearly been crying. 

“Whoa, you okay, Eds?” He asked.

“Get inside, dickface.” Eddie sniffled and moved behind the door as he opened it further. 

Richie stepped in and held out the comic, which was only a little sweaty from his hands. “I brought you this. Tried to bring it to the hospital but I got distracted because of your mom .”

Eddie closed the door and turned. “Did you like, spit on it or something?”

“No?” Richie poked Eddie with it. “Do you want me to?”

“No, obviously!” Eddie grabbed the comic and stomped past him into the kitchen. “Just seems like the kind of thing you’d do.”

“Oh, so I can’t be nice? ” Richie said, following him. “I can’t just be a kind, compassionate soul who brought you a comic to cheer you up when you got your widdle fragile arm broken?”

“Shut UP!” Eddie groaned. He slapped the comic down on his counter, rattling a couple bottles of pills that were scattered across its surface, and sat in one of the wooden chairs by the breakfast table. Richie noticed a couple balls of tissues on the table, though now Eddie pushed them onto the floor. 

“Dude, what happened? ” Richie asked. “Were you crying?”

“No.” Eddie lied.

“How’s your arm?”

“‘S fine.” Eddie sniffled. He was holding his cast under the table. 

“Lemme see,” Richie said, walking over. 

“No!” Eddie said.

“Why are you hiding it?” Richie furrowed his brow. “Do you think I’m not gonna see eventually? I’ll sign it for you, that’ll be worth something in ten years.” 

Eddie took this in and produced the arm from under the table. Richie saw now that someone had written “LOSER” across it in huge letters. 

“Well that’s unfortunate.” Richie said. “Did you sign it yourself?” 

Eddie glared at him, but then his eyes darted around the room, the way they always did when he was nervous. “Greta Keene wrote it. She offered to sign it, and then she wrote that .”

“She signed it as ‘loser’?” Richie raised his eyebrows. 

Eddie gave a half-smile at that. “I guess.”

“Damn, that’s rough.” Richie said. “And you like her, right?”

That’s what he’d said at their last sleepover, anyway. Not–okay, their last planned sleepover, with Bill and Stan. Richie didn’t count last night. 

“I used to.” Eddie slouched. “Not anymore .” 

Richie tilted his head at the cast. “I bet we could fix it somehow.”

“ How? ” Eddie looked down at the damning word reproachfully. 

Richie bit his lip and adjusted his glasses. “I could put a C in front of it.”

“Closer? What does that even mean?” Eddie squinted at him. “I’m not trusting you, Trashmouth. You’ll probably make it worse somehow.”

LOSER. He could turn the L into a lot of different letters, the E could become a B, the R could be another B. There was nothing really to be done about the S, though, and the more Richie stared at the letters, the more nonsense words his brain generated. 

“It’s hopeless.” Eddie sighed. “I’m going to go around all summer with this dumbass cast and everyone’s going to think I’m the stupidest person ever. Broken arm and no friends and let someone write LOSER on it. Why’d I think she was going to sign it like a normal person? What’s wrong with me?” 

“Wait, wait.” Richie grabbed a red sharpie from off the counter. 

“No you don’t!” Eddie jerked away.

“Relax, I’m not gonna do anything yet. I have an idea though.” Richie grabbed a piece of paper off the counter–probably a note from the hospital explaining what pills to take when–and wrote out LOSER on it. Then he drew a V on top of the S. 

“Lover?” Eddie grimaced. “Gross.”

“I don’t know, it could be kind of cool.” Richie pulled out his most macho voice and ran a hand through his hair. “‘Don’t worry baby, I won’t hurt you. I’m a lover, not a fighter.’”

Eddie laughed. Richie beamed at him.

“You can still see the S,” Eddie pointed out. “It’s not bad, though. It might be the best we can do.” He gave a long-suffering sigh. “Go ahead.”

Richie waited for him to nod before he uncapped the sharpie and leaned over the table. Eddie propped his arm up, adjusting it to give Richie a better angle. 

“Stop moving!” Richie said. 

“I will, oh my god.” Richie felt the tips of his hair touch Eddie’s face and Eddie made a pfuh sound, spitting them out of his mouth. “Be careful, because if you fuck this up, fucknuts I will end you.” 

The soft tip squeaked as it slid over the bumpy surface of the plaster, making first one long line, then another. Richie went over the lines a few times to make them thicker before he stood back, satisfied with his work. The red was a nice contrast, he thought. It occurred to him that you could put two arches above the V to make a heart, though Eddie probably wouldn’t go for that. Richie didn’t even know why he’d thought of such a thing. 

“Thanks.” Eddie’s face was scarlet to match the marker, though that could be leftover embarrassment from crying. 

Richie grinned. “No problemo, Eddie Spaghetti!”

“Absolutely not. Absolutely not.” Eddie was even redder now. “If you ever call me that again I will turn your brain into meatballs , you understand me? Meatballs. If I can even find any brain inside your thick-ass skull. Stop laughing, you’re so not funny!” 

Richie couldn’t help himself. “Dude, you’re so easy. Look at you. You’re like tomato sauce right now. Someone get the oregano.” 

“Shut up, Richard! ”

Richie laughed even harder. “Richard!” 

“Richard Blows-ier, want me to call you that for the rest of your life?”

“ Yes ,” Richie’s stomach was getting sore. “Do that.”

Eddie couldn’t help but laugh too. “You’re gonna regret that!”

“No, it’s you who will regret it!” Richie crowed. “I think you’ll find dad is a lot shorter-”

“Shut the fuck up!” Eddie cackled, punching Richie in the arm with his good hand. “You’re so stupid!” 

“Owwww you’re gonna break MY arm!” Richie wailed, sitting back in the other kitchen chair. The pine legs squeaked with disdain on the kitchen floor. 

“I like, barely hit you. You’re such a liar, Blows-ier.” Eddie giggled. “Maybe I will break it, so I can perform unlicensed medical procedures on you, see how you like it, huh?”

“It was pretty funny,” Richie wheezed, wiping his glasses on his shirt. “You were an opera singer there for a second. The most beautiful, angelic high note that I’ve ever heard–”

“Beep beep, already!” Eddie protested. 

“Ahh, fair’s fair.” Richie switched out his laughter for a snarky smile. “Enough chucks have been had at your expense for one day.”

Eddie snorted. He picked up the comic book, flipped through the pages briefly. “Thanks, by the way.”

“Don’t thank me, sir! I live to serve.” Richie said grandly. Then he added, “Owesies, though.”

“Bitch,” Eddie said. He wiped his face with one hand, though it was still red and a little puffy. “My mom will be back soon, you should probably run. She wants me resting. ”

“Scatter, boys!” Richie cried. “You never let a mother bear see you with her cub!” 

Eddie rolled his eyes and began to walk Richie out. “Do you think you’ll be able to sleep okay tonight?”

Richie was surprised that Eddie would bring it up, what happened the night before. It didn’t seem like daytime talk, or maybe any time talk, more like… more like sleepover talk. 

“Pestered by haunting visions of your mother? No, not at all.” 

“No, I mean.” Eddie blinked. “You know.”

“I’ll try,” Richie’s smile flickered as he opened the door. “Don’t worry about me , Eds! You’re the one sleeping in the den of the beast. ”

“Haha, very funny.” Eddie put one hand on his hip. “How about you take your smartass mouth with you out of my house, huh?” 

“You like it,” Richie poked Eddie on the shoulder.

“Out!” Eddie said, closing the door. 

“Bye, Spaghetti!” Richie called, chuckling to himself. He glanced at the house one last time before he got on his bike and rode home. He could see the spot on the tree, to the left of the door, where his sneaker had scratched off a bit of loose bark the night before. 

Chapter Text

Suddenly we all got young,

Running circles around ourselves,

Just for fun

And oh, how good it felt

To be young, and loved, and feel it in our bones

AUGUST 14, 1989 : STREETS OF DERRY

Stan was hardly aware of his legs as he mounted his bike. 

Bill had called him and of course he was coming. They had to go back to Neibolt. Beverly was in trouble. She’s probably dead, the rational part of his mind insisted. There’s no point.

Face mangled, limbs broken, maybe one of them ripped off. They’d find her gruesomely displayed in the middle of a heap of offal—but no, not even the clown would be able to make Beverly ugly, Stan thought. 

However, there was another part of his mind now, a new part that he didn’t understand. That part of his mind knew–with confidence– that she wasn’t dead. She needed their help. He didn’t know how he knew that, and it scared him. 

He met up with Richie and Bill going through downtown, and Eddie and Ben joined the pack soon enough. Ben’s little teddy-bear face was unnaturally resolute, and Eddie treated his broken arm like a kitten tucked against his chest. Stan watched the houses flash by, wondering if the people inside could be counted on if they needed help. 

He didn’t think they could. 

“Mike!” Bill called a greeting. 

Now Stan saw him–Mike, zooming forward in a bright white t-shirt with something glittering at his side. 

“ Finally ,” Richie said. “We’re almost there.”

“I brought my bolt pistol.” Mike said, and Stan realized that that was the object hanging by his belt, with a bandolier of canisters to go along with it. 

“G-g-good,” Bill nodded. 

“Whoa. Is that safe?” Eddie asked. 

“No dumbass, that’s the point .” Richie said. 

“Hopefully I won’t have to use it.” Mike said, but they all knew that he would. 

Stan was breathing quickly now. Suddenly, he stopped his bike, one white sneaker dragging against the ground. It could be scuffed. Stan didn't care. 

“Stan?” Richie looked over his shoulder. “You forget how your legs work?”

It was beginning to occur to Stan that this was different from all the other times he had said yes when he didn’t want to. 

This wasn’t like how when his mother served cooked carrots, he ate them even though he hated them, because otherwise she might frown at him and say to eat his veggies. This wasn’t like how he pretended his dad’s road rage wasn’t happening, even when he was close to tears flinching from the anger in his voice. This wasn’t like how he took Richie’s jokes about Jews and their Christ-killing in stride because everyone else always laughed, and because Stan was already “the sensitive one.” This wasn’t something that normal kids just did, that Stan had to do, something where if he backed out of it, everyone would think he was crazy or selfish or weak. 

“I don’t have to do this.” He said.

“What?” Richie was biking back now, as were some of the others. 

The asphalt under Stan’s feet was gray and pebbly, specks of silica and quartz glimmering in the light. Like something had bleached the night sky, and sank it to the bottom of the ocean; they were biking on a cosmic whalefall, he thought. Sucking the last dregs of life out of the streets. He wasn’t the problem. The others were calling out now, getting one another’s attention, probably trying to get Stan to explain himself. He didn’t want to. Why should he have to? 

He. Wasn’t. Crazy.

The sky was blue and normal. It was hot enough that the birds were mostly quiet, but there was always that background chitter that accompanied any summer day. 

He was supposed to go to school and get good grades and read the Torah well and wash behind his ears and always look both ways before he crossed the street, he was supposed to play with his friends, he was supposed to laugh when they laughed and not complain about the fact that they were always so loud, he was supposed to keep the sabbath holy and keep a separate bowl for his ice cream and cereal than for his soup. 

He was not supposed to go into abandoned houses. He was not supposed to fight a horrifying shapeshifting monster. He was not supposed to hurt anyone. 

“Stan? Stan? Fuck, is this is a thing it can do?” He became aware that Richie was shaking his shoulders and he stepped back. He had forgotten that time was still moving.

“I think I’m going to head home,” He croaked out.

Richie’s hands fell to his sides. 

“But-” Eddie looked perplexed. They were all standing next to their bikes now, waiting for him. “But you said you were coming, right?” 

“I don’t want to do this,” Stan said, “I don’t want to go in there! I don’t have to!” 

His quickened breathing was becoming even more shallow now, tears burning the back of his eyes. “I don’t have to do this! You can’t make me!” 

Richie’s eyes flashed with fear and he adjusted his glasses. “Oh come on, Stan, you can’t back out on us now! Are you seriously going to chicken?”

“Do you know something?” Ben’s eyes were wide. “Is it–is it saying something to you?”

“Guys,” Mike said, and Stan could see the doubt in his eyes. Eddie stood next to him, pallid and slowly reaching for his inhaler. 

Bill stepped from behind Eddie, his shoulders tight and his eyes wavering. 

“You can’t make me,” Stan said, tears beginning to leak down his face. 

Bill was pale, pale enough that his lips and freckles stood out almost grotesquely. He opened his mouth, and then looked away. 

Finally, he said, “It’s-s o-o-o-” He swallowed and tried again. “It’s o-okay.” 

The others turned to Bill in disbelief. How could he let Stan go like this? If Stan could go, did that mean…? But they didn’t believe that. Stan saw no signs of relief on any of their faces–no loosening postures, no relaxing foreheads, no released breaths. Eddie’s inhaler wheezed into the silence.

He could practically see them searching for the words to convince him, to explain that he had to, that they had to, that there wasn’t a choice. The bad part was that they didn’t have to say anything, because Stan already knew that he would follow them anyway. He didn’t have a choice, because none of them had a choice, and this time the reason Stan didn’t have a choice wasn’t because he would disappoint them or because this was what was normal, it wasn’t because he loved them or because he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he turned back now, no, it was because something else was there, tucked away inside their brains and their muscles and their teenage hormones, something that was far more powerful than the draw of conformity. 

It was fate . In a way, it was God. 

Stan began to sob. 

Richie piped up. “He doesn’t like-” 

Suddenly Stan was enveloped by a pair of strong young arms and held tight against someone’s chest. When his nose was assaulted by the scent of peanut butter and onion, he realized that it was Mike. ^[1] That, and the cold metal of the bandolier between them. 

“-hugs. He doesn’t like…” 

Richie trailed off as, to his surprise, Stan didn’t push Mike away. He didn’t have the willpower. Instead, he just stood there, elbows pressing into his ribs, as Mike hugged him, trying desperately to reach the place in his mind where he didn’t exist and everything was actually okay. 

“It’ll be alright, Stan,” Eddie said weakly. 

“No it won’t be!” Stan wept into Mike’s shoulder, knowing with concrete certainty that it wouldn’t be okay. Not for him . Not for any of them, maybe. “It won’t be okay!” 

“Do you want someone to walk you home?” Ben asked. His voice was crestfallen. 

Stan couldn’t answer that, couldn’t begin to try. Mike was squeezing him tightly, a hair too tightly, as if he was attempting to exorcise his own panic as much as Stan’s. Stan wrapped his arms around Mike’s torso, clinging to the firmness of it, and heard the other boy let out a small breath of surprise. He could hardly bear to look at all of them. 

“I guess I could do that,” Richie said, though his ashen expression told Stan that he was desperately bewildered. 

“You’re-” Stan hiccuped, trying to speak through his sobs, “You’re all–you’re all g-going to need me.”

And he resented them for that. He hated them for that. He didn’t dare to say so, believed deeply that he was wrong for this, because he believed that there was something worse than being weak and scared and that was being mean, and he never wanted to be mean, never wanted to say anything to hurt his friends. 

But he hated them, in that moment, all the same. He hated them, and he hated the clown, and maybe he even hated fate, or God, which was horrible and probably meant he was evil, but he shouldn’t have to do this, it was a seething truth deep in his gut, he shouldn’t have to do this. Man, Georgie Denbrough was a good kid, and he understood why Bill wanted revenge, but this was not his fight. Not even a little bit. 

“But what about Beverly?” Ben asked. “We all have to stick together to save Beverly!” 

“Maybe we can do it tomorrow,” Richie said, though it didn’t sound like he was even pretending to believe that. “How fast can you grow a pair, Stan the Man?”

Richie had taken to calling him that since his Bar Mitzvah. Stan wasn’t acting very manly now, though–though it didn’t feel like he was being childish, either. In a way, he thought he was being mature, and that maturity was actually the problem. He was trying to be rational, but that wouldn’t cut it. 

“I-” Stan shook his head, trying to stave off the pure devastation that had descended on him. “I’ll go.” 

He felt Bill put a hand on his shoulder. “Th-thanks, s-st-Stanley.”

“We’ll all be together, it’s safer that way.” Eddie said. 

Stan couldn’t form words anymore, gave up on trying. He loosened his grip on Mike and felt the other boy breathe in, shakily. Stan was distantly aware that Mike must be crying too, and he realized with sudden clarity that he and this kid, who he’d barely just met, were on the exact same page. 

“I’m sorry,” Mike whispered. “I’m so sorry. I won’t let it hurt you. I won’t. I promise, I swear to God , I won’t let it hurt you.”  ^[2]

They'd scared it. The clown had been scared. For the first time, maybe. They had done that. Bill had done that. Beverly had done that. 

The sensation of the concrete was strange under her feet, still as half-real as a dream. Her bicycle rolled along next to her—she had found it outside of Neibolt, despite the fact that she hadn't brought it there. Or, at least, she didn't remember bringing it there. Maybe this was a dream.

“I’m going to go home and burn these clothes,” Eddie said. He didn’t smell dreamy.

“No way your mom is letting you do that,” Stan said. 

“Yeah,” Bill said. “She’d p-probably scream if sh-she saw you holding an unlit match.”

“Sometimes I think I hear a siren and it turns out that Eddie’s just eaten a gummy bear one day past the expiration date two streets over.” Richie said. 

“She does not scream about stuff like that,” Eddie said. “And gummy bears don’t have expiration dates-”

“She’s got a strong set of pipes for sure,” Richie said, ignoring him. “Where else would you have gotten your angelic singing voice?”

“Shut up , oh my god.” Eddie said. “Don’t pretend like you’re not going to be grounded the second your dad sees you.”

Richie wrinkled his nose. 

“My grandfather’s gonna be pissed about the missing canisters,” Mike said, patting the bandolier on his chest. “I don’t know what I’m gonna tell him.”

“What’s it like living with your grandparents?” Ben asked Mike.

“If mine are anything to go by, you probably get a lot of jam tarts,” Stan said.

“Not exactly,” Mike said. He looked gloomy. Beverly wondered if he thought they wouldn’t want to hang out with him anymore, now that the clown was dead. “I mean, sometimes. When my Gran is in a good mood. Mostly my Granddad teaches me how to run a farm—there’s your math and science, I guess—and my Gran teaches me everything else, it’s supposed to be equivalent instruction but a lot of it is just reading church testimonials.”

“Booo-ring” Eddie said. 

“That’s how it is!” Mike shrugged. 

“You sh-should hang out with Ben and me in th-the library,” Bill offered. “We’re always in there.” 

“I’ll show you the interesting books,” Ben said. “There’s a ton that are boring, but I’ve been through lots of them so I can tell you.”

“Nerds.” Richie rolled his eyes. 

“Hey, if it weren’t for Ben, none of us would have known anything about It.” Beverly said. Ben smiled at her. 

“Th-they have fiction books too,” Bill said. “S-Science fiction’s my f-favorite.”

Mike smiled. “I’ll stop by.” 

The streets were mysteriously empty. Beverly wondered if it was just her mood that made it spooky, the way no one passed them on the sidewalk or peered through the windows. Derry was a real ghost town when it wanted to be. 

“Does anyone have a p-place we can w-wash off?” Bill asked. 

Ben made a face. “Maybe? I don’t know if my mom’s home. She’s probably worried sick.”

Beverly fell into step with Bill and lowered her voice. “Do you know… before it took me, I think, my dad…”

“I told the p-people in th-the apartment below you,” Bill said, smiling uncertainly. “I think th-they called s-someone. Was it P-P-Pennywise?”

Beverly bit her lip. “Yeah.”

“S-sorry.” Bill said. 

“We can try my place,” Bev said, betting that her father would not be back from the hospital yet. If he would ever be back. “Don’t know how clean it is,” 

“That’s not so bad,” Richie said. “Look at Eddie .” 

Beverly realized with relief that she was glad they were going back to her apartment with her. As they headed off the main road along the canal, she steeled herself for whatever she might find in there. The mother of the family upstairs might say something to Bev’s dad if she caught sight of this particular sodden parade, but Beverly hardly cared. 

Someone would have taken her father to the hospital, but Bev didn’t know if he would still be there. How bad was his injury? Had she… 

No, she couldn’t have killed him. 

“Hey. It’s-s locked.” Bill shook Beverly’s arm lightly. 

“Oh, right.” She was standing in front of the door now. When had… she shook her head, taking her key off her neck to unlock it. How long had she been standing there, staring numbly? 

“Are you okay?” Ben asked. 

“Thought you went all zombie again for a second.” Richie said.

“Sorry,” Beverly said. “It’s–I still feel like I’m floating, if I’m not careful.”

What if she opened the door and he was there? Who had locked the door? Could the emergency people do that? 

The door creaked open. There was no sign that anything had changed since she had last left. 

Suddenly, she felt a hand on her shoulder. She glanced over to see Mike, smiling slightly, looking worried.^[3] 

“We’ve gotcha.” He said. 

A slow grin spread from the corner of Beverly’s mouth. 

Bill offered a hand, and she took it. She offered her other to Ben, who accepted, and she felt Richie’s hand on her other shoulder. The physical contact was grounding, reassuring. Her mind felt clearer with their hands on her shoulders and her feet on the ground, and she took a deep breath. 

“Great, now we look like assholes,” Eddie said to Stan. 

“You can hold my hand.” Richie said, jokingly. 

“Shut up, both of you,” Stan said. 

“Stay quiet,” Beverly whispered, stepping forward. Richie and Mike’s hands fell off her shoulders. 

It took some finagling to get through the door while holding hands with two people, but they managed it. Quietly, they crept across the apartment; Beverly glanced in the kitchen (empty), the den (empty), and the bathroom…

Empty.

There was a large piece of broken porcelain sitting on the toilet seat, but someone had obviously removed Alvin Marsh and all evidence of his… accident. 

“Are you okay?” Ben asked.

“You’re sh-shaking.” Bill said. 

Beverly swallowed and turned towards her room. She felt Bill stiffen next to her. 

“What?” She asked. Now she spoke at a normal volume, confident that her father wasn’t home yet, if he ever would be.

“When I g-got here last t-t-time,” Bill said, “There was writing on th-th-the w-w-walls.” 

Beverly poked her head through the door. 

Her room was fine. Light streaming in through the window, keyboard sitting on her desk, books and old things piled on the floor in corners and along the baseboard.

“Oh,” Bill said, sounding relieved. 

Beverly reluctantly dropped Ben and Bill’s hands, taking a deep breath. 

“Well,” She said. “Who wants spaghetti?” 

Eddie was the first to use the shower. Beverly and Ben took to the task of setting water to boil, retrieving the Marsh's biggest pot from the cabinet. Mike offered to bring their clothes down to the laundromat and take Richie with him for company—the two of them were the cleanest. Everyone else, except Beverly, stripped down to their underwear and handed it off to them. Beverly offered to let the others borrow some of her clothes—she had spare shorts, at the very least, and they could have some of her shirts if they wanted them, too—which resulted in so much sputtering and blushing and giggles that she rolled her eyes. 

She changed into her pajamas, which were a matching set covered in tiny roses, and watched Bill apply Neosporin and gauze to Stan’s face at the kitchen table while Ben stirred two entire boxes of pasta into the water on the stove.

“What am I going to tell my parents?” Stan asked. “That a woman from a painting tried to eat my face?”

“M-maybe you can s-say it was Bowers,” Bill said, wrapping gauze from Beverly’s first aid kit around Stan’s face. “He does fucked up s-s-stuff.”

“Maybe you tried acupuncture,” Beverly said. 

Stan raised his eyebrows. “With needles the size of chopsticks?” 

Ben laughed. “You know, maybe you could say you fell face-first through glass or something like that.”

Beverly turned at the sound of the bathroom door opening. Eddie was standing there with a towel wrapped around him. 

“I gave Richie all my clothes.” He said. 

“Well there’s your first mistake,” Beverly said.

“Even your underwear?” Bill asked.

“Here,” Beverly walked past him and pulled her bathrobe out of her room. “You can wear this until they get back. Who wants the shower next?”

“I don’t need it t-too badly,” Bill said. 

“Are you sure you don’t want us to wait until we get home?” Ben asked. He looked embarrassed. 

“Don’t worry about it. I said you could earlier,” She paused the slightest amount and twitched one eye in the suggestion of a wink. “‘Didn’t I?’”

Ben blushed–this was yet another song by New Kids on the Block–and nodded. “Okay, I’ll go next.”

“Yeah, we don’t want you stinking up the place,” Eddie said with an elfish grin. 

Beverly shook her head as Ben rushed past her into the bathroom. “Richie’s rubbing off on you.”

“Sometimes I hear his voice in my head when he’s not even here.” Stan said. 

Bill looked at him. “You sh-should g-get that checked out.” 

“No!” Eddie said. “That’s not crazy. That happens all the time. You just get so used to it that you can imagine what he’d say even when he’s not here. Because he’s so fucking unoriginal. ”

“Or you both have s-s-schizo-mania,” Bill laughed. 

“Okay, well we don’t ,” Eddie said, walking towards the table with Beverly’s yellow terry-cloth bathrobe cinched around his waist. “Because it’s a totally normal thing. And you don’t know anything about schizo-mania, actually, because you’re not a shrink. Maybe you shouldn’t be joking about something you don’t understand, huh? Especially when we just killed something that could make us see and hear things that aren’t there, okay?”

“You’re saying Pennywise would pretend to be Richie in my head for no reason?” Stan said, sounding doubtful.

“I don’t know, he pretended to be a ton of stupid stuff! Also Bill, you’re doing that wrong.” Eddie said. “You cleaned that before you put the gauze on right? Because otherwise it’s going to get infected and Stan could literally die because who the hell knows what was in that water that we were all just splashing in-” Eddie’s watch suddenly beeped, and he looked down at it, frowning. 

“Let’s see if this pasta’s any good,” Beverly said, changing the subject. She stirred the water, watching the bubbles rise to the surface and -pop!-

She shuddered. 

“Do you p-play piano, Bev?” Bill asked. “I saw th-the keyboard in your room.” 

“No, I bet she keeps it around as decoration, idiot.” Eddie said. 

Beverly snorted. “I have lessons on Thursdays. I’m not very good, though.” 

“Th-that’s cool.” Bill said. “My mom used to p-play. Before g-g-Georgie.”

Stan’s improvised bandage job was done now, leaving him with a strange crown of white medical mesh, like some kind of embarrassing halo. “Thanks, Bill.” He said. 

Beverly used a fork to fish out a strand of spaghetti and she shook it in the air before popping it into her mouth, surprised by the heat of the slippery thing on her tongue. It was like her brain had stopped expecting to feel sensations when she touched things, like her mouth had forgotten it could actually taste.

She concluded that the pasta needed at least another minute. It was quiet in the kitchen, just the sound of the water boiling and the shower running in the other room. 

Things stayed quiet for a bit. Bill and Eddie played a game of checkers. Ben and Stan swapped places in the shower, and Ben helped Beverly serve up the spaghetti. She took out her keyboard at one point, played the songs she was good at, accepted their overenthusiastic applause with grace. She showed Bill her drawings–she had a lot of sketches, of dresses and outfits she wanted to make–and blushed when he told her they were the best he’d ever seen. Beverly took her turn in the shower after Stan, rinsing her hair roughly and drying quickly. She didn’t like being in there on normal days, and she liked it even less so now, though when she turned the water off, the sound of laughter and chitchat from her kitchen was enough to calm her down. 

When she came out, towel wrapped around her head, she relaxed. The apartment smelled like marinara sauce and someone had turned on a lamp, flooding the front room with soft warm light. She rubbed the fleece of her pajamas between her fingers and focused on the feeling of her bare feet on the floor. 

“Feels better, doesn’t it?” Stan said. 

She nodded. 

There was a knock at the door, and Bill went to answer it. 

“Dude, don’t , you’re in your underwear,” Eddie said. “What if it’s like, a Jehovah’s witness?”

“I’ll get it,” Beverly said, walking over. 

On the other side of the door were Richie and Mike, who was carrying a basket of clean clothes that smelled faintly of lavender. 

“The laundry brigade has returned!” Richie announced, making a trumpeting sound. 

“ Finally.” Stan said, getting up and looking at the basket eagerly. 

“Anything exciting happen over here?” Mike asked. 

Richie took in Eddie’s bathrobe getup and grinned. “Oh man, Eddie! Get you some hair rollers and slippers and you’ll look just like your mom!” 

“I fucking would not, ” Eddie protested. “We look like very different people, I have my dad’s face, okay?”

Bill dug through the basket and began slinging out clothes to people. Stan was dressed faster than anyone could blink.

“Is there still any pasta? Smells good,” Mike asked sheepishly.

“We can warm up what’s left,” Beverly said, stepping back towards the kitchen. 

“I don’t know about you all, but I’ve gotta get back to my place.” Ben said. 

“Yeah, me too.” Stan said quietly. He sucked his cheeks in and then released them in a long breath. 

Eddie groaned. “My mom will be furious. ”

“Hurricane Sonia,” Richie said, shuddering.

“I s-should go too,” Bill said, though he gave Beverly an apologetic look. “I don’t want my p-parents to th-th-think…” 

“You get yourself home,” Mike said, putting a hand on Bill’s shoulder. ^[4]  

Beverly shot Bill a reassuring smile, though she was sad to see them go. She wasn’t looking forward to being alone with the old wallpaper and the bathroom mirror and the creaking floorboards of the apartment. 

“I’m not in any hurry,” Richie said. “Mine can worry all they like.” 

“I’ll stay, too, if that’s okay.” Mike said.

“Of course it’s okay,” Beverly said. She paused. “Thank you guys for coming over. It was nice not to be alone.”

“Any time!” Ben said. 

“Thanks for letting us shower,” Stan said. 

Beverly smiled. “See you guys around?”

“Yeah right. I won’t see the sun for weeks .” Eddie said. 

“I hope you have a tunnel started in your basement,” Richie said.

“I bet Ben could help you with that,” Beverly said. 

They all said their goodbyes then. Bill hugged her goodbye, and she squeezed him hard, trying to let go of the tightness that hounded her shoulders. She could tell that he was still tense, too. 

“Take care, Beverly.” Ben said, smiling at her. 

“Stay cool.” Beverly leaned against the door frame, watching them thump down the stairs.

She heard Richie fumbling around behind her. “This is the knob for the front burner right? Oh. There we go! Yeah!”

“You alright, Bev?” Mike asked.

She turned, closing the door with a listless elbow. “Yeah.”

“Are you worried about your dad?” He asked.

Beverly chewed her cheek. “A little. Are you okay? Did Bowers get you anywhere?”

Mike shook his head, though Beverly saw him gulp. “No, I’m alright. Just bruises.”

“It was pretty cool when you whacked it with that baseball bat, Richie.” Beverly said, leaning against the door until it clicked shut all the way. 

“Somebody had to,” Richie said, poking into the pot on the stove with one finger.

“You rehearse that monologue in the mirror?” She asked.

Mike laughed, sitting down at the table. 

“Nope!” Richie grinned. “All off the dome!”

They heated up the leftover pasta, though they used the microwave and not the stove as Richie had initially attempted. The sun wouldn’t set for another hour or two, and the three of them sat around Bev’s kitchen table, finishing off the spaghetti and the hydrox cookies Bev found in her cabinets. Richie insisted Bev pull out her boombox and complained extensively that she didn’t have any “good music” on cassette, though he failed to explain what he meant by “good music.” There was a little discussion of what they had just done, but mostly they talked about other things–Mike’s chores, the explanations Richie planned to pitch his parents, the gossip Beverly had collected on her upstairs neighbors. 

“Are you going to sleep here by yourself tonight?” Richie asked.

“I guess,” Beverly said. She twisted her rings around her fingers. She had lost one of them. 

“Sounds lonely,” Mike said.

“Heck yeah!” Richie said. “No rules, right?”

“I’m gonna go wild,” Bev grinned. “Get a huge dance party going. Just shattering plates willy-nilly. Maybe I’ll kidnap a squirrel and set it loose in my dad’s closet.”

“This place’ll be in flames by sunrise,” Mike giggled.

“Exactly,” Bev said. Richie snorted into his mouthful of spaghetti.

Beverly slid her hands along the rim of the kitchen table, scratching at the spot where she had stained it with glittery pink nail polish when she was younger.

Mike shook his head. “Does anyone else feel weird about just going home like nothing happened?”

Richie pointed at Mike with his fork. “Trust me, it will not be like nothing happened.”

“Well, yeah, but your parents will get over it.” Mike said. “I mean, like. Does anyone else have that feeling like, what next? Like, we just beat that thing.”

“What do you want, an article in the paper?” Richie asked. He brought out his newscaster voice. “‘Local Weirdos Fend Off Evil Demon Clown, Don’t Even Ask For A Thank-You.’”

“No, I mean,” Mike smiled. “Bev, do you get what I mean? Like, how can everything just go back to normal?”

Beverly looked around, not meeting his eyes. 

“It’s not,” She said. “It’s not going back to normal.”

“Right, not for you.” Mike looked defeated. 

“You’re not wrong,” Richie said, giving up the ghost. “It’s weird. It’s like, what are we supposed to do now?”

Beverly shrugged. “Live our lives? Be kids?”

Richie blew a raspberry. “Bo-ring.” 

“Will we all still hang out, do you think?” Mike asked. He looked unsettled. 

Beverly made a face. “Mm, no. We’ll never speak to each other again and every time I see one of you I’ll hold my nose.”

A smile slowly spread across Mike’s face. 

Richie laughed. “She got you there!” 

Mike began to giggle, and soon Beverly joined in. 

It would be a strange couple of weeks, she thought. The world would never feel as safe as it had before. 

But she wouldn’t be alone, and maybe that made it all okay. 

AUGUST 16, 1989 : HANLON FARM 

Mike was not surprised to learn that he would be shoveling twice as much shit as he usually did, for two weeks. 

He was surprised when Bill Denbrough volunteered to help him with it. 

The day after the fight, Mike’s Gran called him in from the chicken coop and told him that a boy had called asking for him. This was, as they were both distinctly aware, only the second time any such thing had happened, since the time Bill had called Mike to join the rescue.

“He sounded nervous as I’ve ever heard,” His Gran said. “Have you been stirring up trouble with any of those boys, Mikey?”

Mike had explained that Bill always had a stutter, and that had seemed to reassure her. No, he would never step out of line. He would never make trouble. He knew what kind of town this was. 

He planned on calling Bill back after dinner, but before he could, the boy showed up on his porch. His hands were stuffed into his jean pockets, his hair hanging over one eye. He smiled awkwardly when Mike came running from the field. 

“Big Bill!” Mike hugged him without thinking about it, patted him on the back. ^[5]“What’s going on?”

“I wanted to make s-s-sure you were okay,” Bill said, his lips shaking as he talked. “You were th-the only one who didn’t p-p-pick up.” 

“I was out in the barn,” Mike said. “You came to check on me? Shouldn’t you be grounded or something?”

Bill looked a little sad. 

“Not me,” He said. “I… I don’t th-think they cared.” 

Mike furrowed his brow. “Your folks?” 

Bill shook his head, swallowed. “Th-they barely s-s-seemed worried. I told th-them I was at Richie’s house, and th-they just told me to call home next time.” 

Mike was at a loss. He chewed his lip. 

“Well,” He said finally. “Thanks for checking up on me. My folks are having me do all my chores double–it’s going to be a long few weeks, I’ll tell you what. Are the others okay? You called them?” 

“Th-th-they’re alright,” Bill said. “I think Richie’s g-going to lose his mind, he’s not getting any arcade or movie money from his parents for th-the rest of the s-summer.” 

“I’m sure he had a lot to say about that,” Mike said. 

“He always has s-something to say,” Bill grinned. Then he shrugged. “Eddie has it wor-st-st, I th-think. But he’s okay.” 

Mike nodded. 

It was a little awkward, standing there, and Mike wondered if he should invite Bill in for a glass of iced tea or something. 

“You sh-should probably g-get back to work, right?” Bill said.

“Yeah,” Mike sighed. “Thanks for coming by, though.” 

Bill looked uncomfortable for a moment–hesitant. 

“Can I help?” He asked finally. 

Mike opened his mouth, paused. 

“I’m th-the one who dragged everyone into this mess,” Bill said. “And I g-got almost nothing. S-So it’s the least I can do.” 

“I mean, it’s not pretty.” Mike said. 

Bill laughed. “I’m kinda used to the smell of sh-shit by now, Mike.” 

Mike led him back to the barn, gave him gloves that Mike never wore himself and a shovel. He found himself apologizing, even though it was Bill’s idea, and Bill didn’t complain. They got to work, and while Bill wasn’t exactly proficient , he was good company and it was quicker with two of them. The air was heavy with summer, hot and dreary. Bill sweat through his shirt quickly, but he stayed focused, mouth pressed into a thin line. 

Mike thought he understood why Bill had asked to help. 

See, Mike had a stone in his belly. That’s what it felt like; a rock, smooth and heavy, like the kind at the bottom of the Kenduskeag or the type that they picked out of the fields in spring. He felt that stone, sitting in the base of his gut, when he smelled the wrong kind of smoke, or felt the wrong kind of heat on his skin. He felt it when his Gran called him angel-child, when she told him to pray every Sunday to the God that saved him from being a pile of ashes. He felt it when his Granddad told him he was just like his Pa, when he told Mike to have some responsibility, to be a man, to toughen up. He felt it when they told him they were putting some money away to send him to college. College . The message was clear: don’t fucking blow it, kid. Don’t blow it like your parents did. 

Bill, standing inside the farmhouse screen-porch, his head bowed, his shoulders bent a little inwards–he had the posture of a kid who’d just swallowed his own rock. 

When they were finished with their shoveling, Mike showed Bill over to the truck, so they could take it all over to the dung pile. 

“You can drive?” Bill asked, impressed. 

“Well, yeah!” Mike said. He swung into the front seat and turned the keys to the old pickup, which looked like it was more rust than metal. The engine didn’t usually start till his third try. “No license, but there aren’t any cops on the farm.” 

Bill climbed in next to him and watched with fascination. 

“I’ll let you try on the way back if you want,” Mike said, finally getting the ignition to work. 

“Yeah,” Bill said. “Can you take th-this thing off the farm?”

“I don’t think that’d be a very good idea,” Mike laughed. “Marty’s not what you’d call a smooth ride.” 

“We could st-still take it,” Bill said. “Out of Derry. Away from all of th-this. Anywhere we want.” 

Mike got Marty in first gear, and to his wonder, didn’t stall the engine when he gave it gas. “We’d have to come back, though.” 

Bill sighed. “Eddie’d p-p-probably object anyway. ‘Cause you don’t have a lic-cense.” 

As they drove, Mike thought about all the stones in his stomach. He imagined taking them out and stacking them, like one of those towers that Buddhists and hippies make, each one balancing precariously on the one before. 

Mike steered them over the rough path between the fields, jiggling the whole truck, manure and Bill and his pile of rocks, all of it. 

He imagined placing a new rock on the top of his little tower, hands hovering around it as he let go, waiting to see if it would fall. This rock was painted, though. Painted, like a child’s art project, covered in names and smiling faces. 

“Your g-grandma,” Bill said. “Sh-She calls you Mikey?”

“Yeah,” Mike said, smiling. 

“Th-that’s cute.” Bill said. 

“Your parents call you Billy?” Mike asked. 

“Nah, I’m Big Bill, and th-that’s from Richie.” Bill said. “Th-the only one who got a s-special nickname from my parents was G-Georgie.” 

AUGUST 20, 1989 : THE BARRENS 

"Insect! Two o'clock!" Richie cried.

Beverly ducked, looking around over her shoulders. 

“I meant six o’clock!” Richie said, karate-chopping the air around her blindly. “Never fear, oh maiden fair!” 

“You’re facing ten o’clock!” Eddie said. “Do you even know how that military code works?”

Beverly stopped looking around and narrowed her eyes at Richie, waiting for his bit to conclude. 

“Aha!” Richie grabbed a dead stink bug he had noticed three minutes ago and held it up triumphantly. His voice took on an exaggerated British accent. “I hath slain the terrible beast. It shall bother you no more!” 

Beverly rolled her eyes and resumed trying to strike a match.

“Richie, you’re so stupid,” Eddie crossed his arms. “Did you even hear what I said?”

Richie bowed majestically before Beverly’s feet. “As I, humble Sir Ants-a-lot, Lord of the Stinkbugs, have slain this foul monster, doth it sit well with your ladyship’s honor that I might be deserving of a cigarette? My Lady?”

Bev gave Richie a cigarette, a slight look of amusement on her face. 

“Don’t encourage him!” Eddie grumbled.

“HAHA!” Richie crowed. He waited patiently for her to light her match.

The three of them sat near the crest of a grassy hill, the forest behind them stretching out into the Barrens. It was just past noon, so that the sun spilled a slight shadow from the trees over their spot. Dead dandelions and clovers speckled the hillside, rustling in the occasional breeze. It was the kind of day that made Richie want to go barefoot, maybe make weird toe-rings out of grass, but then Eddie would start going on about tetanus again. 

Eddie was sitting upwind of Bev and Richie, who were sprawled across the grass in positions that seemed carelessly artistic for Beverly and awkwardly jumbled for Richie. Eddie had his arms wrapped around his knees, his fingers pressing hard enough to turn white at the tips, and was watching their cigarettes with a hateful gaze. 

“I can’t believe you’re smoking around a person with asthma,” Eddie said. “It’s like you want me to die ^[6],” 

“Will you shut up if you stop breathing?” Richie asked. 

Eddie rolled his eyes. 

Beverly took a puff on her cigarette. “So what have you upstanding individuals been up to?”

“The latest spiderman hit the shelves,” Eddie said, “I’ve been weeding Mrs. Perkin’s garden all morning trying to get enough money for it.”

“Can I read it when you get it?” Richie asked. 

Eddie wrinkled his nose. “Earn your own weed money, asshole!”

“Oh, it’s not weed money I need,” Richie said. “See, your mother’s started charging for a BJ–”

“Beep beep , dumbass.” 

“Can’t do any better than Eddie’s mom, Richie?” Bev raised her eyebrows. “Eventually we got to start asking why your standards are so low,” 

Eddie started laughing hysterically and then stopped himself. “Wait.”

“That’s a good one! Bev gets off a good one!” Richie said, delighted.

The wind changed direction, carrying Bev and Richie’s smoke into Eddie’s direction. 

“Yuck!” Eddie tried to dodge the air, but found that to be a futile pursuit. He coughed slightly and waved his arms around. “This is disgusting, I don’t why either of you think that those things are fun! Smells like–like what comes out of the smokestacks at a crematorium!”

“It’s so cute when he gets mad.” Bev observed. 

Richie giggled, blowing another puff of smoke in Eddie’s direction. “That’s what I’ve been saying!” 

Eddie’s face turned bright red. “Okay, smartasses. Enjoy your cancer! I’m going to go buy that Spiderman comic, and Richie I swear to god if you still smell like that when you come over I am NOT letting you read it.” 

“But Eds!” Richie clutched his heart in mock betrayal, then dropped the act. “Whatever. I’ll take a bath in tomato juice or something.”

Eddie turned from his stumbling jog down the hill to point at Richie. “Don’t call me that, asshole.”

“See you later!” Beverly called. 

Richie flapped his hand in a goofy wave. “Ta ta, now!” 

Beverly snorted and shook her head. “You dorks are better than Bugs Bunny. I could watch this all day.” 

“Why thank you, milady!” Richie said, trying to hide a cough when he breathed in the smoke kind of wrong. 

Beverly watched him, a faint smile on her face. “How long have you known Eddie?”

“Oh, eons.” Richie said. “Centuries. I think we met doing the first grade Christmas play. ‘A Christmas Carol.’”

They had started rehearsals the day after Richie got his first pair of glasses, and he remembered putting them on and taking them off again and again, watching the chubby faces of his peers blur and unblur until he got a headache. 

Beverly’s eyes lit up. “I remember that! Oh my god, you were Bob Cratchitt!” 

Richie nodded proudly. “‘Cuz I could do the accent. ‘Cheerio, oh you old miser! Won’t you let me take off Christmas Day to spend with my dear lit’ul family, aywhat?’ And Eddie was Tiny Tim. My poor little boy. But a sickly waif!”

“That’s so precious!” Beverly grinned. “I think I saw that.”

Richie cringed. “I had to pick him up and carry him on my shoulders. He was so heavy for such a tiny thing. Very dense. Very whiny.” 

“You’re lucky he’s not here to hear you say that,” Beverly laughed. 

“Oh, yeah. He’d turn the same color as his little red shorts.” Richie snorted. 

“So what were you up to today, Trashmouth?” Bev asked. “You never answered the question.”

“Oh, nothing of note,” Richie said. “These days I am as a leaf adrift upon the wind, floating to and fro with careless abandon…”

Bev rolled her eyes. “So basically, you stole your dad’s playboys and jerked off all morning again.”

Richie’s eyes widened. “...Excuse me?”

Bev giggled. “What, a girl can’t make jokes now?”

Richie gaped at her, shaking his head in disbelief, but his own laughter caught up to him before he could think of a smart reply. The two of them sat there, shaking with smokey giggles for a moment. The grass began to scratch Richie’s legs, and he shifted. 

“I just spent the morning playing Streetfighter,” Richie finally said. “Nothing special there, except I had to pull off a heist to get spare change from my dad.” 

“You’re going to be playing Streetfighter until you’re eighty. Eventually your wife will divorce you for using up all the coins around the house,” Beverly said.

“‘Richard, dear, I just need a few quarters for the laundromat,’” Richie tried to make his voice breathy and old. “‘Surely you haven’t used all of– oh, no, you have.’”

Bev snickered. 

“Do you think we’ll still be friends when we’re eighty?” Richie pondered. “Like, all of us Losers. Do you think we’ll still talk every now and then?” 

Beverly smiled, about to speak, but then Richie saw her brow furrow. She turned away and took another puff of her cigarette. “I don’t know.”

Richie got the distinct impression that she did know, and it raised goosebumps on his arms. Suddenly he became aware that he had stumbled back into that territory, It’s territory, the serious and supernatural business of what they had done together just a few weeks ago. 

“‘Oh, Richard!’” He adopted the voice of his imaginary elderly wife again. “‘That little twerp Eddie wants you to go out and play golf with him again, he says he can’t drive the golf cart because his little legs are too short to reach the pedals.’”

Beverly raised her eyebrows at him. 

Richie was enjoying his new thought experiment. He dropped the voice. “Stan the Man is practically an old man already. He won’t have changed a bit. Probably have some kind of birdwatching club. You and Bill will have legions of grandchildren.”

“ Stop !” Beverly smacked Richie’s arm, but she was grinning. 

Richie pitched up his voice. “‘Oh grandmama, there’s a monster in my closet!’ ‘Have you tried impaling it on an iron spike, little Stevie?’”

Beverly buried her face in her hands, laughing. “Stop, stop, I wouldn’t say that-”

Richie took a stab at Bill now. “‘Hold on now, young whippersnapper, I’ll fire up ol’ Silver and fetcher my old pal Hanlon, he’ll- he’ll-” Richie dissolved into laughter before he could think of a punchline to that particular joke. 

Bev shook her head, blushing slightly. 

“Oh, shit.” She realized she had nearly shaken her cigarette out and hurriedly rushed to blow some life back into the embers. 

“Man, Bev, it’s a real shame you only started hanging out with us this summer,” Richie said. 

“That’s sweet of you to say.” Beverly said.

“None of those other dumbasses ever had cigarettes!” Richie said. “And the last time Stan successfully lit a match he had to use my glasses.” 

Beverly smirked at that. “I wish we’d met earlier, too. I could’ve used the company.” 

“You’ll take that back eventually,” Richie said jovially. “You’ll get sick of us and look back on the good old days before you had to carry around a pack of sausages to get anything done.” He whistled through his fingers. “‘Look what I threw over there, boys! Leave that rotting deer carcass alone!’”

Richie laughed at his own joke, but sobered himself when he noticed that Beverly was only giving a lackluster chuckle. There was some somberness to her expression that caused the smile to drain from his face. 

Bev glanced away, taking a final draw on her cigarette, which was on its last legs. “Can I tell you something, Richie?” 

“As long as you don’t mind me hearing it,” Richie said. 

“You have to promise not to tell the others yet. Bill especially.” Beverly looked at him now, her eyes fixed on his. “I don’t want them to get all sentimental.” 

“Shoot,” Richie threw his arms open.

“I think I’m going to stay with my aunt next year,” Bev admitted. “I can manage this summer at home, because my dad is…”

“Recovering from a hole in his head that looks like someone thought it was an apple?” Richie asked. 

“More or less.” Beverly said. “But my aunt is worried that I shouldn’t be taking care of myself all school year, and I’m worried what he’ll be like when he recovers…” 

She trailed off and Richie picked the seeds off a blade of grass, sprinkling them over her hair. She half-smiled, shook the seeds loose, gestured like she was going to put her cigarette out on his leg, but then crushed it into the ground. 

“You think you’ll ever live with him like normal again?” Richie asked. 

Bev’s face was pale. “I don’t know.”

“Do you want to?”

The sun was starting to slink behind the trees, the shade they had perched in spreading down the hill. Beverly looked distressed, and lit a second cigarette. Richie thought she was maybe a bit young to be smoking so many in one sitting–he was getting sick of the smell himself, and he worried his mom would smell it on him when he got home. Oh well. He could blame it on the men who liked to sit around Bassey Park chain smoking on their lunch breaks.

“I feel bad about it,” She finally said, “Because… it wasn’t an accident,” 

Richie squinted. “No, it was Pennywise, right?”

“No,” Beverly shook her head. “I… I hit him with a big porcelain tray. He was…” She surprised herself by choking out a sob. “Richie, I had to,” 

“Whoa, you okay?” Richie scrambled to sit up, a hand hovering near her shoulder. 

Beverly sucked desperately on her cigarette. “It was– he was– nevermind. You don’t need to know that part. I just– I had to do it, I couldn’t let him h-hurt me.” 

Richie’s eyes were wide, and looked even wider with his glasses. “I bet he deserved it. Don’t feel bad. Don’t feel bad, he had it coming! He’s a real son of a bitch.”

Beverly wiped snot off her face with one hand. “So- so anyway, I think I’m going to move to live with my aunt , which is okay I guess, except for she doesn’t live in Derry and I don’t know if we’ll get to hang out anymore.”

Richie took this in with a serious expression. “That’s big news, Bev. You should tell the others soon.” 

“I kn-know,” Bev hiccuped. “I just don’t want you guys to think it’s anything p-personal.” 

“You sound like Big Bill,” Richie said. “Don’t worry about it. If I had the option to get out of Derry, I’d take it too.”

“Y-yeah,” Beverly shook her head. She closed her eyes and leaned her forehead on her palm, and it struck Richie that she looked tired, but not in the way kids look tired. She looked adult-tired. “It’ll be fine.” 

Richie was uncertain about that. He cautiously placed a hand on her back. The rules always seemed different when you were comforting a girl. “But who’ll do the talent show with me in the fall?”

Beverly rubbed her eyes. “I don’t know, Richie. Get Eddie to do it. He’ll do anything for you.”

“I don’t know about that,” Richie said bitterly. “I’m pretty sure he won’t let me pretend to cut him in half. And if I put on the sparkly leotard and vest, that’ll probably set off certain alarms.” 

“Nothing you can’t handle, Trashmouth.” Beverly said. “After seeing you hit that thing with that baseball bat, I’m pretty sure you can take a few rumors.” 

Richie snorted. Bev’s tears had subsided, and now she tugged the bottom of her shirt sleeves down her arms. 

“Hey, it’s getting kind of cool out.” Richie commented. “Want to get Micky D’s and split some fries? I can see if Ben’s around, he never says no to some fried potaters.” 

Beverly sniffled one last time and carefully put out her cigarette, deciding to hold it until it cooled down enough that she could stash it back in her case. “Honestly? That sounds amazing.” 

AUGUST 22, 1989 : A PICNIC TABLE JUST OFF KANSAS STREET

Mike's eyes were closed, his head resting on his arms, which were folded on the picnic table under him. A tiny splinter from a place where the red paint was chipping jutted into his elbow and he shifted slightly. 

“Mikey, are you as-s-sleep?” Bill asked. 

“No,” Mike said lazily. “It’s just hot and bright out, that’s all.” 

He could feel the sun on his eyelids, warming them and making them red. 

“Sorry if we’re keep-p-ping you up,” Bill said, a little snarkily.

“Hey, you didn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn to milk the cows.” Mike said. 

Bill hummed in response. Mike listened to the rushing sound of what he knew was the branches of a little birch tree planted nearby swaying in the wind, its little sharp leaves quivering back and forth. 

“I’m getting sick of Kraft mac and cheese,” Beverly said, across the table from Mike. He could smell her cigarette. “Mac n’ cheese and PB&J. That’s all I can do with the stuff in the cabinets right now. I’ll have to get some more eggs.” 

“If I knew how to make steak tartar I’d teach you,” Mike offered. 

“Tar-tar?” Beverly asked. 

“It’s like, raw. But it’s safe to eat. It’s so weird,” Mike said, opening his eyes a sliver, just enough to glimpse Beverly’s elbow and a slice of her paisley-patterned dress. Then he closed them again.

“Stan!” Beverly cried. “Stan, over here!” 

Mike opened his eyes fully now. Stan was walking past their picnic table from the direction of the library in a green shirt, the gauze bandage still wrapped around his face and forehead. He saw them and turned, his eyes bright. 

“Stan the Man!” Mike cried, delighted. Stan’s curls bounced as he walked over. 

“Hey!” Stan said, sitting down across from Bill. 

“S-Stan, you messed it up,” Bill said. 

“What?” Stan frowned. 

“Oh, no, that was my fault. I moved.” Beverly returned to her pose, cigarette held ponderously in the air. 

“I’m almos-s-st done.” Bill said. Mike could hear the faint scratching of a pencil from his right, where Bill sat with his sketchbook. 

“What are you up to, Stanley?” Mike asked. 

“Just finished returning some library books for my mom.” Stan said. He leaned over the table to see what Bill was drawing. 

Mike glanced at the page. Bill’s pencil had swiftly rendered a messy sketch of Beverly in her current pose, her face the most detailed part of the drawing with the proportions of her body not quite lining up. Bill had clearly sketched and erased her hand several times. That being said, it was still the finest drawing Mike had ever seen anybody do in such a short amount of time. 

“That’s good , Bill.” Mike said. 

“Since when have you been good at sketching?” Stan asked. 

“Since Beverly s-s-started teaching me how to do it p-proper,” Bill said, looking proud. 

“My dad has a knack for it,” Beverly said, her eyes downcast. “He taught me that technique. You start with the big shapes, then you get down to the specifics.” 

Stan nodded appreciatively. “That’s clever. It’s like painting.”

“I wish I could draw,” Mike said. “I can’t do anything artistic.”

“Have you tried?” Stan asked. 

“Not lots,” Mike shrugged. “I wish I could play an instrument or draw or write. I was in church choir,” the corner of his mouth turned up at the thought. “But that didn’t last too long.” 

“I’m a terrible singer.” Beverly said. “Piano is all I’ve got.” 

“You could learn, Mikey.” Bill said. “There’s-s not much to it,” 

He tore a page out from his sketchbook and passed it to Mike. 

“Does anyone have a sp-sp-spare pencil?” He asked.

“Here,” Stan pulled one out of his backpack. 

“Th-this thing’s-s dull!” Bill held it up. 

“I don’t mind,” Mike said. He was struck by this gift, which seemed to him strange and a tad whimsical. He took the piece of paper and lay it in front of him, tapping the pencil with one hand. “What should I draw?”

“Uh,” Bill cringed and glanced around. 

“Maybe this?” Stan pulled a baseball out of the side pocket of his bag and put it on the table in front of Mike. “You can draw it as a warm-up, and then maybe you can try my mitt.” 

“St-start with a big c-circle-” Bill sighed. “Bev, you explain it.”

“You said it,” Bev said. “Can I move?”

“Yeah,” Bill said in defeat.

Bev leaned over the table and gestured with her finger what Mike should do. “Like he said, start with a big circle and maybe indicate the lines of the table peeking around the bottom. Keep your head in the same place so your view doesn’t change. Then you can try to add the stitches on the ball using the table lines as a guide.” Beverly squinted, leaning on one arm. “Try to draw it as you see it, not as you… know it, if that makes sense. Like, don’t draw the lines as you’d picture them in your mind. Draw them where they are in front of you.”

Mike was a little intimidated now. “I’ll give it a shot.”

Stan pointed to Bill’s sketchbook, lying open to a different page. “Who’s this?”

Bill turned the page protectively. “It’s a character. From th-the s-story I showed you before.”

“Story?” Beverly asked, puffing on her cigarette. 

“Our Bill’s a writer,” Stan confided. 

“What kind of stories?” Mike asked. This was new to him as well. 

“Th-they’re not g-good,” Bill said, clearly embarrassed. “They’re s-supposed to be s-scary, but I’ve never s-s-scared anyone with th-them.” 

“They’re not bad, though.” Stan said. “Maybe I can read them while you draw, Bill.” 

“I like those campfire tales,” Mike said. “Are they like that?” 

“Yeah, a little.” Bill paused. “I need the s-sketchbook to draw, th-though.” 

“Oh, come on.” Beverly smiled encouragingly. “I want to hear it!” 

Bill’s mouth quirked into a smile. “Alright, th-then.”

He ripped out the page he was working on and passed the sketchbook to Stan, flipping to a page covered in tall, narrow writing. 

“P-p-pose, please?” Bill said, picking up his pencil again. 

Beverly lifted her cigarette askance into the air once more. “ Alright !” She huffed, mocking annoyance. 

“‘It was the middle of November,’” Stan began to read. “‘It was cold enough that John had to bring a jacket when he went outside.’”

Mike picked up his pencil and began trying to draw the baseball, feeling a little silly. 

“‘Every day, Johnny went down to the old cellar in the hill to get firewood for his family. They–’”

“One second, Stan.” Beverly said. “Mike, you want to go lighter than that. Don’t try to get it all in one stroke, go soft, less pressure.” 

Mike cringed and began to erase. “I can’t even draw a circle .” 

“You’ll pick it up,” Beverly said, that confident smile returning to her face. 

“Can I keep going?” Stan asked. 

Bill nodded, his eyes fixed on the page. 

“‘They sent Johnny because he was the youngest, and they could-’ Wait, Bill, who’s ‘they’?” Stan asked. 

“It’s-s his brothers,” Bill said. “It s-says in a second.” 

“Keep reading,” Beverly rolled her eyes. 

Stan did. 

Mike figured out what he was doing after some trial and error, erasing and re-drawing until he had something that looked, to his eyes, halfway decent. When he glanced up, he watched Bill’s hands, quick and light, and tried to copy the way he held his pencil. Stan held the notebook in front of him with both hands, a tiny crease between his eyebrows. As Mike watched, one of his curls kept blowing into his eyes, and he paused reading to push it away a few times. He caught Beverly watching him, that little smile still on her face. 

Mike was a tad embarrassed, but when he sat up and looked down at his page, he was surprised that what he had drawn–while certainly imperfect–had the quality of a sketch, something he had never made before. The first lines were light and faded into the back as he added further, more confident strokes. Changing the amount of pressure that he used to draw created a whole new effect. 

As he tipped the pencil onto its side to add a little shading–something that felt like a bit of a show-off move–he wondered what other sides of himself he might unlock, now that he had friends to explore them with. 

AUGUST 26, 1989: CAPITOL THEATER

It was summer, and the Losers were going to see a movie. Specifically, they were going to see The Avengers—no relation to the later hit superhero franchise—a spy movie which Richie thought looked spectacularly horrible. 

The Capitol Theater was also air-conditioned, which was a major plus. 

“It’s not my fault th-that you g-guys didn’t buy a ten-foot p-pole,” Bill said. “I had already made th-the whole dungeon.” 

“But you could’ve warned us there were going to be pressure plates,” Ben said. 

“Yeah, now we have to start at level one all over again,” Mike said. He was sitting on Ben’s left, and so had to lean forward so that Bill could see him. 

Richie turned to Beverly and lowered his voice. “Starting to understand why people killed themselves over this game.” 

Beverly snickered. “What’s it about?”

“It’s called Dungeons & Dragons,” Ben said. 

“Except there aren’t any fucking dragons,” Richie said. “I played with them once. Never again, I say! If I want to watch a bunch of idiots play make-believe, I don’t need to consult an encyclopedia, I’ll just go to Mass.”

“You’re just mad th-the rust monster ate your s-s-sword,” Bill said. 

“It was a good sword!” Richie said. “I stole it from that cave! It was cool!” 

“We need a third player!” Ben complained. “Bill says we need a fighter, but I want to play a thief.”

“Ask Stanley,” Richie said, putting his feet up on the back of the seat in front of him. “He loves math.” 

“I’ll play a fighter,” Beverly said.

“Yeah right ,” Bill teased. 

“Hey, she can fight better than your clumsy ass,” Richie said. “ And she can do it outside of your kitchen-table-of-imagination.” 

“So you make characters?” Beverly asked. Stan approached their row and sat down on her other side, carrying a large bag of popcorn. He passed it to Bev, because he owed Richie and so Richie had sharing privileges.

“My character is Sigmund the Green,” Mike said. “He’s a mage. Which means he can cast spells and stuff, but only if he remembers them–it’s pretty weird, actually, when he casts spells he forgets them.” 

“And then he died,” Ben said. 

“The gelatinous cube.” Mike agreed. 

“Oh, I think that’s what Eddie’s mom brought to the PTA bake sale.” Richie said.

“What about you, new kid? What’s your character?” Beverly asked.

What’s wrong with you people, Richie thought. I made a good joke just now. That one was definitely good!

“He was a fighter, until he got stabbed by giant spikes in the walls,” Ben said sadly. “Next time I’m going to play a thief. A halfling thief. So I can find the traps.” 

“What was his name?” Richie asked. “Haystack Calhoun?”

“Steve Stevenson,” Ben said.

“Creative,” Richie said. “And your new guy?”

“I think I’ll play his twin brother,” Ben grinned. “Sam Stevenson.” 

Stan burst up laughing on Richie’s other side, suddenly making his presence known after having said nothing for the past minute. 

“Alright,” Richie leaned around Beverly to kick him. 

“I can play a fighter,” Beverly said. “Can I have a bow and arrow?”

“S-s-sure,” Bill smiled. “If you want.”

Eddie walked up now, carrying both popcorn and a large soda. He paused, squinting at the six of them sitting in a row. 

No–not squinting at all of them. Squinting at Richie. 

“You got a haircut,” He said, with an accusing tone in his voice.

“Isn’t it fetching?” Richie said, pretending to flip his hair. It was, indeed, shorter now, no longer brushing into his eyes. 

“It looks dumb,” Eddie said, sitting down beside Stan. 

“Your mom looks dumb.”

“Ed, you wanna p-play D&D with us?” Bill asked. 

Eddie scrunched up his nose in that most adorable way of his. “Isn’t that satanist?”

“Nothing can be satanist unless it’s a person, if it’s a thing it has to be satanic .” Stan said. 

“If my mom found out I was playing a game like that I think she’d call a priest,” Eddie said. “I’d be eating nothing but communion wafers and drinking holy water for a week. She’d skin me alive.” 

“Bill, you should put her in your dungeon.” Richie said. “She can be the final boss!”

“It’s not demonic,” Mike said. “It’s just a game, like Monopoly or Pictionary or Chess. People just don’t like it because it’s new and popular and they think that wizards are trying to brainwash their kids.” 

“I don’t know, I think the rules are from Hell.” Richie said. “What the fuck is a thack-o?” 

“You mean whacko?” Eddie said. “Cuz I’m looking at one right now.”

“To hit armor class zero,” Mike said patiently. “It’s a number that you can use for reference to tell if a-”

“Yeah, yeah, z equals m plus w minus c,” Richie said. 

“‘When you need to figure out if your sword hit the goblin scout, that’s mathematics!’” Stan sang with a shit-eating grin. Probably another reference to Tom Lehrer. Richie hadn’t heard Stan talk about anything that past summer as much as he talked about birds and Tom Lehrer. 

“Is the movie starting yet?” Richie yawned. “This one’s got Uma Thurman, she’s hot.” 

Stan grabbed a piece of popcorn and threw it into Richie’s open mouth. 

“No she isn’t,” Eddie said. “You have the worst taste in girls, Rich.” 

“Must explain why I keep fucking your mom,” Richie said.

“Your hair looks stupid.” Eddie said, out of new insults. “You look like if Paul McCartney was ugly and wore glasses.” 

“Don’t be too jealous, Eds.” Richie said. “We can’t all be heartthrobs.” 

“Don’t fucking call me that,” Eddie muttered. 

“Shut up!” Beverly grinned, pointing at the screen and munching on Richie and Stan’s popcorn. “It’s beginning.” 

“Oh, you didn’t come here just to listen to Haystack complain about how he doesn’t have a ten-foot pole?” Richie said. “I’m telling you, you can just use me ole’ cocker!” 

“Beep beep,” Stan said. 

“A ten foot pole is like what Eddie uses to push the buttons on a fucking elevator,” Richie said. 

“More like what I’d use to keep you the fuck away from me,” Eddie said. 

“Sh-shut up!” Bill said. “They’re g-going to kick us out.” 

Richie and Eddie exchanged glances, but didn’t say anything. 

“Richie, duck.” Beverly said. 

Without thinking, Richie did. 

Beverly leaned over his head and gave Bill a peck on the cheek. 

Stan gagged. 

“What was that for?” Bill sputtered, flushing bright pink. He brought one hand up to his cheek, scandalized. 

“Getting them to shut up.” Beverly said, turning back to the movie with a smirk. 

AUGUST 30, 1989 : THE MEADOW ON THE EDGE OF THE BARRENS

"I'm not fucking going in there, have you ever heard of Lyme disease? Tall grass is literally the most classic place for ticks to be." 

Regardless, Eddie ditched his bike next to Richie’s and followed him into the field. The late August sun cast slanted orange beams across the stalks, rippling with the breeze. 

“We killed an evil clown monster and you’re afraid of a widdle bug?” Richie teased. “Maybe I’ll catch some in a little glass jar and take them home. I’ll train them to exclusively drink the blood of virgins, it’ll be fine.” He mimed reaching out and snatching bugs off of the tall stalks of yellow grass around them.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Eddie shook his head. “Ticks are literally parasites that carry so many diseases. When those things infect someone, their death will be on you, just so you know. And you’re a virgin, so good going, asshole.” 

“Am not!”

“Are you a fucking pathological liar?”

“I’ll name them after the warts on your penis!” Richie cackled. He stomped down the grass so that it wouldn’t touch Eddie’s legs as they walked. 

“Okay well I don’t have penis warts, so there aren’t any names for you to choose from.” 

“But if you had them you would name them.” Richie squinted. “I’ll name them after your freckles,”

“My freckles don’t have names either, dipshit!”

“Sure they do. Edward, Widdle Eddie, Eddie Junior, Eds-”

“Shut up, Richie. so you’ve just been addressing one of my freckles this entire time?”

“Yeah, they’re much better conversationalists.”

“So your idea of a good conversationalist is something that can’t interrupt your bullshit?”

“Holy shit, a tick!”

Eddie turned around, jumpy. In this moment of weakness, he suddenly felt Richie’s arms swoop around his waist and pull him backwards, sending both of them tumbling to the ground from behind, rolling through the grass in a screeching pile.

“OH MY GOD, YOU FUCKING DORK?” Eddie shrieked, scrambling so that he was no longer laying on Richie’s pelvis. 

Richie cackled. “Your fucking face-”

“Remind me never to go fucking anywhere with you again, you’re a fucking menace to society. You should be-”

“Eddie–I have to tell you something.” Richie said, adopting a serious tone of voice.

Eddie stopped talking and squinted in suspicion.

“This patch of grass here is special to me,” Richie said. “There’s a reason I brought you here today. This is where I lost my virginity.”

“You are a pathological liar, Richie, if you had any action, we’d know because you wouldn’t stop talking about it,” 

“This is where your mother and I conceived you,” Richie said, and Eddie nearly slapped him in the face, but he lurched away laughing.

Eddie rolled onto his back. “You didn’t happen to bring sunglasses, did you, asshole?”

“No…” Richie said. “I already see the world for its true darkness…”

“Okay, well that’s not going to save you from going blind.” Eddie propped himself up on his elbows, looking down at Richie and shading the other boy’s face with his head. “ More blind, anyway.”

“I’ll be fine as long as you don’t go anywhere. Who needs sunglasses when one has a dainty little parasol named Edward Kaspbrak?” Richie grinned and pinched Eddie’s cheek, causing him to flinch away. “Just don’t move and I’m golden.” 

Eddie shook the blush from his cheeks. “I’m going to get Lyme disease and die because of you, ^[7] and you’re not even going to make it to the funeral because you’ll go blind and walk into traffic on the way there.”

“I’m glad we’re talking about this. Which fanny pack would you like to be buried with?”

“Fuck you, idiot.”

Richie giggled. 

Eddie looked down at him, brow furrowed, ruthlessly reciting statistics about parasites and symptoms, anything to distract from the fact that underneath his annoyance was a feeling that he was pretty sure he recognized from his mom’s favorite songs. 

Chapter Text

“It’s gonna be the future soon!

And I won’t always be this way,

When the things that make me weak and strange

Get engineered away.

It’s gonna be the future soon,

I’ve never seen it quite so clear—

When my heart is breaking,

I can close my eyes

And it’s already here.”

SEPTEMBER 4, 1989 : DERRY HIGH

“I can’t believe I have to sit through English with you two every day for the rest of eighth grade.” Stan said, watching Richie flick tiny bits of paper at Eddie from the desk next to him.

“What are you talking about, this is epic.” Eddie tore off a piece of his own paper and balled it up to flick back. “Next year you’re gonna be sitting in class with just a bunch of weirdos like Connor Lawson who don’t wear deodorant and never say anything interesting, and you’re gonna miss this, so why don’t you sit back and enjoy the show, Stanley?”

Stan didn’t enjoy classrooms. They were full of bad noises–squeaks and snickers and silences that made him self-conscious. This one’s full of lunatics, he thought. Eddie’s nose was wrinkled up like one of his pieces of paper, the nebulas of freckles on his cheeks contracting like a reverse big-bang. His concentration wasn’t working–he kept missing Richie’s desk. 

“She’s going to put you guys on opposite sides of the room if you keep doing that.” Stan said. 

Richie hit Eddie in the face with his next wad of paper. “Ohhh! That one almost went in your mouth!”

There was a clap as their teacher, Mrs. Gregson, assumed her position at the front of the room. “Alright, everyone. Happy first day of school. Settle in and I’ll get out the seating chart.”

“Ugh. She’s even uglier than Eddie’s mom,” Richie said, stuffing his torn-up paper into the open pocket of his backpack. Stan thought he might strangle him. Eddie flicked one last little ball at Richie and he flinched. “Who do you have for biology, Stan?”

“I’m in McBrady’s.” Stan said. “Fourth period.”

“HA! Yes.” Richie grinned. “We’re in this together, my brother!”

“I have Shneider.” Eddie held up his schedule and wrinkled his nose. “I haven’t even heard about her. Do you think she’s bad?”

“Rock on!” Richie said. “I think I’ll call her Dee. Is she the one who got so mad at a kid for passing notes that she made him hold a tarantula for the whole class?” 

Stan thought that seemed like more of a punishment for the tarantula. 

Eddie stared at Richie, wide-eyed. “Are you serious?”

“No, dumbass!” Richie snickered. “I made that up!”

“So it begins,” Stan sighed, though in truth he was delighted.

“One of the bio teachers does have a tarantula, though.” Richie said. “I know I heard that. I don’t remember which one.”

“Hey Stan!” 

Rachel McFaddigan’s voice. Stan turned, keeping his face composed. 

Rachel was sitting at the desk in front of him, turned around in her chair, her eyebrows raised and her mouth smirking. She was one of Greta’s friends. Stan couldn’t tell what Greta saw in her, but guessed her character analysis probably began and ended at the fact that Rachel was blonde, rude, and loyal. 

“I like your bow tie,” Rachel said, and then snickered. One of her friends, who was actually very pretty, was sitting next to her, hand over her mouth. 

Stan’s ears burned and he looked down. His mother had insisted on the neckwear-and the suspenders. She wanted his first-day-of-school picture to be nice. 

Richie had made a comment not too different from Rachel’s when he saw Stan that morning, though that had been easier to endure because Richie was wearing a David Bowie t-shirt and patterned shorts. Stan compulsively checked to make sure that his kippah was still pinned in his hair. 

“Aw, shut up.” Richie said, flapping a hand in Rachel’s direction. “By the way, your shirt’s untucked. I think it came loose when you were tying your big football boyfriend’s shoes for him.” 

“What the frick is wrong with you, Trashmouth?” Rachel pressed a hand to her blue cardigan and frowned. She glanced at Stan. “I was giving him a compliment, not that you’ve ever heard one.” 

“It’s fine,” Eddie said. He never liked to argue with girls. “Just shut up.”  

 “Listen, Stan’s got more class than every other guy in this school combined,” Richie continued. “He doesn’t need compliments from someone who’s afraid to say ‘fuck’ out loud.” 

Now Mrs. Gregson was standing at the front of the room again, and Stan shot his friends a look so that they would notice. Rachel turned to face the front of the room, disgruntled and rolling her eyes. 

So this is the kind of year it’s going to be, Stan thought, forlorn. 

“Hey,” Eddie whispered from his left. He gestured in Rachel’s direction and stuck out his tongue. 

Stan smiled a little. 

“Fuck her,” Richie muttered. “I like the bow tie.” 

“Thanks, Richie.” Stan said quietly. 

They got on with class after that.

NOVEMBER 3, 1989 : STREETS OF DERRY

Eddie turned 14 in the first week of November, which meant that for the last two weeks of October, he diverted conversations about Halloween and costume plans to hound his friends until they promised to go with him to Jackson’s Family Amusement Center, the new bowling alley and roller rink that opened next to the Capitol. 

Happily for him, his birthday was a Saturday that year, which meant that after he woke up, ate the blueberry french toast his mother fixed him, and took his medicine, he was free. He kissed his mom on the cheek, ignoring her comments that you know it’s cold to be out biking, be sure you’re dressed warm, and remember when you were nine and we stayed in and watched I Love Lucy? That wasn’t so bad, was it? 

Next year he would let her win maybe, but not this year. She was getting worse with every year that he got closer to college–something he knew, but pretended not to notice. He knew a lot of things  that he pretended not to. He tied his sneakers with double-knots the way she’d taught him, so he wouldn’t trip and fall to his death. 

Fanny pack on his hip, he leapt on his bike. He was wearing his favorite jeans and a salmon polo shirt under his red jacket, his beat up converse feeling fresh on his feet. He would collect Richie, then Bill, then Ben. Stan and Mike would meet them there. The air was cold, but it wasn’t cloudy–the sky was clear, blustery, and sharp as a papercut.

Eddie was in a good mood, but he could feel it coming under subtle threat as he made his way to Richie’s house. What if the new place let him down? Or if the fries were soggy? There was nothing Eddie hated like soggy fries. Well, there were public bathrooms–those were worse than soggy fries for sure, and obviously nothing was worse than pneumonia, like when he’d had it a few years ago. 

Eddie abandoned that train of thought for a new one. He had to bug his friends about his birthday in order for them to get their asses in gear and remember. They were terrible about scheduling things like that. Shit. They would forgive him for being annoying about it, right? They actually wanted to go–why wouldn’t they? It was a bowling alley and roller rink. That was like, the definition of fun. Did they think he was lame for caring about his birthday?

He thwarted his anxiety by reminding himself insistently that he wasn’t allowed to be worried about that kind of stuff on his birthday. Everything would go fine, because they were usually fine, except when they weren’t. 

Richie’s house was a squat two-story cape cod style affair, neat (if plain) on the outside. Eddie rang the doorbell and Richie’s mom, a lanky blonde woman who had spent her college years as a lifeguard with no respect for sunscreen, answered almost immediately. 

“Looking for Richie? I’ll see if he’s up.” Maggie Tozier turned and yelled for Richie up the stairs, which were close to the front hall and cluttered with a variety of abandoned sneakers, stacks of magazines, and random items of clothing.

“I’m not in a hurry,” Eddie said politely, though he very much was. 

Maggie pursed her lips at the stairs, where her son did not make a swift appearance. She turned back to Eddie, opening the door wider. “Here, come on inside, it’s chilly out. How’ve you been, Eddie?”

“I’ve been very good!” 

“Richie said you kids are headed to the new bowling place, is that right?”

“For my birthday.” Eddie smiled. 

“Oh my goodness! Happy birthday–are you fourteen, is that it?” Maggie led him back to the kitchen, which was similarly cluttered with soda cans, dishes, and three empty jars of Fluff. “Gosh, I can remember when you were so small!” 

“That’s right.” Eddie said. He sat at the low counter, which was not stone but was covered in a material that looked something like it. He folded his hands. 

“Do you want anything to drink? I could make you hot chocolate.”

Eddie shook his head. “No thank you. Richie and I are going to turn right around and head out after he comes down, so-”

“I want hot chocolate!” Richie said, thumping down the stairs. “Here he comes, the man, the myth, the legend, it’s-”

“It’s 10 AM, you dork,” Eddie said, mindful of his language in front of Richie’s mom. “You haven’t even gotten dressed yet? Put on some clothes, dude.”

Richie was wearing boxers and a Star Wars t-shirt, his hair a bird’s nest on his head. “This is clothes. I’m wearing clothes.”

“Go get dressed,” His mom told him, mild-mannered. “And tell your friend happy birthday.” 

“Happy birthday, Eds!” Richie ran over and mussed Eddie’s hair, his bony knuckles messing up Eddie’s hard work. “Look at youuuu! You’re so big and taaaall! You’re almost five foot! When did my little Spagheddie get so oooold?” 

Eddie slapped him away. “No nicknames on my birthday!” 

Maggie laughed at them. 

“Okay, Edward.” Richie said, bopping back up the stairs. “Anything you say, Edward.”

Richie returned a few minutes later wearing jeans (that were beginning to tear at the knee) and a different Star Wars t-shirt. He was carrying something behind his back and grinning in a manner that Eddie found most suspicious.

“You’re ready. Good. Finally.” Eddie walked past Richie to the door. “I see that you’re hiding something from me and I’m choosing not to care. Thank you, Mrs. Tozier!” 

“Have fun, boys!” Richie’s mom called. 

“Let me put my jacket on first, jeeze.” Richie grabbed a navy blue bomber jacket from the stairway railing and followed Eddie out the door. Cold air immediately flooded Eddie’s lungs, and he wrapped his arms across his body. 

“Bill’s probably waiting for us, let’s go.” Eddie said.

“Hold this for a second,” Richie shoved a folded paper bag into Eddie’s hands and clumsily donned his jacket, tilting his head up to keep his glasses from sliding down his nose. 

Eddie glared at the parcel with equal parts curiosity and suspicion. Richie had folded the brown paper down around the object inside, which was about the size and shape of a book, but a little lighter. 

“Is this my birthday present?” Eddie asked suspiciously. “I told you what I wanted.”

“For me not to call you Eds?” Richie said.

“No, a–yes, technically.” Eddie began to open the bag. 

“Don’t open it yet,” Richie said, his grin either gleeful or sheepish, Eddie couldn’t tell. 

“It’s too big for my fanny pack.” Eddie said. 

“That’s what she said! Ohhh!” 

Richie took the present back and stuck it in the pocket of his jacket. Mounting their bikes, they made their way to Bill’s house. Eddie could feel his momentary annoyance fade into the background. Richie was good for things like that–for distracting him from what he wanted to complain about by giving him new things to complain about. 

When they arrived at Bill’s house, Bill was already waiting on his front steps in a heavy winter jacket, Silver leaning against his porch. 

“If it isn’t Big Bill!” Richie cried. “Top of the mornin’ to ya!” 

“Hey Eddie, happy birthday!” Bill grinned. 

“Let’s fucking go!” Eddie said, not even stopping his bike. 

Ben was next. Bill slowed down so that Eddie could give him directions, even though he knew the way just fine–because they all knew Eddie was best with that kind of thing. Anyone could get from here to Ben’s house, Eddie thought with a smidge of pride. I can do it efficiently. 

“Howdy, Haystack!” was Richie’s greeting when Ben opened the door. 

Ben lived in a one-story little house on the corner of Palmer and Jackson Street with his mother, tucked behind a few poorly maintained lilac bushes and an old armchair that had been out on the curb since before Ben was born.

“Let me grab something, I’ll be right there!” Ben said, turning and pulling a small object covered in wrapping paper and scotch tape off a shelf. Eddie watched as he stuck it in the pocket of an oversized sweatshirt before joining the rest of them on their bikes. 

“Are you gonna be warm enough in that thing?” Eddie asked Ben, skeptically. 

“I run hot,” Ben shrugged. 

“It’s like, 15 actual degrees.” Eddie said.

“He’s warm-blooded, Eddie, leave him alone!” Richie giggled. “Just because you’re made of toothpicks and paper-mache doesn’t mean the rest of us are!” 

“Shut up, Richie!” Eddie pulled ahead as they began the final leg of their journey. 

“In your dreams,” Richie said. 

“You’ll be quiet in my dreams? That’s right, because you’re not in them.” Eddie said.

“Missing out if you ask me. Am I right, Big Bill?” 

“W-w-which way?” Bill asked as they reached an intersection. 

Eddie took a right turn. “I told you guys not to get me anything,” 

“Unfortunately, it’s too cute to watch you blush and squeal.” Richie said. “So think about that next time.” 

“Sorry!” Ben piped up. “My mom said it would be rude not to get you something.” 

“I’ll consider forgiving you.” Eddie said, ever a diplomat.

“Are they going to make me wear those weird shoes?” Ben asked. “At the bowling alley? I hate those things.”

“Don’t worry,” Richie said. “If they don’t have shoes big enough for ya we can stick thumb tacks through the bottom of Mrs. Kaspbrak’s sneakers for traction and–”

“Leave my mother’s name out of your filthy mouth, Richie!” Eddie shot a glare over his shoulder. 

“It’s not my fault people keep taking her out with the trash!” Richie said, and then he almost lost his balance on his bike trying to get Bill to give him a high-five. 

“Don’t you ever g-get tired?” Bill asked Richie after he righted himself. 

“Tired of what? Fucking Eddie’s mom?” Richie snorted. “Never,”

Bill shook his head. “Being a dumbass.” 

Eddie laughed real hard at that one.

Mike and Stan were leaning against one wall of the Jackson’s lobby when the other Losers finally arrived, one wearing a jean jacket and the other a parka. They were debating what the shapes in the colorfully patterned carpet were meant to be. 

“It’s clearly confetti.” Stan said. “It’s all confetti.” 

Mike shook his head. “Most of it is confetti, but that thing is totally supposed to be a party hat.” 

“That’s literally just an isosceles triangle.” Stan pointed at the pink shape on the floor. “Why would they have a party hat sitting on the ground in the middle of the confetti?” 

“Why are they celebrating anything anyway?” Mike shrugged. “What do they have to celebrate?” 

“The miracle of life?” Stan said. 

“Hey g-guys!” Bill called. “Over here!” 

“Here he is!” Richie said, pushing Eddie forward by the shoulder blades like a proud aunt. “Our little birthday boyyyy!” 

“I hope you like the fucking obituary I’ve written for you, Trashmouth,” Eddie said. “They won’t be able to read half of it on TV before 11 PM.”

“Are you gonna kill me? Are you?” Richie grinned and tapped Eddie’s nose. “That’s so sweet,”

“Richie cut the bullshit, we’re paying.” Ben said. 

“Ugh, Eddie, FINE, I guess I’ll pay for you if you insist, because it’s your birthday or whatever,” Richie said, joining Ben at the counter. “Don’t expect this kind of generosity from me again,”

“Hey! I brought money! Move, asshole!” Eddie tried to shoulder his way in front of Richie. 

“Pay me back after, this is easier.” Richie said.

“Happy birthday, Eddie,” Stan said, smiling. 

“Happy birthday!” Mike echoed. 

Eddie turned to them. “Thanks guys. Do me a favor and throw that freak in a trash can when I give the signal.” 

“No can do,” Mike said.

“You got it!” Stan gave a thumbs-up. 

“Stan’s my favorite,” Eddie announced. “Stan, you’re my favorite and you always have been.” 

Bill let out a loud laugh. “S-suck it, Richie!” 

Richie glanced at Stan over his shoulder. “I wish you luck, my good man. It’s lonely at the top.”

It was getting a little harder to make out what everyone was saying over the din of the place, which was undeniably exciting, but also unfamiliar. Mike was surprised by how dark the place was–it reminded him of the lobby of the Capitol. Colorful, dim, and full of loud kids with a sugar-rush.

“Does-s anyone else want nachos?” Bill asked, projecting his voice. 

“I could eat,” Mike said. Ben also nodded. 

“You guys are being very loud.” Stan said. 

“Yeah, everyone, shut up!” Eddie said. “Beep beep, coming through!”

Mike stumbled as they all surged past the front desk, a grin on his face.

“Forgetting someone?” 

The Losers turned around, and there was Beverly Marsh. 

She was clutching a bus ticket in one hand and a card in the other, her freckly face beaming at them from underneath hair that had grown out enough to touch the collar of the powder blue coat she was wearing. 

“BEVERLY!” Eddie cried, running forward to give her a hug. “I thought you wouldn’t have gotten my letter in time!” 

“Happy birthday!” Beverly said. “Couldn’t miss this for the world!”

“Long time no see, Ringwald!” Richie said, offering a high-five. 

“It’s s-so g-good to see you,” Bill said, and she hugged him next, followed by Ben.

“How are you doing?” Ben asked. Mike picked up on a flash of pink in his cheeks as Beverly hugged him.

“I’m doing great!” Beverly said, hugging Mike last after Stan shook his head politely. “Gotta make sure I’m out of here by 4 PM, but otherwise pretty dandy!”

“This for me?” Eddie snatched the card, which had a big illustration of a cake on the front, out of Bev’s hand. 

“I did my best,” Beverly said. “Do you know how hard it is to find birthday cards without balloons on them?”

Richie snickered. “Probably not as hard as finding the condom I lost in Eddie’s mom last night.” 

“Beep beep, idiot.” Eddie finished scanning the card. “This is really nice, thanks Beverly!”

“Don’t mention it,” Beverly grinned. “Now, are we here to plate or bowl?”

With their party paid for, they made their way over to rent shoes while Mike and Ben went to get food. Inside, the dark walls and floor were speckled with neon designs, lightning bolts and fluorescent flames. A large mural of a jaunty kid on rollerskates stuck his tongue out at them from the back wall, where the slightly more tame bowling alley gave way to the roller rink. As he and Ben walked past, arms laden with nachos and bottles of coke, Mike could hear synth music at full blast and see purple and orange lights glinting off of the shiny floor. Kids were zooming across the rink, some in pairs, others doing tricks. Mike hoped that someone would pay him back for the food immediately, so that he wouldn’t have to ask awkwardly for what he was owed later. 

After food, shoes and balls were acquired with only the typical fuss, they headed to a free lane.

The bowling area was slightly quieter, though it still echoed with the thunder of balls rocketing across the floor, pins falling in cacophonies of clatter. It was populated by one or two families and a group of white-haired old-timers who Mike heard arguing about the fairness of a particular ball choice. Quickly, the plastic couches afforded to their lane were covered in discarded jackets and half-drunk bottles of soda. 

“Oh man, I wonder if they do bingo nights, too!” Richie said, grinning. “My great aunt would love it here!”

“I’m going first,” Eddie announced, promptly throwing three gutter balls and slapping Richie and Ben, who laughed at him. Stan went next (being the favorite), and managed to get all of his pins except one, which teetered in a taunting fashion without toppling. Mike took a turn and managed to knock over half of his pins, causing Richie to whistle appreciatively. 

“So close. Man, we could go pro!” he joked, hefting a bright green ball in one hand. 

“Let’s s-s-see you try, Trashmouth.” Bill stood behind him with his arms folded across his chest. 

“I’m going to send those pins flying all the way to Australia, just you watch,” Richie said, making a production of backing away and swinging the ball in slow test arcs before letting it go. 

It rolled into the gutter halfway down the lane. 

“Well, you tried.” Stan said with his trademark sarcasm. 

Bill turned to Mike, leaving Richie and Stan to their bickering. “Hey, I finished th-that book if you want to read it.” 

Mike grinned. “Sweet!” 

“It was p-pretty good,” Bill said, stepping toward their seats. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a battered copy of Children of Dune by Frank Herbert. “Here, just g-get it back to me by Christmas break.” 

Mike took the book from Bill’s hands and beamed at him. “Is it as good as the last one?”

Bill tipped his head to the side. “Yeah, I th-think so. Might even be better!” 

“I’ll get it back to you by Thanksgiving!” Mike said, anticipating a few weeks of delicious reading now that most of the harvest chores were behind him. 

“What are you nerds talking about?” Eddie said, darting over to steal nachos from Ben’s plastic basket. 

“Dude, pay for your own nachos!” Ben protested. 

“I’m only taking one!” Eddie said. “And I paid for Richie’s fries,” 

“Do you want my coconut long boys?” Mike offered. “I have them left over from Halloween, I don’t want them.” 

“Absolutely not, coconut’s fucking disgusting,” Eddie said. Then he addressed Bev, sitting next to Ben. “Your turn after Richie.” 

“Have you ever read Dune?” Bill asked Eddie. 

“Oh I read that!” Ben said. 

“Nope,” Eddie said, crunching down on the nacho he’d taken and reaching for another. “Does it have aliens?”

“Yeah, it’s really g-good,” Bill said, “M-Mike and I are reading it. Did you like it, Ben?”

“It was killer, I liked the mentats,” Ben said. “I finished it a while ago.”

“That reminds me, I just found this series called The Black Company and it’s really good,” Mike said, talking to Bill. “I think you’d like it. I know you like more sci-fi than magic stuff, but it’s got all these demons and-”

“Did someone say demons?” Richie had finished, knocking down maybe one or two of his pins in the process. “Raaghh!” He grabbed Eddie’s shoulders from behind and shook him. 

Eddie dropped his stolen nacho and shrieked. “Asshole! I was going to eat that! Now they’re going to have to scrub cheese whiz out of the carpet!” 

Richie snickered. “Don’t whiz your pants, Eds, I’m sure the janitors would really hate that!”

“What did I say? No nicknames on my birthday!” Eddie said. 

“You’d make a fabulous preschool teacher!” Richie cackled. He pitched his voice into a high falsetto. “‘What did I say, boys and girls? No running with scissors!’”

Beverly stood and went over to take her turn, casually testing the weight of the ball in her hands.

“Thanks for the book.” Mike said to Bill. 

Bill nodded in acknowledgment. “I’m g-gonna s-see if the library has the next one.”

They suddenly heard the crash of pins as Beverly dusted off her hands with a flourish. 

“Was that a strike?” Mike asked, admiringly.

Beverly shrugged, smirking. “I don’t know, is a strike when you get them all in your first try?”

Stan raised his eyebrows and made a note on the score sheet.

“We’re all doomed,” Richie said, though his voice was excited. “Bev always had the best aim.” 

“You’re gonna get your asses beat,” Eddie said, grinning. 

“It’s your turn,” Stan said to Ben.

“Thank god,” Ben said. “Took all of you long enough.” 

Stan laughed. 

“They’re arguing like my p-parents,” Bill said to Stan, gesturing to Richie and Eddie.

“I can’t hear you!” Stan said. 

“He said they’re arguing like his parents,” Mike repeated, closer to Stan. 

Stan shot him a pained look. “It’s really loud in here.”

“Do you want to get food or something to drink? It’s quieter over there,” Mike offered. 

Stan glanced over at the small cafeteria and then shook his head. “It’s fine,” he said, though Mike wasn’t convinced. He tried not to take it personally and failed. 

The Losers continued with their game, slowly improving with practice. Mike sat next to Bill in between turns, laughing as Bill and Richie traded teasing remarks. As usual, Bill’s jokes were tamer and more refined, while Richie’s were louder, more abundant, and more obscene. 

“When we finish this game, let’s switch to the rink,” Richie said, sitting on the bench between Eddie and Stan with a basket of fries. “I’m getting tired of watching Beverly put us all to shame.”

“Chin up, it’s still anyone’s game,” Bev said, though she maintained a six point lead ahead of Ben. 

“Putting us all to shame,” Richie repeated, handing his fries to Mike. He now turned in his seat so that his head was on Eddie’s lap, and he began to swing his legs over Stan’s, except that Stan pushed them back with a quizzical expression on his face. 

“What are you doing?” Stan said, holding one of Richie’s calves away from his lap. 

“Let me lay down! I’m tired! I’m so tired, Stan!” Richie protested. 

“Get off! Get off!” Eddie ordered, scooching away from Richie so that his head fell on the plastic. Stan pushed Richie’s legs off him gently, sending him tumbling to the floor. 

“Oww!” Richie said, half-laughing. He rolled back and forth across the neon carpet. “Can’t a humble bum like me find a place to get some shut eye?”

Bill, who was trying to take his turn, glanced behind him. “You g-guys are distracting me,” 

“You’ve turned him into a worm,” Mike said, pointing at Richie and giggling. 

Eddie grinned slowly. “Stop being a worm, Trashmouth!” 

Richie chuckled. “Can’t a humble worm like me find a place to get some shut eye?”

Beverly giggled and leapt up on top of the bench, perching there to avoid getting her feet squashed. 

“Richie, move, it’s my turn,” Eddie said, trying to dodge the rolling boy on the ground. 

“The floor is Richie,” Ben observed, and then giggled at his own joke. Stan chuckled. 

“Why is he doing th-th-that?” Bill asked as he returned and took Eddie’s seat.

Mike ate one of Richie’s fries. “Who can say?”

Stan pulled up his feet to sit cross-legged so that Richie couldn’t play with his shoelaces. 

Richie stopped rolling and sat up, adjusting his glasses. “Fuck this, I’m bored now.” 

“This is gonna be a loooong day,” Bev snorted. 

At the other end of Jackson’s, the DJ of the roller rink announced the beginning of the Couple’s Skate, followed by the sappy piano of Debbie Gibson’s “Lost in Your Eyes.”

“Hey Eddie, it’s your favorite song!” Richie said. 

“Shut up, asshole.” Eddie said, watching his bowling ball careen into three pins and then vanish over the side. Richie began to croon along to the song in an obnoxious falsetto. He knew all the words, which struck Mike as funny. 

“You’ll get ‘em on this next shot,” Ben said encouragingly as Eddie hefted his next ball. 

“Richie messed me up!” Eddie complained.

“I think I’m gonna head home.” Stan said, standing suddenly. 

Mike looked at him, confused. What? 

The other Losers were stopped in their tracks. Richie stopped singing; Beverly furrowed her brow; a nacho went half-crunched in Ben’s mouth.

“What? But we’re not done with the game yet!” Eddie turned, brow furrowed. 

“Come on, Stan, it’s his birthday!” Richie said. 

“Are you good?” Mike noticed the faint crease in Stan’s forehead, the way his shoulders were tight around his neck.

Stan glanced at Mike, but didn’t say anything. The multicolored lights gave his skin a washed out pallor. 

“W-w-what’s wrong, m-man?” Bill asked.

“Yeah, are you alright?” Bev echoed. 

“I’ll stop, I promise.” Richie said. “Sorry.” 

“I think I’m coming down with something,” Stan said, reaching for his coat. “Wouldn’t want you to get sick on your birthday, right?”

“You don’t look great,” Ben agreed. 

“But…” Eddie looked crestfallen. “But we’re all here. We’re never all here.” 

“I’m just gonna get home,” Stan said. 

Eddie put down his bowling ball and marched over, determination on his face. He tried to put a hand on Stan’s forehead, but Stan slapped it away.

“Come on, dude, I’m gonna check for a fever-”

“No, stop–”

“Let him check!” Richie said. “Dr. K is on the case!” 

“Is it a headache?” Eddie asked. “Feeling warm? Woozy? Stomach hurt?”

“Leave me alone, I’m just gonna-”

“Guys, if he’s sick, he’s sick,” Mike said.

“I want to help you! I have aspirin!” Eddie said, patting his fanny pack. “And Tums!” 

“W-why do you carry around T-tums?” Bill asked. Mike noticed that his stutter always got worse when they were arguing. “Isn’t th-that for d-diarrhea?” 

“First off, no, it’s for heartburn! Second of all, mind your own business, fuckface!” Eddie said, reaching again for Stan’s forehead. “Come on, Stan. You don’t really have to-”

“Leave me alone!” Stan shrieked, shoving Eddie away. “Just let me go, okay?”

Everyone stared at him, taken aback. Mike stood up, though once he did he realized he had no idea what exactly to do. Other bowlers from the lanes around them had noticed, and Mike thought he saw the old-timers shaking their heads in disapproval.

Richie stood up too. “What the fuck, dude?”

Eddie was staring at Stan with wide eyes. “I didn’t- I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to-”

“What the fuck’s your problem, Stanley?” Richie took a step in Stan’s direction. 

“Everybody calm down,” Mike said. “There’s no need for screaming.” 

“Did I miss something?” Beverly looked mighty lost. Mike could sympathize, and he shrugged at her helplessly. 

Stan began to put on his parka. “I’m gonna go home.” 

His fingers fumbled on the zipper, and he tried it once, twice. 

“If you didn’t want to come you could’ve just said,” Eddie said. Mike thought he sounded heartbroken. “I don’t understand why you’re being this way, I was just offering to help if we could figure out what’s wrong-”

“I’m gonna go home,” Stan repeated, finally zipping up his coat and heading for the door. 

Mike almost made to follow him. “Are you gonna be okay biking back by your-” 

“I’m fine!” Stan said, and then he was out of earshot.

The Losers watched him walk out with shocked expressions.

Richie put his hands on his hips. “Why, I oughta-” 

“I’ll g-g-go talk to him,” Bill said, putting on his own coat.

“You gon’ go smack some sense into that sillah boy?” Richie said. 

“No, Richie.” Bill said. “I’m g-gonna t-talk to him.” 

That left Mike, Eddie, Richie, Bev and Ben. The room did seem awfully loud, now that they weren’t contributing to its ambient noise.  

“I guess you can finish your turn,” Ben said to Eddie.

“Whatever,” Eddie said. He unzipped his fanny pack and pulled out his inhaler, triggering it a few times down his throat. “Mike can have my turn. Where’s the bathroom?”

“Over by the-” Mike gestured in the direction of the cafeteria, and Eddie was off before he could finish his sentence.

Richie gave a low whistle. “Everybody havin’ fun?”

“Stan’s not usually like that,” Mike said. He was worried about him, and kind of wished he had gone with Bill to sort things out. 

“Yeah, we know.” Richie said, flopping back on the bench. 

“What do you think that was about?” Ben asked. 

“I didn’t miss anything, did I?” Bev’s eyes were wide. 

Mike looked off in the direction of the doors. “I don’t know. I think maybe it was too loud for him? He seemed kind of overwhelmed.”

“Gee, I wonder whose fault that is,” Ben said. 

Richie turned to Ben, wagging a finger. “Well you listen here Haystack, I am a master of entertainment-”

“Do you think Eddie’s okay?” Mike asked. “Maybe I should go talk to him,” 

Richie shrugged. “Probably weeping in the bathroom. I’ll come with you.” 

“We can’t all go,” Mike said. 

“I’m staying out of this,” Ben said. 

Richie looked at Mike, and then sighed. “Okay. Knock yourself out.”

The bathrooms were hidden down a short orange-painted hallway behind the snack counter. Mike had barely turned the corner when he saw Eddie sagging against the wall, inhaler clutched in one fist.

“Eddie? Are you okay?” 

Eddie saw Mike and looked embarrassed. “I’m fine,”

“You don’t seem fine,” Mike said, leaning on the wall across from him. 

“Did Richie send you to check on me?” Eddie asked glumly.

“No, I sent myself.” Mike said. “I don’t think Stan meant to yell at you.”

“Do you think he hates me?” Eddie turned away, though Mike caught sight of anxious tears brimming in his eyes. 

“No, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t.”

“How would you know?”

Mike crossed his arms. “He’s our friend? And he doesn’t hate anybody.”

“Then why would-” Eddie wiped his face with one hand self-consciously. “Why would he do that? If he didn’t want to come he could’ve just said,” 

“It’s not like he planned to be sick.” Mike said.

“He wasn’t sick,” Eddie said. “He just wanted to leave. I could tell.” 

“It’s loud back there. Lots of yelling. It was getting to him.” Mike said. “I think he just needed to step out. He’ll be back,” 

Eddie gave Mike a doubtful look. 

“I mean, maybe.” Mike amended.

“Was I being too bossy?” Eddie asked. “Like, annoying?”

“A little,” Mike shrugged. 

Eddie furrowed his brow, and then nodded gravely. “Thank you for being honest with me.”

“Hey, anytime. Let’s get back to the action, huh? I gotta finish beating your asses.”

Eddie half-smiled. “Don’t sound so sure of yourself.”

Bill eventually returned, but Stan did not come back with him.

“He said he felt s-sick,” Bill shrugged. 

None of them questioned him further. 

Richie came in third, Bill last. Bev won by five points, and seemed rather pleased with herself. Following this, the Losers switched out their bowling shoes for skates and took to the rink, a thrilling hour of shenanigans interspersed with clumsy chases, comedic falls, and Eddie trying to do “the trick where you put out one leg and go backwards” repeatedly to no avail. At one point, Richie noticed Bev and Bill holding hands. 

The mood never quite recovered to pre-argument levels, but Richie was proud to say that he got a good few chucks out of the others. Why, it seemed to him that by the time they were on their way out, the whole ordeal was as distant as the days of Julius Caesar.

“Man, I’m so glad you made it out, Beverly!” Eddie said. 

“It was really nice to s-see you,” Bill smiled.

“We miss having you around!” Mike added. 

“I’ll write, don’t worry.” Beverly grinned. “Happy birthday, Eddie. Don’t let Trashmouth corrupt you.”

“Jeeze, love you too.” Richie said, adjusting his glasses.

“And you really are happy at your Aunts’?” Ben asked.

Bev smiled. “Yeah.”

“Sorry to hear it,” Richie said, offering Bev a parting high five. “Stay cool, Bev.”

“Alright, I’m gonna catch my bus.” Beverly pulled a cigarette out of her pocket as she stepped onto the sidewalk. 

“I’m in the same direction, I’ll walk with you,” Mike said. “Bye, Losers!” 

“Hell yeah,” Beverly offered Mike a fist pump and then waved over her shoulder. “Don’t smoke, kids!”

They called goodbyes as Bev and Mike headed off towards the bus station. 

“Eddie, you didn’t warn us that sh-sh-she’d be coming,” Bill said. “I would’ve worn a better sh-shirt.” 

“I didn’t know if she would.” Eddie said. 

“Oh, almost forgot!” Ben said, gesturing to Eddie. “You should open your gift!”

He passed Eddie the box he’d brought along, about the size of an apple. It was covered haphazardly in red wrapping paper and scuffed in more than a few places.

“Wow, Haystack, did you let your neighbor’s dog do the wrapping?” Richie asked.

“Beep beep,” Eddie said, turning the box over in his hands. “Thanks, Ben.” 

“Happy birthday!” Ben returned cheerfully.

Eddie tore into the wrapping paper and discarded it into a trashcan. Underneath was a little gift box with a picture of Santa on the top, cheerfully waving a candy cane. 

“That was the only box we had that was the right size,” Ben said sheepishly, before Richie could say anything about it being Eddie’s perfect likeness. 

Eddie lifted the top to reveal a baseball, a slight tinge of earthy brown on its white skin.

“It’s from Yankee Stadium,” Ben explained. “When my mom took me last spring–we got two balls, so I thought you could have one. It’s not signed or anything, but it’s the real deal.”

“Wow,” Bill said admiringly. 

Eddie tipped it out into his hand. “With the special mud and everything? Stan told me about the special mud.”

Ben nodded proudly. “With the special mud and everything.”

“Can I hold it?” Bill asked. Eddie passed it around. 

“That’s pretty frockin’ cool,” Richie said, feeling its weight in one hand. He resisted the urge to toss it and try to catch it. 

“Thanks, man!” Eddie said. “This is pretty tight! Anyone want to go back to my place?”

“I’ve g-got to clean my room,” Bill said glumly. “Had to p-promise to do it in order to come here.”

“I should head home too,” Ben said. “My mom said we were doing dinner early.”

Eddie looked at Richie. 

“Well Bob’s your uncle, don’t you know I’m free as a circus elephant carousin’ through a flower garden!” Richie said in an accent that couldn’t decide if it hailed from Australia or Boston. “Lead on!” 

“If it’s just you, we should go to your place,” Eddie said. “You’ve got the Atari.”

“If you say so, Birthday Boy!” Richie said, the voice landing finally on Alabama.

“See you later, alligator.” Eddie said to Ben and Bill, who each offered goodbyes as they zipped up their jackets and headed into the cold. 

“See you’re supposed to say ‘after a while, crocodile,’ but none of them ever do.” Eddie told Richie when they had left. 

“They must be agents of the Kremlin. Only explanation.” Richie said. 

“That is so totally dumb, I don’t even know where to begin arguing with it.” Eddie said.

“That’s right!” Richie said.

“You’re so annoying.”

“Won’t your mom want you home for some kind of birthday dinner or something?” Richie asked. “Doesn’t sound like her to let you run amok at all hours of the day.”

“She’ll be pissed, whatever.” Eddie shrugged. “I can handle it. Do you have any new games?”

“Nope. All the same.” Richie said, detangling his bike from the bike rack where they’d left their rides.

“Asteroids and Caterpillar again, I guess.” Eddie sighed. “That’s alright.”

They pedaled over to Richie’s house, and aside from a few jokes—“You gonna bring that ball to Stan’s next game, Eds? Or are you finally gonna try and join the team?”—they were mostly quiet. They were tired, and the wind was loud, but Richie could also tell that Eddie was thinking about something—probably Stan. 

Richie hoped that it would all turn out to be nothing. 

They turned into Richie’s driveway and ditched their bikes.

“You think it’s gonna snow?” Eddie squinted at the clouds.

“Sky always looks like that.” Richie said. 

“No it doesn’t, sometimes it looks flat and gray and sometimes it looks like snow,” Eddie said. 

“What, what? Master meteorologist here,” Richie said. 

“Better a meteorologist than a wannabe ventriloquist,” Eddie said.

“I told you that in confidence, four years ago-" Richie laughed, but his cheeks began to burn. 

“And I’m repeating it in confidence!” Eddie said. “No one else is here,”

“Walls have ears,” Richie hissed. 

“We’re outside, dumbass.”

Richie opened his front door and stomped inside, kicking off his converse halfway to the kitchen. He could see his dad down the hallway in the den. “Did you hear what he just said?”

Wentworth Tozier looked up from his book. He was in his armchair by the defunct fireplace, reading up on World War II fighter planes. “No.”

“Called me a wannabe ventriloquist! I have never been more insulted in all my life,” Richie cried, banging open the pantry cabinet and squinting at what was inside.

“You, my son? I’m sure you’ve been called worse.”

Eddie began to cackle. “Yeah, Trashmouth.”

“We don’t have any fruit roll ups. This frockin’ blows.” Richie closed the cabinets and sighed.

“Language.” Wentworth called drily. 

“I said ‘frockin’!”

“I’m not an idiot, Rich.”

“I’m so terribly sorry, father,” Richie said in a prim Regency British voice. “I shan’t ever cuss again.”

“You’re a filthy liar, Richie.” Eddie snickered. 

Richie grabbed Eddie by the top of his head and pulled him in the direction of the stairs. “Let’s get out of here.”

Eddie squirmed away. “Let me—let me go, fuckface!”

“SEE?” Richie called towards his father as they bound up the stairs. “SEE?”

“Language.” Wentworth repeated in a monotone. “And pick up your shoes, your mother will yell at you again.”

“I’ll do it later,” Richie said, and then he followed Eddie into his room and slammed the door.

“Jeeze,” Eddie winced. “If I slammed the door like that my mom would kill me.”

“More like she’d make sure you didn’t stub your widdle toe.” Richie said. 

“She can be mean when she wants to be.” Eddie said, and Richie believed him.

Richie plopped down in front of his room’s tiny TV, scrabbling under his bed for the joysticks. As always, his room was an artful deconstruction of teenage boyhood; posters that he hadn’t gotten around to hanging up were rolled against the back of his desk, the laundry basket his mother had delivered with clean clothes was slowly mixing with a melange of dirty ones without ever touching his closet shelves, and the case of the missing fruit roll-ups could be easily solved through examination of the wrappers strewn ponderously across the floor. It took talent to keep a floor that messy without killing yourself by accident, and even more talent to do that when you weren’t wearing glasses first thing in the morning. It was something Richie prided himself on. Stan refused to come over.

“...that is how you get diabetes. Hey. Hey dipshit, are you even listening to me anymore? Earth to Richie. Hello?” 

Richie hadn’t been paying attention to the last thirty seconds of whatever it was that Eddie had been saying. He finally sorted through the dust bunnies and found the controllers.

“This is Major Tom to Ground Control!” Richie burst out, re-emerging and destroying the residences of several arachnids. “I’m sliding across the floo-oor…”

“Spare me the bullshit.” Eddie sighed, grabbing one of the pillows from Richie’s bed and propping it up between his back and Richie’s dresser. 

“That was one long-suffering sigh for a birthday boy,” Richie said, passing him one of the joysticks and then scooching over to turn on the Atari, which would take a hot minute. “Stan the Man’s little antics still got ya down?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Eddie said. “It’s whatever.” 

That was okay enough with Richie. “I’ve known him for a long time. Sometimes he gets like this.” 

“Does he?”

Richie shrugged. “There was one time when I dragged him along to Canal Days with me and Bill back in fourth grade–that was back when I was trying to get him to hang out with us more, you couldn’t be there for some reason, don’t remember why–and he just broke down crying in the middle of the line for the funhouse. Never explained why. Just in a bad mood, I guess. Got a real tight wedgie or something.”

“Maybe he was nervous about hanging out with Bill,” Eddie said. “New person, wanted to make a good impression.” 

“Aw, Big Bill’s not that scary!” Richie swung a hand through the air. “…I don’t know. Maybe it was that.”

The Atari finally booted up and the screen slowly came to life. The sound of the wind howling through the trees outside was joined by the low buzzing of the electronics.

“I want some gum. Do you want any?” Richie went over to his desk drawer and pulled out a pair of loose gumballs. 

“Dude, no. Those things look like what the clown would feed its dog.” Eddie said. Richie giggled and popped one in his mouth. It was several months stale.

That was how they referred to Pennywise nowadays; the clown. Sometimes they made jokes about it–Richie and Eddie more than any of the others, who all seemed to have a sort of fearful reverence of the subject. Richie couldn’t stand that kind of superstitious taboo. In his opinion, the clown didn’t deserve the respect. 

“Don’t you have any candy left?” Eddie complained. 

“My dad put it all in a jar and told me he’ll only give me a piece every time I clear my dishes from the table or take out the garbage without being asked.” Richie said, forlornly. 

Eddie laughed at that. 

They started by taking turns playing Caterpillar, with Richie intermixing good-natured encouragement with jokes that “this time, maybe you’ll actually reach level two!” 

“This is level four, asshole.” 

“Nah, nah, this is part four of level one,” Richie said, watching the pixelated gun slide back and forth across the screen. “You gotta play through three more of these until you reach level two.”

“You’re lying.”

“You wouldn’t know, you’ve never gotten that far!” Richie snickered. 

“I don’t need to know you’re wrong to know you’re lying, dumbass.” Eddie’s brow was furrowed as he concentrated. His summer freckles had finally faded, leaving his face paler but just as pretty. Small sounds of electronic violence issued from the screen in front of him.

“Faster. To the right. Don’t–no, now it’ll go down another row. You gotta mush the mushrooms. There’s a spider–oh. You–you’ll get ‘em next time, I’m sure. Maybe when you’re forty-five and your mom still pours milk in your Apple Jacks for yo-”

Suddenly, Richie was interrupted when the screen went black. Eddie fiddled with the controller, but it remained dead and quiet, the hum that emanated from those precious tan boxes now silent. 

“Oh shit, is the power out?” Richie asked. 

Eddie stood up and tried to flick on Richie’s lamp. It remained dark. “I think so!”

Richie opened the blinds on his window for the first time in a while to notice that it was snowing, practically sideways and making the world outside opaque. 

“White out.” Eddie said ominously.

“I guess you’re not going home for a bit!” Richie said, turning to give Eddie a high five. 

A few minutes later, the pair of them were seated at Richie’s kitchen table with Wentworth’s camping lantern between them, testing the phone to see if the lines were still working. 

Eddie finished dialing and held the phone to his ear, tense.

Richie watched with unabashed amusement.

Sure enough, he could almost hear Sonia Kaspbrak’s exact words as she picked up the phone–Eddie, I swear to God one of these days you’ll send me to an early grave!

“I’m okay, Mommy.” Eddie said. “I’m at Richie’s house. Yes, Richie Tozier. His folks have offered to let me stay the night while it snows.”

Richie tapped his fingers together gleefully.

“No–you–you don’t want me to bike home in this, mommy. It’s snowing really hard. I wouldn’t be able to see. It’s already dark out. The roads are closed.” 

Eddie smiled at Richie as his mother began to go off on him about something or other, being more careful probably. He gave Richie a thumbs up. 

“Yess!” Richie pumped a fist in the air.

“Yes, his dad will bring me home tomorrow. It’s okay. I’ll do my homework then. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, okay?”

Richie got up and began to dance in celebration.

“Okay. I will. I will. Yes, I promise. I will. Okay, I’m hanging up now. Love you, Mommy.” 

Eddie hung up the phone and grinned. 

“Wooo!” Richie cheered. “Birthday sleepover! Birthday sleepover!” 

“I hope you like meatloaf.” Maggie Tozier said, leaning against the fridge. “That’s hoping the power comes back. If not, peanut butter and jelly it is.” 

“I don’t mind,” Eddie said. 

“Mom, can you make us brownies?” Richie asked. “If the power comes back?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Richie’s mom ruffled his hair and smiled. “You’re going to give Eddie your extra toothbrush, okay?”

“Whatever,” Richie grinned. 

“This is so epic,” Eddie said. “She would never let me stay over if I asked before.”

“She’s gonna be soooo mad at you tomorrow,” Richie said.

“She can’t be too mad, it’s my birthday!” Eddie said.

“Oh!” Richie grabbed his jacket from the banister of the stairs and pulled his present out of one of the pockets. He bopped Eddie on the head with it and waggled his eyebrows. “Reminds me!” 

“Move your shoes on your way up!” Maggie called. 

They careened back into Richie’s room, and Eddie began to open the paper bag. He tipped its contents out into his hand and raised his eyebrows. It was a cassette tape, and Richie had spent hours on it. 

Richie grinned. 

“You dork, is this gonna be all Paula Abdul and Cher?” Eddie was smiling.

“Better.” Richie pointed to where the songs were written out on the side. 

Eddie scanned the list. “Elvis? Dire Straits? Queen? Who the fuck do you think I am?”

“I thought you liked Queen.” Richie said. “Who doesn’t like Queen?” 

“Queen is fine,” Eddie said. “You know The Cure is my favorite, though.”

Richie snickered. “There’s Michael Jackson, too.” 

“What are you up to, Trashmouth?” Eddie crossed his arms. 

“Here, we’ll play it.” Richie unburied his cassette player and placed it on the floor between them. “It’s a perfectly normal mixtape.”

“I fucking doubt that,” Eddie said, placing the cassette inside.

Richie pressed play and waited, grinning. 

Slowly, they listened as the opening chords of Michael Jackson’s Beat It began to play. 

“This doesn’t sound right.” Eddie narrowed his eyes. “What the–”

Richie began to chuckle as the vocals kicked in. 

“Oh my god it’s Weird Al. Richie. That’s not funny. Richie stop-”

“It’s really funny,” Richie shoved Eddie on the arm. Eddie began to giggle despite himself. 

“It’s not funny oh my god–how long did you spend making this, this has got to have taken–did you use the radio?”

“I have all his cassettes!” Richie pointed to a pile of tapes loosely arranged in one corner, delighted tears in his eyes. “Your fucking face-”

Eddie was fully laughing now, Weird Al reaching the chorus of the song in the background. “You absolute dumbass!”

“It’s pretty funny, admit it!” Richie cackled. “It’s pretty damn chuckalicious!” 

“Okay, it’s funny,” Eddie admitted, “Even if you wasted your time.”

Richie stopped rolling around on the floor. “Here, wait.” 

He dug through the pile of disorganized cassettes until he found the one he was looking for. 

“There. Are you happy now? All your boring music, just how you like it. Weird Al doesn’t even do covers of those.” 

Eddie inspected the second mixtape with surprise. Richie already knew what songs were listed out on the side; there was U2, R.E.M., and of course, The Cure. 

“I can’t believe you’re calling The Police boring.” Eddie said, already beginning the process of switching out the cassettes. “What, is your hearing as bad as your eyesight?”

“Ohh, Eds gets off a good one!” Richie snorted. “Proud of yourself for that?”

“Shut up, asshat.” Eddie had a smile on his face. Richie knew that was the closest he was getting to a thank-you.

The snow raged on as Eddie and the Toziers ate sandwiches (the power never did come back), played an incredibly boring game of poker throughout which Richie did an incredibly poor New York/Italian accent, and Maggie fed Eddie half a box of fudge-striped cookies. Eddie elbowed Richie to clear his plate and Richie proceeded to make puppy-dog eyes at his father until Wentworth remembered his promise and handed him a sad looking Hershey’s bar. Richie complained that he deserved a kit kat at least, to which Wentworth replied that he was welcome to shovel out the driveway. 

“Your toothpaste tastes like shit,” Eddie said, following Richie back into his room. He had changed into one of Richie’s sleep t-shirts–his King Kong t-shirt, which Richie only wore to sleep now because he had switched to team Godzilla. 

“What’s yours taste like, key lime pie?” Richie said. “It’s mint, what do you want from me?”

“Mine’s bubblegum, which is okay,” Eddie said. “But yours makes my eyes hurt.”

“Bubblegum? Do you need a nice glass of warm milk, too? Should I read you fuckin’ Green Eggs & Ham?” Richie climbed into his bed, shining his flashlight into Eddie’s face. Eddie threw up a hand to shield his eyes. 

“Bubblegum is a way better flavor than mint, it’s not juvenile just because it tastes better, you asshole, being mature doesn’t mean being a fucking masochist about your dental hygiene.” Eddie stood with his hands on his hips. “And judging people for their preferred flavor of toothpaste is actually way more immature than just minding your own business, okay? You keep old ass gumballs in your desk drawer, I don’t know why you think you have…”

At this point Eddie trailed off because Richie was laughing far too hard to be paying attention.

“What, are you getting in?” Richie gestured to the bed grandly. “Or do you want to sleep on the floor like a dog?”

“Do you have a sleeping bag or something?” Eddie asked.

“I mean, yeah. I think Kim had one in her closet somewhere.” Richie said, referring to his sister who was currently in college proving that she had received all the functioning genes. “What, afraid you’ll piss the sheets?”

“More like I don’t want to sleep next to your farts all night,” Eddie said. “Whatever, I’ll brave it.” 

Richie wiggled his eyebrows, though Eddie didn’t see because he was pulling Richie’s pillows out from between the mattress and the headboard. 

“How do you even jam these in here so far?” He asked. 

Richie scooched up against his window to give Eddie room, suddenly aware that he was suppressing the urge to scoop Eddie against his chest and roll across the bed with him. “Have a good birthday, Eds?”

“For the last fucking time, Tozier.”

“Have a good birthday, Edward?”

“Oh my god. It was fine. No thanks to you.”

Richie giggled and snuggled deeper into his quilt. Their voices were hushed now, something that Richie always savored. “Two years until you can drive. And then we can get the fuck out of this place.” 

“We? I’m not taking your sorry ass with me,” Eddie grinned. He slid his legs under the comforter and played with the flashlight in his hands, pointing it back and forth across the ceiling. Then he dropped it, looking at Richie. 

They were really much closer than Richie had initially registered. 

Suddenly, Eddie reached over and took the glasses off Richie’s face, plopping them onto the nightstand. “Forgot those.” 

Richie’s heart was beating faster. That was weird. 

Flustered, he rolled over and looked at the ceiling–or, gazed in the direction of the ceiling, which he couldn’t really see. “I can’t wait to get out of this town, man.” 

“Yeah,” Eddie said, clicking off the flashlight. Richie heard the clunk as it landed on the floor. “You still get nightmares?” 

Richie was quiet for a moment. 

“Nah, nah.” He lied. “You?”

He felt Eddie’s head shift on the pillow next to him. “No, ‘course not.”

NOVEMBER 5, 1989 : DERRY HIGH

“Jason could still come back from this,” Eddie said. He had to speak louder to be heard over the hubbub of the hallway. “You don’t know. Comics do shit like that all the time.”

“He got exploded and dunked in a Lazarus pit, he’s not coming back from that. He’s more of a goner than your love life.” Richie said, grabbing onto Eddie’s backpack to avoid losing him in the crush of students.

Eddie spun, dislodging Richie’s hand. “Have you ever heard of a redemption arc, dumbass?” 

Richie shoved Eddie through the door of their English classroom. “Come on, time to talk about Romeo and Juliet and their dumbass plans to bone.”

“If Mrs. Gregson hears you say that, she’s not going to let you read for Mercutio again,” Eddie said. 

Richie blew a raspberry as they parted for their assigned seats which were, as Stan predicted, across the room from one another, though not for the reasons he’d assumed. Stan was already seated at his desk, which was next to Richie’s on account of T and U being next to each other in the alphabet.  

“Stan the Man, what’s going down?” Richie said. He hadn’t talked to Stan since Eddie’s birthday.

Stan had a notebook open and was carefully writing something in pencil next to a sketch of a bird sitting on a branch. 

“Whoa, you draw that?” Richie said, hunching over Stan’s shoulder, but careful not to touch him.

“No, it was Bill. He’s pretty good at it.” Stan said. He stopped writing and tapped his pencil on the side of his desk, producing a neat click, click sound. 

“‘Tufted titmouse.’” Richie read. “Color me intrigued!”

Stan snorted. “Ha. It’s not a mouse, obviously.”

“But does it have tufted tits?” Richie grinned.

“No!” Stan said, but he was smiling. 

“What are you idiots doing over here?” Eddie said, coming over to sit on Richie’s desk lest he be left out. “Whoa, cool drawing.” 

“That’s what I said,” Richie said. “It was Bill’s, apparently.” 

“He’s doing the pictures and I’m doing the words,” Stan said. “It’s a sort of synthesized journal of information from all of my different birding guides.” 

“That’s the nerdiest thing I’ve ever heard,” Richie said. “Is that why your backpack’s always so heavy? You carrying around encyclopedias in there?”

“I’ve got a couple reference books with me,” Stan said.

“Oh my god, imagine if Mrs. Gregson sees you doing that?” Eddie said. “They’d probably give you some sort of prize for being a naturalist prodigy or something.”

“You think?” Stan raised his eyebrows. 

“They’ll do more than let you skip a couple grades,” Richie said, “Send ya straight to the nursing home!” 

Stan giggled. “Young people can care about wildlife, you know. Just because you hate all of God’s wonderful creatures doesn’t mean the rest of us do.”

“You’re right. If I was Noah I would’ve drowned those bastards.” Richie laughed, playing along. 

“More room for your arcade!” Eddie chimed in.

“Exactly!” Richie said. “Give me computers and a wife, that’s all I need.” 

“He had his son, too.” Stan pointed out. “I think more than one.”

“Oh yeah!” Eddie said.

“I’d bring you guys along,” Richie said. “You can watch the doves, cuz we need those, and Eddie can warn me if there’s an urgent risk of scurvy.”

“And we can eat him if we run out of food,” Stan said. 

Eddie squeaked. “Do not!”

“Oh, he’ll be perfect for getting rid of scurvy.” Richie said. “It’s a Vitamin D deficiency, right? Eddie’s full of sunshine.” 

Eddie tried to look offended but was giggling too hard to pull it off. 

“Well, he usually is. Hold on.” Richie pinched Eddie’s cheek, causing him to scowl and slap his hand away. “There we gooo!”

“I think Richie’s calling you a piece of citrus!” Stan said. “I think he’s calling you a lemon!” 

“Scurvy’s about vitamin C, not vitamin D!” Eddie laughed. “Maybe get that right before you resort to cannibalism, you freaks!” 

They laughed until one of their classmates shot them a dirty look.

“You better scoot your booty before Mrs. Gregson shows up,” Richie said. 

“Oh my god, there’s something wrong with you, Trashmouth.” Eddie said. 

“Sorry about leaving your party early on Saturday,” Stan said, tapping his pencil again. “I wanted to say that before you head back to your seat.”

Eddie flushed. “Yeah, sorry I was weird about it. I hope you feel better.”

“Aw, he’s fine.” Richie said. “Just had a little case of the crazies. We’ve all been there.”

“I didn’t mean to yell at you,” Stan said. “I was kind of out of it.”

“I get it,” Eddie shrugged. “Talk to you later.”

Richie drummed his feet on the floor as Eddie walked back to his desk. 

“He’s not still mad, is he?” Stan asked.

Richie glanced over at Stan, who was watching Eddie anxiously. “Nah, he’s fine. Now, guess who didn’t do the reading!” 

Stan rolled his eyes.

APRIL 24, 1990 : EDDIE’S HOUSE 

Eddie was sorting his meds at the kitchen counter. 

He had dropped them earlier– couldn’t remember why exactly, only that he had–and now was tasked with the Herculean feat of returning all of the small white capsules to their proper places. 

Yes, this was the one for his acne–you could tell because the edges were slightly more rounded without being a perfect circle–and this one was a multivitamin. What was this red one for, again? 

Eddie held it up to the fluorescent kitchen bulb. Did he take a red pill? 

Maybe it was something his mom took that had mixed into his stuff. He set it aside carefully, and-

Ding!

The doorbell. Eddie glanced down the hall. 

Ding! Ding! Ding!

That was probably Richie. Only Richie was so impatient that he rang the doorbell like that.

He ran over to get it before his mom was bothered, swinging open the door with a hand on his hip. 

“Richie! My mom’s going to go berserk if you keep doing that!” Eddie said. 

“Aw, sorry Eds,” Richie grinned. He was almost a head taller than Eddie now, his hair still a mess of curls and his glasses still potent enough to burn down a building if you needed them to, but he had grown into his features well over the past year or so. “Just couldn’t wait any longer to see your adorable face.”

Eddie turned scarlet. “Get inside, asshole.”

Richie stepped in and followed Eddie to his room, which was fairly bare of personal effects on account of Sonia Kaspbrak’s snooping habits. Eddie’s dresser was bare except for a stack of school papers, a model cadillac he had put together himself, and a picture of his dad. 

“What’s the deal?” Eddie asked, crossing his arms. “Arcade full of out-of-order signs again?”

“You betcha,” Richie shut the door to Eddie’s room with a soft click. “I’m bored as hell.”

“I don’t know what you think we’re going to do,” Eddie said, though as Richie came and sat next to him on Eddie’s bed he was embarrassed to realize he had a couple ideas. 

“I’m not worried,” Richie smiled easily, pinching Eddie’s cheek. “Every moment with you’s better than a day at the Big Top.”

Eddie’s mouth was dry. He realized a second too late that he hadn’t reacted appropriately annoyed when Richie had done that, and he felt the urge to reach for his inhaler. There was heat burning in his cheeks as Richie looked at him. 

Why did he always look at him like that? It had a dangerous effect on Eddie. He tended to freeze like a deer in headlights. 

“Hey,” Richie said quietly. “It’s okay.” 

Eddie blinked at him with disbelief, stomach roiling now. “What are you talking about, dumbass?”

Richie reached one hand forward, bringing it up under Eddie’s chin. His fingers pressed lightly into the soft place above his throat, his thumb sliding under Eddie’s lip. He tilted Eddie’s head up, holding it gently in place.

Eddie thought he might just never talk again.  

“I know,” Richie said. “And it’s okay.”

Eddie gulped. 

Richie’s eyes flicked down to Eddie’s lips and Eddie realized with yearning blooming in his stomach that he knew exactly what was coming next and he wanted it, very, very badly. 

Richie kissed him, softly, the curls of his hair brushing Eddie’s temples, his hand moving to hold the back of Eddie’s head. Eddie was melting, could feel every ounce of embarrassment and shame and self-awareness lifting from his soul, leaving him warm and aching and wildly free. 

“Eddie bear?” 

His mom was in the hallway. 

Eddie opened his eyes to see Richie staring at him, a smile on his lips. Without his glasses, his eyes were so big and soulful–and the lashes on them…

“Eddie, who was at the door?”

“Just Richie, Mom.” Eddie finally choked out. He could feel something itching on his hand. 

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” He glanced at his hand, which was clasped on Richie’s waist. Was there a bug on there? Now that he thought about it, his other hand was itching too. 

“You know that clown is out and about, right? Pretending to be people?”

Eddie furrowed his brow. What? 

“Are you in your room, Eddie?” His mom sounded closer to the door now. 

Richie ignored Eddie’s mom, stroking the side of Eddie’s face and leaving him speechless. Now, though, Eddie could feel the shame beginning to come back, flushing his cheeks and beginning to burn his eyes with tears. His mom was going to come in, was going to see them, was going to know. 

Richie leaned in, to whisper in Eddie’s ear. “Want me to blow you, Eddie?”

No. No, no no. 

The itching on Eddie’s hands intensified and he lurched back, scrambling to get away from the thing that was definitely not Richie. Dread had become horror in an instant. 

“Eddie? What are you doing in there?” 

He looked down and saw that his hands were covered in boils. Open sores, pox and pustules, popping open on his fingers and emerging on his arms, as if there were a colony of ants digging their way through his skin. Terror put his thoughts on double-speed, as if he was trying to fast-forward his way through time. He looked aghast at Richie, who wasn’t Richie anymore but was slowly turning into the Leper, that satisfied grin still shining on rotting teeth and desiccated lips.

“No, no, no, no,” Eddie whispered, watching the sores spread up his arms as he looked desperately for an escape. 

There was pounding on his bedroom door now. “Eddie, I’m coming in there.” 

“You know you want me to,” the Leper said, grinning. “Come on, Eds.” 

“Don’t come in!” Eddie shrieked. 

“Eddie-” The door burst open. 

His mother saw him. 

Eddie could feel the rash spreading up his neck and to his face as she looked at him, and he knew that she knew what he was. 

Eddie woke up with sweat all over his body, sitting up in bed and nearly crying out. 

Still shaking with terror, he grabbed his inhaler off his bedside table and began to use it. His room was dark and quiet, and Pennywise was gone. 

For the time being, anyway. 

Just a nightmare, just another nightmare, Eddie repeated to himself, hugging his blankets to his chest and wheezing. You’re good. You’re fine. You’re safe. 

As the inhaler mist filled his lungs, he felt his breathing slowly return to normal as his heart rate slowed. He would be fine, he just had to wait it out. Wait it out, just like he did with every nightmare. 

That being said. 

Eddie didn’t know much about psychology, but he was pretty sure some nightmares could tell you something about a person–and he didn’t like what his were saying.

Chapter Text

You don’t like crazy music,

You don’t like rockin’ bands,

You just wanna go to a movie show

And sit there holdin’ hands!

You’re so square-

Baby, I don’t care.

JUNE 3, 1990 : RICHIE’S HOUSE

When summer returned, so did Richie’s insomnia. It’d been a real problem the prior year, what with all the clown business, but it had died with the warm weather and the coming of school, which tired him out and kept him from sleeping in.

However, on the second night of June, after he and the Losers played a thrilling and delightful game of Jenga to celebrate Ben’s birthday, Richie found himself lying awake at 2 AM after a nightmare about that Paul Bunyan statue, a bad one that left him sweaty from head to toe. He peeled himself out of his sheets, one hand fumbling for his glasses, and switched on a light. 

Since he was unprepared, he grabbed a book.

The next day, he set up his ladder. 

The routine was simple. Just before dinner, he would sneak out back and leave the garage ladder leaning up against the house under his bedroom window. Then he would go to bed as normal, and if he couldn’t sleep–which was often, but not always the case–he would open his window and climb out. If he was careful, no one asked questions.

Once, the previous summer, his mother had caught him moving the ladder back to the garage the following morning and asked him what he was doing. He’d said that he’d been using it to get a paper airplane out of a tree, which struck him as a terrible lie, but she had believed it. Eventually he realized that if he put the ladder in the side yard, no one missed it and he didn’t have to move it as far.

Usually, when he snuck out, he didn’t go more than a block away. His main objective was to get out of his room, which always felt like it was keeping secrets from him. He would bring his radio and sometimes a book or comic, though he didn’t always. Sometimes it was enough to just bike around Derry until he was so tired he felt drunk, and then he’d clamber back into his window and collapse on his bed. 

That changed in early June of 1990, however. 

Don’t touch the other boys, Richie, or they’ll know your secret.

He was in a funhouse mirror-maze. That was what he remembered. Eddie was in the mirror maze, and Richie thought maybe Bill and Stan were too, but they didn’t make it as far as Eddie did. He knew what happened to them because he saw their blood on the mirrors, their mangled bodies on the floor. 

Eddie was faster, Richie guessed. Or maybe Eddie was last because Pennywise liked to play with him, because…

His face. Contorted with terror. Reflected seven ways, creating a panopticon of fright around Richie’s head. 

But that wasn’t the image that stuck in his brain. 

It was bad when Richie caught up to Eddie, that, yes, that was bad. Not as bad as the mirrors. Not as bad as looking down at his hands–not hands, claws. Not as bad as the fur or the yellow eyes or the taste of blood. 

Richie could listen to the clown’s heinous laughter if he had to. He could listen to the taunts, the petty insults, the mockery that made him sound like he was hiding treats from a chihuahua. 

He didn’t think he could look at him. 

Especially not in those dream-mirrors. Especially not that smile, those teeth. Especially not with Richie’s jacket bursting to bloody shreds, tearing over monstrous shoulders.

Don’t touch the other boys, Richie, or they’ll know your secret.

But it was just a dream. Pennywise was gone, and Eddie was alive, sleeping soundly a few blocks away. Richie wanted to go bother him, but he instinctively refused to. He wasn’t sure he should talk to Eddie, after that dream. Not with all the disturbing ideas still floating around in his brain. He wouldn’t be able to explain them, and that would probably only make conversation more painful. He didn’t want to worry Eddie, either way. 

Then his mind landed on a new idea. He hadn’t talked to Mike in a while.

Mike awoke to the sound of all of his dogs suddenly bursting into howls and shrill barks of alarm downstairs. 

God almighty, he thought as his eyes slowly opened. It’s always either a fox or a raccoon or something only they can see. 

He was placing his bet on imaginary animals. 

Let his Granddad deal with it, either way. 

There was a sudden clunk from his window. The hounds–Larry, Mo, and Curly–reprised their outrage. 

Mike creased his brow. He slid his feet out of bed, smoothing down the rumpled t-shirt he slept in, which had folded up around his chest in his sheets. 

Another clunk. 

He groped for his lamp and pulled the little chain, sending impossibly bright yellow light flooding his room. He squinted out the window, wondering if there was perhaps a really stupid bird. 

A slow smile broke out across his face. 

Richie Tozier. 

He was scurrying out from behind a scraggly rhododendron bush to one side of the Hanlon farmhouse, something in his hands, his glasses glinting when they turned up towards Mike’s room. Mike thought he saw Richie smile and adjust his glasses. 

Richie waved. 

Mike pressed open his window with the heels of his palms, leaning out over the collection of rocks and seashells that he kept on the sill. 

“What are you doing down there?” Mike whisper-shouted. 

Richie dropped the pebble he was holding and stuffed his hands in his jean pockets. “Wanna sneak out?” 

Mike glanced back at his bed, which was quite comfortable. He flexed his muscles, which were quite tired. He looked down at Richie. 

“Let me put on some clothes, I’ll be down.” He said. 

Five minutes later, Mike snuck out the back door of the farmhouse in his Keds and Levis, closing it painfully slowly to prevent its habitual creak. 

“My grandma is really used to me getting up early because of chores,” He said. “What’s up?” 

Richie grinned. “Did I interrupt any good dreams?”

“Nah, not really.” Mike shrugged. “Don’t remember them now. You?”

“I guess you could say I was having a bout of the ol’ shell-shock,” Richie said. “Got spooked. Came over to bug you. Thought I saw a jack-o-lantern, nearly shit myself.”

Mike giggled. Richie led him back towards the street and pointed to his bike.

“Wanna go lay in a field somewhere and try to find constellations?” Mike said. “Or, we could catch fireflies!” 

“Dude, you’re so wholesome.” Richie laughed. “Should we hold hands and spin around while we’re at it?”

Mike was appalled. “I don’t know what people normally do out here. That’s what I do, when I can’t sleep.”

Richie took this in. “Since last summer, you mean?”

Mike nodded. “Yeah, last summer didn’t help. It wasn’t great before that, though. This here mind’s got a lot that it doesn’t want to remember.”

An opaque world of smoke. Crisping hands. Tears squeezing from his eyes.

Richie clapped him on the back and put a geezerly cowboy accent in his voice. “‘Listen ‘ere, son. This ol’ world is tougher than shit of a coyote that done only been eatin’ beef jerky all its life. But you and me, we’re tougher even ‘n that, and don’t you forget it.’”

“You sound like my granddad.” Mike shook his head. “Let me get my bike. Want to head out to the Barrens?” 

“Sure. Let’s find us a field!” 

The two of them did find a field, which, sure enough, was speckled with flickering lightning bugs. The stars were out as well, but as close to the road as they were, Mike could only make out the faint purple shadow of the milky way. It was beautiful enough to let Mike forget he was in Derry. 

Mike flopped down in a patch of grass, instantly soaking himself in refreshing dew. “I used to come out here all the time when I couldn’t sleep. Got bored of it eventually–lately I’ve just been reading.” 

“Anything good?” Richie asked, joining him. 

Mike thought it felt good to be flat on his back, the hard ground solid and sturdy beneath him. He gazed up at the sky and felt that old sensation of falling that you can sometimes get when you look into the sky or deep water–the terrifying, yet awestruck sensation of looking into the void. 

“Did you ever read Lord of the Rings?” Mike asked.

“Nah, I leave that nerd shit to you and Bill.” Richie said. “The Hobbit was okay. I lost interest halfway through the first chapter of that other series, though.” 

“They can be pretty dull,” Mike agreed. “But they’re good, too.” 

Richie nodded, tipping his chin to look over at Mike.

“Reminds me of us, sometimes. The Losers.” Mike said. “Because, you know, there’s this fellowship of people from all over Middle Earth who join up to get rid of this evil ring that has the power to destroy the world, and-”

Richie yawned dramatically.

“I mean, Sauron’s no Pennywise, but.” Mike paused. “There’s a part where Frodo–Frodo is Bilbo’s nephew–talks about how it’s not fair that he has to be the one to do it. To save the world. And Gandalf–you remember Gandalf?”

Richie closed his eyes. “You betcha.”

“He tells him, like. Tough shit. We all have to carry our burdens. You know?” 

“That’s so profound.” Richie said. “Oh my gosh, Mike, I’m speechless.”

Mike paused. “I’m not doing it justice. But it’s a good moment. And there’s this other hobbit, Samwise Gamgee. I think you’d like him.” 

Richie nodded slowly. “Go on,”

“He’s really loyal…” Mike said, trying to find the right words. “Now that I think about it, he’s a lot more like me. I don’t know, I just like to think that we have something in common with them. Because we’re all heroes.”

Richie was quiet. 

“Sorry, you probably don’t want to hear about this.” Mike was a little embarrassed now.

“No, it’s cute,” Richie yawned again, this time a genuine one. “I’m just tired. Hey, tell ya what. You do the talking tonight, okay? I’m all talked out.”

“Never thought I’d hear you say that, Trashmouth!” Mike said.

“It’s your lucky day,” Richie waved one hand in the air with a flourish before it thumped heavily back to the ground. 

Mike did do the talking for the rest of the night, though it mostly consisted of summarizing the plot to the Lord of the Rings in great detail while Richie dozed in and out of consciousness. Mike didn’t mind. He was just happy that, out of all the Losers, Richie had picked him. 

He tried not to take it personally when the other Losers didn’t invite him to hang out with them. He understood that it was easy to forget about him, because he didn’t go to their school and he lived on the edge of town. Besides, he’d joined the group last, and even if all of the Losers were outcasts, he couldn’t ignore the feeling that he was one even more so. He had been taught, from when he was a young boy, not to expect to be included. He had been taught that the vast majority of the world didn’t want him in it, but that was okay, because sometimes you could find a part of it that did, or that you could claim for yourself. 

Still, it was always a pleasant surprise when someone proved an exception to the rule. 

JULY 17, 1989 : THE ABANDONED QUARRY

The water of the quarry was cloudy, cold, and deep. Eddie sank into it with a crash, the muggy heat of the afternoon suddenly a distant memory. He flailed for a moment, arms and legs kicking him towards the surface, and when he emerged into the brilliant daylight air he gasped, delighted. 

“Awesome!” Stan was treading water not far away, and he sent Eddie a splash of greeting. 

“Who’s the coward now?” Eddie cackled, splashing back.

“I’m pretty sure it’s Ben!” Stan pointed back up the cliff. 

Richie was hurtling through the air overhead, glasses clutched in one hand, whooping loudly. Ben and Mike were still at the top, Mike giving Ben what seemed like an encouraging slap on the shoulder.^[1]

Richie hit the water a few yards away from Eddie, splashing him and Stan with water that tasted like dead leaves and rain. Eddie sputtered, kicking away as Richie surfaced. 

“Yeeeeowza!” He said. “Nothing like a good cannonball to tweak your beak! How was that?” 

They had asked Richie multiple times what it meant to have one’s beak tweaked, and he had only laughed at them and wiggled his fingers mysteriously. Eddie was pretty sure he made it up. Richie kept saying it anyway. 

“That was the best splash yet! Sent water splashing up three meters!” Stan grinned.

“Meters?” Richie switched to a posh british accent. “Well how are you liking the colonies, Mr. Uris sir? How are things across the pond?”

Stan snorted. “The metric system is rather dandy!” 

Eddie began swimming over to where Bill already waited. 

“You think Ben will make it down?” Eddie grinned. 

“Maybe if we install one of th-those chairs that lowers in old p-people,” Bill said. 

“Hey, one day you’re going to need one of those,” Stan said. 

“Nahhh,” Richie said, joining them. He affected a bro-ish voice. “I’m gonna live forever!”

“I don’t think that necessarily means you won’t need help getting into a pool when you’re eighty five,” Stan said. 

“Exactly!” Eddie said. “Even if you don’t die for some reason, your muscles sure will!” 

“Th-that’s assuming he has-s any,” Bill said, chiming in. “Which he doesn’t!” 

“Man, you guys are really saucing my faucet,” Richie said. 

“What the fuck does that-”

Eddie was interrupted when Mike belly-flopped spectacularly into the water, sending waves and droplets careening into the other Losers’ faces. Eddie went under for a moment and then resurfaced, spitting out water, to the sound of Richie’s howling laughter. Mike was grinning when he made it to the surface, butterfly-kicking his way over to them. 

“That was frocken EPIC!” Richie’s glasses had nearly fallen from his face and he righted them with one hand. “That was like fuckin’ Hiroshima!” 

“Way to disrespect one of the most tragic crimes against humanity,” Stan said. 

“Save the hippie shit for your first acoustic album, Stanley.” Richie said. 

Eddie cringed. “That looked like it hurt.”

“It’s COLD!” Mike said. “Whoo-ee! Can’t believe I’ve never come down here before!”

“It’s pretty nice when you get used to the eels,” Eddie said.

“I’m not buying that,” Mike said, “How would eels even get into this place?”

“No, there really are,” Richie adjusted his glasses again and only succeeded in smearing them with more droplets of water. “There’s an underwater tunnel connecting to the canal,” 

Mike squinted at him. 

“Th-they’re full of bullshit,” Bill said. 

“Oh come onnn!” Richie splashed Bill. “Will you quit fruitin’ my loops already?” 

Bill splashed him back, catching Stan in the crossfire and setting off a magnificent splash-battle. “What the f-fuck is fruitin’ your loops, Trashmouth?”

“Oh I’ll fruit your loops!” Richie shrieked, diving under water and speeding towards Bill’s legs. Stan dodged as Richie attempted to yank Bill underwater by the ankles, Eddie and Mike screeching. Eventually Richie gave up when Bill managed to kick him away, and turned on Eddie, who began to flee clumsily, back-stroking over to the shallows. 

“Ben, are you coming?” Eddie heard Mike turn to shout back for Ben, who still stood at the top of the cliff in his swim trunks. Ben shot him two thumbs up and a nervous smile, hesitated for one second, and then leapt off. 

Stan and Bill were following Eddie now, who was watching with equal parts delight and adrenaline as the blurry underwater shape that was Richie Tozier gained on him. 

“This must be one of those eels,” Stan said, sounding mildly amused, out-pacing Eddie and Richie both with a few strong strokes. “I’m glad optometrists are willing to treat aquatic myopia.” 

Eddie started laughing at this so hard that Richie managed to catch up to him. Eddie felt the other boy’s fingers close around his ankle–his laughing now turning into playful cries for help–and he quickly lost his ability to keep afloat, plunging down into the cyan depths. Bubbles shot up around him as Richie advanced with a mad grin, letting go of Eddie’s ankle and wiggling his fingers spookily. Eddie shoved him so that both surfaced. 

“I’m the Kraken!” Richie cried after he regained his breath. “I’ll french your fry! I’ll fry your french!” 

“You fucking piece of shit!” Eddie said, coughing up water. “I left my inhaler up there!” 

“Oh sh-shit, are you okay?” Bill caught up to them. 

“I’m fine,” Eddie said, though he could feel his chest beginning to tighten, his voice beginning to rise in pitch. He paddled furiously for the shallows where he could stand.

“Oh good,” Richie said. “I was worried you were gonna ask me to do mouth-to-mouth,” 

“As IF,” Eddie wrinkled his nose, “I’d rather eat- eat-” he decided to save his breath for swimming, but no sooner had he made this decision than his inhales became wheezing gasps and his lungs began to constrict painfully. Had he breathed any water in?

“Do you think you can make it, Eddie?” Stan furrowed his brow. 

“I- I-” Eddie could tell his butterfly-stroke was getting sloppy, not that it was working particularly well in the first place since he was keeping his head above water. He thought he should be reaching the shelf any moment now, but his feet kept flailing, and his legs kept kicking, and he-

“Don’t you worry your itty bitty head about it, Eds!” Richie wrapped his arms under Eddie’s armpits and began to flip him over onto his back, keeping his head above water while also propelling both of them forward at a steadier, less frantic pace. “I’ve gotcha!” 

Eddie began to wheeze wretchedly, sounding for all the world like a half-drowned chainsmoker as he tried to suck in air. His legs went limp as he allowed Richie to carry him. Eddie was panicking. Richie was singing “Rock Lobster” by the B52’s. 

He stared into the cloudless sky. Above him, the heavens were the color of azure hydrangea blossoms. Now his back was pressed against Richie’s chest, which was bony and almost as hairless as a naked mole rat. That wasn’t helping him calm down. 

“You’ve got him?” Eddie heard Stan’s voice and caught a glimpse of Bill’s surprised face to one side. 

“Yessir!” Richie said. 

“I’m a better swimmer than you,” Stan said, “Let me take him.”

“We’re fiiiine,” Richie said, “We’re basically there anyway. Here you go, Eds!” 

Suddenly Richie dumped him and Eddie’s feet flailed for a moment before finding purchase on the shelf of rock that formed the shallows. 

“You okay, Eddie?” Bill asked. 

“Asshole,” Eddie wiped his mouth with one hand and glared at Richie. 

“There goes a manta ray!” Richie began to squeak obnoxiously. “In walks a jellyfish!” 

“I fucking hate that song,” Eddie muttered.

“Richie, you’re being so annoying today,” Stan said. Here in this part of the shallows, the water was up to Eddie’s shoulders, but almost half of Stan’s chest was above the surface. 

Richie squawked. “I saved him, didn’t I?”

Stan shook his head in disapproval. In college, he would become a lifeguard for one summer, and he’d be pretty good at it, though he’d leave the position quickly because he hated the texture of sunscreen. 

“I didn’t need rescuing,” Eddie said. “I could’ve made it. Probably worse to have you fucking squeezing my chest the whole way-”

“Oh, stop!” Richie said. “Really, it was nothing! You’re welcome!” 

“You looked like th-the creature from the Black Lagoon,” Bill said, clapping Richie on the back and making him cough. “Like a levia–like a leviathan!” 

“I send sailors to a watery grave,” Richie said. “All the old sea dogs won’t even dare whisper my name.”

Mike was now rejoining them with Ben, who looked sheepish. 

“What’d I miss?” Ben asked. 

“Just Eddie’s tragic death,” Richie said.^[2] “You’re such a drama queen, Spaghetti.”

“First off, not my name. Second, you’re lucky I didn’t die,” Eddie narrowed his eyes. “Imagine explaining that to my mother. You’d be wanted dead or alive.” 

“I bet that’d really tweak her beak,” Richie said, and then they set upon splashing him again. 

JULY 17, 1990 : RICHIE’S HOUSE

Eddie had insisted that Richie shower, because he always smelled horrible.

“That’s just the smell of testosterone,” Richie had laughed over the phone. “You’d know if you had any.” 

Cautious of his mother in the other room, Eddie had said, “Smells more like the bubonic plague to me. Take a shower, Tozier, or I’m not coming over.” 

“We just went swimming, how much wetter do you want me?”

“That was hours ago and that water is literally so unclean. Shampoo, Trashmouth. Have you heard of it?” 

“Don’t get your panties in a twist, Spagheds. I heard you loud and clear.” 

This meant Richie's head left a damp spot on his pillow, sprawled across his bed like he was, and Eddie wrinkled his nose at it. Things like that could cause mold. Not if you did it only once, of course, but if you made a habit of it. 

They'd been lying there for hours. Eddie didn't want to go home. 

“I hope you’re not giving me the cold shoulder,” Richie said. 

“And why would I be doing that?” Eddie asked, rolling onto his back so that he couldn’t see Richie’s smug little face anymore. “Could it be because you could’ve caused me to suffocate in the middle of an abandoned quarry?”

“You wouldn’t have had an attack if you hadn’t gotten so worked up about it,” Richie said. “Do you ever think about that?” 

That’s easy for you to say, Eddie thought. 

There were glow-in-the-dark stars on Richie’s ceiling, which had been there as long as Eddie had known him. They were pale and inactive with the glow of the ceiling light illuminating the room. 

Richie had gone mysteriously quiet. Eddie wondered if that had anything to do with what Eddie had said when Richie picked him up and nearly flung him across the bed twenty minutes ago. The second time he picked Eddie up like it was nothing that day. No, Eddie was probably reading into things again. He was always doing that. Richie was always saying that he was doing that. 

Instead of talking, Richie was fiddling with the strings on his sweatshirt. Eddie didn’t mind the quiet. He preferred to lay on Richie’s bed and stare at his poster for The Smiths, one of the few that Mrs. Tozier actually let him hang up. Sometimes, on nights like these, he’d think about the fact that they were going to grow up one day. He didn’t relish the idea. 

Richie’s ankles were hanging off the edge of the bed, his mosquito-bitten legs tapering into dirty neon socks. God wasn’t coloring inside the lines when he made you, Eddie thought. 

“Eds?” Richie asked suddenly. 

“What,” Eddie rolled his head over to look at him. 

Richie had chewed his lip. It was swollen and red. That’s going to get infected, Eddie thought. The mouth is like, the germiest place in the human body.

“Thought you went catatonic there for a second,” Richie said. “Like Bev. Remember?”

“I miss her,” Eddie said, scooching back further onto the bed and adjusting his shirt so that it didn’t expose his stomach. 

“Yeah.” Richie said. “I called her once, you know.”

“Did you?” Eddie asked. He sat up, swinging his feet over the edge of Richie’s unmade comforter. 

“She was surprised,” Richie said. “I don’t think she knew who I was at first, to be honest.”

“She forgot you?” Eddie asked, genuinely confused. 

“I guess so,” Richie said.

“Don’t know how she managed that,” Eddie said. 

Richie’s voice was nonchalant, though the pause before he spoke caused Eddie to wonder if that was genuine. 

“It’s not that serious,” He said. “She moved away. She’s probably left Derry in the dust, made a new crew of friends who don’t have to hide from the football players. I wouldn’t want to remember here either.”

Eddie pressed the heels of his palms into the bed and pushed off, pacing. 

“Do you want to go home?” Richie asked, still languid and stretched out. 

“No,” Eddie said.

“You’re real quiet,”

“I’m tired.” 

“Oh.” Richie’s hair was brushing into his eyes. “Me too.”

Eddie needed to stop noticing things like that. It was fine, in small doses, but to make a habit of it… 

Eddie reached the light switch. He flicked it off, plunging them into darkness, and returned to the bed, flopping on it next to Richie.

“Usually, I brush my teeth before I go to sleep,” Richie said, a little confused. 

“Nah, I just didn’t want to look at your dumb face anymore.” Eddie said. Then, when Richie didn’t laugh, he added, “I wanted to look at the stars.”

Richie shifted. “I forget they’re there sometimes. Can’t see them without my glasses on.”

The tiny five-pointed stickers glowed pale green now, more like glow-worms in a cave than the cosmos. That’s what passes for stars here in Derry, Eddie thought. We’re all just stuck underground.

One day he’d have to leave. It’d be a good thing, if reason was to be believed—it’d be a cause for celebration, in fact. He’d move out and his mother wouldn’t stop sobbing for days. He’d go to college and call her twice a week and he’d lose touch with the Losers and he’d never hear Mike humming, or watch Bill drawing, or make Stan roll his eyes. Ever again. Shit.

He’d have to find himself a place in the adult world. He wasn’t sure he could. 

Richie poked him in the arm. “You asleep, Eds?”

Eddie turned to him, dragged himself closer across the bedspread so he could barely make out the silhouette of his curls, the rim of his glasses, in the light from Richie’s alarm clock. He imagined he could see the dark crescent of Richie’s eyelashes against his pale skin. 

“If you left,” He said. “Would you make new friends and forget about us?”

Richie’s voice lost its sleepiness. “You know I could never forget about you, Spagheds.”

Eddie felt raw, dangerously so. Like he might lose control of himself at any moment. He swallowed. “Good.”

Richie’s fingertips brushed a strand of hair off Eddie’s temples, and Eddie’s breath caught. He was frozen.

Richie seemed to notice and pulled his hand back quickly. He stuck his fingers in his mouth, chewing on his nails again. Disgusting habit.

“I wouldn’t forget you either,” Eddie whispered, and his voice cracked as he spoke. He blushed furiously. 

“C’mere,” Richie murmured, and pulled Eddie into a hug. Eddie closed his eyes, grateful for it, letting tears he hadn’t realized were falling dry on his cheeks. He tucked his nose into the nape of Richie’s neck, the fine soft hairs smelling like artificial watermelon shampoo. 

Richie let him go too soon, and then he turned the lights back on and resumed his jokes and his stupidity, but it was too late. Eddie wouldn’t forget the feeling of his heartbeat, fast and jazzy, pressed against his chest. He wouldn’t forget that for a long time.

JULY 18, 1990 : THE CLUBHOUSE

Sweetheart, can you turn that music off? I’m getting a headache.

The Loser’s clubhouse was empty when Richie made it there, dumping his bike on the side of the road and trekking into the Barrens with his boombox swinging in one hand. He closed the trapdoor–despite Eddie’s frequent warnings that to do so while alone massively increased his odds of death in the event of an accident or sudden collapse–and slung himself into the hammock, turning up the volume on Buddy Holly and tuning out his brain. 

Buddy Holly cheered Richie up, and he’d had a soft spot for him since he was a kid. Not that he’d ever admit it to anyone, of course. Man, he wished he looked that cute in his glasses. 

Groaning, he lay back in the hammock and stared at the ceiling. There was a reason he had been blasting his music–he’d had a shitty day. His head was all in a funk, his thoughts a tangled web connecting whispers from girls to leers from boys and updates he heard on the news. He wanted desperately to avoid untangling them, the same way he wanted desperately to avoid cleaning his room. 

I tell my blues they mustn’t show, but soon these tears are bound to flow, ‘cause it’s raining, raining in my heart… 

Of course, it didn’t help that the night before, Eddie had been stretched out on Richie’s bed trying to argue that the fucking Spiderman comics were better than the Batman ones, even when Richie proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Poison Ivy would take out Peter Parker in a goddamn heartbeat. 

Caught up in the moment, Richie had picked Eddie up off the bed and pretended to smash him down again, eliciting Eddie to shriek, “Put me down, you dipshit flamer!” 

And it wasn’t that Eddie was the first person to call Richie that–he wasn’t. Nor was it a particularly shitty insult for Eddie to lob his way. Of course, that was before Eddie had turned off the lights and lay so close to him, asking him quiet timid questions that electrified every breath from both of their lips, before Richie had lost all reason and succumbed to the urge to stroke his hair, before Eddie had frozen like a deer in headlights, and–the less that was said about that moment, the better, Richie concluded. And the whole debacle was only hours after the quarry, when Richie had carried Eddie under one arm like the world’s most ridiculous lifeguard and managed to get a boner despite the cold. Then he’d had to make excuses to stay in the water longer to wait for it to go away while Mike complained about the Derry High marching band director (who wasn’t letting him join because he was behind the other incoming freshmen, who had been in junior high lessons) and Bill tried to do a handstand. 

Music. Music. I don’t know why my heart flips, I only know it does… I wonder why I love you, baby, I guess it’s just because! 

If Richie wasn’t careful, he could end up like Betty Ripsom or Eddie Corcoran without the help of any clown. 

All the other Losers with their lingering gazes at Bev, their awed (and often lewd) observations of Becky and Sarah and Lily, their hushed confessions in the dark sanctuary of sleepovers. Once the pieces began to fall, he couldn’t keep them from clicking into place.

Well you go your way and I’ll go mine, now and forever ‘till the end of time… 

Richie’s mom liked Buddy Holly. Would play him in the living room while she vacuumed or cooked, would tousle Richie’s hair when he pretended to hate it. His dad liked him too. His dad, who once saw the video for Karma Chameleon on MTV over Richie’s shoulder and gagged. Nevermind David Bowie. 

Richie was different, and they all fucking knew it, so what was the point of hiding it from himself? 

…And the longest day I live, it’s only you that I’ll be thinking of. You know, I’m thinking of… well, it’s you I’m thinkin’ of…

Fuck. Fuck. Richie didn’t want to admit it to himself. He didn’t want Bowers and the other kids and even that fucking clown to be right about him, he didn’t want to lie to his parents and friends, he didn’t want to get murdered or infected or laughed at, he didn’t want to be a pathetic motherfucking f-

The trapdoor thudded open and Richie realized he was crying. ^[3]  

“Who goes there?” He squeaked. “Reveal yourself and surrender, or face the consequences!” 

“Call off the cavalry, Richie.” It was Stan. “Are you going to throw a rock at me again?” 

Richie relaxed only slightly, furiously turning away to hide his red and tear-stained face as Stan climbed down the ladder, his sneakers descending with caution. 

“Funny, I came here for some peace and quiet.” Stan said when he hit the floor, gently enough that he didn’t kick up dust. With a swipe of his hand, he switched off Richie’s music so he didn’t have to talk over it. “But I doubt I’ll get that with you around.”

“What the fuck, man?” Richie protested, but he didn’t try to hit unpause. “I came here to get away from peace and quiet. It’s so lame at my place.”

He sniffled a little, and Stan noticed. 

“Are you okay?” Stan asked, no judgment in his tone. His eyebrows were knit together with earnest concern. 

“I’m freaking devastated.” Richie muttered. “I just learned that you’re going to die without ever truly appreciating the wonders of Rock n’ Roll.”

“Shut up. Are you hurt?” 

Richie adjusted his glasses and shook his head no. 

Stan squinted at him, taking in Richie’s puffy face and wet cheeks, which, while not the picture of winsome masculine charm, were not bruised or scratched in any way. “Did someone say something to you?”

“You sound like my mom, Stan.” Richie said, picking at a hangnail on his thumb. 

Stan only raised his eyebrows, hands on his hips. 

Richie turned, swinging his legs over the side of the hammock. Stan sat in it beside him and Richie flinched. 

Stan tilted his head, tense with silent confusion, but didn’t comment on it. “Why are you crying?” 

“Got my prescription fixed and looked in the mirror,” Richie let his feet sway, his fingers gripping the fabric. He felt a new wave of tears coming on, this time fueled by hot, fresh embarrassment. His face was sticky and gross and probably looked more bloated than the corpse of a dolphin that swallowed a pufferfish whole. He thought he’d like to climb into Stan’s lap and curl up there, but he couldn’t do that, no, honestly, that was what was wrong with him in the first place, and either way, Stan hated being touched and he definitely hated gross things, ugly things. So maybe what Richie wanted to do was bolt into the forest and let the wind dry his tears. 

“Whatever it is, I won’t tell anybody.” Stan said, a touch impatient. “Come on, dumbass. I’ve known you forever.”

Richie opened his mouth. Usually this was all he needed to do for speech to occur, but this time his instincts failed him. He tasted salt and knew he probably looked very pathetic. A gnat hit his cheek and he slapped it, feeling it die on the side of his face like a new pimple. 

“Stan.” He swallowed, hiccuping slightly, and buried his face in his hands. “ARGHHHH!” 

Stan watched, a slightly puzzled expression on his face. “Did you get rejected by a girl?”

Richie’s eyes squeezed shut and he shook his head. “I–I… I don’t think…” 

Stan waited patiently. 

“I mean like, I’ve never… I’ve never had a crush. On a girl.” Richie squawked. “I don’t know, Stanley, I don’t think I’m like all you guys, and you all probably guessed this by now and it sucks but I think I might be–” his voice became very tight and high and shameful. 

Stan’s face was pale, but he recognized his chance to save Richie. “I get it, you don’t- you don’t have to say it, if you don’t want to.” 

Richie choked out a sob. “It’s not obvious, is it?”

Stan was flummoxed. “Uhh, well–wait, you mean Eddie?”

Richie’s head shot up, eyes somehow wider than his glasses. “Don’t you dare fucking say anything to him or I’ll skin you alive, I’ll kill you for real.” 

“Oh, uh-” Stan cringed. “No, no, of course not. Calm down, Richie, it’s okay. I just thought that that’s where you were going with that.” 

“I fucking mean it, Uris, I’ll throw your body in the sewers,” Richie said in reply. Then he caught his breath, began to hold it. He was terrified that whatever came out of his mouth next would doom him. He needed Stan to understand, because Stan should know, because Stan would see. He needed Stan to leave. He needed to make a joke and play it off like a prank. He needed Stan to stop looking at him like that–he looked like a spooked rabbit. 

“Sorry,” Stan said eventually. “I– I didn’t, um. I didn’t mean to imply anything.”

Richie returned to crying in earnest, and Stan looked around for anything vaguely suitable for use as a tissue. Eventually he landed on one of Bill’s discarded sweaters, which he threw to Richie.

“I just–it’s not fair, you know?” Richie sobbed. “I don’t want to die, I don’t want everyone to hate me, I don’t want to go to Hell-”

“Calm down, you’re not going to die,” Stan said. 

“I don’t need this! I’m already enough of a fuck up,” Richie said, gripping the cord of the hammock with one hand. “I can’t think, can’t do things normal people just do, I haven’t cleaned my room in three years, I can’t fucking keep my mouth shut, my face looks stupid, my nose looks stupid, my teeth look stupid, my fucking glasses look stupid, now I’m a-”

“Richie-” Stan tried to put a hand on Richie’s shoulder. Stan tried to put a hand on his shoulder-

Richie startled, jumping up from the hammock. He backed away from Stan, shaking. “You don’t get it, Stanley! I’m a freak! I’m a perv! I’m a fuckin’ liar! A monster! A piece of shit! I should’ve just let Hockstetter finish me off, I know he wanted to, I know he was fucking gonna, if Bill hadn’t come into that locker room, if I hadn’t-”

Stan grabbed Richie by his shoulders and shook him. “Richie!”

Richie blinked, tears streaking his glasses. 

“Stop it! Stop it.” Stan said, his eyebrows drawn together. “You’re not a monster. You’re not a pervert. You’re my best friend.” 

Richie began to shake his head, trying to shrug Stan off. “You shouldn’t touch me, man, you don’t-” 

“Because what? You’re attracted to me?” Stan said. He flicked Richie in the cheek several times. “Is this turning you on?”

Richie flinched away. “No,” 

“Well if it is, I don’t care, Richie. I don’t give a single fuck.” Stan said. “Honestly, this isn’t even the weirdest thing about you.”

Richie couldn’t look at him. He didn’t want the heat under his skin to show, didn’t want it to be so obvious that he was unraveling at the seams, that his mind was starting to match his jeans in terms of its ability to hold together. Stan was still keeping his shoulders in place, not so much with his hands, but with his deep brown eyes and his fucking porcelain cheekbones, because goddamnit if Richie hadn’t ever known a boy who wasn’t damn pretty. 

“But it’s… unnatural,” He said. 

“That’s just plain wrong,” Stan shook his head, looking genuinely annoyed. “Same-sex mating is actually pretty common in nature. Pigeons, for example, are known to, uh. Have nests with two male pigeons. They raise all the orphaned chicks, it’s actually pretty cool.”

Richie… hadn’t known that. He hadn’t prepared for this reaction. His mind was spinning like a bike tire disconnected from its pedals, nothing more to feed the energy but just enough momentum left to keep click click click-ing. 

“You don’t have to say that, Stan.” He said. 

Stan rolled his eyes, let go of Richie’s shoulders. “Whatever. Beat yourself up about it if you want, but the facts are the facts.” 

Richie opened his mouth, closed it. Opened it again. 

“You’re not even a little grossed out?”

“Well, that depends on the amount of details you’re about to share with me,” Stan admitted. 

Richie’s face was still tight, his legs still tense with the dream of running, but his sniffling began to abate. His mind was losing steam. He wiped his eyes with one hand. 

“What was that about Patrick Hockstetter?” Stan asked cautiously. “And… finishing you off?”

Watcha doing, creeping around, huh, you little faggot? You getting your rocks off? 

Richie turned bright red. “He tried to- it doesn’t matter, Stanley. It really doesn’t matter. He had a lighter, he…” Richie gulped. “It doesn’t matter.” 

“Alright.” Stan looked doubtful of that. 

Richie stared at the floor and cleaned his glasses on his shirt. 

“You know we all love you.” Stan said. 

“No you don’t. You just like that I’m funny.”

“You’re not funny,” Stan said. “And that’s not the reason we love you.”  

“You don’t even know me,” Richie said glumly. Then he looked up at Stan. “Well, maybe you do.” 

“And I love you.” Stan said, wrapping Richie in a hug, something that hadn’t happened since before Beverly left. Richie squoze Stan back, releasing some of the painful tightness, trying to stop himself from seeming too eager. 

“Then you’re crazy,” Richie said, trying not to get snot on Stan’s polo. 

“Yeah, I know.” Stan said quietly. “But so are you.”

Chapter Text

And if you ask what bird I want to be, 
I’ll say a blue jay! 
If you ask what time I want to leave, 
I’ll change the conversation–
If you lean in close and kiss me, 
I won’t mind…
I’ll probably respond in kind.

OCTOBER 8, 1990 : DERRY CEMETERY

Stan lived a little on the edge of town, only a block or so away from Derry Cemetery. He had avoided it for most of his childhood, because cemeteries were sad and spooky and every time he passed by he had to hold his breath. After the summer of 89’, though, he had lost his fear of the place and began to find it appealing to go on walks there when he was bored of Bassey park or the Standpipe (and he never really liked to go near the Standpipe anymore). 

The cemetery had two sections. There was the old section, which Stan mostly avoided–that part, he thought, was still kind of creepy–and the new one. The old section was shady, with great towering maples and hemlocks and elms that had spent centuries feeding on the remains of Derry residents. Or, Stan imagined that was what they had done. He wasn’t sure how recent embalming and preservation methods reached the standard of keeping out the local flora. In the old section, all of the gravestones were cracked and covered in mint-green lichen, and no one ever came by to leave flowers or smoke cigarettes by those graves. Stan preferred to leave them alone.

The new section had wider footpaths, the occasional bench, and clean gray headstones surrounded by flowers and sometimes little American flags. There was a willow with a birdbath under it that Stan liked to sit under, observing the birds and sometimes bringing seeds for them. He thought that the ghosts in the new side of the cemetery seemed much friendlier, much less likely to bite.

Eddie clearly thought it was weird.

“You come here all the time?” Eddie asked, looking around at the wrought-iron fence and the tidy lanes of headstones, interspersed through the grass. 

“Not all the time,” Stan said, leading him towards the willow tree and his favorite spot. “Just when I don’t want to go too far from the house.”

“Creepy.” Eddie said. “I’m pretty sure my dad is kicking around here somewhere.” 

“You better hope he’s not kicking!” Stan said, grinning. He blinked as they passed every other row of headstones, a habit he’d formed when he started coming here.

“Well,” was all Eddie said. 

Stan laughed. “Do you want to find him?”

“No,” Eddie shook his head. He opened his mouth like he was going to add more to that statement, but then he didn’t. 

Stan hadn’t heard him talk about his father much.  

“I don’t think I’ll want to be buried.” Stan said. “Seems pointless.” 

Eddie looked up from the path. “Why?”

“I mean, why go to so much effort to make you look all nice and fancy for all of eternity when no one can even see you down there?” Stan said. “Probably smells bad. I’d want to be cremated.”

“I think I would too,” Eddie said after a pause. “As long as I get scattered. Otherwise I think my mom would just hold on to me forever.” 

“Now there’s an afterlife I wouldn’t want!” Stan said. They had reached his favorite willow tree and he pointed Eddie to the bench where he usually liked to sit. 

Eddie shuddered. “You don’t know the half of it. She’d probably stick my little urn in the medicine cabinet.”

Stan almost giggled, but then he was a little scandalized. “What would you cure? Impulsivity? Risk-taking?”

“Oh my gosh, she wouldn’t take me as medicine!” Eddie gaped. “She’d just keep me there next to it, because… I don’t know what the joke was. It didn’t make much sense.”

“O-okay.” Stan blinked. “I thought it didn’t make sense but sometimes I’m wrong about that.” 

Eddie looked at Stan, a little smile on his face. “You’re weird, Stan.”

Stan looked rather pale at that suggestion. “I know.”

With Eddie, who was unusually short, and Stan, who was a little tall, the two made an odd pair sitting next to each other. They sat there, talking and watching the birds at the feeder–these were not the type that one needed to be quiet for–and sometimes glanced up or down at each other’s faces. Stan never held eye contact for very long.

“Greta Keene told me once that all my medicine is fake.” Eddie said. “Just… placebos.”

“What’s that?” Stan asked. 

“It means they give you fake medicine that doesn’t do anything, but sometimes people feel better anyway because they think they’ve been cured.” Eddie said. “I looked it up.”

Stan nodded thoughtfully. “Do you think she was just pulling your arm?”

“That’s what I thought for a while,” Eddie said. “I guess telling someone to stop taking their life-saving medicine is a pretty good way to get that person killed.” 

“That’s unsettling, though.” Stan said, frowning. “Are doctors allowed to lie like that?”

“Apparently they can,” Eddie shrugged. “Made me feel kind of crazy. Like, if you can convince a person that they’ve been cured and they really do feel better, can you convince a person that they’re sick?” 

“That would make sense,” Stan said. “You said you only used to think she was lying to you?”

“Yeah.” Eddie said. He waited a moment, getting his words in order, before he continued. “I don’t know anymore. I think maybe she wasn’t lying to me. I got mad once–right after, you know, the fight. The final one. Didn't take any of my pills for three days. Nothing happened. I was basically fine.” 

Sure, there had been a series of hours where he had felt like his throat was slowly closing, where he’d counted his individual heartbeats and waited with bated breath for them to stop, where he’d wheezed and panted and locked himself in the bathroom for long periods of time to wait for the world to stop spinning and for his brain to stop fixating on the feeling of all of his skin at once. Stan didn’t need to know about that. That happened sometimes when he took his meds, too, so he wasn’t sure that there was any connection between them. 

Stan watched a robin land in the birdfeeder with mild interest. “So you think your mom was lying to you too?”

Eddie looked glum. “Maybe.”

He didn’t know what he thought Stan was going to say. It wasn’t like he would know whether or not Mrs. Kaspbrak and Mr. Keene were playing a big prank on him. It sounded pretty implausible, when Eddie said it out loud. But Stan probably already thought he was stupid. 

“Wait, that’s why you threw your fanny pack before we went into Neibolt that day,” Stan said, something clicking for him. 

“Yeah.” Eddie said resentfully. “My mom was so pissed about that.”

“She made you start taking them again, didn’t she?” 

Eddie nodded. He was remembering how later on, he’d gone back to Neibolt and gathered his pills back, blowing dirt out of the plastic containers, trying to tell himself it was because the fanny pack itself was still useful. He fidgeted with his inhaler. 

“Stan, do you think I could be crazy?” Eddie asked. His face was all pinched and tight. 

“No, I don’t think so.” Stan said. “I mean, Patrick Hockstetter, Henry Bowers–they were crazy. You’re not crazy like that. If you are crazy, I mean. I think you’d only be a little crazy. Like how Richie’s a little crazy.”

“Is he?” Eddie frowned. 

“Just a little. You know how he can’t sit still, and he’s always talking nonsense,” Stan shrugged. “A lot of people are just a little crazy, I think.”

“I guess.” Eddie said. “I don’t really think I’m crazy crazy. But sometimes I’ll have these days where I can just tell that everything’s about to go to shit, you know?” Eddie swallowed. “Sometimes things really do go to shit, sometimes they don’t. But I just know that something bad is going to happen, and I can’t breathe, and I have to use my inhaler and I go through it really fast.” He paused, catching his breath. “Then I feel a little crazy.”

Stan considered this. “I don’t think it’s that crazy that you get scared. Considering what we went through.”

“Do you get days like that?”

Stan tipped his head to the side. “Every now and then. Especially in the summer. I don’t have an inhaler, so I just…” He blushed at this. 

“What?” Eddie sat up now, sensing that there was some juicy secret about to be revealed. “What? What?”

“I… I recite birds, in my head.” Stan said. “I list them all out. As many as I can think of, Latin names and everything. It calms me down.”

Eddie laughed. “That’s so weird. But not as weird as sucking on pretend medicine.”

“You don’t know if it’s pretend or not,” Stan pointed out.

“I guess I don’t!” Eddie said.

“I do that thing with the birds whenever I think about, y’know-” It. “Scary stuff. Like if I don’t, then…” He trailed off. “It’s a superstition, I guess.” 

In fact he would like to be doing that now. He should be doing that now. He should be-

“That IS crazy.” Eddie said, though he didn’t say it in a mean way. He said it more appreciatively, as if they were exchanging stories of mean teachers or annoying parents.

Stan had never told anyone about the bird thing before, and he was heartened to think that Eddie might understand–or, if not understand, confirm something for him. 

“With the medicine thing,” Stan said. “Did you ever think, before Greta said that to you, that it could be fake?”

“Not really,” Eddie shook his head. 

“Or like,” Stan struggled for words. “Do you ever really think about it now? Like, worry if everyone’s lying to you? Like everyone knows something about you that you don’t?”

Eddie turned pale. “Is that how you feel?”

Stan’s gaze flicked away. “Y-yeah.” 

Eddie looked off into the distance, his face tense and unhappy. “I worry that you guys don’t really like me at all and you’re just pretending to be nice. And that when I’m not around, you’re all happy about it.”

“Sometimes I think that too!” Stan said. He was almost excited to hear that they had this in common. “People don't make any sense. Sometimes they think something's funny, sometimes they look at me like I'm insane, and I made the exact same joke both times. I don't know what their problem is.”

“Well,” Eddie said. “I think you're pretty funny.”

“Thanks,” Stan said. 

“I don't know how Richie does it,” Eddie said. “He's so good with things like that. With people.”

“Richie? Good with people?” Stan laughed. “That's funny. That's hilarious. Now, Bev? Yeah. Bill and Mike too. They just have a way about them.” Stan paused. Then he added, “I’ve never heard anyone complain about you, by the way. Except for Richie.” 

“That’s good.” Eddie said. “And eh, I don’t care what he thinks.”

Stan was pretty sure that was a lie, unless it was a joke. Eddie didn’t deliver it like a joke, though. Stan didn’t say anything, in case this would only reveal how deep his craziness went.

Eddie seemed to flip on the issue immediately. “But he’s just joking, right? Richie?”

“When he complains about you? Yeah, I’m pretty sure.” Stan said.

“Okay.” Eddie said. “You’ll tell me if he does say something for real, though, right? I have a right to know. I’m one of his best friends, I should know what he really thinks of me.”

“I…” Stan was pretty sure he couldn’t do that, seeing as how he’d already promised Richie his silence on such matters. “I don’t think I can do that.” 

Eddie looked at Stan like he had stabbed him in the chest. “Why?”

Stan gulped, tapping his hands together and his feet on the ground to manage his discomfort. “I… I promised him I wouldn’t. But I can say that he doesn’t hate you!” 

“Why did he make you promise that?” Eddie cried, ashen-faced and stricken.

“I can’t say!” Stan held up his hands. “I promised him I wouldn’t say! It’s not bad, though. He didn’t say anything about you that was bad.”

If Eddie mentions this to him, Richie will throttle me, Stan thought to himself. He was bungling this one, that was for sure.

“So he…” Eddie was befuddled. “He made you promise not to tell me that he thought nice things about me?”

Stan kept his mouth firmly shut, afraid of the things it might reveal. 

“Why would anyone do that? Everyone knows you only keep secrets like that when you’re mad at someone,” Eddie said. He began to breathe rapidly and reached for his inhaler, and then held it up in one hand, the other pressing on his chest. 

Stan watched him, perplexed. “I’m sorry, Eddie! I promised! I’ve said too much already!”

Eddie didn’t react, only held up his inhaler and began to laugh. 

“Administer as needed!” He wheezed. “Administer as needed…”

Stan began to panic himself. Carolina wren, thryothorus ludovicianus. American goldfinch, spinus tristis, black-capped chickadee… 

Eddie was laughing so hard through his wheezing that he began to cough and gasp, clutching his chest now and sliding down on the bench. 

Stan unfroze. 

“Um, um–your inhaler,” Stan stood and grabbed the thing from his friend’s hands and held it up to Eddie’s mouth so that he could use it, but Eddie slapped it away. He held up one hand, indicating Stop, and Stan paused, unsure of what to do next. 

“It’s-” Eddie choked out the word and then returned to gasping, clutching the wooden slats of the bench so hard that Stan worried he would get splinters. 

Stan sat down again, counting bird names in his head. Eventually Eddie grabbed one of his hands and clutched it awkwardly, heaving air in and out, in and out.

Eventually, Eddie’s breathing began to return to normal. He let go of Stan’s hand and closed his eyes, relieved. 

“Do you… water?” He asked, his voice still light and wheezy. 

Stan passed him the bottle he kept in the pack he always brought with him on walks. It was full neatly to the brim, even though Stan hadn’t expected to need it.  

“What was that about?” Stan asked. “‘Administer as needed?’”

“It says that…” Eddie said. “...on the inhaler. It… it says that.”

Stan held up the plastic and metal device. “So it does.”

“Don’t you think,” Eddie gasped, “if it were real, there would be more… more warnings?”

Stan pursed his lips. “I’ve never seen medicine without it.”

Eddie lifted his hand and dropped it in a half-hearted gesture that Stan couldn’t decode. “…Yeah.” 

“Man, you really are crazy.” Stan said. Now he began to laugh, and Eddie joined him. 

“We’re both crazy!” Eddie giggled. “We’re both just a little crazy!” 

Stan laughed harder, and the way that they were laughing only convinced him that they were crazy, just a little, and that seemed all the more hilarious. The two dissolved into a fit of hysteria that lasted for a long time. 

DECEMBER 19, 1990 : MIKE’S HOUSE

“Does anyone remember Eddie’s number? I know I had it written down somewhere,” Mike said.

Richie, Mike, Stan, Ben and Bill were all gathered around the Hanlon farm telephone. They had gathered at Mike’s almost immediately upon the news that Derry High would be cancelling class due to snow, after Mike called each of them one by one. 

Mike’s eyes were shining. He was clearly thrilled about the whole concept of a “snow day,” which was new to him, like many things about their freshman year of high school. Ben liked watching his reactions. It was nice that someone else was out of the loop when it came to the Derry public school system.

“Let me, let me.” Richie said. Mike handed him the phone and he began to dial, messing it up almost immediately.

“Mike, you said you had a good hill for us?” Ben was still dressed head to toe in snow gear from his walk to the farm.

“The perfect hill,” Mike said, grinning. 

“Oh Eddie!” Richie said in a sing-song voice, though they could all hear the phone continue to ring through the line. “Where is that guy?”

“Just be quiet, what if his mom picks up?” Stan said.

“Nahhhh,” Richie said. “I trust in Eds.”

Ben heard a murmur from the phone speaker and then Richie’s eyes went wide.

He covered the speaker and hissed, “Shit! It’s his mom!”

“She’s never gonna let him come out,” Stan said regretfully.

Bill shook his head.

Richie paused, a half-smirk on his face. Then he put the phone back to his ear.

“Hello, is this Sonia Kaspbrak?” He’d made his voice deeper and taken up a stronger Maine accent, in an imitation they all immediately recognized. Ben put his hands over his mouth to muffle his laughter.

“This is Joseph Lewis, your son’s History teacher?”

Bill bit his lip to hold back a grin. Ben was shaking with the effort holding in his laughter. Stan looked petrified. Mike was watching Richie with amazement. Faint sounds emanated from the phone speaker.

“I do remember you from parent-teacher conferences, of course!” Richie said. “Ayuh, I’d like to speak with Eddie if he’s available.” Richie was grinning now.

“Holy sh-shit!” Bill whispered.

Joseph Lewis, who had perpetual cold sores on his lips and a habit of pounding on his desk when someone showed interest in his lectures, which Ben often did. The man had clearly never encountered a child who expressed any genuine interest in the French and Indian War. His classroom always smelled like tobacco, even though none of the students (and Richie had searched) could find any evidence of it. Ben liked that class, if only because everyone else seemed grateful that he was answering Mr. Lewis's questions so that they could nap in the dusty sunbeams instead of paying attention. The worst Ben got was eye-rolls, and he could handle that. 

Richie’s face went slightly pale. “Yes, er, I was hoping to tell him myself, but he’s achieved top marks on the qualifying exam for the state Geography Bee.”

The imitation was on-the-nose, but it was also terrible. Ben couldn’t hold in his laughter any longer and he pulled up his neckwarmer to muffle them. It was still damp and slightly crusty from the snow still falling in the morning air.

“Yes, he’s an exemplary child.” Richie continued. “May I speak to him, please?”

Stan shook his head frantically, eyes wide.

“Risky,” Mike whispered.

A grin spread across Richie’s face. 

“Oh my god, did he do it?” Ben whispered.

“Hey there Eds!” Richie said. 

The Losers cheered.

“I can’t BELIEVE that worked,” Ben said.

“Richie th-that was s-sick!” Bill pounded him on the back. Mike grabbed Richie’s shoulder and shook him, grinning. ^[1]  

Richie continued speaking into the phone. “I had to! She wasn’t gonna talk to me! Just tell her you backed out because they’d make you take a plane to DC or something!”

“That was such a bad idea,” Stan said, though he was smiling now.

“Is he gonna show?” Mike asked.

Richie raised his eyebrows in a silent “i dunno!” 

“What if she tries to bring it up to Mr. Lewis?” Ben asked.

“We’re all at Mike’s, he’s got the perfect sledding hill,” Richie said. He began to explain their idea.

“Th-this fucking rules,” Bill said. 

Richie hung up the phone. “He’s gonna wait a bit before he heads out so his mom doesn’t figure it out. But I think he’s coming!”

“Yes!” Mike cheered. 

“Okay,” Ben said, grinning. “Let’s see this perfect hill.”

The Hanlon farm was set apart from its neighbors by a long road, and along that road, a good stretch of unused land. In the summer, it was a scraggly field of knotweed and dusty grass. Now, it was covered in several feet of fresh powder, with more coming down overhead. 

“Technically this is part of the farm,” Mike explained as he led the Losers out to the hill. He was wearing a thick coat, and Ben had seen him layer two sweatshirts under it before they left the house. Behind him, a bright yellow plastic sled bounced over the snow. It was Ben’s sled, and he’d brought it all the way from his house with him. “The reason we don’t use it for anything is because it’s not flat. Lots of times we dump rocks out here. I think that’s where the hill came from.”

“Lovely. Who doesn’t want to sled down into a bunch of soft, pillowy rocks?” Richie said. Snow was beginning to gather on top of his navy blue hat. 

“There’s plenty of snow on top,” Ben said. His legs sank into the snow halfway up his calves with every step, but he could tell there was more underneath him, packed down.

“There it is,” Mike gestured, his eyes bright from inside his hood.

The hill, which was better described as a slope, was ginormous. It sat in the bend of the road that led up to the farmhouse, and it curved up from the valley of the driveway to the higher land which would eventually turn into pastures. Now, the road was almost invisible, blanketed in the same smooth layer of white that had coated the rest of Derry. The only sign that it was there were the tentative car treads from Margaret Tozier’s van, which had brought Richie, Stan and Bill to the Hanlon farm all together. 

Ben immediately saw what should be done.

At the steepest point, they could roll one solid snowball down straight to make a fast track. That snow could be re-shaped to make a jump at the bottom, which would send them flying—potentially all the way over the road!—and into the opposite snowbank. Beside that, where the slope was gentler and broader, they could carve out something with twists, like a water slide…

“What are you planning, Ben?” Stan asked.

“I think we have enough room to make two tracks,” Ben said, taking heavy steps towards the hill.

“Tracks? Who needs tracks?” Richie asked, bounding ahead with enviable agility. “We can just sled straight down!”

“It’ll be faster if we carve out a channel,” Ben said, “Let me show you!”

And so they got to work. Bill and Richie began work on the straight track with the jump, while Ben directed Stan and Mike on constructing the double-turn track. Mike eventually made a trip back to his house to grab shovels. 

Ben was in his element. He and Stan smoothed down the sides of the channel with their mittens, packing down piles of snow on the bank to secure the edges and shore up the corners. The snowfall lessened, until it stopped entirely, leaving only the work of smoothing it down. 

This was the kind of thing he’d wanted to do for years. There’d been a good sledding hill behind his house when he lived in Saco, but he’d never made use of it because putting so much effort into sledding by himself would make his mom sad. 

“Oh man, I grabbed these for nothing!” Mike said. He was back with shovels under his arms. “You guys look almost done!”

“No, no—we can make ‘em deeper,” Ben said. “And we still have to smooth down the snow in the middle. I think we can use the sled for that, so we stop leaving tracks.”

He, Stan, and Mike brought the sled up to the top of the hill.

“Hey Mike, what are those woods over there?” Stan pointed in the distance, beyond the blinding white fields, where Ben saw a dark line of trees.

“They’re woods,” Mike said. “Been there forever, I don’t know.”

Stan squinted. His hat pushed his curls, now wet from snow, down almost to his eyes. “They look deep. Wish I had a spot like that by my house, I’m sick of cowbirds and robins. I bet out there you could see a hawk up close. Maybe even a scarlet tanager.”

“Hawks, definitely.” Mike said. “We get them flying around all the time. What’s a scarlet tanager look like?”

“I bet it’s purple.” Ben said. 

Stan looked at him, brow furrowed, and then he began to laugh. Ben and Mike joined, giggling at the thought of a little violet songbird. 

“Yeah. Bright purple.” Stan said when he recovered.  

“I can take you out back there sometime,” Mike said. “Maybe when it’s not the dead of winter.”

“They’re red with black wings,” Stan said, answering the earlier question. Then he paused. “That’d be cool.”

Ben grabbed the plastic sled and angled it at the top of their track. “Let’s get to work, boys! We might finish before Eddie shows up!”

They didn’t finish before Eddie showed up. They might’ve, if Richie hadn’t started throwing snowballs at Stan and caused an impromptu battle. Just after their icy melee concluded, leaving all of them collapsed and giggling or hiding behind improvised snow barriers, Eddie tromped up the road with a frown on his face. His coat, which was at least twice as puffy as any of the other’s, went down to his knees. 

“It is so much farther to walk than I thought,” He said. “This better be good. What the fuck happened to you guys?” 

Stan emerged from behind the hill. “Richie started it.” 

“Haystack got me good,” Richie said, sitting up from a snowdrift and rubbing his arm. “Yeouch!” 

“We’re making tracks for the sleds,” Ben said, brushing snow off his jacket. “We’re almost done, too.” 

“My socks got wet,” Stan observed with a grimace on his face.

“Probably pissed yourself when you saw my incredible might,” Richie flexed.

“Gross, Richie.” Eddie said. 

“I wouldn’t mind going in for a bit,” Ben said. “My socks got wet too.”

“What a bunch of pussies!” Richie said. “You seeing this, Big Bill?”

“I’m g-going in,” Bill said, grinning. “Really nice of you to volunt-t-teer to finish the tracks by yourself, th-though.”

Richie crossed his arms. “Nice try.”

“Mike, do you have hot chocolate?” Eddie asked. The six of them began to trudge back towards Mike’s house. “Richie’s gonna need it when he gets frostbite on his huge nose.”

“No hot chocolate,” Mike laughed. “Just coffee and some weird tea.”

Eddie gagged. “Coffee tastes like shit! Don’t you have like, chocolate syrup or something?”

Mike grimaced. “We might have chocolate chips?”

“Oh, you can use those!” Ben said. “My mom showed me. You just melt them down and mix them in milk, it works fine. Do you have cocoa powder? That’s all that hot chocolate mix really is. And some sugar.”

“We can check,” Mike said. He opened a squeaking screen door and held it open as the rest of them stepped onto his porch. Then commenced the violent stomping of boots that all children are taught to remove snow from their shoes.

The Hanlon farmhouse was drafty, but cozy. Ben always appreciated the shelves of books on one side of the parlor. The old cloth spines gave the shelf an aura of curation. He imagined Mike’s Granddad, who seemed to Ben both intimidating and wise, going through those shelves every so often. He might pull out one title, weigh its value to the collection, and then swap it out with another that he had found in an old shop. When Ben looked at it now, he saw one of the cats walk across the top and settle into watchful repose.

The Losers soon upended the Hanlon kitchen, under the supervision of Mike’s Gran, who shook her head and smiled silently. She was perhaps the skinniest old person Ben had ever seen, with big, cloudy eyes and a shock of thin, but shining silver hair.

“Mikey, bring out the mugs.” She said in her warbling southern voice. “The nice ones. Been a while since this little one’s had friends over.”

“Watch the handle,” Eddie said, watching over Richie’s shoulder as he melted chocolate chips in a saucepan. “The metal gets hot.”

“I know the metal gets hot! What, do you think I was born yesterday?” Richie said.

Stan had been hanging up their wet things on the porch, where he had insisted they remain as long as they continued to be wet. Now he walked in, hiding shivers in his cable sweater. “I think I understand what astronauts talk about when they talk about the cold vacuum of space.”

“I can try to dry your socks for you!” Mike said. “I’ll put them on the radiator.”

“You-you don’t have to, that’s okay,” Stan looked embarrassed.

“Can you put mine on the radiator?” Eddie said. “I want warm socks.”

“Me too,” Ben said.

Stan seemed relieved. The three of them peeled off their socks and handed them to Mike, who made a big show of wrinkling his nose.

“You asked for it,” Bill said, laughing. 

“He didn’t know what he was getting into!” Richie said from the stove. Ben could hear a worrying sizzling from the pan. “You know Eddie’s smell like rotten pizza.”

Eddie exhaled, exasperated. “No they don’t. How would you even know what pizza smells like rotten? Do you just like to go hang out in like, the dumpster behind Pizza Hut? Just huffing garbage all day?”

Ben heard Mike’s Gran whisper to her grandson as he walked past. “They seem like nice boys. Don’t let them get into any trouble, eh?”

Ben flushed with pride.

“I’ll be in the den watching my soaps if you need anything,” The woman patted Mike’s arm and turned to shuffle out of the room.

“Thank you very much for letting us come over!” Ben said before she disappeared. She smiled at him and waved a hand. 

“I think that’s definitely melted.” Stan said, pointing into the saucepan over Richie’s shoulder. 

Richie shook the pan to toss its contents. He adopted a ridiculous french accent. “Vat do you know of ze cooking, Stanley, huh? I have it on goooood author-ay-tee zat all ze best chefs au Paris use extra melt in zer chocolahh!”

“That’s burning.” Stan said, and turned off the electric burner.

“Did anyone add the cocoa?” Ben asked. 

“I’ve g-got it,” Bill said, holding up the box.

Eddie stepped in now. “Don’t pour it too fast. You’re gonna add too much. That was–whatever. It's fine. Oh my god that smells so good. Mix it, idiot!”

They stirred this concoction into a mixture that looked slightly chunky but which, according to Bill, who tested it, tasted delicious. 

Mike pawed through a drawer and pulled out a ladle. “Grab a mug, boys!” 

Ben took one of the green ceramic mugs from the collection that Mike had set out and stepped up to receive his portion of the hot chocolate. “Thanks, Mike.”

Richie elbowed his way in behind Ben, who stepped away with his steadily warming mug. “Fill me up, senor!”

“Asshole, do lines mean anything to you?” Eddie said. “I was next!” 

“I made plenty enough for all of us, lads,” Richie said, gesturing broadly with his hands. “The trashmouth provides!” 

“I’m p-pretty sure it’s Mike who provided,” Bill said. 

“Yeah, and you would’ve burned it if it hadn’t been for Stan.” Eddie said.

Suddenly there was a crash. 

Ben turned and saw Stan, cheeks still red from the cold, staring down in horror at a splash of green ceramic shards on the floor. 

“Good going, dumbass,” Eddie said.

“It’s okay!” Mike said, before Stan could recover from his shock.

“I’m so–I’m so sorry, Mike.” Stan looked like he might cry. His hands, quivering slightly, went to his mouth. “I’m so sorry, my hands were stiff and-”

“It’s okay! It’s fine,” Mike repeated, “You didn’t mean to, it was just an accident.”

“Your grandma’s gonna whoop your ass.” Richie said. 

“Beep beep, Richie.” Bill said. 

“I–I’ll ask my parents for money, we can pay to replace it,” Stan said. “I’m so sorry, please tell your grandma it was all my fault.”

“No, tell her it’s me.” Eddie said. “She won’t hit me. Hey, I’ll come by with five bucks tomorrow.” 

“Those were more than five bucks,” Richie said. “I’ll chip in ten. You give him two, Eds. You don’t get as big of an allowance.”

“But I dropped it.” Stan said. His face was pale now, and he was staring at all of them with wide eyes. 

“Let’s clean this up,” Ben said, setting his mug down. “Mike, do you have a dustpan?”

“Yeah, I’ll get the broom.” Mike leapt over the broken mug and clasped Stan on the shoulder,^[2] though in the hallway he shot a nervous glance in the direction his Gran had gone. “It’s okay, man. Really.”

“I’ll chip in two,” Ben said, kissing his comics savings goodbye in his mind.

“Why are you offering to-” Stan furrowed his brow. “You don’t have to do that.”

“Don’t g-get worked up about it,” Bill said. “We’ll all chip in four.”

Mike came back and Ben held the dustpan as he swept up the shards. 

“We’ll all pitch in four, does that cover it, you think?” Richie said to Mike. 

“You’re going to give me twenty dollars for a mug?” Mike was wide-eyed.

“Sixteen.” Eddie corrected. “Stan’s not paying.”

“Yes I will,” Stan said. “Why wouldn’t I pay? I’m the one who–”

“No you won’t.” Bill cut him off. “Do you th-think that’ll be enough?”

Mike raised his eyebrows. “My Gran will kill me if I accept sixteen dollars from you guys.” 

“Well, as long as the funeral’s not on Tuesday, I should be able to make it.” Eddie said. “I’ve got an appointment.”

“What, your hepatitis acting up again?” Richie said.

“No, I’m hiring an assassin to poison your godawful Pepsis.” Eddie said. 

There was a moment of silence, and then Stan snorted. Then they were all giggling, the tension releasing, Bill almost spilling hot chocolate on his hoodie. 

“That’s more like it.” Mike grinned, slapping Stan on the back. ^[3]“Let’s get you a new mug.” 

Ben dumped out the dustpan in the trash and took up his own cocoa. It tasted like a melted Hershey’s bar, which was, in Ben’s opinion, perfect. Well, actually it could use a peppermint stick, but Ben didn’t have one of those, and he was far too polite to ask. 

“I don’t know what to say,” Stan said as Mike handed him a fresh mug filled with hot chocolate, this one white plastic from the cabinet. 

“‘Thank you’ is traditional, you ungrateful jerk.” Eddie said. 

Stan blinked, and then Richie started to laugh. Ben giggled. 

“Yeah, man!” Bill grinned. “Where’s our th-thanks?”

“You really want me to tell her it was you?” Mike asked Eddie. 

“Yeah, dipshit. You think I’d just lie?” Eddie sounded almost offended.

“Wh-why are you guys doing this?” Stan asked, staring at the cup in his hands.

Ben shrugged. “Losers stick together. Can we drink our cocoa please? I want to actually sled.”

MARCH 23, 1991 :  STAN’S HOUSE

“I always forget how nice your house is, Stan.” 

“It’s not too different from yours. Only thing is we know how to open cabinets and drawers, put our things in there, and close them again. And we actually use our cleaning supplies for their intended purpose.” Stan said. 

Richie ignored this attack on his cherished home. “It really beats sleeping every night in the arms of Eddie’s snoring mom.” 

“Fuck you,” Eddie snapped. “She does NOT snore.”

“Fuck you!” Richie cackled.

“Do you ever say things that are true?!”

“Do you ever ask the pharmacy to prescribe you a chill pill?”

“Shut up, you g-guys,” Bill said, interrupting their back-and-forth before it could escalate too far. He unrolled a sleeping bag on the floor of Stan’s room. “It’s way too late to be s-screaming like that.”

“I don’t know, Eddie’s mom was screaming into the wee hours…” Richie sprawled out on a sleeping bag of his own.

“You are the stupidest goddamn liar that there’s ever been, do you know that Richie? The stupidest, dumbest-”

“Let’s play a game or s-something. Truth or dare?” Bill suggested, interrupting Eddie. 

“Ugh, that’ll be boring! I already know everything about you guys and we can’t do anything crazy or Stan’s parents will wake up.” Eddie complained. “Can I have a glass of water? I need to take my evening meds.” 

“Hey Eddie, truth or dare.” Stan said, getting up.

“Dare.” Eddie crossed his arms.

“I dare you not to argue or complain about anything for the rest of the night.” Stan said, and turned to get Eddie’s water.

“Ohhhhh!” Richie put up a hand to high five Bill.

“I-” Eddie’s face was the color of a tomato. “I can do that!”

Stan walked back and passed Eddie his glass of water (“Thanks,” he muttered), and closed the door. 

“Okay, my turn.” Richie said.

“No, assho- I thought whoever was asked goes next,” Eddie said, gritting his teeth slightly.

“Careful there, tiger!” Richie laughed. “Almost sounds like you were going to be disagreeable!” 

Eddie made a strangled noise of rage. 

“You sound like a fucking Gremlin,” Richie said. “Why’d you give him water, Stan? He’ll go rabid!” 

“G-go ahead,” Bill said to Eddie.

“Richie, truth or dare.” Eddie said.

“Truth.”

Eddie frowned. “Do you have a crush?”

“Yeah,” Richie put his hands to his cheeks. “Her name starts with an S…”

“Wait, actually?” Bill said.

Stan rolled his eyes.

“...and then an O… and an N…”

“You’re spelling my mom’s name aren’t you? Tha-” Eddie clamped his mouth shut.

Richie guffawed. “Ohh my god, does anyone else think this is the cutest shit ever?”

Stan rolled his eyes harder. “Answer the question, dickhead.”

“No, I don’t have a crush.” Richie said. Stan blinked at him. “Big Bill, truth or dare?”

“Truth.”

“Does Beverly still send you those letters?” He made a kissy face.

“No,” Bill said, looking self-conscious. His stutter suddenly returned with full force. “S-s-she stop- sto-pped last year. With s-sc-school.” He paused. “I think s-she forgot about us.”

“I still don’t think she forgot about us,” Eddie sounded incredulous. “Not with everything that happened.” 

“You, Bill?” Richie shook his head. “Your face is so hot it’s probably burned into her eyeballs like Eddie with that one picture of Nancy Reagan.”

Eddie looked like he was moments away from slitting Richie’s throat with his fingernails.

“Richie, can it.” Stan said. “He’ll die.”  ^[4]

“Sorry Eds. Don’t go having an aneurysm.” Richie said, though he was pretty pleased with himself. 

“Don’t c– urggghhhh.” Eddie stopped himself.  

“Anyway,” Bill said. “I haven’t g-gotten a letter from her since eighth grade. The weird thing is,” he paused. “Once I made a joke about th-the clown, and she asked me what I was t-talking about.” 

“What?” Stan said. 

“That’s weird,” Richie said, wrinkling his nose. 

Privately, he thought about the time he called her. The way she’d paused when he said hello. The slight confusion in her voice throughout the conversation. It was weird, but somehow he wasn’t surprised that Bill had experienced it too. 

“You know, I’ve heard about stuff like this. Sometimes when something really bad happens to you, you repress the memories.” Eddie nodded. “But then if they hypnotize you, you can remember what really happened.”

“Is that how they got your mother to admit giving birth to you?” Richie said.

“That’s not even funny,” Stan said, so that Eddie could breathe. “Did you hear about that from all those fundamentalists on TV? Because my dad says that Jerry Falwell is full of bullshit. Like he actually said, ‘bullshit.’” 

“Okay, my turn,” Bill said. “S-Stan, truth or dare?”

“Truth,” Stan said.

Bill quirked his mouth to one side, considering. “Do you th-think… do you think we’d still hang out s-sometimes if I lived in Bangor?”

“What kind of question is that?” Richie cried, sitting up.

Stan looked a little distressed. “I don’t know,” he said. “Are you moving?”

“Not my turn,” Bill chuckled lightly.

“Well I’d still want to hang out with you,” Eddie said. “For the record.”

“It’s not your question, dipshit,” Richie said.

“Then why are you talking?” Eddie spat back.

“Ah ah ah!” Richie wagged a finger at Eddie. “Noooo arguing!”

“Both of you shut up!” Stan said, and they did, because Stan looked upset. “Bill, if you lived in Bangor I’d buy a bus pass.”

Bill nodded, satisfied.

“A bus pass? Make him drive here!” Richie said. “He’s the one who’s gonna get his dad’s old truck!” 

“I’m not s-s-sixteen for another year,” Bill said. 

Richie squinted at him. “You could lie.”

“Yeah, Trashmouth, I’ll lie jus-s-st so I can come back and s-squash your face in every once and a while.”

Eddie laughed uproariously at that, pointing at Richie and guffawing in an exaggeratedly mean way. Richie shook his head, almost smiling but not quite getting to it. 

“You’ll miss me and you know it.” He said. “When are you moving?”

“Probably over the s-summer,” Bill said. “After school gets out.”

“Well that’s not too soon,” Eddie said, sounding relieved. “We should try to get the Losers back together before then.”

Stan was grim. “Ben might be moving this summer too. He said his mom was talking to him about it.”

Bill looked mildly distressed. “Sh-shit!”

“Man, our numbers are dwindling so fast, they’ll put us on the endangered species list.” Richie moaned, but he left it there.

“It’s my turn,” Stan said, sounding just a little unhappy. “Eddie. Truth or Dare?”

“Truth.” Eddie said, glancing mournfully at Bill.

“If you get a new dare, you’ll be released from your misery, you know.” Stan said.

“What? Nooo,” Richie scoffed. “You said 'for the rest of the night'.”

Stan shook his head, ignoring Richie. “What about you, Eddie? You got a crush?”

Eddie turned pink. “Nope.”

“I don’t believe it,” Richie said. “No one’s caught his fancy for the past two years! Not still moony over Greta Keene, are you?”

“I don’t answer to you,” Eddie said. “And I don’t lie. I wouldn’t do that!”

“Come on,” There was a small smile on Stan’s lips, slightly amused but also encouraging. “Nobody?”

“Nobody!” Eddie repeated, now the color of pepto bismol.

“Oh he’s so lying,” Richie grinned. “He just doesn’t want to tell us about his secret boyfriend. I bet they meet out in the Barrens under the stars and-”

“BEEP BEEP! BEEP BEEP!” Eddie screeched, with all the urgency of a dozing trucker slamming on the emergency brakes when faced with a jaywalking child in the street.

“-write each other poetry.” Richie finished. He pulled out a new voice now, something he wanted vaguely to sound like a New York queen. He leaned toward Eddie, expression full of mock sincerity. “‘Edward my dahling, roses are red, violets are blue, and you look just like a toddler doused in ketchup-’”

“Beep beep! Beep beep!” Stan, Bill and Eddie continued in their chorus of beeps until Richie dissolved into laughter, too amused with himself to continue.

“That’s-s not even a good g-gay voice,” Bill said, looking somewhere between amused and mildly disgusted. 

Richie cracked up even harder at this, to which Stan rolled his eyes.

“Don’t worry Eddie,” Stan said, though Eddie didn’t look any less uncomfortable. “Richie’s just mad because if he were into guys, maybe one of this town’s lonely queers would get desperate enough to finally give him a chance.”

They all burst up at that one, though Richie’s laughter subsided first and he flipped Stan off. Stan quirked an eyebrow as if to say, what? You want me to tell them? You were being mean anyway.

Richie did feel a little bad about pummeling Eddie on the crush thing, though he also thought his new voice was pretty funny. But he had to be careful.

“‘s my turn,” Eddie said. “Richie. Truth or Dare.”

“Dare!” Richie cried. “I’m not a coward like all of you!”

Eddie smiled, in a most terrifying way. 

“I dare you,” He began dramatically. “To keep my mother’s name out of your filthy fucking mouth and NOT make any your-mom jokes until we leave tomorrow. And if you do,” he added over Richie’s gruesome choking noises, “You have to give me a dollar. Per. Joke.”

“I’ve fallen!” Richie cried, clutching his chest as if he were dying. “There’s no hope for me! Someone call the priest!”

“Don’t bother,” Bill said, already laughing. “You’re not g-getting into Heaven, dumbass.”

They fell into another fit of laughter.

Stan shook his head at Richie. “You should’ve seen that coming.”

An hour and a half later they were lying in the dark, sleeping bags settled, Stan and Bill likely asleep. By the end of their game, Eddie had reached what Stan drily termed “the boiling point,” because when Eddie was that exhausted, he became rather loud, shrill, and bouncy. Richie didn’t mind it, though, because most of Eddie’s giggling had been at things Richie said. Making Eddie laugh… that had him feeling just fine. Fine as art, you could say. He almost giggled at himself.

You could say he didn’t want to go to sleep just yet.

Richie loved sleepovers. There was nothing not to like; sleeping in the warm presence of his friends, laughing late into the night, the dream-like intimacy of secrets and sleepy whispers. 

He was a little too warm in the sleeping bag Stan had lent him, but it would make so much noise if he moved. Stan’s bedroom was quiet, with not even the hum of appliances that Richie was used to in his own house. Bill was a deathly silent sleeper. Slightly unnerving, but consistently true. Stan’s breathing was only a little louder, but it was soft and rhythmic enough that Richie guessed he wasn’t awake. Eddie, he couldn't tell. 

Richie didn’t sleep well in quiet.

He heard Eddie shift in his sleeping bag next to him, and that perked him up. He rolled over to face him, pulling his arms out of the bag into the cooler air.

“Eds?” He whispered.

“What?” Eddie replied immediately. Richie couldn’t make out more than just the blurriest silhouette in front of him, between the darkness and his lack of glasses. 

“It’s just you and me, alone in the dark of the night!” Richie whispered with a grand tone.

“Shhhh,” Eddie scooched his sleeping bag in Richie’s direction, the sound of polyester scratching over Stan’s rug surprisingly loud in the silence. 

“You’re being loud,” Eddie said in an even more hushed whisper. He sounded far closer to Richie now, his face barely inches away.

“I’ll be quiet,” Richie said, matching Eddie’s volume. It felt like hardly talking. They were just breathing in the shape of words. “Do you think Bill will still go by Big Bill in Bangor?”

Eddie paused. “I don’t know. Probably not, right?”

“Probably not,” Richie agreed. 

That was frightening. To think that Bill might become something Richie didn’t recognize. 

“What?” Eddie whispered.

“At least we won’t have to listen to him go on about Dune anymore,” Richie joked.

Eddie’s laugh was silent, just a puff of air that brushed Richie’s face. “You’ll miss him.”

“Yeah…” Richie trailed off. “I’ll really miss his brooding looks and his weird burps and his habit of being better at everything than me…”

Eddie was silent.

“If you’re making a face, I can’t see it,” Richie told him.

He reached a hand blindly into the dark. His fingers hit Eddie’s cheek, which was cool and velvety, and he pinched it gently—more of a squeeze, really. Eddie giggled.

“I knew it!” Richie whispered in mock-triumph. “I knew you were smiling. You think I'm funny. Admit it.”

He walked his fingers across Eddie’s face and tapped his nose.

“And now you’re frowning,” Richie guessed.

Eddie didn’t react. Richie withdrew his hand sheepishly. 

“Wrong,” Eddie finally said.

“What?”

“Wasn’t frowning.” Eddie said. His voice was barely audible, low and strange.

Richie swallowed. 

“Oh, okay.” He said, trying to keep the tone humorous. He wished he could see.

Suddenly, Eddie’s hand was touching Richie’s face. Richie’s heartbeat fell off the face of the planet.

Groping blindly, Eddie’s fingertips slid from his forehead along his hair line, down to Richie’s eyelids and nose. Light, soft, innocent. 

Richie kept himself perfectly still.

Eddie was silent, his hand continuing to explore. There was the feather-gentle touch of his pinkie just under Richie’s eye. The warmth of his palm brushing Richie’s cheek. His thumb, swiping up under Richie’s jaw and sending his pulse fluttering. It was… it was tender. Slow. Deliberate. 

Now the tips of his forefingers stroked Richie’s lips. 

Unthinking—on reflex—Richie kissed them. 

Just a peck, tiny and playful. Then he kissed the first knuckles, then the back of Eddie’s little hand, which was frozen, paralyzed. Richie felt half-delirious, like he was in a dream. He nudged his nose under Eddie’s palm and kissed the crease on the inside of his wrist, lips pressed against the heartbeat there. 

He stopped himself. 

He stopped himself so suddenly he imagined he could hear screeching car tires.

Eddie was still unmoving, his hand hovering a half inch away from Richie’s face. Richie could feel it there, like a ghost, electrifying every tiny hair on his body.

Suddenly Eddie jerked it back, his breathing rapidly returning at breakneck pace, sitting up with a start.

Now it was Richie who couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe.

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, He thought, and intended to say, but couldn’t. I’m sorry, I’m sorry (I know that it’s wrong) please come back-

Eddie was rifling through the pack next to his sleeping bag now, clumsily enough that Richie winced at the noise. 

The wince was enough to break his paralysis. He managed to sit up and pulled his legs out of his sleeping bag. It was too warm in there. 

“Eddie?” His own breathing was stopping and starting. “What are you looking for?”

His question was answered when he heard the telltale shaking and wheeze of Eddie’s inhaler—always first the rattle as Eddie shook it, and then the hiss of gas being pumped free. 

Richie really had fucked it up, hadn’t he.

Eddie used his inhaler again—rattle, hiss—and then he lay back down flat on his back.

Richie followed suit, terrified.

“Eds?” He whispered hopelessly.

No response.

Richie bit his lip, hard. He dug his incisors in, viciously, until he tasted blood and felt sharp pain. He bit down again, and again, and this kept him from crying.

He squeezed his eyes shut and sucked the blood off his lips, maintaining control, staying silent. 

When the flash-flood of panic had somewhat abated, he listened for Eddie’s breathing and heard nothing.

“Eds?” He breathed the question. So quiet he could barely hear himself.

Again, Eddie’s only response was silence. 

Richie was under no illusions that Eddie was asleep, but he understood. He was playing dead.

Well.

Two could play that game. 

MAY 7, 1991 : MIKE’S HOUSE

Mike held a little piece of paper in his hands with a phone number on it, and he re-read it nervously as he began to spin the dial on his family’s rotary phone. The number input, he waited as the sound of ringing echoed through the line.

It was a woman who picked up–Stan’s mom, probably. “Hello? This is the Uris household.”

“Good morning,” Mike said. “My name is Mike, I’m one of Stan’s friends?”

“Nice to meet you, Mike. One second.” He heard her pull back from the phone and call for Stan, who now took the phone.

“Mike?” Stan answered cautiously.

“Stan the Man!” Mike said. “Are you doing anything tomorrow? I was wondering if you wanted me to show you the woods out back, now that it's spring.” 

“Oh–the scarlet tanagers!” Stan said. “Have you seen any?”

“I don’t think so,” Mike said. “But I know they start migrating back by May.”

“They’re most active in the morning. How early do you get up?” 

“5 AM,” Mike said. “Is that early enough?”

“I forgot you live on a farm. This is perfect,” Stan sounded excited. 

Mike breathed a sigh of relief. 

“I’ll bring my bird book. Is it okay if I get there around 6?”

“Of course,” 

“Good. I’ll see you tomorrow, then!” 

“Okay, see you soo-” The line went dead before Mike could finish his goodbye. 

He grinned to himself. Now he just had to make sure his chores were done before Stan showed up. 

Stan arrived the next morning at exactly 6 AM, wearing a red windbreaker and carrying a small bag containing binoculars, his bird book, and a collapsing umbrella–just in case. He followed Mike out through the fields, further and further from any building with more than two rooms. It was a cool morning, cloudy, and the boys’ boots left deep tracks in the mud. 

“Scarlet tanagers like to be deep in the forest,” Stan explained. “That’s why I never see them out in the cemetery or even in the Barrens. They’re too exposed there, an owl or a raccoon are more likely to find their eggs. The deep woods are safer for them.”

“I don’t know how deep these woods go,” Mike said. He could see the treeline on the edge of the field they were passing through now, where the Hanlons usually planted the lettuce crop. “I’ve never made it out through the other side.”

“That’s a good sign,” Stan said. There was a confidence to his voice and a joy in his eyes that Mike had never seen. 

They made it to the edge of the woods a few moments later and Mike began to trample his way through oak saplings, bushes, and thickets of thorns. Stan followed behind him at a more cautious pace. 

“There aren’t really paths out here.” Mike said, half-apologetically. “We’ve got to bushwhack it. I should’ve brought my machete!” 

“It’s okay,” Stan said. There was excitement building in his voice. “You hear that? The-” Stan paused, trying to find words to articulate the bird noise he was hearing. “Those little chirps?”

“I hear a lot of little chirps,” Mike said, walking on a fallen log to navigate a particularly muddy patch of ground. The forest birdsong was beautiful to Mike, but he wasn’t particularly skilled at picking out individual notes. 

“Well, some of those chirps are a Carolina Wren.” Stan said. 

“That’s cool!” Mike said. 

They made their way into the forest, keeping to a fairly straight line so that they wouldn’t become lost. They were surrounded by chittering and buzzing, but somehow Stan was able to pick through the noise to identify specific calls–that was a woodpecker, that was a robin. 

Eventually they came across a large boulder, covered in moss and pine needles, but a good shape for sitting. Mike brushed it off and they each took a seat. Stan tracked the canopy with a discerning gaze, pointing out chickadees and nuthatches with discreet whispers, while Mike watched, bewildered. 

“I’ve heard the call described as a chirr-up, chip-chirrup,” Stan whispered, pulling out his book and flipping to a bookmarked page. Mike peered at the picture there with curiosity. There was an illustration of a small red bird with black wings perched on an oak branch. Stan tapped it sagely and then closed the book. “We’ve got to be quiet.”

Mike nodded, a smile breaking out across his face. It was thrilling to be whispered to, to be invited into Stan’s little world of avian delights, to be trusted with sharing it. He tried to focus on the chirps, the tweets, the trills of the creatures around him. What had once been an opaque feature of his morning, as mundane–if lovely–as the gray of the sky and the scent of the dirt, suddenly came alive with possibility. 

Stan was unnervingly still beside him, his face tilted up towards the branches, his hands resting on his binoculars in his lap. Mike could almost take him for a statue if the wind didn’t ruffle his curls slightly, back and forth across his eyebrows.

Mike tried to find that stillness, to settle into that alert serenity that he saw on Stan’s face. He closed his eyes for a moment, eventually pulling up his feet so that he sat criss-crossed and it took less effort to balance on the rock. Stan twitched when his knee touched him, but then returned to his eerie vigil. 

The rock was cold underneath Mike’s legs, seeping through his jeans and making him wish he’d sat down on a jacket. 

Over the next twenty minutes, he began to pick out different calls. That buzzing, which faded in and out–that was probably an insect. There was the caw caw of crows in the distance, easy enough to identify. There were twittering melodies and blunt staccato cheeps, but each had a slightly different rhythm, a unique tone. 

Suddenly, he thought he heard it–a chirr-up, chip-chirrup, chirrup, chip-chirrup, chirrup. He grabbed Stan’s arm and gestured indistinctly with his head.  ^[5]

Stan went tense, cocking his head to the side. His eyes widened and he began to look around excitedly.

Mike held his breath, staring into the branches. The buds of leaves were only just beginning to appear, so they had a pretty good view into the forest as they scanned the gray and brown canopy for a flicker of red. 

Stan seemed to remember that he had his binoculars and now he brought them up to his eyes, slowly adjusting them as he went. 

Eventually, the calls faded. Stan set his binoculars down, clearly disappointed. 

“Do you think that was really it?” Mike whispered. He was still gripping Stan’s arm, and he loosened his hold on it now. 

“Could’ve been,” Stan said. He suddenly looked down at Mike’s hand with the intensity of someone who had just noticed a spider inches away from them, and Mike took his hand back self-consciously.

They returned to listening, though now Mike knew what he was on alert for. He tried to hold in his mind what the call had sounded like, replaying it in his head. 

He noticed a long-legged insect slowly crawling its way up the rock beside him and hoped it would change course. Don’t come over here, little buddy. He thought. I don’t want to have to flick you away.

Suddenly Stan grabbed Mike’s hand and squeezed it, hard. Mike followed his gaze and saw–there it was. 

A tiny flicker of red, the orangey-red of tulips rather than the rose red of a cardinal. The little thing’s wings were black, and it hopped from branch to branch on the hemlock across from them, occasionally pausing to twitch its head back and forth and ruffle its wings. 

Stan lifted up his binoculars and Mike helped train them on the right spot, hearing a small intake of breath as Stan caught sight of the tanager. Mike squeezed Stan’s hand, a grin on his face. 

Stan passed him the binoculars and he took them with his free hand and squinted through their curious lenses. Stan held the other side of the barrels and gently tilted it towards the hemlock, holding it steady so that Mike could see. 

Up close, the bird was even more unmistakable. Its twiggy feet were wrapped around the branch underneath it, little black eyes darting to and fro. Mike watched it open its beak and let out another call-chirr-up, chip-chirrup–before it suddenly hopped out of view. He lowered the binoculars and heard Stan’s breath catch as they watched it flit off into the woodland. 

“That was a male,” Stan whispered, awe still resonating through his voice. “Probably looking for food.”

“That was so awesome,” Mike whispered back giddily. 

Stan dropped Mike’s hand and pulled out his bird book and a pencil, removing a folded map of Derry and making a small marking on the northern border, approximately where the Hanlon farm would be if the map expanded to show the outer limits of town. He made a note there–scarlet tanager, 5/8/91–and replaced the pencil into his bag. Mike noticed a cluster of markings around the Derry cemetery, and a good number scattered through the Barrens and around the Standpipe.

“You know, I used to be afraid of birds.” Mike said, still whispering.

“Really?” Stan looked at him with genuine shock. 

Mike half-smiled, embarrassed. “Yeah, I don’t know. The way they move, all twitchy, and their little beady eyes. Crows, owls, and hawks, especially. We get hawks out here, sometimes. Have to take in the chickens. Once they got one of the hens and I had to clean up the feathers,” He swallowed. “Nasty.”

Stan was looking at Mike as if he were perhaps the stupidest person on the planet. “They’re so small, though!” 

“Not ravens!” Mike protested. “Have you ever seen a raven? Thing’s huge!”

“Yeah, I’ve seen a raven.” Stan said. “They’re not that bad. I can’t believe you were afraid of birds. That’s so funny.” He had a little smile on his face.

“Well, not anymore.” Mike shrugged. 

Stan grinned. “Huh!”

Mike looked away. “I guess we did it!” 

“Yes we did,” Stan said. 

There was a pause. 

“Have you ever seen a cooper’s hawk?” Stan asked. 

“If I did, I wouldn’t know it.” Mike said. 

“This seems like a good place to find them,” Stan said. “Let’s see if one turns up.” 

Mike understood what this meant. Yeah, we found what we were looking for. But I don’t want to leave yet. 

The morning was still chilly, and Mike’s jacket was beginning to grow damp without any rainfall to wetten it. He could see the insect on the rock next to him beginning to creep closer.

He thought he could sit on that rock forever, if Stan wanted to.