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“‘Sup, fellas,” Pete hums, tossing his backpack down at the library table that he, Richie, and Ruth had laid silent claim to in eighth grade and never felt like changing.
He was a very, very different Pete from the one who’d had strong opinions on where the best space to do homework in the Hatchetfield Public Library was, but he can still admit that they’d chosen nicely. One of the far back corners, so no one could really see you, but also not near a window, or on the floor with bathrooms, so it was almost always free. There were two outlets within reach, and it was just adjacent to a vent so the temperature was always solidly good.
He likes their table. It’s a nice table. It’s one of the only non-useless efforts put in by baby-Peter that’s lasted (or, well, as non-useless as anything was… which is… probably not that much).
Richie looks up from his notebook, squinting, “You’re late.”
“Detention,” He excuses himself, shooting him a lame, limp finger gun, and then laughing a little at himself. Richie’s mouth twitches, but he nods, ducking back down to scribble something.
Ruth blinks up at him with big, wide eyes, “With Stephanie Lauter.”
“Yup,” He nods, letting the -p pop.
Impossibly (or, he’d think impossible if he hadn’t know Ruth Fleming since he was six), her eyes get even bigger, “Did you--?!”
“Nope,” He interrupts, popping the -p even harder. Like verbal punctuation that he’s not talking about it.
“Hey!” Ruth whines, “I didn’t even--”
“You did not need to.”
‘Cause, like, she didn’t. Pete had known she’d ask about his completely non-existent sex-capades before he’d even gotten to detention. He offers her a close-lipped smile, almost like an apology he doesn’t really mean. But, eh. Whatever.
She huffs, slinking back in her seat with her arms crossed, “Don’t bully me.”
“Cool…” He laughs, focusing back in on the group in general, “‘kay, you know the drill. Delegate all the boring shit you don’t wanna do, I’ll figure it out.”
Both of them just sort of nod, Ruth snorts, and they go from there. It’s a well organized system.
Pete… knows he’s not really reliable (hell, he’s actively sort of trying not to be reliable, it just makes shit easier) but he’s always made sure to be good at this. Everything is total bullshit, but that’s his own doomsday conclusion, not Ruth and Richie’s with their 4.2 GPAs and extracurriculars and SAT prep panic. He’s not gonna be that asshole group project member who doesn’t do his part; just as long as they don’t expect him to listen in class or read the assignment breakdown to figure out his part himself.
Neither of them ask if he’s high.
They know he is, and he appreciates that they don’t bother asking in the judgy ‘ I know you are and I don’t like it’ way his parents do.
He’s gotten pointedly fucked up before detention, whole head just one floaty, easy swirl for the entire hour-and-forty-five. He’s a little more on Earth now, but not all the way. That was sort of the point.
He twirls his pen, staring down at the end of it and letting his mind go fuzzy as Richie and Ruth start duking out project planning around him. He can’t, totally, remember what the rubric entails. He probably could ask, or, like, find it on his own but he doesn’t really wanna.
The only big difference would be if there is a public speaking aspect, and Pete hasn’t cared about that since he was fourteen.
Something buzzes against his leg. He half processes it, instead zoning in on the smudgy blue mark his pen left along his thumb. He doesn’t really know how it even did that, he’s holding it by the bottom. No where near the uncapped, inky blue end of it.
“--Pete!” Ruth whines, like it hasn’t been the first time he said it. Shoot. Whoops.
He blinks hard, dragging his brain back into focus, “Hm?”
“Silence your phone in the library!” She says, pointedly, and. Oh. Huh. Cool. The buzzing had been his phone. Right.
“Shoot, sorry--” He yanks it out of his pocket, answering it before he can drag his thoughts together enough to read the caller ID, “Hey.”
Whoever is on the other end sniffs, a wet, snotty sound. For the first time he registers that he’s actively with two of the only people who would call him. Well, other than his parents, and they’ve generally given up on him enough to barely bother.
“Hi,” The person on the other end says. Not either of his parents. Huh.
He ignores the tiny, thirteen year old Pete in the back of his head that’s suddenly, nervously insisting he should hang up, “Sorry, whose--?”
“It’s Stephanie?” She says like a question, voice all thick and weird, like she’s either just finished crying or actively still is.
“Lauter,” He adds, unnecessarily. She’s the only Stephanie he knows, and she definitely knows her own last name. He’s a little too fuzzy to feel actually embarrassed by it.
Both Ruth and Richie, however, explode.
There’s a flurry of yellow-and-red in his periphery as Ruth scrambles out of her chair, latching onto his back like a fucking spider monkey. Across the table, Richie flops over his notebook until his whole head is shoved towards Pete’s chest.
Despite himself, he snorts hard into the phone.
“What?” Steph says on the other end. Oh. Right. Has she been talking?
“Nothin’, sorry.”
“Right. Well, um. Sorry, this is weird--” Her voice tips up at the end, and an absent part of Pete registers that she’s nervous.
“No, it’s fine. What do you want?”
He processes, once the words come out, that that was probably rude. And then Ruth kicks him sharply in the thigh. He course-corrects. Okay, definitely rude.
He considers apologizing, but he can’t wrap his head, totally, around how to say it in a way that isn’t more objectively confusing than anything. Plus, if she didn’t think he was being rude, or something, he doesn’t want to, like, introduce it as a concept.
“I, um, sorry. I’m actually calling you off a payphone outside of Pasqualli’s, if you can believe it? My, um--”
“Why?” He interrupts, before he realizes she was still talking. He just… genuinely hadn’t even known there was a payphone outside of Pasqualli’s. Or, really, still in Hatchetfield.
He’d just assumed those had gone generally extinct, like VHS players and floppy disks. Which, maybe he’s a hypocrite, because there are definitely both of those in his home right now. But his parents are old, so, like. His household is more the exception and not the standard.
Richie battering rams the top of his head against Pete’s chest and he zones back in.
He’s really gotta stop getting distracted; but, hey, maybe he’s just cursed to be forever slightly too high for every situation he gets himself into involving Stephanie Lauter.
“My dad…” Steph is sniffing again on the other end, “My dad took my phone.”
“Oh. For detention?”
“Obviously!” She snaps.
That’s complete bullshit, actually, he thinks. Steph gets in trouble for what Pete’s pretty sure is the first time ever, and her dad takes her phone? Christ, Pete’s parents didn’t even talk to him about it.
Well, though, probably has more to do with how much Pete’s managed to wear them down over the past couple years, but still.
“That sucks,” he says, instead. Because, he’s pretty sure, even all swirly-headed and spacey, that saying anything more specific than that would probably be insane.
“Yeah, but, whatever! That’s not important!” She says too quickly, voice sharp and annoyed and he, honestly, isn’t sure if it’s his fault or not.
“... okay?” He manages, as Richie and Ruth hiss questions at him that he’s distinctly ignoring.
“Do you, um. Just. Can you get me weed?” She says, all in a rush, her voice dropping barely perceptible right at the end. It confuses him for a second before it clicks. Oh. She doesn’t want to chance anyone overhearing her asking for drugs.
He has to curl his tongue back and bite down on it with his molars to stop from laughing at her. It feels mean, “... what?”
“What is she saying?” Ruth whispers frantically, rocking him back and forth so hard the front two legs of his chair lift off the ground for a second, “Pete! What the fuck is she saying?!”
“I’m not. I’m gonna say it again, asshole,” She snaps, “Can you or can you not? Because I fucking… I can’t just...”
“Woah, cool it, one sec,” Pete mumbles, extracting himself from the pile of Ruth-Richie, much to their audible disgust and displeasure. He shakes his head hard, twice, trying to sober up even… at all. It’s not… actually effective, but he’s gotten kind of okay at pretending it is. It’s just, like, masking times ten. He tucks himself between shelves, alongside the three hundreds of Social Sciences.
“Wait, okay. Run it back. Why do you need weed?”
“I don’t need-- Ugh,” She huffs, like the auditory equivalent of rolling her eyes, before sounding so desperate Pete winces, “Just. Can you? Please?”
He tries to walk himself through what the fuck she could be talking about, but he doesn’t really get far enough to make much of a difference. Though, he’s at least somewhat convinced this is some contrived sting operation.
He should probably care more about that.
He doesn’t, really, though.
“Kinda sounds like you do need it? I mean, I can--”
“Whatever, it’s stupid. I never should have--”
“No, no, shut up. You’re okay. And, like I said, I can. I just really would appreciate, like, context.”
“It’s stupid,” She repeats, voice twisting more and more panicked as she speaks, which Pete… doesn't think he's causing, but he’s still definitely not helping, “I’m just… I’m such a good daughter. Like such a good fucking daughter, and I get in trouble one time and he takes my phone. And, I’m clearly too freaking dumb to actually be as smart as he wants me to be because I keep dropping my limit notation, even though I study every fucking night, and--”
Ah. Fuck. Okay. Pete probably shouldn’t get Stephanie Lauter weed. It’s not like he doesn’t use it as a coping mechanism. He does. Fully, and wholeheartedly. It’s a fucking stellar coping mechanism when you don’t care about your life going anywhere.
He just… is pretty sure this one of those things he should be hypocritical about instead of letting Stephanie fucking Lauter become reliant on marijuana.
“Woah, that’s a lot.” he says, instead of all that, though. Which is an objectively worse response, but, the other one requires… too many words right now to explain.
“I just want to give him an actual reason to be mad,” She says, sounding embarrassed, which makes him feel like a shithead, “But… but that sounds childish, and… and stupid. But I already told you it was going to be stupid, so you can’t be an asshole about that.”
He snorts, “Wasn’t planning on it.”
She sniffs.
“Look, okay,” he says, plan only half formed in his head, “Why don’t I help you study first? Sounds like the whole problem stems from, fuckinnn' calculus? And, like. I’m good at calculus.”
“I don’t need a fucking tutor,” Steph snaps, but her voice is still all weepy, which kinda muffles the heat of the whole thing, “I am a fucking tutor.”
“Yeah, okay. Then tutor me.”
“What?”
“Think of it as tutoring me. But, like… my studying technique is walking you through shit.”
She snorts, damply, “That’s dumb as fuck.”
“Yeah, well.” He shrugs, even though she can’t see it, “So…?”
The other line goes quiet for a beat. And then a second. And then a third. Or maybe it’s just the first beat, and Pete’s sense of time is sorta fucked right now. All draggy-out and stoned.
“Fine.”
“Fine?”
“Yes. Fine,” She says, reluctantly, “We can try it. But if it doesn’t work, you aren’t allowed to ever mention it again.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Want to…” She pauses again, and then clears the teariness from her throat to ask with more confidence than Pete was expecting, “Do you want to meet me at Pasqualli’s? Have our first tutoring session?”
“Yeah, sure… actually, one second,” He side steps, poking his head around the shelf to look at his friends. He, actually, ends up looking above both their heads. Their table is empty.
Ruth and Richie meet his eyes, both crawled out of their seats and pressed against the other side of the bookcase like one of those fucking Scooby Doo around the corner shots.
“Is it okay if I go hang out with Stephanie Lauter? I promise I’ll do my part at home,” He whispers, unnecessarily.
“Where?” Richie hisses back.
“Pasqualli’s?”
Ruth gasps so loud that it completely nullifies the already pointless whispering, “She wants to suck you off already?!”
“What the fuck--?”
“It’s Pasqualli’s, Peter,” Richie elaborates, like he’s the insane one.
[“... Pete…?"] Steph says, muffled from his phone speaker.
“Oh. Shit, yeah. One another second-- Is that a fucking yes?”
“Yes! Obviously!” Ruth insists, wide eyed.
“You baka idiot!” Richie finishes, succinctly.
“Yeah, Steph, I’ll be there in like… fifteen?”
She lets out a little sigh of… maybe relief? Pete can’t tell. She seemed a little too reluctant to accept his help to now be glad she’s still getting it.
“Okay. Good. See you then.”
A realization clicks together in his head, belated and suddenly too important for him to hold off on it.
“How’d you get my number, anyway?”
“Oh,” She sort of giggles, slightly, and then sounds sort of surprised by it, “My dad’s the mayor.”
“Wow, what a fuckin’... terrifying answer,” He snorts. What the fuck does that even mean?
“Yeah, I know. Sorry.”
“You’re good."
“See you soon?” She says again. Even though she just said it.
“See you soon.” He confirms. Since they’re repeating themselves. And then, he has a second, smaller realization, “Oh, fuck. Hey, and Steph?”
“Yeah?” She says, half-laughing, probably at him.
“If this doesn’t work, I can definitely get you drugs.”
She laughs, for real that time, “... thanks, Pete.”
“No problem.”