Chapter Text
Richie Tozier is Stanley Uris's best friend.
Some, far less knowledgeable, folks might assume that this role is taken by Eddie Kaspbrak. The two banter and rile each other up like they are. It’s an easy assumption, although very wrong, because before Eddie—before the losers club—it was Stan and Richie in a sandbox fighting over a toy car that was easily lost to the sand.
Richie and Stan’s moms were best friends growing up. They had their kids at the same time, “in solidarity,” they’d joke, and Richie and Stan were practically built-in best friends from the moment they could sit up on their own.
Richie and Stan learned how to crawl in the same dingy living room carpet. Richie and Stan both got haircuts by the same dull pair of scissors. Both kids got their front teeth knocked out by the same table corner. Both kids got the same “don’t talk to strangers or clowns” Talk from their moms.
Stan does not recall a time before Richie. He has always been there. A constant, annoying staple in his life.
Bill came afterwards in Miss Doleson's Kindergarten class, all Superman smiles and a kind hand when Richie was tripped onto the wooden ground by Henry Bowers.
Bill had walked Richie to the nurse's office, and by the time the two came back, they’d already become friends.
Bill defended them against bullies even when his words failed him, and he was calm enough under pressure to defuse any trouble Richie got into.
A contrast to Stan's awkward companionship— forged from years of getting into Richie-related trouble. Stan couldn’t get Richie out of trouble—if anything, he was being dragged into it with him. He was grateful to have someone at least half sane take the reins on Richie.
Bill balanced them out. Steering them in the right direction.
A good addition.
A pair became a trio.
A year after that, Eddie started school — first grade, no prior schooling, and an overprotective mother who barely let him breathe funny without threatening to pull him out. It wasn’t instant with Eddie. Not like with Bill.
In fact, he’s pretty sure Richie kind of hated the guy. Eddie had made some off-beat comment about the state of Richie’s glasses—broken at the hilt from a bad trip between periods—and it had rubbed the jokester the wrong way.
Richie didn’t like him, and any attempt Bill made at speaking with Eddie was swatted by the boy's mother, who wrinkled her nose every time his stutter turned sentences longer than necessary. Eddie had looked mortified when his mother called Billy’s stutter a “mental deficit.” And Billy placated the woman’s faux sympathy with a polite smile. His attempt at befriending the boy was successfully swatted.
Stan’s mother told him that Eddie's father had passed away that summer. To show grace. He thinks Bill got a similar run down by his own parents because he kept trying to pull Eddie in. Each attempt was blocked or wasted.
Stan pretended not to see the way Bill's eyes had grown distant at the comment or the way he made his sentences shorter so his stutter didn’t take up as much time. Stan also pretended not to see Richie's jokes about Bill's stutter become more soft-hearted, less ignorantly mean, and more just making light of it. It was a small gesture, like he was saying, “don’t hide it.” In the only way Richie knew how. With jokes.
They barely spoke to Eddie in those first few weeks of school. Bill out of mortification, Richie out of blind loyalty to Bill, and Stan simply out of indifference.
Eddie was reclusive, quiet. It was his first time away from his mother for more than ten minutes. His first time navigating hallways without a hand attached to his wrist. He was easy to ignore.
Then one day Richie got in trouble—always loud, always too disruptive in class, always stretching the jokes too far—-and Ms. Smith made him sit away from Stan who he had been trying to make laugh, and away from bill who laughed at his stupid half-baked jokes, and sat him with the ‘good kid’ in class hoping he’d rub off on him. The good kid was Eddie Kaspbrak, sitting two tables down from the teacher's desk with a perfectly organized desk and straight back—personal hand sanitizer propped in the corner of the desk like a stapler.
Ms. Smith had no idea she was about to introduce the most diabolical pair to ever curse her classroom. She couldn’t have known that the wrong child would be influenced, stripping any good kid label Eddie had acquired from her. She had no idea that by pairing them off, she made their trio a quartet.
Four friends. One after the other. Then, a couple of years later, Mike, and Ben, and even Beverly freaking Marsh, if you could believe it.
“Sure, maybe I'll see you around,” Beverly had said to them in the alleyway outside the pharmacy with that all-knowing grin on her face before the worst summer of their lives bonded them all together. Once you’ve helped wipe blood from someone's bathroom window, caused by a killer clown, it's kind of hard not to be friends.
But let’s not forget who the founding pair had been. Let’s not forget their moms used to change the others' diapers. They have biweekly custody of their shared collectible Magneto figurine they spent two months saving their allowances for. Stan and Richie are the best friends. The original best fucking friends. Stan knows Richie better than he knows himself. When Richie makes a scandalous joke about sleeping with Eddie's mom, it's Stan he tries to give a high five to. When Stan gets his Kippah taken and is pushed to the ground, it's Richie who runs to his side to lift him off the ground.
Stan knows that when Richie was younger, he wanted to look like Clark Kent, so he convinced his mom he couldn’t see so she’d buy him real glasses. She has bad eyes too so it was believable—“hereditary” Richie said to his half blind mother. A facade—only for his vision to actually get horrifically bad afterwards, which required him to actually need glasses.
Stan knows that Richie didn’t know how to tie his own shoes, wearing Velcro or pre-tied shoes for a good few years, until Georgie asked him to tie his shoe once, and he was so mortified that he didn’t know how to, so he begged Stan to teach him. He swore Stan to secrecy and learned the bunny loop method at the ripe age of ten, just so he could be prepared next time when Georgie asks him to tie his shoes.
Stan knows that Richie is lactose intolerant, but refuses to stop eating dairy. He knows that Richie carries around Eddie's extra inhaler because of that really bad asthma attack Eddie had during one sleepover that scared the shit out of him. Stan knows that Richie nearly converted to Judaism because he wanted to have joint bar mitzvahs —he was used to constantly sharing those celebrations with Stan. Stan knows every small intricacy about his best friend. Every dumb blooper, every minor habit. Stan is observant—probably the most observant of the Losers club besides maybe Mike. He doesn’t voice his observations; he keeps it logged away in his mind, searching for variables he can’t name.
Stan knows that Richie, his best friend in the whole wide world—they pinky promised in pre-k, so it must be true—is hiding something.
Bill gets asked out by a girl a grade above them, and Mike talks about a girl from his church that he thinks is pretty—-Richie’s jokes turn too sharp. He fumbles with the punchline, and when they laugh, he sighs into his bones like he’s relieved.
Something is wrong. Stan waits for him to tell him. Like he always does. Big and fast and explosive with his words. Stan waits and waits and waits, and it never comes.
Richie can’t keep a secret.
It’s big. It must be. Something big enough that he’s keeping it from Stan. Stan is a bit annoyed by the secrecy of it all. Richie is a blabbermouth, but the one time Stan is actually curious, the boy does not speak on it. Not even to him—his best friend.
Stan has a few guesses. A suspicion he can’t voice out loud. An idea of what could be happening with Richie. But if he’s wrong—it’s a type of hurt Richie won’t be able to come back from because it came from Stan.
Richie has a crush.
On one of them.
Stan doesn’t know who it is, but he knows how people look when they’re trying not to look at the person they like.
And Richie is very, very bad at hiding where his eyes go.
Richie has a crush on one of them, and it’s not Beverly Marsh, and Stan knows what that means. He knows the scripture and words spoken on the sermons and the discussions playing on the radio. He knows what it means when boys don’t like girls.
He knows it’s not right.
But it’s Richie. His best friend.
Richie, who threw the first swing at a demonic clown and lived to tell the story. Richie, who was the only one of the losers to go to his Bar Mitzvah—the only one Stan really wanted to go. Richie who spends all his extra money on street fighters at the arcade. Richie who cried for three days after Eddie got his cast and was forbidden to see them. Richie who cracked jokes when Stanley scraped his knees while riding his bike for the first time so that he would laugh instead of cry.
Richie Tozier isn’t scary.
But all year, they talked about a disease. The one only certain types of people get. The ones that people write sermons about. They die by the hundreds. Thousands. A disease that no sanitizer or scrubbing of his hands can cleanse. “The devil can be your neighbor.” This is what his uncle from New York said—visiting and showing his knowledge of the rumors that Derry is only getting snippets of.
It scares Stan. Scares him like the sewers in Derry. Scares him like the painting in his father's office. Scares him like the Well house.
He knows the stakes of being right about this. He knows the damage it would cause if he’s wrong. So he stays quiet. He doesn’t ask. He doesn’t know how to.
Stan observes carefully. He says nothing. Even if he can see Richie twisting himself in knots. Stan could untwist him—loosen one knot so it’s less of a burden, but it would require Stan to say it out loud. It would require Stan to speak it into the air. Staining the oxygen with its finality.
Stan can’t say the word. The word that everyone else seems to say so cruelly to each other. The one the bowler kid used to say to all the loser kids. The one he used to say to Richie specifically.
It could be true.
Stan Uris hears the words soar out casually, and he can’t bear to repeat it out loud, knowing it might hurt Richie. But it’s the only word he knows to describe what he thinks Richie is.
Richie has shed tears about it. Stan hates to ever be the cause of that, and deep down, Stan knows that the worst part is that it could be true.
It could be true. Is that okay? Is it true enough to kill him over? Is Richie safe from the disease if he never utters the words? Is he safe if he never acts on those things? Can Richie stay alive if he hides it behind crude jokes and forceful smiles?
Stan doesn’t know enough to say.
His silence feels complicit. When Stan sees the graffiti in the bathroom stall—his best friend's name displayed sharply with the word he cannot say—Stan hides the graffiti by drawing a giant turtle covering the haunting word. Perhaps a moment of protectiveness or maybe cowardliness. Stan can’t decide if he feels good about it or horrible.
He tells no one about the graffiti. He sees two more notes on the walls of the bathroom and the Sharpie stains his hands enough that he needs to wash his hands twice.
Stanley stares at the magneto figurine in his room like he’d give him answers. Richie handed it back to him that morning for his biweekly turn with the shared toy. Although this time Richie says “don’t think he can stay at mine's for a while. My dad says I’m too old for toys. He’s throwing a fit. Probably safer with you.”
Safer. Richie had said it with genuine sadness—handing him Magneto two days earlier than he usually does. Stan almost asks. He almost asks if his dad has said something else. Maybe that’s why his eyes are puffy, and his hands shake when Stan grabs the figurine.
Stan doesn’t understand. He wants to understand, but he has no one to ask. No one he trusts to respond without judgment—without retribution.
Stanley tries to do research. He’s no Ben, but he tries his best. He goes to the public library—working backwards through the Dewey Decimal System, just like Hanscom taught them, searching for terms he could justify looking up without suspicion.
Public Health, Epidemics, Infectious Diseases.
Stanley looks over his shoulder like his father might be watching by the entrance. Stanley's hands flip through pages like Richie’s life might be on the line. It might be. Stanley doesn’t know. He needs to know.
He finds a genre—hopefully helpful to Stan in its content.
Applied Science and Medicine.
The genre was dense and academic, but years out of date. Stan’s fingers graze the spine of the books with hesitance.
The first book he tugs out of place Is about the history of plaques. This one was useless, focused on Black Death and cholera. But Stan noticed a brief, recent addendum, a small pamphlet stapled inside the back cover by the library itself. Maybe the very librarian walking slowly with a purple walker and old saltines in her pockets. The pamphlet mentioned a "modern crisis of the blood" striking major metropolitan areas. It used the word "Homosexual" exactly one time, hidden in a list of risk groups next to intravenous drug users. Stan’s stomach dropped.
He slammed the book shut, his face hot with horror or shame or maybe something far worse.
His reaction to it should’ve been enough to stop his research but he continues his search. Desperate for any morsel of information. Another book on Sexual Health and Wellness.
Stan pulled it fully out of the shelf simply because of its subtle cover—a bland blue—which would make it look like he was looking up biology homework. Inside, the language was clinical, vague, and terrifying. It spoke of transmission via "bodily fluids" and cautioned against "risky behaviors." There was a single, stark illustration of the human immune system under attack that made Stan’s stomach curl up. The caption focused on the destruction of T-cells. Stan almost has a panic attack.
He could find no mention of whether eating the same food, sharing a collectible figurine, or simply being friends was a risk. Stanley felt no reassurance that Richie was even safe. His dive into the unknown hasn’t quelled his curiosity at all; it's only made his fear worsen.
Stan learned that the disease was a death sentence and that it was somehow associated with the word he couldn't bring himself to say.
Richie could die.
Stan’s search for facts was a big fucking failure. It hadn't given him a sanitizer for the mind, or a shield for his friend. A way for him to protect himself or Richie or any of his friends. It had only confirmed the terror: the world saw Richie not as sick, but as bad. Sinful. Disgusting. Infectious.
Stanley Uris refused to believe it. Richie is reckless—but not this reckless. He wouldn’t go around being—well that—if he was hurting his friends in the process. It’s just not something he would do. So there has to be more. Something he isn’t realizing—something he needs to find to understand.
Stanley had no choice but to recruit the best person he could think of to help in his research on the topic. Ben Hanscom could probably find something more reliable than a stapled pamphlet. Stanley didn’t give him any details—not anything that could link this research back to Richie. Stanley wouldn’t be able to forgive himself if he’s the reason something like that got out about Richie.
It’s already punched into his stomach—taunted—scribbled into bathroom stalls—but Stanley refuses to add to that. He will not contribute fuel to the ever growing fire that seems to want to burn his best friend alive.
Stan gives Ben the vaguest prompt, cautious in his attempt at clarity.
“What diseases are people scared of right now?” Stan says as he flips through his comic book without reading it. The shower cap on his head—to stop the spiders from crawling into his head—gives him a sort of manic vibe that only makes the prompting more believable. Only Ben is here—adding reinforcements in the infrastructure of the clubhouse, distracted by screws and bolts.
“Are you doing a research paper or something?” Ben gives him the lie—Stan feeds into it slumping into his chair. A summer research paper sounds more believable than the covert gathering of information for the purpose of his peace of mind.
“Yeah…it’s hard.” Stan says lamely.
“I can help.”
Stan is grateful that Ben is such a genuinely nice guy. Stan should feel horrible for lying to him but it’s necessary.
The other boy approaches the question exactly how Stan expected him to. A puzzle he needs to finish once he starts. Ben did not squirm away or snap books shut when topics became too taboo. He is critical and factual and he doesn’t freak out like Stan does when he dives into the topic.
Ben Hanscom goes to the library like a shark smelling blood, eager to answer any questions Stan might ask. Because they’re friends. Stan feels a bit bad—like he’s using Ben’s eagerness to please others against him. But it’s for Richie.
Ben discovers a series of things that bring some clarity—fact checking things through instinct—pushing past suspicions and getting only the truth of the matter. “It’s not airborne.” Ben says, while writing something down in a notebook—citing the book for reference.
Right. Because this is meant to be for a research paper. Stanley takes notes as well—not even to sell the lie—simply because he needs the physical reminders. He needs to see the facts. To memorize them.
“you can't get it from sharing the same food—or touching someone.” Ben adds with a matter-of-fact voice.
“—or being in the same room
or using the same toilet.”
“-or sharing a toy?” Stan asks stupidly. Desperately. Stupid. What a stupid question.
“No. It’s nothing like that—newspapers exaggerate. Half of these news clips are based on rumors or fear-driven. I’m not really surprised it’s Derry, you know?” Ben says with a shrug, and Stan is taking it all in. It’s not all true. IT feeds off fear. Propaganda. Like the war. Like the holocaust. Like this disease. Stan thinks he understands just a bit.
“What if—“ Stan bites his tongue. How does he word the question without saying too much?
Ben pauses, looking at Stan patiently “What if what?”
“What if someone was…” Stan falters, and Ben seems to fill in the blank without much prompting.
“Gay?” Ben doesn’t say it with any sort of disgust or worry; he says it quietly—because they are in a library.
“Being gay doesn’t automatically mean you have the disease. It doesn't spread simply by being.” Ben snorts like that’s funny—like that idea would be ridiculous. As if he didn’t just read dozens of papers that implied exactly that. That being gay was a death wish.
As if Derry didn’t set a man on fire two months ago to stop the disease from spreading. The town had smelled like smoke and flesh and Stan had seen the burned car on his way out to the synagogue covered in nothing but a tarp and hazard tape that was torn down by the wind forgotten.
It’s a disease people die over.
It kills and it spreads and people all across the world are terrified because of it.
But Ben is saying it’s not. Stan trusts Ben—maybe more than he should for someone who’s so new to the friend group but he’s genuine and kind and Stan doesn’t think he’d mislead him.
“You have to do specific stuff to get it. Adults are just freaking out because they don’t understand it yet.” Ben says and Stan knows that adults are supposed to know more—they are supposed to be able to understand things better.
But he just experiences a summer of hell with a killer clown that no adult helped defend him from so maybe he’s a bit biased.
Stan lets out a steady breath. He’s relieved. Burning is not inevitable.
Ben Hanscom has no idea he was Stan’s accomplice.
Ben won’t know what he helped uncover. He won’t know the weight he helped take from Stan’s shoulders.
He won’t know he handed Stan the first real hope the boy has felt in weeks.
Richie is going to be okay.
Stan makes the conscious decision to leave Magneto in the clubhouse. “That way we can both see him whenever.” Stan tells Richie when his gaze lands on the propped figurine next to the tin can near the hammock.
“Does that mean I can touch it?” Eddie pokes and Richie scoffs “no way Eddie-bear, magnets is just for Stanny and me.”
Stan has never made this rule—this is simply something Richie took it upon himself to enforce.
“That’s no fair! I never get to touch it.” Eddie scoffs but does not attempt to grab the figurine—leaving it perched on its spot.
“It’s not meant for touching. You’re supposed to admire it. Like your mother’s beautiful bosom." Richie dodges the elbow to the face by Eddie. “Gross! You’re disgusting!”
“That’s not what your mother said, Ed’s.” Richie grins suggestively and he doesn’t dodge the smack to the back of his head.
Billy is laughing at them in his corner beside Mike who smiles at the two boys.
“Shut up! Don’t call me that!” Eddie fumes and the figurine is all but lost in their usual bark and bite.
Stan watches them from his little corner—huddled near his X-Men comic, watching with curious eyes. With Magneto as his witness Stanley darts his eyes away when Richie climbs into the hammock with Eddie.
They’ve been doing that a lot lately. Sharing that space together with the excuse of fairness. A made up rule Stan is convinced Eddie placed just so he can argue with Richie about it being his turn. Stan has sat in the hammock a total of two times—he doesn’t think he’ll be climbing into the hammock to wrestle Richie for it.
Sometimes Stan thinks Eddie does it on purpose.
Stan flipped the page of his X-Men comic—his eyes skimming the newest edition. He didn't care about the fight on the page—he cared about the edges. There was a mutant called Northstar, who could fly faster than sound. Everyone said he was arrogant, fast, and constantly running away from something. He reminded him of Richie a bit. A little too sharp—a little too loud.
His father had told him he should stop filling his head with fantasy’s. He lifts his nose at his comics and figurines and scolds him for not being just like him.
“You’re thirteen now, you’re a man. You should act accordingly.” His father was sharp and Stan looked to his mother who placates his father’s anger with a coffee and a tug at the wrist. A distraction. “Hes still my little boy.” His mother peppers a kiss to his forehead which he wipes away with mock disgust.
Stan hopes growing up doesn’t make you inevitably mean like his father.
“I got you s-s-something.” Bill pulls a book from his bag, shuffling through its content and placing it swiftly on his lap.
A book on birds. Stan’s eyes grow big with wonder and a soft smile forced its way into his face. “It’s the fourth edition.” Stan had been begging his mother to send him into the city to go to a more popularized bookstore to get it. The one in Derry only has the first and second one.
“Where did you get it?”
“B-b-b-Ben has an uncle in the c-city.” Bill smiles and he nods to himself. “Happy late B-Birthday.” And it’s the most acknowledgment Stan has gotten over the missed Bar Mitzvah.
Richie was the only one to go and at the time it had bothered him but he’s just happy everyone’s made up. It's been a rough summer.
He still wakes up with panic attacks as his morning alarm. He doesn’t think they’ll ever stop.
“I didn’t know Ben had family in the city.” There’s a lot of things they don’t know about the newest member of the club. He’s not from this town. He’s not from Derry.
“I wanna live in the city.” Richie informs “as far away from this shit town as possible.”
“Oh, yeah? They have diseases in the city, you know? You could die just from breathing the air!” Eddie says in his usual manic state. Stan stiffens at his words and darts his eyes towards Richie who just shrugs—despite the stiffness in his own shoulders.
“There’s diseases everywhere Eddie. No need to be such a girl about it.” Richie jokes—it falls flat.
“Excuse you.” Beverly, a girl, raises her eyebrow at him, her hairs gotten just a bit longer since she chopped it.
“Sorry, dearest.” Richie bows dramatically towards her —a gentlemen accent in his voice.
“What I meant is You don’t have to be such a paranoid germaphobe about it.” Richie turns to Eddie with a forced grin.
“I’m not paranoid! I heard it on the radio. People catch the flu and they just die!” Eddie waves his hands around, his foot poking at Richie’s ribs.
“It’s not the flu, moron.” Richie jabs and moron leaves his mouth with more bite than usual.
Stan watches with a pounding heart—watching a train wreck about to happen. He closes his book—hands stiff.
“You shouldn’t go to the city, it’s not safe.” Eddie says instead and Stan hears almost a silent plea in his words. Please don’t go. Don’t leave.
Stanley wishes they would just say what they mean. But he’s a hypocrite in that stance.
“I wanna move to Florida.” Mike says quietly from his little swing—Billy looks up at him from the ground where he sits. Stan can’t tell if Mike senses the tension—or if he just wanted to contribute to the conversation—but his words lighten up the mood.
“Florida is such an old people place to move to.” Richie jokes. “You gonna retire to Florida with mimosas and sunshine weather, old man?
“That’s the dream.” Mike smiles—Mike has such a timid smile that makes him seem younger then he is.
“I wanna go somewhere with lots of birds.” Stan rifles through his book—heavy in his lap. “Will we still keep in touch?” The words leave Stan’s mouth involuntarily.
His mom doesn’t speak to any of her childhood friends—only Mrs. Tozier. He knows that she had other friends. A big group. But they're either dead or long gone from here. Faded into obscurity. His dad doesn’t have any friends at all. He doesn’t know many adults that are still friends with the people they grew up with.
There’s a brief silence where everyone seems to take that in.
“Yeah, obviously Stan the man. No way you can get rid of us.“ Richie says with a big smile.
“Don’t be so depressing. We aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.” Eddie laughs even though he seems just as worried.
“We’ll always be friends?” Mike asks—quiet and pondering and Stan likes his quiet—he likes that he thinks before he speaks. Unlike half these losers.
“Yeah, of c-course. Losers stick together." Bill says with an easy smile.
The fear comes and goes.
As the end of summer passes, Richie's crush grows more apparent. Stan’s almost done reading through his bird book—he’s been taking his time, and it’s just Richie and Stan today in the Clubhouse.
Richie has been rifling through Stan’s X-men comic books. “I think I was Jewish in another life.” Richie says that every time he goes to the synagogue with Stan. He says he just feels like it’s where he’s meant to be but Stan thinks he just likes the free snacks. Or maybe he likes spending time with Stan’s family more than he lets on. Stan likes when he’s there too even if he does stick out like a sour thumb and purposely tries to make him laugh at inappropriate times. It all tends to drag on and on and on when he’s not around.
“A soul may return to Earth because it did not complete its mission in a previous lifetime. Do you have unfinished business Richie?” Stan looks Richie in the eye when he asks—a daring look if Stan is being honest. He’s been doing the whole silent support thing and Richie hasn’t really been catching it. Richie still freaks when certain topics are brought up—he still jokes about vulgar shit he has no actual idea about, and his crush has become suffocating in the presence of Stan’s knowing gaze.
Stan almost asked once while they walked past the Derry kissing bridge to get to the arcade. There had been familiar initials carved on the bridge that could’ve meant anything. But he knows Richie’s handwriting. He’s read his butchered handwritten Superman Fanzine Fiction. He knows Richie’s handwriting. Stan opened his mouth to ask—-but he clamped it shut when he saw how Richie avoided even looking at the carving. Stan let the moment pass.
He is trying to be supportive. But Richie isn’t taking any of it. He’s cancelled on two sleepovers at Stan’s house now. When they get to the quarry, he jumps before any of the boys take off their own shirts to jump.
Richie looks almost startled for a moment before laughing— “Yes—to avenge Eddie's mother. My long-lost love.”
“Right.” Stan rolls his eyes. “Eddie's mom.” He says slowly, like he couldn’t quite believe it.
“She has been done a great injustice. Raising Eddie Bear all by her lonesome. I gotta show her what a real man is.”
Stan can’t stand his best friend sometimes. “Right.”
Days later they are walking to Beverly's house. A temporary foster home before she moves in with her aunt across the country. It was a slow trudge as everyone seemed to speak over each other, trying to get as many words out before they got to their destination. Richie is doing what he does best. He’s talking. A mile a minute–nonetsop. Overflowing with words that mean nothing.
The group walks down the familiar path, and Richie spots a cat stuck in a tree. Meowing through his heart strings.
“Don’t climb that!” Eddie exclaims before it’s even a thought, but Richie is already hitching his legs over a branch to reach the terrified cat. “You’re gonna fall over and break your damn neck, Richie!” Eddie panics.
“B-Be careful rich.” Bill leans over the branches—maybe to help him?
Stan watches as Mike stands below the branch as if he’s going to catch the cat if it falls. A silent action no one points out but makes Stan laugh to himself.
“You’re freaking him out.” Ben points out as he gestures towards the shaking cat, inching away from Richie, big bug eyes.
“You’re freaking me out! Get down before you break something!” Eddie hisses and balls his fist in an angry fit. His own cast is still prominent on his arm.
“A b-b-bit to the left.” Bill says helpfully, and Stan snorts at Eddie's facial expression.
“They are so chaotic.” Beverly says quietly beside him—smiling fondly at their friends. Her eyes turned a bit sad. “I’ll miss you guys.”
“You’ll visit?”
“Or you can visit me? It’s no Florida but they’ve got plenty of bookstores. Lots of birds in the area.” She checked. Stan smiles at the thoughtfulness.
He wished they could’ve got to spend more time together before she leaves.
“Definitely.”
He never does visit.
“You’ll call once you get there right?”
“Yeah of course. I’ve got all you guys’ numbers memorized.”
Beverly never calls. Not even once.
IT was still around. Taking things from them before he ever came back.
Stanley hadn’t known that this would be the last time they’d all be hanging out together.
Beverly leaves and they all cried. Richie pretends he isn’t and Stan is covering his face with his shirt—mortified by his own emotions. He had been fine the days leading up to her departure but now he’s not.
This is for real. She’s moving away. She just became a member of their stupid little group and now she’s leaving.
“Hanging out with Beverly made me too emotional.” Richie wipes his face “I can’t stop crying. You think girliness is contagious?”
“Beep beep Richie.” They all say, sniffling back tears.
Ben joins a special carpentry school program. He had one more semester with them and when spring came he was already in a plane to some fancy school in Portland.
Stan has a fleeting thought that maybe Ben would reconnect with Beverly since they’re both out of Derry. Beverly never called. Neither did Ben. Stan pretends it doesn’t affect him to lose them both.
Richie is very vocal about his outrage. He refuses to go to the clubhouse when Ben never calls, and Stan forgets Magneto in the corner of the clubhouse. Lost and forgotten.
They said they’d be friends forever. It feels bitter to think about. Stan sticks close to Richie. Afraid that if he looks away, he won’t be a permanent person in his life anymore.
Eddie and Richie bicker. Stan joins sometimes—but it feels like he’s blended into the background. It feels easy to fade out–to step back and let it all unfold. He feels himself becoming smaller—more cowardly.
Stan was always such a coward.
Richie still hasn’t said anything to Stan. Stan doesn’t push. He covers slurs with turtles, covers the Fs, and colors the Ts with green, and he puts Richie's name in the prayer box. Praying for his health.
He tries not to see the burning corpse inside a lit up car—he tries to stop himself from imagining the corpse being Richie.
When Eddie opens up to them about his medication being placebos and how his mom insists he has a sickness. A sickness. A sickness she can’t name–a sickness he's apparently had all his life–drugging him with fear and uncertainty. When Eddie tells them that Stan thinks it sounds…familiar. Alarming in a way that sends shivers down the Jewish boy’s back. He puts Eddie's name in the prayer box, too.
Afraid of what might happen if he doesn’t.
He wishes Ben were here to tell him not to be afraid when teachers start talking about AIDs at school. He wishes Beverly were here to lighten the mood with her blunt commentary. He wishes all his friends were still here.
Stan watches the way his friends spring up tall. Puberty hits them like rocks to the face. Richie’s cheeks lose their baby fat, and Eddie's legs grow longer. Knobby and awkward, and they’re both acne-covered, and Stan hasn’t grown a damn inch. He’s trying not to be mad about it.
He feels stuck.
He stays the same height, and his friends loom taller than him. Mike works at a farm doing manual labor, and it shows as the months pass. His hair grows a bit longer—just like Richie’s. Everyone is changing. Bill's voice cracks less—he gets braces that make his face look odd.
Stan stays the same. He feels stuck in time. Never changing.
He misses his friends.