Mixtape

56

56

The wind trembles around him, blowing flurries of snow off of the drifting banks plowed off to the sides of the roads.
He doesn't want to be here. He really doesn't. Richie nearly threw up as he snuck out of the house through the backdoor, sliding on the ice that's frozen over the pathway around front. He panicked the whole way here, and now he continues to panic, just more quietly.
He burrows himself deeper into his coat, hiding his nose behind the scarf that Eddie left in his room. He doesn't want to be here, yet he is.
"Is your watch broken?" Beverly's voice drifts through the wind, more delicate than the snowflakes frosting against Richie's cracked lenses.
Richie looks up and sees her sitting there, crumpled up against the curb like a used napkin. She's hardly dressed for the weather, but that's Beverly for you. The girl will look fashionable even if it costs her frostbite.
A wave of deja vu washes over him, the feeling of familiarity surrounding him like a warm beach during the summer. There's no sun, though. No sun, no shore, no sand, just Beverly and the blistering cold they're bearing through right now.
Richie just shrugs. He doesn't have a snarky comeback, no classic one-liner to come out of the trashmouth, he just shrugs and stares at the slush pushed up against the curb that's turned black beneath all the tires it's been under.
"Come on, let's get inside," Beverly reaches out to touch his arm, but Richie takes a cautious step back just out of reach. She looks at him for a moment, hurt and betrayed, but then swallows her grief and leads the way in towards the gas station.
Richie doesn't pick up any snacks or drinks, he stands behind her with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the ground. It's easy to be quiet, he's had years of practicing being invisible to know exactly how to go about unnoticed. She offers him some of his favorite candies, but he shakes his head each time.
The two sit down at their familiar table in the laundromat, the sounds of dryers rotating clothes and fluorescent lights humming almost seem to swallow up all the silence, but then Beverly starts unwrapping a candy bar that seems deafening in comparison to the lack of noise around them.
"You seem happier," she says after a long while.
Richie nods, looking up towards the ceiling tiles. There's a brown, mysterious stain leaking through them, and part of him always wonders if it's blood. "I am," he says. "Didn't think I ever would be, but yeah, I am."
"That's good, I'm glad," she says in the way that sounds like she's not very glad at all. It's hard to be happy for other people when you're miserable, and Richie understands that.
"And you?" He asks, finally meeting her eye. She has these deep, crystallized ocean blue eyes. He thinks all that water is finally catching up to her, because he can see her drowning beneath the foam of the sea.
"I've been better," she laughs, a hint of sarcasm edging along her words.
Richie nods in agreement because, yeah, she has been better. Or has she? Has she always been this way and he was just too blinded to notice? Too desperate to care? Richie used to make up a lot of excuses for Henry's behavior when they were kids too, just because Henry was his only friend and he didn't want to be alone. Did Richie make up excuses for Bev just so he wouldn't be alone?
Now, he's not alone. He's not. He's got a brother, a true love, and all the best friends he could ask for. There's no need for Beverly's mind games anymore, yet he's still here giving her a second chance.
"I didn't want for any of it to happen," Beverly sighs out. "My dad. I didn't want that. I didn't want him to touch me, and I didn't want to be scared, and I didn't want to be hurt, and I didn't want to hurt him. I didn't want to. I still don't. I have- It keeps me up at night, I can hardly sleep. All I see is him on the floor, just... just.... bleeding."
Richie tries not to imagine it. "That's no excuse to be treating everyone like this, Bev."
She sighs weakly, covering her face with her slender hands. Her nails are painted a dark blue, chipping and uneven. "You let Henry get away with being a fucking asshole."
"You're not the only one with a bad father," he says slowly, but then, "I don't let him get away with anything. He's in therapy now, he's trying to better himself. Can you say the same?"
Beverly peeks between her spread fingers, not expecting that type of response. Henry Bowers in therapy? It seems almost unreasonable.
"Why do you feel the need to have everyone underneath you?" Richie asks quietly. "Why do you have to be so- so adored?"
Beverly is quiet for a few minutes, folding her hands on the table between them. After careful consideration, her tiny voice says "The truth is, I feel so helpless all the time that it's just easy to be worth something if I've got people looking up to me. I feel so out of control, like my dad took everything away from me. If I have control over you guys... it just hurts less. The truth is, I'm scared of being alone."
"We all are," Richie sighs, "That's why we're all friends in the first place. You think Mike liked being out on that farm by himself for years? Nobody visiting? You think Ben likes sitting in the library by himself because he doesn't have anybody else to talk to?"
"Well, no, but-" she stops herself, then shakes her head. "I know it's not right, Richie. It just makes me feel like I'm worth more than daddy's little girl. Sometimes I'm so afraid of letting men have power over me that I'll do anything to control them. I know it's not right, but I'm scared."
"I get that, I do, but Bill? You seriously think Bill would ever hurt you?" Richie scoffs. "Kid's a fucking marshmallow. He was so in love with you, and you took advantage of that. You don't need to have control over him, Beverly. That's just fucked up, and you ruined a perfectly good relationship."
"I know, I know!" She covers her ears in frustration, squeezing her eyes shut. "Same thing happened with Ben."
Richie pauses. "Ben said-"
"I know what Ben said," she sighs, "He'll tell everyone that lie before he admits what actually happened. We were kissing and I got scared, so I pushed him off and screamed at him to never come near me again. So he didn't. He blames himself, I know he does, but how am I supposed to tell him it's because all I could feel was my father touching me? I couldn't bear it."
Richie processes the new information for a few seconds, rewriting what was already told in his brain. Ben's lie was believable, but just to protect Beverly. He didn't want others to know about her PTSD, so he spun something else that painted him as the bad guy for breaking up with a girl who was in pain. Classic Hanscom, though. Always the hero.
"That's something you should talk to him about," Richie says. "He needs that closure, Beverly. Aren't you tired of things being like this? Aren't you tired of hurting people? Start with Ben. Give him the closure he deserves."
"I don't think that will make up for everything I've put these boys through," she says quietly, followed by "It won't make up for anything."
"It's a start," Richie says. "You can try to be better, and that's all you can do. Just show that you're actively trying to change. For fuck's sake, Bowers is trying, man. He's all kinds of different. So if he can, I know you can. You're so much stronger than this, Bev."
"You don't hate me?" She asks, tucking hair behind her ears. Richie still isn't used to her longer hair, he's expecting her to chop it all off any day now.
"Why would I?" he asks. He shrugs, clenches his teeth a little, then looks over at the dryer rotating clothes in a small cycle. "Whatever, man. Aren't you tired of just... all this complicated shit? I want things to be easy. We're practically adults, you know, there's no point in dragging shit out for so long. We learn, we heal, we grow."
After him and Beverly talk for a few more hours about the pains of being single, Richie claims that he has to get back home and explains that he can't be sneaking out anymore. She understands his desire to obey, especially after she sees the way he rubs his scarred hands when he talks about his parents' wishes.
The two stand up from the table, gathering all the trash that's accumulated and throwing it away in the proper bins. As they stand outside beneath the flickering streetlight, Beverly reaches out to take ahold of his damaged hands. He doesn't flinch away, but he doesn't grip her back the way he once would have.
Beverly traces her thumbs all along the jagged, raised scars. In a quiet, wavering voice, she whispers "We learn, we heal, we grow."
Richie gives her a kiss on the cheek when they hug goodbye, but he doesn't look back after he starts to walk away. She waits there for a few moments expecting him to turn around and give one last wave, but Richie turns the corner without looking back.
Muscle memory never really goes away. It's like riding a bike, or playing an instrument. You practice something for so long that it becomes impossible to forget. Sometimes, you'll do it without even realizing what it is that you're doing. Richie supposes that's how bad habits form, such as his old inclination to smoke down sticks of nicotine without even thinking about it. It was second nature to him, a comforting routine.
Richie's muscle memory causes his legs to walk down the wrong street, down the wrong block, and through the wrong neighborhood. He's not even aware of it, not until he's standing next to a mailbox that used to have his former name on it.
Richie looks up in shock, surprised at his own actions. He didn't realize where he was walking, his brain was set on autopilot and headed straight for home. Now, here he stands, facing the very house he was abandoned in alone for weeks.
There's a new car in the driveway. Richie stares at it, his eyes reading the license plate and glancing at the bumperstickers plastered in the rear window. Then, he brings his attention to the porch. They changed the shutters to a burgundy color. It matches the exterior better than the eggshell white his mother insisted on.
Richie walks around the mailbox, noting the outlines of where six stickers used to spell TOZIER. Now, the mailbox doesn't say anything, but those sunbleached outlines are still prominent enough in his memory.
He approaches the side of the house, his eyes moving over the area where a garden used to be. It's filled with pebbles and cobblestones now, a path that leads out to the back patio. There's no trellis with vines crawling up it anymore, no overgrown weeds to be taken care of. No sickening rose smell.
Richie looks down in the snow and remembers the way Eddie's body fell through, his arm softening the blow but crumbling in the process. A hectic night. One he never forgave himself for.
Richie realizes that his own footprints are now in the yard of a stranger's home, and if he goes any further, it might be considered trespassing. He shakes his head and starts to back up, fleeing from the blackened spot that takes up most of his memories. This house is a hell hole, or at least that's how he feels about it. Too many bad memories. Too much silence.
Richie runs home to burn off the calories he ate from dinner that night. His heart burns in his chest, bile rising in his throat, but he keeps running. He tastes tangy iron on the back of his tongue. He keeps running.
He doesn't stop until he's unlocking the back door to his new home, his real home. He shuts the door behind him, his chest heaving as if he just outran a murderer instead of his own past. He felt like that house would swallow him whole if he didn't outrun it, and now the Denbrough residence is the only place of safety he can find.
Once the boy catches his breath, he notices how empty and quiet the house is. He begins to panic, growing wary and afraid of every tired creak the house echoes in the pitch black silence. He feels alone. He feels as if he did get swallowed whole. Richie's biggest fear used to be going missing, but now he thinks it might be waking up as a 15 year old and having to relive that abandonment over and over again.
Richie tiptoes down the hallway, through the dining room, through the den, and to the secluded area where Zack and Sharon's bedroom is. The two converted Zack's office into a bedroom sometime after Bill's 16th birthday in order to give the kid the upstairs to himself, but Bill tells Richie that they only did it so that they can have sex without waking Bill up.
Richie prays that tonight isn't one of those nights. His hand hesitates above the doorknob, afraid of what he's going to see on the other side. He has vivid memories bubble up to the surface, the images of an empty bed and hollow closet haunting his mind. He's not afraid of what he'll find on the other side of this door, he's more afraid of finding nothing.
Even so, Richie's anxiety simply won't let him walk away if he doesn't make sure that his parents are still here. He needs to know if he got lost in the shell of his old home.
He pushes the door open, the hinges whining instead of creaking. He sees two sleeping figures illuminated by the slots of moonlight coming in through the large picture window parallel to their bed, so he lets out a sigh of relief and closes the door behind him.
Richie goes upstairs and turns right instead of left, heading towards Bill's room instead of his own. He stops outside the door when he hears shuffling coming from inside, but Richie is a pro at silent crying. He recognizes those muffled whimpers, and he knows how hard it is to force that pain down your dry throat. He can imagine the way Bill might be crying into a pillow to mask the sounds of his pain, only because it's a position that Richie is so unfortunately familiar with. He takes a step back, figuring that he better not interrupt something so private and vulnerable. Bill ended a two year relationship despite not wanting to, Richie knows his brother is going to need space. Which is fine. As long as Richie knows he's there, Richie feels safe. He feels less alone.
He finally pushes his own door open, not at all surprised by the lump curled up in his bed. This isn't surprising in the slightest bit, but it is unplanned for. After Beverly invited Richie out at the movies, Eddie had promised to not stop by that night since Richie wasn't going to be home. Yet, here the tiny one sleeps, curled up in Richie's sheets with a balled up sweater in his arms.
Richie finally exhales, feeling entirely safe. He starts to unzip his coat when he notices the journal sitting on his desk. Out of place, sitting in plain sight after Richie has been very specific about keeping it hidden up on his bookshelf.
Richie shrugs the jacket off, throwing it over the back of his chair as he approaches the desk. There's a pen jammed between the pages, marking a spot that's been freshly written in. As Richie opens the cover to read the new words, he hears bedsheets shuffling to the left of him.
"Hey," Eddie's sleepy voice calls out. "How was Bev?"
"Fine," Richie shrugs, shutting the journal and turning his attention back towards the one that feels more like a home than the house he's standing in. "Nothing really groundbreaking, but I'm tired now."
He hopes Eddie doesn't ask why Richie is sweaty, or why his breathing still isn't quite steady. He doesn't want to talk about his obsessive exercise, because then Eddie will get all concerned in that way that he does. Richie doesn't need to worry the boy any further than he already has. He's tired because of how hard he pushes himself, that's all.
"Then come here," Eddie lifts up the blanket up, closing his eyes again.
Accepting the invitation, Richie unbuttons his pants and slips out of them quickly before climbing in bed next to his loved one. It feels safe and familiar. It might've been the only thing that made his old house feel less like a prison.
Eddie's been there through it all, and Richie has a feeling he's always going to be here. They have that funny sort of way of always coming back to one another, no matter what happens.
He hopes Bill will find someone like that, because Richie feels nothing but guilt drench over him when he realizes he's falling asleep next to his significant other while his brother is down the hall, crying and alone.