Control // It (2017) // Stanley Uris

Fifteen- "He never came back."

Mia made her way through the front door of her house and was greeted by her father. He didn't greet her by saying hello, she found him passed out on his favourite chair in front of the television, a beer in his hand and five empty ones on his coffee table. This was a very typical way to find him.

The young girl quietly picked up the empty bottles and recycled them, careful not to wake up her father. She then made her way up to her room.

She wanted to be alone. She was still confused about the earlier events of the day, and of the day before, and had no intention of spilling her guts to anyone else. She was mad, and scared, and upset all at once. How many people get stalked by a psychotic clown for two days straight and stay calm about it? None.

Opening the door to the room her and Henry shared, she found her brother laid out on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. Tears were streaming down his cheeks.

"H-Henry?" Mia stuttered. She mentally kicked herself for stuttering, obviously she'd picked up a habit from the Losers.

"Where the fuck did you go? You don't just get to stay out all night and disappear!" Henry sat up, wiping the tears from his cheeks. He was covered in dirt and grass, obviously from running around in the woods looking for her and Ben. It was strange that he hadn't changed his clothes yet.

"What you were doing wasn't right." Mia sighed, making her way over to her bed.

"Mia this isn't a fucking joke!" Henry growled at her, jumping to his feet and standing over her. He glared down at his little sister. "Where were you?"

"Yes it is! It all is! We hurt all of these people that would never hurt us. Why? Because we're the joke. We're fucking psychos." Mia glared at her older brother, "and for the record, I slept over at a friend's house. I was safe. Safer than I would've been here."

Henry shut his mouth for a minute, then sat down next to Mia on her bed. He sighed, and sniffled.

"Did I do that to you?" Henry lifted a hand up to Mia's face.

"Yes." The young girl shifted her weight backwards, backing away from her brother.

"I'm sorry."

"Why were you crying?" Mia tried to change the subject.

"I lost dad's knife. I thought he was going to actually kill me. I looked all night and I still couldn't find it." Henry sobbed. "And after everything that happened yesterday, Patrick, he, he never came back. We looked for him everywhere."

"Did you check his house? The school? Everywhere?" Mia's eyes widened. The memory of hearing Patrick say that he loved her rushed into her mind.

"He's just..." Henry paused, "missing..."

"No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no..." Mia repeated over and over, feeling a tight clench in her gut. It wasn't like Patrick to just disappear. Derry is a small town, there aren't very many places he could be.

Derry had a steadily growing list of missing kids, and Mia refused to believe that Patrick could be on it. She began to frantically shake her head back and forth, tears brimming her eyes.

"Mia?" Henry grew confused as he watched his sister's response.

"He..." Mia choked out, "he..."

"He what?" Henry reached his hand out towards his little sister and stopped her from shaking.

"He said that he loved me. And I just let him walk away."

"What? When?"

"We were hiding in a bush after we ran away. Patrick walked by and talked to himself, he talked about me. He was looking for me. I can't believe this." Mia began to hyperventilate, tears streaming from her eyes.

"Th-there's posters of him up around town now..." Henry mumbled. The two siblings stared off into empty space and thought about their lost friend. Patrick was the closest thing that Henry had to a brother, and the closest thing that Mia had to a boyfriend.

Mia couldn't wrap her head around his disappearance. It had all happened so fast, and if she'd known what was going to happen, maybe she would've done things differently. Maybe she would've just kept her mouth shut about Henry's actions. Maybe.

Her feelings for the boy were never as strong as his were for her, that much was obvious. The Bowers girl liked Patrick's company, and she liked that he liked her, but she never was able to reciprocate his feelings. But now that he was gone, Mia found herself thinking that maybe she had.

Because the heartbreaking truth of it all is that things are sweeter when they're lost. The love that we cannot have is the one that lasts the longest, hurts the deepest, and feels the strongest. Mia Bowers could feel her heart break.

"Did you love him, too?" Henry pulled his sister out of her negative trance.

"I..." Mia thought to herself, "I don't know." She concluded. As hard as she thought about Patrick and her love for him, there was something else that drew her attention. Any and all possible feelings she had for the Hockstetter boy had already been transferred somewhere else. "I don't think so."

The rest of the night was spent with little talking, and hardly any movement from any occupants of the Bowers home. The young girl sat on her bed and didn't move a muscle until she pulled her bed covers over her shoulders to go to sleep.

As the night progressed, a strange eeriness fell over the house. Mia Bowers was fast asleep, having cried her eyes out before finally slipping into darkness. Dreams danced in her mind and filled her every sense.

But soon enough, those dreams turned to nightmares. Images of the clown, of Patrick, Eddie, Bill and Stanley all became clear in her mind, and the young girl couldn't bear to watch the scene unfold. Her eyes shot open and she sat up, holding her blanket to her chest and shaking with fear. The room was pitch black, except for two small yellow lights radiating from the outside window. Upon further investigation, Mia could tell that those lights were actually two eyes staring at her.

And even after the eyes had left her window, which was almost immediately after she'd spotted them, Mia Bowers didn't sleep for the rest of the night.