cherry bomb ➵ Richie Tozier

twenty six

"Where are you taking me, Rich?" I asked with a giggle.

It was the last week of school and I was ready to get out of here. Now, Richie had me roaming the halls during lunch period. That could mean absolutely nothing good.

We rounded another corner and went straight out to the courtyard of the school. I gasped, looking up at the graffitied outside wall of the school. "Richie what the fuck did you do?" I asked, giggling at the work of art in front of me.

A great big heart had been painted on the wall in spray paint, "R+J" in big bold letters in the middle of them. Richie smirked at his work and pulled me into his embrace planting a sloppy kiss on my cheek.

"I spray painting our initials in a heart on the outside wall of the school, duh." he said proudly. I rolled my eyes and pulled away from him slightly, still shocked and kind of flattered by his action.

"Do you want to do something?" Richie asked casually, reaching into his backpack to pull something out.

"Like what?" I responded, still gazing at the big heart on the wall.

"I don't know," he began, placing a spray paint bottle in my hand, "whatever you want to do."

I smirked at him before breaking out into a wide grin, taking the spray paint and shaking the can.

It was wild how easily things came with Richie. We went from constant fighting to being an actual couple, and I was glad we did. I enjoyed hanging out with him, and I was glad he was in my life. He completed me. I definitely spent time with my other friends, but not as much as I spent time with Richie. Which made sense I guess, he was my boyfriend.

I made two O's right next to each other with the spray paint, a chuckle escaping my face as I connected them with a long U at the bottom.

A dick.

I drew a dick on the side of the school.

"MISS ASHER, WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?"

Principal Wiseman was standing in front of me, tapping his foot with a fuming expression on his face.

He had caught us red handed in the act.

♦︎

"Mr. Asher, sir, as much as I'd like to just let her off the hook, I simply cannot do that! She was caught defacing school property! She was drawing crude images on the side of the school, sir! I saw it myself! That's all the evidence I need!"

I sat in the small office silently as my father tried to reason with the principal. My mother sat next to me, equally quiet, watching my father intently. Richie was in a chair on the other side of my mother, and his father was in a chair on the other side of him. Mr. Tozier looked just as I had remembered him: tired and run down.

"Yes," my father started, putting on his negotiating face, "but, did you really catch her in the act? What proof do you have that it was actually her and not someone that looked like her? Maybe it was a different girl that's just trying to frame my daughter?" His case was almost laughable. Sometimes I wondered what my dad was like before he was a hard business man. I wondered what he was like when I was an infant. If he had any friends.

I had seen the serpent tattooed on his back, and it was pretty fucking badass. I'm sure at some point of his life  he had the badass personality to match it. Now he just seemed to be a greedy businessman trying to win as much money as he possibly could.

"No disrespect, Mister Asher, but I can assure you it was most definitely your daughter and Mister Tozier! I don't have a shadow of a doubt! You're only here to discuss the consequences."