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CHRIS PEDALLED HIS BIKE SLOWLY beside the group, most of which were walking alongside theirs. Except for Richie, who rode around them in circles.
"No, I love being your personal doorman, really," the bespeckled boy whined. Chris rubbed his forehead with his uninjured hand, feeling a headache beginning to pulsate. Too much had happened in such a short time. "Could you idiots have taken any longer?"
"All right, shut up, Richie," Eddie spit back, tired of the boys blabbering.
"Yeah, shut up, Richie," Stan followed.
"Oh, okay, trash the trashmouth, I get it. Hey, I wasn't the one scrubbing the bathroom floor and imagining that her sink went all Eddie's mom's vagina on Halloween."
Richie's words seemed to strike a nerve in Chris. Was it really his imagination? Chris had spent almost his entire childhood into his teenage years stuck in his imagination, refusing to swallow that this was the reality he was forced into. Could it be possible he was stuck there now?
"She didn't imagine it," Bill's voice brought Chris back down to Earth. Even if it wasn't Bill's intention, that simple sentence managed to remind Chris that for once he wasn't in it alone. "I... I saw something, too."
"You saw blood too?" Stan asked, but Chris had a feeling of understanding and dread in the pit of his stomach.
"Not blood. I saw G-G-Ge-Georgie." Bill's words struck the Marsh boy. He peered down instinctively at his injured hand, remembering the previous night. Half of Chris wanted to remove the Band-Aids and see if the cuts he could feel stinging were really there, or if he was truly part of a mass hysteria situation.
The other half just wanted to pretend the whole thing never happened. Though, is that really different from hiding in your imagination all your life?
"It seemed so real," Bill continued, everyone's undivided attention hanging off each word as they all too wondered if they were sane. "I mean, it seemed like him, but there was this..."
"The clown," Eddie's frail and shaking voice continued for him. It seemed those two simple words managed to seal their Summer's fate. It left a distaste in Chris's mouth. "Yeah, I saw him, too."
Bill's eyes scoured the group, seeing each scrunched-up face either full of confusion or fear as they nodded, confirming that this was real.
"Wait, can only virgins see this stuff?" Richie's voice abruptly burst the short silence. "Is that why I'm not seeing this shit?"
Chris wanted desperately to shoot back a scorching response. To once again push Richie from his high-horse and play into his incessant banter-- but he couldn't. He couldn't tear his eyes from the single speck of blood on his baby blue sneakers. He was hypnotized by the deep red. It constricted his throat from speaking.
