Elaine watched as Richie stole a tuba from the local high school band. She covered her ears as the boy aggressively blew through the loud instrument. "Jesus." She muttered. He clearly did not have an ear for music. Behind her, the kids starred at Betty Ripsom's missing poster. They talked about what seemed to be usual lately. Missing kids.
"What the fuck dude!" Richie yelled, trying to pull the tuba away from it's owner. The boy eventually managed to pull the instrument away from Richie's reach. Elaine sighed, uncovering her ears. "Finally." Richie made his way back towards the group, Eddie squeezing in beside him, two vanilla ice cream cones in hand. He handed one to Richie, taking a bite from his own.
Who the hell bites ice cream? Richie licked his ice cream, approaching Elaine and using her head as an armrest. "Gee, I really wish I had ice cream right now." She pouted, eyeing Richie's cone. The boy pointed to Eddie as he devoured his cone, "Why didn't you tell, Eds?" Elaine shrugged in response.
"Edward! Why didn't you get Elaine any ice cream?!" Eddie shrunk then stood back tall. "She didn't ask!" Richie crossed his arms, "I'm going to need a better reason," The shorter boy rolled his eyes. "Why don't you just go get her one if it's so important?" Eddie sassed. "Because, I'm broke, I thought you knew this by now?" Stanley snorted, holding back a laugh.
Ignoring the situation beside them, Mike, Bill, Bev, and Ben stayed focused on the poster, making quiet chatter. Richie smirked, lifting his cone towards Elaine. "Here, Laine, you can have mine." Richie handed the girl his cone. "Thanks, Rich-" But before she could finish thanking him, Richie smeared the cold dessert all over her cheek.
"Are you kidding me?" Elaine groaned, wiping her cheek with her forearm. Stanley and Eddie broke out laughing, the rest of the kids not interested in their gimmicks. The ice cream only continued to spread on her cheek, the substance growing sticky. "Now, I must lick it up!" Elaine furrowed her eyebrows, Richie still grinning above her. "You... What?" She questioned.
Richie crouched to her eye level, "Y'know, 'cause i'm a gentleman, obviously." Still confused, Elaine was taken aback when Richie leant forward, beginning to kiss her face all over. Her eyes widened, ears growing hot. Watching the scene unfold, Stanley and Eddie laughed in unison, the duo hysterical.
Not knowing what to do, Elaine stood still, Richie plastering sloppy kisses against her cheeks. When he finally pulled away, a shiver ran down her back as she frantically searched for the right words. "I-I-" Richie wiped his face with the back of his hand, "Lainey, you've been spending way too much time with B-B-Bill lately." Bill flipped him off from a distance, not wanting to get involved.
"Let's do it again sometime, alright?" Her cheeks heated up, the two boys behind them cackling. Annoyed with all the laughing, Bill pursed his lips. "Will you l-leave her be?" Richie pushed up his glasses, a toothy grin displayed on his face. "Never." Bill groaned, losing his temper, "Did you guys even h-hear any of that?!" "Yeah, yeah, twenty-seven years; we get it." Richie mocked, Bill wanting to knock his teeth out.
"I swear to god, I'll punch you in the t-throat," Bill murmured. "Sorry, what was that?" Richie teased, a hand cupping his ear as if he was awaiting a very important secret. "Fuck you." Seeing how Richie was busy being an asshole, Bill insisted on re-explaining what he, Beverly, Ben, and Mike had discovered earlier.
He uncovered how every twenty-seven years, someone or rather something... Went around taking and killing kids in Derry. Elaine shook her head, the information just not adding up, "That makes no sense," Mike shrugged, guiding the group toward a bench to sit. "Hold on, so it comes out every what... Every twenty-seven years?" Eddie asked, still trying to process what he'd just been told.
Bill nodded. "So it comes out from... Wherever and just eats kids for like a year, and then what? It goes into hibernation?" Elaine and Richie shared a look, just as confused as rambling Eddie. "Maybe it's like, what do you call them?" Stanley added trying to find a word, "Cicadas!" He finally remembered. "You know, the bug that comes out every seventeen years?"
Richie snickered, leaning down to Elaine's height. "Only Stanley Urine would know that," The girl frowned, smacking Richie's arm in defence of her friend. "That's rude Rich," He only shrugged. "I'm rude." At least he was self-aware. Mike went on, "My grandfather thinks this town is cursed." Listening to Mike's words, the idea of Derry being haunted brought shivers to her spine.
She reached for Richie, searching for any form of comfort. He lazily threw an arm over the girl's shoulder, his chin resting on top of her head. He yawned, bored of what sounded like a made-up story. "He says that all the bad things that happen in this town are because of one thing. An evil thing." Elaine gulped, her leg bouncing up and down from her position on the bench.
She was particularly anxious today. "Something that feeds off of the souls of the people of Derry." Elaine's eye's widened at his final sentence. He could've at least found a lighter way to put it. Richie groaned, "Dude, why'd you have to make everything going on seem so dark?!" The boy placed a hand on top Elaine's leg, tired of watching it bounce up and down.
"Clearly, some perverted psycho is just going around snatching-" Stanley placed a hand over Richie's blabbing mouth. "But it can't be one thing, we all saw something different." Stanley reminded. "Maybe? But maybe, it knows what scares us the most and that's what we see?" Elaine felt her breathing speed up, her thoughts taking her back to Richie's house earlier that day.
Elaine's biggest fear was not just losing Chris, but being guilty for his death. The memory of the horrific day played constantly in her mind. The idea alone of it being her fault being all that roamed her mentality. Eddie cleared his throat, "I saw a leper." He shook, sucking in a breath as he tried to keep his asthma under control. "He was like a walking infection,"
Images of the sunflowers that surrounded the house, his fallen pill's on the dirty cement, and the creepy clown he'd seen that evening circled his mind. Elaine sent Eddie a reassuring smile, seeing how clearly shaken up he was by the situation. She then sat up, hesitantly informing the kids she'd seen something too. "I thought you said you didn't see anything... L-Like Richie?" Bill asked.
"Well, I hadn't. Until this morning when I saw-" Elaine paused, "I'm going to sound crazy." Richie delicately gripped her hand, urging her to go on. "It was Chris." She croaked, the boy's around her sucking in a breath. Beverly proceeded to send the girl a sympathetic look, Ben and Mike both sharing glances as they didn't know much regarding the situation.
"He just, sort of, appeared, and then he-" Elaine shuttered at the memory of her brother's evil smirk. "He just sh-shot himself. Right in f-front of me." Elaine choked back a sob, begging herself not to start crying. "It just felt so real. Like he was still here." She concluded, quickly wiping her eyes when she shed a tear. Stanley broke the silence, "But you didn't."
"Stan-" Richie started, glaring daggers in his direction. "No, because it isn't real." He defended, anxiously gripping his blonde curls. "None of it is real. Not Eddie's leper, not Bill seeing Georgie or Elaine seeing Chris." The girl looked up at Stanley's distraught expression. "Or the woman I keep seeing." He expressed, Richie shooting up, "Was she hot?" "No Richie! She's not hot!" Stanley snapped. Richie shrunk, "Jeez, I was just asking." He mumbled annoyed.
Stanley went on, "Her face is all messed up and she's like... it's all like a bad dream!" Watching Stan as he practically hyperventilated, Elaine sighed to herself. Thank god she wasn't the only one to feel this way. Elaine understood Stanley to an incredible extent. Sure, she and Richie got along but not in the same way. They were very different whereas Elaine and Stanley were the same. Both overly anxious adults in the body of young teenagers.
This was something the others would never even be able to imagine. Elaine and Stanley were both bothered by things out of their control, things they would never be able to fix. They were both scared of being left, afraid of the idea of a life without the Losers. Elaine truly loved Stanley, but like a brother. She just didn't love him hoe she loved Richie. She didn't love anyone how she loved Richie.
"No, I know the difference between a bad dream and real life, okay?" "What did you see? You saw something too?" Mike cleared his throat at Eddie's question, "Yes. You know that house that burned down on Harris Avenue?" He asked, though Elaine already knew where this was going. "I was inside when it burned down." Eddie's expression changed once again from curious to shocked.
"Before I was rescued, my parents were trapped in the room beside me, they were pushing and pounding on the door trying to get to me." Mike pushed back tears, "It was too hot." Sad looks were shared all around. "When the firemen finally found them, the skin on their bodies it had..." Mike paused, taking a deep breath before continuing. "It melted down to the bone." Eddie almost regretted asking Mike what he had seen.
Mike sighed as he wiped off some sweat from his face, "We're all afraid of something." "You got that right." Richie laughed awkwardly, looking rather uneasy. He looked around at the people who surrounded them, holding on tighter to Elaine's smaller hand. "Why, what are you afraid of?" Elaine asked, genuinely curious. The boy gulped, pushing his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose. "Clowns."