The Next Day
It has been a day after I first met Bev. I went to the library as I had planned before. Speaking of her, she was just so beautiful like an angel. Her eyes, her hair, her smile, and everything about her was just lovely. Even if I managed to wipe the goofy grin that I had on my chubby face, I could not get her off of my mind. If anything, she had set my mind and my heart ablaze.
As soon as I entered the library's domain, I proceeded to a nearby table and put my belongings on it. I took a seat and I found a postcard lying down below me. At first, the postcard seemed unassuming until an idea popped up in my mind.
"Your hair is winter fire, January embers, my heart burns there too," I whispered in delight, writing out my heart's confessions on the postcard to the girl who got my cheeks flaring red. I smiled as I ended the poem. I kept on wondering if I was ever going to meet her again, especially in the town I recently moved in.
After quite a while, I stood up to stretch my body and walked to a bookshelf not far away. There was a book titled The History of Derry, and I took the book to read. I flipped through many pages, later stumbling to a section of the book that troubled me. Series of stories about mysterious tragedies and sudden disappearances throughout the centuries were recorded in the few pages I had read so far. I read further into them up until the story about a headless boy from the gas explosion in an Easter egg hunt decades ago.
As I dive myself further into the book, I heard the sound of the wind whooshed from behind. I glanced back to have a look of what it was and saw a red balloon gliding towards a door. Curiosity got the best of me and I followed wherever the red balloon went, only to see an egg in front of my eyes. This reminds me of Easter back in my hometown. Without hesitation, I continued to follow the trail, in which another egg appeared after the other. Not long, I found myself in the darkness that inhabited the basement. Seeing an egg nearby, I got it from the floor before the lights went awry.
I wondered what had gone wrong before seeing a dark apparition passing by the library archives and catalogs. Dumbstricken, I looked back to find a way out before seeing a boy slowly walking down the stairs.
"Hello, egg boy."
It was at that moment I realized that he was the headless boy from the story I had read minutes ago. Explosives were being set up on the stairs as I stared at him with fear quivering within me. He approached me when my feet began to set off in response to my reflexes. I dashed through the shelves as he followed me from behind.
"Egg boy," the boy said when I found a door nearby. I opened it before he could get a hold of me, but ended up bumping into the librarian. The librarian was as startled as I was. I stared back to see if he crept behind me, only to find nothing.
I turned back to the librarian and apologized to him before going back to gather my bag and books and left the library to go home. Man, it had been quite a disturbing discovery to see a headless boy in the basement. I pondered if this day could get any worse.
I continued to walk as if nothing had ever happened, not long before hearing someone asking me, "Where do you think you are going, tits?"
An "oh, no" reflex sparked my legs to run, only running into a boy with messy, black hair. Then two other boys grabbed my limbs and pulled my shirt to cover my face before bringing me to a menacing face with a mullet.
While they made fun of Michael Jackson and blasted a fire from the lighter, I kept on begging for their mercy.
"Get off me!" I repeatedly cried out for help to a passing car. However, no one answered.
The boys kept on punching my face until my nose bled dark red while Henry muttered something to me before he unsheathed a knife.
"Henry, please..." I implored, but had done nothing to stop him from carving the letter H on my belly. I winched from the immediate suffering it inflicted.
Henry kept on blurting out string of curses upon me before an ingenious idea dawned in my mind a second later. Like a knee jerk reflex, I kicked Henry in the place where the sun did not shine, plunging myself into the earth down below.
I could hear the boys yelling at each other, deciding to hunt me down. With time ticking, I rolled and ran with all of my might before they had another chance to hurt me again. I jumped through the rocks and drifted through the water coursing in the river. I took a peek behind, and they were out of my sight.
Even though it was a victory for me then, the pain from my wounds and bruises caused me to stumble to the rocky ground. I huddled my body together to cope with the agony. When I could not handle it anymore, I screamed as quietly as I could before hearing a girl's soft voice not far away from where I was.
"Guys, I heard someone screaming."
"Oh, y-you have g-good ears, Ja-Ja-Jasmine," another voice, this time from a boy, said, "c-c-can you l-lead us to h-him or her?"
"Sure thing, Bill."
A minute later, I found myself surrounded with four boys and a girl. I didn't know what to say or do. Could it be just my imagination?
"Are you guys Pennywise?"
"No," a girl with black wavy hair spoke dreamily, "we just happened to hear you screaming in pain." I could see her eyes brimming with concern and her face beginning to go pale.
"B-by all me-means, we are not Pe-Pennywise," a boy with brown hair stuttered.
"Then who are you guys?" I asked, wanting to reassure myself that they are not Pennywise.
"My-my name is B-Bill," answered the stutterer.
"I am Richie," said the boy with curly, dark hair and thick-rimmed glasses, "How are you going?"
"I am Eddie," said the shorter of the boys with a weak smile.
"Stan's my name," said by the boy with light brown curly hair.
"And I am Jasmine, but you can also call me Jaz. What is your name?" the girl wearing a Care Bear t-shirt and pink rain boots inquired as she squatted to meet my eyes.
"My name is Ben," I replied.
Jaz spoke as she tried to hold back her tears, "Oh, nice to meet you Ben. By the way, you look like you need some help..."
"Yeah, you look like you are hurt by fucking Bowers!" Richie exclaimed.
"We need to get him to the pharmacy quick," Eddie told the others after looking at how serious my injuries are.
"Al-alright, Ben, y-y-you can h-have a ride w-with me," Bill took me to a seat behind his bicycle seat while the rest were waiting for us in their bicycles. I got onto my seat and held on Bill's back.
"Are we ready yet?" asked Stan.
"Yeah, we-we are!" And off we went to the roads that awaited us. We rode as fast as though there were ambulances during an emergency.
After a few minutes and several "health lectures" delivered by Eddie, we were right at the alley behind where the pharmacy was. Bill propped up a makeshift chair for me to sit on while the others were discussing who should be getting the medicine.
“R-Richie, wait here,” Bill instructed Richie, who were standing nearby me, before joining with Jaz and the other boys towards the pharmacy.
"I'm glad I got to meet you before you died," Richie said to me with a blank expression. Everything went silent since that.
Several Minutes Later
"I need to focus right now," Eddie told everyone as he applied bandages and stitches to my wounds.
"You need to focus now?" Stan asked.
"Yeah." Eddie continued to tend to my wounds as Richie, Stan, and Jaz watched. The boys kept on arguing, while Jaz remained calm and quiet with her eyes scrutinized towards the injury. Seconds later, I could see Bill and a girl walking towards me. And wait, was that girl Bev?
The redhead then asked me, "Are you okay? It looks like it hurts."
"No, I'm good," I lied, trying to excuse myself from saying that it was Henry who hurt me, "I just fell."
"Right in the head of Bowers," Richie blurted out, causing uneasiness to knot in our stomachs. Bill quickly admonished Richie, but the latter defended his statement as it was the truth.
"Are you sure you got the right things to fix them up?" Bev asked with a smirk, ignoring the others. Tints of red began to circulate up to my cheeks as I beamed with embarrassment.
"You know, I-I got, I-I-I mean, we w-w-will take care of him. Thanks again, Beverly."
"Sure," Bev replied, "Maybe I will see you guys around."
"Yeah, we-we-we are thinking of going to the quarry to-to-tomorrow."
"Good to know, thanks," Bev happily agreed.
"Beverly, maybe we can meet up at this place again tomorrow," Jaz suggested before Bev thanked her and left, resuming with our talk.
"W-why do we bring up Bo-Bowers to her?" Bill questioned. I also wondered why.
"What did she do?" I asked innocently, having no clue of what was going on as I was relatively new to Derry.
"More like who didn't she do. From what I heard, the list is longer than my wang..." Richie answered as Jaz's cheeks flushed a bit in confusion.
"That's not saying much," Stan chortled at Richie's remark.
"She and I are just classmates in English class, but man, I really feel her," Jaz murmured sadly "She does not deserve all the suffering Greta made her feel..."
"Basically, the bitches who bully her all pee rose water," Richie interjected.
After several words were exchanged between each of us, I could see Jaz heading towards her bike.
"Guys, I will be going back home now," Jaz said as she plopped herself onto her bike and rode away, waving at us. "See y'all tomorrow."
We all said our goodbyes to her and went on with our conversations about what happened to me. Out of all the days, this was both my luckiest and unluckiest day.