Fast footsteps thud over Eddie and Stanley's heads. The sneakers squeak as they go down the steps and Eddie twists his back to look between the cracks of the stairs. He hopes to see the scuffed white converse, but instead are met with a flash of black sneakers and long jeans. Eddie lets go of a soft sigh and turns back around as the footsteps hurry to the cafeteria doors.
"I want to go home." Eddie looks to Stanley, then to the floor.
"You say that every day," he comments and Stanley nods, as if his reason is obvious.
"I mean it every day." He lets his head fall back and hit the brick wall he leans on. Eddie can already sense the complaints coming on, so he opens his mouth to smother them all.
"We have four days of school left, counting today. I think you'll survive, Stan."
"Will I, Eddie?" He asks, his eyes trained on the steps above them. "Will I? Finals are next week and we still have these next four days to get through."
Guess Eddie's reassurance didn't do anything to block up the complaints..
"And I can't focus when Richie and his big mouth will be hanging around us."
Eddie lifts his gaze. Something stirs deep within his stomach. He can't pinpoint the feeling, but it's sickening and he doesn't like it. "You don't like Richie?" He asks.
Stanley keeps his eyes on the stairs, then glances at Eddie. "No- wait, yes. Hold on.." he shifts and sits straight, his eyes narrowed in confusion. "I don't don't like him," he says, his eyes focused on something far as he sorts through his thoughts.
Eddie's own eyes study Stanley intently, listening to every word that falls from his mouth. "We're in the same geometry class. He talks too much and gets everyone off topic."
Eddie nods, shrugging his shoulders. "Doesn't Mr. Irwin shut him up?" He asks and Stanley shakes his head, his eyebrows drawn.
"Mr. Irwin gets off topic more than Richie does."
"May-maybe you can juh-join my class," Bill says. Eddie jumps at the unexpectedness, turning to look over his shoulder. Bill's crouching down at the entrance underneath the stairs, a hand reached up to help himself dip. "Next suh-semester." Stanley looks off to the side as he thinks.
"That won't work. Classes switch next semester, remember? So if you do change to Bill's class, you could have it with Richie again," Eddie says as Bill gets settled on the floor. His back slouches with the weight of his backpack still strapped to his shoulders.
Stanley hums. "He's right."
Bill rolls his eyes in that older-brotherly way he hasn't lost. "Alright," he says and shakes his head. "I get it-t."
He pulls his backpack to his side, the straps still clinging to his shoulders. Bill unzips one of the smaller pockets and dips a hand in. Stanley watches, curious, as he searches before pulling out a deck of red and black cards. "I bru-brought Uno." He rolls the deck around in his hands as Eddie grins.
"Nice, Bill! Oh, Stan, you're going to lose again."
Stanley's eyes narrow, a hand reaching over to take the stack of cards from Bill. The edges are starting to curve and bend at the usage, the vibrant red fading down. A rubber band wraps tightly around them, securing them into place. "If I'm remembering correctly, you cheated last time, Eddie."
"I didn't cheat! I was getting water!"
"And walked behind me?"
"Guh-Guys," Bill said, his lips parted as his eyes dart from one boy to the other. Stanley looks over at him and visibly lowers his guard.
"You're not winning," he says, glancing at Eddie again.
Eddie shakes his head and shifts around to get more comfortable. "Yes I am."
Stanley doesn't respond, instead letting a finger flip fast through the cards. "Play during lunch?" Eddie asks.
"Well, yeah," Bill says with a soft shrug, "that's wuh-what we al-always do.."
Stanley hands the cards back and Bill tucks them into the front pocket again. As he does, the intruding roll of the bell sounds throughout the school.
Stanley closes his eyes and breaths out a sigh. "I'm going to kill myself," he says before leaning forward and getting to his feet.
Eddie gives him a sympathetic smile and follows Bill out from under the stairs. "Tuh-Time for Geome-metry," Bill says to Eddie as they climb the steps. Stanley hurries from behind them, trying to escape the roar of footsteps rushing down the hallway.
As his two friends round the corner, Stanley catches sight of Beverly trying to shove the door on Richie. He gets through, barely, his leg and backpack getting caught as she pushes on the metal. "Fuck you, Bev," Richie says, his voice carrying down the mezzanine. He stumbles inside and starts to walk away, a laughing Beverly jogging to keep up with his long strides.
Stanley's eyes roll, but there's no mark of annoyance. A hint of an amused smile plays at his lips, but before it can show he raises a hand and waves at the pair. Beverly sees him first, then Richie drags his eyes away from the posters on the wall to Stanley.
"Hey Stan," Beverly says as she and Richie walk over to him. They stand off to the side of the stairs, safely away from the herd of all grades. Richie watches as two figures push past the flow, hands emerging only for bodies to follow. Eddie looks over his shoulder, adjusting his backpack strap as Bill looks to Stanley.
"You left us, Stan," Eddie says as the two abandoned boys approach.
"W-We were almost kuh-killed."
Stanley looks at his friends, eyes slightly narrowed. "You look fine to me," he responds.
Eddie shakes his head, saying, "That's not the point."
Stanley rolls his eyes and face Beverly and Richie again. "What classes are you guys heading to?" He asks.
"Art class," Beverly says first.
"English," Richie says. "Learning about Julius Caesar at 8 in the morning gives me brain damage, but I prevail."
Bill smiles a little. "Ha-Has Mr. C-Cuh-Coyle sss..started the finals re-review yet?" Bill asks Richie, who only throws his hands up in a dramatic shrug.
"Guys, we should go," Beverly says as she watches the few students left walk up the gym steps. Richie hums and jumps into pace with Eddie, who looks at him out of the corner of his eye. Bill follows Stanley and Beverly down the hallway.
Later that day, Mr. Martinez waves a hand over the board, a finger ghosting over a blue line that represents the Tigris River. For the past few school days, a few teachers have been going over what they've taught throughout that first semester, while others cram the last chapter of material before Wednesday came and teachers were forced to review the semesters work.
Eddie breathed in deeply, lazily listening along. He's got all the notes down and also a vocabulary Quizlet from Bill, so he was set for studying later that night.
His phone buzzes from inside his pocket, gently tickling his thigh. He looks down at his legs, then looks back up at the board. He'll just check during lunch because even if Mr. Martinez is a chill teacher, he's still strict about cell phones. Another gentle vibrate. Eddie shifts his leg and a few beats later, he feels another.
He glances around at the people sitting next to him. In fear of bothering them with the pestering texts, he keeps his eyes trained on the board as he slips his phone out of his pocket.
He waits for Mr. Martinez to look at the board before dipping his gaze.
Richie
eds!!!
guess who finished the project - per your knightly request
eddio!!
He narrows his eyes and looks up at the board before turning around in his chair. Richie's behind him and across the classroom, but between the other students heads is a clear path. Richie catches Eddie's questioning eyes and breaks out in a grin. He glances to Mr. Martinez, still going on about geography and empires, before raising his phone and pointing to it. Eddie easily picks up what he's hinting and looks to his own phone.
Eddie
Did you do the project during class??
Richie
yeah
world history is easy peasy lemon squeezey, eds
Eddie
That's not my name
Richie
defiantly sounds like your name :):)
Eddie
ItS nOt
But thanks for getting it done
Now all we gotta do is present it
Richie
you're not gonna die on me when we present are you?
Eddie
No I'm not going to fucking die
I'm not that weak!
Richie
where did i ever say weak eds?
just seeing if i have to do any mouth to mouth ;););)
Eddie
That's gross 🤢🤢
Mr. Martinez's voice becomes more clear and Eddie snaps his attention up to the board. He's turned around again, still rambling on as he faces his students. Eddie slowly looks over his shoulder and sees Richie looking at him. He smiles, and Eddie playfully rolls his eyes.
The bell rings and all the upperclassmen rush down to lunch. Eddie takes his usual seat next to Richie as Beverly pushes everyone's lunches to the side. Richie and Bill were already there, the four waiting on Stanley to make his trip across the school.
"Seven, right?" Beverly asks Bill as he shuffles the Uno cards. He meets her eyes and a small smile pushes itself onto his lips.
"S-suh.. seven," he forces out. "We each guh-get sev.. seven."
Beverly hums and watches with slight interest as Bill riffle and bridge shuffled the deck. "Last time I played Uno was when I last got laid," Richie says before popping one of Beverly's grapes into his mouth.
"Oh yeah? And when was that?" Eddie asks.
"Ask your mom."
Bill snorts loudly, a smile cracking up onto his face once more. Eddie's eyebrows furrow, his mouth opening. "How's she going t- oh."
The joke clicked.
"That's disgusting. Take it back!" Richie laughs, shaking his head as he does. Bill sets the cards straight in his hands and looks to Beverly. She catches his eyes and raises an eyebrow, nodding her head to the two boys.
Just as Bill's responding, Stanley comes jogging up to the table. "Hey," he says as he falls onto the bench next to Bill.
"Glad for you to join us, Staniel," Richie says and Stanley sucks in another deep breath.
"I got caught up in the stairwell. Bowers was there."
"Bowers and his goons?" Beverly asks, her eyes narrowing in a swirl of disgust and concern.
Stanley nods his head and shakes it off. "It's fine. I went the other way." He looks to the cards resting in Bill's hands and pushes his books to the side. "Are we playing?" He asks and looks around at his friends, "Or what?"
Bill pushes out an airy laugh and starts sliding the cards around in a circle. His eyes are focused, making sure not to lose count. "Who's first?" He asks and places the deck in the middle, a single red 5 placed neatly beside it. Eddie slaps a red 9 down first before anyone else could. "Stanley, it's your turn."
He looks up from his bag of Cheeze-It's before sighing. He tugs out a blue 9 and places it in the pile, quickly going back to his crackers. Bill places his card, then Beverly, Richie, and it's back to Eddie again.
"Try and win with this," Eddie says, a grin on his face as he throws down a +4. "Green." Stan's eyes roll and he takes the needed amount from the deck. He places down a green +2, in which Bill stacks with a blue +2, making Beverly draw four.
Beverly Marsh is a collected person. She has her moments, sure, but who doesn't? Anger only contorts her near heavenly features when necessary.
Maybe it's not necessary for card games but, god, it's necessary for her.
She grabs the four and sits back, organizing her cards. Richie watches her with wary eyes, knowing exactly what her silence means. The two have sat in her basement multiple times playing card games, including the ones that involved drinking and stripping and gambling. Drinking and stripping were all for fun, something to get a good laugh out of. When they threw money into the mix it never mattered anyway, because at the end the two would pile it all up and save it away.
She places a card, a blue 8. Innocent enough. Richie follows it up with his waiting card. Eddie takes a second to think about his next move, his eyebrows furrowing and fingers grazing over the surface of the cards. He finally slips a card on top of Richie's, and waits for Stanley to go.
He does, placing a multicolored +4 in the center of the table. "Red," he says simply.
"I think yuh-yellow is b-better," Bill responds and places another multicolored +4 over Stanley's.
Beverly sucks in a sharp breath. "Draw eight, huh?" She asks.
Eddie's snickering to himself, watching with pure amusement as Beverly's smile falls completely from her face. "That's ruhite, luve!" Richie talks in one of his Voices. "Pip pip and tally ho. We don't got ul-day, do we now?"
"Oh, shut up, Richie," Beverly complains.
A pang of rejection strikes him hard. He forces out a laugh and sinks down into himself. No one seems to notice how his smile falls from his face.
shut up, richie
just shut up!
Bill and Stanley are focused on sharing Pretzels and Cheeze-Its. Eddie flips through his own cards to organize by color. Beverly's plotting her attack.
No one really notices.
Do they ever?
Richie shifts in his seat and thumbs a corner of his card, his eyes swirling deep as he wanders far into his own mind. No thoughts really pass through, but it's nice to seclude yourself from the bustle of high school cafeteria. Block all noises from your ears, all sights from your eyes until someone's calling your name. Someone saying,
"Richie."
He snaps out of it. His eyes dart up to Stanley, who's watching him with confused eyes. "So far in your own mind you can't hear us anymore?" Beverly asks. Her smile is back, and Richie breaths out a small breath of relief.
"Or far up his ass," Eddie says.
Richie snorts and he looks down at the boy beside him. "I think you're getting us switched up," he says and lifts a hand to flip two fingers around. Eddie's eyes roll, but the corners of his lips pick up.
~~~
Eddie pulls his hand up in a pathetic excuse for a wave. Stanley smiles a small bit in acknowledgement before turning around in the drivers seat, watching for cars as he backs out. Eddie feels inclined to watch his best friend drive away and down the street, but he doesn't want to put any nonexistent pressure on Stan.
Stan's such a good friend, Eddie thinks. It's a little out of the blue and random, but that doesn't make it any less true. Bill's there to look up to, the placeholder older brother in the friend group, but Stanley - Stan's the glue and the rock and the whole reason the group is there to begin with. The rumble of Stan's dads car drowns in with the other noises of Eddie's neighborhood.
He goes inside, feeling the sharp cold sweep past his legs and into the house. As his sneaker presses into an uneven floorboard, a long groan he can't quiet coming up past his foot, he prepares himself to hear-
"Is that you, Eddie?"
A sigh falls from his lips. He closes the door and twists the lock all in one breath and nods his head, even if his mother isn't there to see him. "Yes," he calls into the house, hoping his voice can travel deep enough for Sonia to hear. "Hey mom? I got a project I really need to finish before the week ends. So if you don't mind I'll be up in my room until dinner."
He yanks off his shoes and kicks them to the wall. His mother won't be happy about the messy discard of them, but they're out of the way and Eddie hopes that's enough for her. Yet deep down, despite all the false hopes smothering his anxiety, he knows that it won't be enough. It won't be enough because when it comes to Sonia Kaspbrak nothing is ever good enough.
Eddie goes up to his room, his backpack jumping on his back with each step until he's closing the door and also his eyes. Just then, when he's surrounded by blue walls does he allow himself to relish in the comfort of being alone.
His mom is still downstairs, doing whatever she does on a Tuesday afternoon. His mother's presence inside the house burns into Eddie's consciousness, mocking him, almost. But the excited yells of the neighbor's kids and the rumble of passing cars gives Eddie some sort of grounding sensation. That he isn't completely alone with a nasty fire inside this house.
Eddie detaches himself from the door and goes to his desk. If he's going to throw an excuse in his mother's face, he might as well stick to it. He pulls out his laptop and flips open the top, rummaging around in his backpack for other homework as it powers on.
He walks to his bed to organize, to keep the mess off his desk and somewhere else. He doesn't know if he should be grateful or disappointed he doesn't have much homework - knowing that Sonia will drag him downstairs and make him watch some boring TV shoe with her as she paints her nails.
Eddie turns, gearing himself up to half-focus on homework for the next hour or so until dinner. As he's making his way back to his desk, a memory from earlier that day pops into his head and his feet stutter to a stop.
Richie finished. They're done with the project.
"Oh," he says into the emptiness of his room. A thick feeling floods into his bones and stomach, but he forces his lips to curve upward. That's what he wanted, right? To be done with the project as soon as possible and for the two to go their separate ways?
Eddie's muscles strain and he drops his smile all together. The thick, unsettling feeling swirls and digs in deep. Eddie sticks two imaginary fingers into it, testing the waters, seeing what it is exactly. His fingers draw back and the unknowing of it all is as looming as ever.
He shakes his head, desperate to fling the thoughts away. He moves again, walking towards his desk and the unending swooping in his stomach seeps away. Homework, Eddie thinks simply. Get the homework done
And he does.
~~~
Eddie manages to dodge a handful of questions during dinner. They're always the same anyway.
Have you eaten all your lunch? Oh, Eddie, remember to take your pills. I don't have you take them for no reason. How was school? Still hanging around with those two boys? ...Beverly?
Of course she's asked about Beverly. He saw it coming the second he sat down at the table. For as long as Eddie can remember, Sonia always had this incurable need to judge and pick at Eddie's life. His friends, schoolwork, love life (if he had one). It's irritated Eddie to no end, itching under his skin and burning his fingertips, yet Sonia looked unbothered by how Eddie reacted.
He manages to keep his irritation at bay until he's up in his room. He's not the type to react violently, not the type to throw things or scream into his pillow. He stands in the middle of his room, inhaling deeply through his nose and releasing through his mouth, calming himself down.
The anger simmers and leaves his arms and legs aching. Now he's just tired. So very tired. He grabs his phone from the mess of blankets and climbs on, only sliding his legs halfway under the sheets.
The evening sun sweeps into his room, bathing his walls and carpet in gold. It won't last long, it usually never does. Soon the gold will water down to a normal sunlight white, Earth will continue to turn, and sunlight in all will seep away only to come roaring back 10 hours later.
He doesn't want to sleep just yet. It's still too early in the day to. He wants to text Bill and Stan and ask what they're up to, if they want to walk through the park and just hang out until curfew strikes and they have to make their way back home. His thumbs dance over the keyboard, debating with himself. As long as he's outside and not staring at a screen (unless it's with Sonia) his mother would be okay with it, right?
Dread pits itself inside Eddie once more at the idea of having to sit with his mother. A thick silence smothers the two, only broken up by the TV whenever she does drag Eddie downstairs. He types out the text and sends it off.
Bill responds within the minute. Not unusual, Bill's always been fast at responding. Not today, Eddie, it reads. I've got too much homework. Eddie's mouth twitches into a frown as he rereads Bill's words. Stanley's name and text pops up right after Eddie sent: Oh, okay. Stan?
i can't either, dad's making me study for finals
Well, great. Eddie doesn't respond and instead shuts off his phone and tosses it into the blankets near his feet. He rolls his head back, gently thudding with the headboard behind him.
Without Richie and their project, it gets quite boring after school. Richie and him may not have seen each other much in person, but their project was something to do. And sometimes, as much as Eddie hates admitting and even thinking about it, if Richie's deep green cursor appeared on the slideshows Eddie would find himself smiling at the screen.
Maybe, Eddie thinks, at the beginning I may have hated Rich, but not much anymore. How could he much anymore? Richie's taken him to the Aladdin, Yellow Cafe, thrown paint at Eddie and also himself through windows..
And Eddie's smiling again.
His eyes travel around his walls lazily, his mind wandering in and out of daydreams and memories. Everything's hazy in his mind and yet nothing has ever been sharper.
Eddie doesn't know when the idea floated into the mess of replayed memories, but next thing he knows is he's reaching for his phone again. Never in a million years does he expect this of himself, and yet there he is, thumbs dancing and dipping onto the keypad with set determination.
He sends the text and with it being Richie and his clumsy yet perfectly put-together personality, Eddie doesn't expect a response back horribly soon. So in a way to busy himself, he gets up out of bed and goes to charge his laptop.
His fingers prod at the rubber of the charger port, right until it cuts off because it's snugly plugged into the laptop. A blue light flashes against Eddie's skin, signaling that it is, in fact, charging. A piercing scream from outside his window makes his head snap up and his heart skip a beat, but the scream dissolves into laughter and Eddie's shoulders fall back in relief.
His feet carry him away from his desk and to the window. There's a tree in the front yard, dead and dormant for the winter. It's far away enough to where his window is safe from its long branches, but not safe from the moving shadows the moon casts during the night. But Eddie doesn't mind, it's been a long while since he got over his childhood fears.
It doesn't take much to find the source of the scream. There's a group of three- no, four, kids running and bending down in a blanket of white a few houses down. Snow has been greatly shuffled around in the yard, some holes dug so deep bits of brown and yellowing grass peek through. Others are piled high with snowmen and poorly made igloos. A kid adorning a yellow jacket so bright it could hurt your eyes comes skidding down the sidewalk, looping around a streetlight and facing their friends again.
That's what Eddie thinks he and Richie could be - friends. They might be already, but either way Eddie won't mind calling Richie that. A friend.