It's been days of radio silence from the group.
Almost a week of Stanley sitting with Ben and the football team at lunch, almost a week of Bill and Eddie not showing up to lunch at all sometimes, almost a week of Beverly pestering Richie with questions that she thinks he won't be able to answer.
She's partly right on that, he won't be able to answer some of her questions. Like the question to where Eddie and Bill are some lunches, or how Eddie seems to disappear right after the last bell of the day.
One day Beverly caught Bill after school and interrogated him as Richie watched from afar. He looked quite scared when Beverly stood on her toes to get into his face, not in a fighting way, but in a overly-concerned-friend way. When she walked back to Richie, she only had apologizes from the other boy.
Richie knows this whole situation isn't his fault, he knows that. Yet somewhere deep inside still seeps guilt into his every waking thought. It hits deep in his guts when he sees golden curls peaking over most heads in the crowd, or (especially) when he walks into World History to see Eddie sitting at his desk every day.
As Richie sits in his own desk with Mr. Martinez asking questions and picking students to answer, he replays the scene in his head over and over. Stanley's crumbling face, his shaking hands. What Richie could've said and what he didn't. It festers in his mind and only grows as the minutes tick on.
What he could've said, what he didn't.
What he could've said, what he didn't.
Why didn't he say that instead?
Richie's knee bounces quickly from under his desk, so quickly it starts to agitate his desk partner, who shoots him a warning glare. Richie catches onto her stare and offers her an apologetic smile. She doesn't take it.
Richie's eyes haven't made their daily path across the room to Eddie, who's hands are on his desk messing with a pencil. No, instead they're focused on the classroom floors, distant and not all there because his mind is off in a self-destructing path.
The scene restarts. The dialogue begins again. Then, before Richie could process it himself, his skin pricks and he begins to feel extremely claustrophobic. The urge to leave the classroom burns at the soles of his feet, an invisible gravitational rope pulling to him to get under the vast blue skies. He can't be in there anymore, not with Eddie's presence feeling like a fire a few feet away, or Stanley's expressions plastered behind his eyes.
He forces himself to breath in deeply, then it all begins to melt away.
He's becoming overwhelmed with everything and if one more thing is added to his plate, he thinks it might shatter. His mind moves to Beverly. He thinks of her smile and her personality that seemed to rope him in the moment he met her. The wish to just let everything spill out to her burns deep within him, but it's not fair to Stanley. He doesn't deserve to have his secret let out like that. No one does.
So, when World History finishes and Richie watches as Eddie ducks out of the classroom, and when he meets up with Beverly after all his classes, he keeps his lips sealed. Just because his secret was passed around middle school in little whispers and pointed fingers, it doesn't mean Stanley's should either.
They stay sealed even when Beverly is in the passenger seat of his car, a leg pulled up and leaning against the door as she rants about the situation at hand.
"Was it something we did?" She asks, her eyes focused on the road ahead. She seemed to have answered her own question as she quickly shakes her head and falls deeper into her seat. "No. They would've told us."
Richie briefly glances at his best friend, then shrugs. "I don't know, Bev. People keep secrets, that's how it is."
She sighs deeply and nods. "Maybe so, but.. this is something different. At least I think so... Have any of them ever come up to you about something?"
Richie inhales sharply. Beverly is digging quite close to an underground pit without even knowing. "No," Richie says and shakes his head. "Nothing. Complete zilch."
But right after he says that, something pops into his head. Beverly's words remind him of Eddie and Bill's secret conversation that sparked the entire Stanley situation. Their debate they needed settled that somehow led Stanley into asking Richie about Eddie.
Richie grips the steering wheel. What was that about?
Beverly hums softly and peers out her window. "Maybe I can talk to Ben. I see Stanley sitting with him at lunch," she says.
Richie takes a hand to his eye, rubbing it hard. "I don't know, Bev," he says as he straightens out his glasses. "This whole fucking thing feels like one big, unfixable shit show. I might as well be the star of it because I feel like a fucking clown."
Beverly looks at him with narrowed eyes. "Richie, what?"
"What I'm saying is that-" He tries not to look away from the road, as he knows how much that freaks Beverly out, but he doesn't know how he'd get his message out if he wasn't looking at her. "-Is that I just.. we- I feel like I gotta leave, alright? This whole situation is- is messy and no one is talking to us. Stanley just up and left like a pussy, but can I really blame him?"
It all caught up to Richie too quickly, his mind running at outrageous speeds to outrun the pure anxiety and panic and confusion he's been trying to hide from. His fingers tap and run along the stitching of the steering wheel, his anxiety burning to get out. Beverly seems to notice as her wide eyes stare at his excessive tapping.
"Richie, pull over," She says. She's not relaxing in her seat anymore, instead sitting almost on the edge with her eyes now trained on the road. "Now, please!"
Richie follows her demands, quickly getting into the farthest right lane to pull off into a gas station parking lot. His chest rises and falls too fast for comfort and Beverly's piercing stare only makes it worse.
"What the hell are you on about, Tozier?"
His last name. It attacks his mind and now he knows this is serious. She's only ever used it to get her point across to him.
"You're not thinking of leaving, are you?"
Richie exhales and throws his hands up in a dramatic shrug. "I don't know, Bev! I really don't know! Like I said, everything is going to shit and I'm starting to think everything was fine before we forced ourselves into Eddie and Bill and Stanley's little group."
"We didn't force ourselves into anything, Richie."
He opens his mouth to shoot back, but her words make sense to him and he slowly closes it again. He thinks of what to say, but the need to get as far away as possible that tickles at his fingers can't be put into words and explained in a way that Beverly would understand. She might say she understands everything Richie tells her, but sometimes it doesn't feel like she truly does. It might be in the way she looks at him, empty and unbelieving. Or that might just be him.
Finally, Richie speaks again. "You said you wanted to leave." He looks to Beverly and her face is stuck between worried and confused. "Back freshman year, you said you would leave with me."
The realization clicks from behind her eyes and she bows her head slightly, a soft sigh falling from her lips. "Richie," she says, her voice soft and sweet as if she's talking to a child. "I might've said that, sure, but that was when.. my dad first went to prison. I didn't know my aunt and everything was a mess-"
"Everything is a mess now!"
"Not like it was before!" Beverly snaps back. Her eyes are wide and staring into Richie's, looking into both of his eyes. "It's different now."
"And how is that, Bev?" Richie asks. "Because you have a relationship with your aunt? Because you have more friends than before?"
"We have more friends than before, Richie. We do," she says, then slowly falls back into her seat while inhaling shakily. Her uneven breath strikes Richie's heart, gripping it in an unforgiving hold and pours guilt into his consciousness.
you're causing this. you are
"We both have reasons to stay here," Beverly says, her voice more even and low. He hears her swallow thickly and her head turn to look at him. "We both do."
Richie turns his head to the side to stare out his window, trying to ignore how Beverly's presence next to him feels like a fire in the car. It's in the back of his mind no matter how much he chases his daydreams. This conversation is not leaving.
"Just because we both have friends doesn't make me want to get the fuck out of dodge any less."
Apparently that sentence snapped something in Beverly, the friend Richie knew to always have a soft hand towards him. He went too far, pushed too many buttons.
"Look at me, Richie."
He hesitates, his chin gravitating to Beverly, but his eyes staying plastered to the scenery outside.
"Look at me," she repeats.
He takes a second to follow her instructions, but he eventually slowly turns his head and lifts his eyes to Beverly. She doesn't hold any sort of anger on her face, but it most defiantly isn't soft or understanding either. Her eyebrows are crinkled with sadness and the tips of her lips are upturned in a slight frown.
"I- I know you want to leave, Richie, I know that," she says. Her hands grip the armrest, her knuckles beginning to turn white.
He can't watch Beverly cry, oh god, not again.
Nothing hurts Richie more than seeing the ones he holds close cry, not Beverly, not Eddie, not anyone. He doesn't think he can listen to this, but it's Beverly and he also can't leave her.
"I know your parents- your parents aren't the best people in the world, not even I like them a whole lot," she says. Her chin wobbles and she has to lift it and swallow thickly to regain control of her facial expressions. She's on the brink of breaking again, and they both know it.
"But, Richie, we both have so much to stay for and I can list it all off if you don't believe me. We can leave together in the future, when we have money and high school diplomas," she says, then inhales deeply and looks down at her hands. It could've been seconds Beverly kept her head bowed slightly as she regain control of herself or even minutes, Richie doesn't exactly know.
She sniffs and moves to sit in her seat correctly, a leg still perched against the door. "Do you know why.." she says softly, looking down at her lap, "..why I ask if I'm going to see you the next day or the next class period?"
Richie doesn't want to talk. He doesn't trust his voice at the moment so instead he only shakes his head.
"It's because I don't know if you're ever going to hop on that train and leave without warning. Without telling me. You're so.. you can be so unpredictable sometimes, Richie. Your emotions, at least, and it terrifies me to think that you would leave everything we know just to get away from a few problems."
Richie shifts in his seat while clearing this throat. "I wouldn't," he starts, then breaks off and looks up at the gas station. He takes a second to sort out his thoughts and what he wants to say exactly. There's a lot he would want to say to Beverly, but all of that can wait for another time. A time when he knows what he's feeling and when he's ready to even share those with someone who isn't Eddie.
"I would never leave without you, Bev," he says at last.
He's not sure, but he thinks he hears a soft breath of relief come from her. Her shoulders relax and there's a spark of hope behind her already horribly saddened eyes. His words breathe new air into the car and everything feels a little easier to deal with.
"Thank you, Richie," she says. "And if it ever comes to it, I would never leave you either... I'm still upset at you though."
At the utter absurdity of her words, it draws a snort of laughter from Richie. "Excuse me?" He asks, a little apprehensive at how fast the mood around them is lightening up. That might just be the perks of being best friends with someone.
"I said what I said," Beverly says as she gets settled back into her seat. "Threatening to leave this shit hole? There's no way you're getting out of my sight this early." She moves her head to look at him, her eyes holding more fondness than ever.
Richie doesn't look back, yet he holds a small and happy smile as he turns the keys to start up the engine.
He starts to pull out of the parking space, ready to go drop Beverly off thirty minutes after she was supposed to be home. From over the music that erupts from the speakers as the car erupts with life, Richie swears his ears pick up on a deep, low whistle.
The train.
His heart pick up and the same daydreams he's been holding close since seventh grade appears back in his brain. Then, the conversation that ended not even a few minutes ago comes up too.
Richie breaths in deeply, the want to chase his dreams swelling up in his chest. At the same time, Beverly's words hammer down in his head.
He's conflicted, but that's one thing that's never changed.