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.
He was snapped out of his daze by muffled shouts emanating from the Kenduskeag Stream nearby, hidden away by lush green trees. A slick blue car sat haphazardly parked near the trail leading to the stream. Any loser, loner, or bullied student of Derry could recognize that car in heartbeat.
"Oh, shit. That's Belch Huggins' car," Eddie spoke with a waver in his voice. "We should━ We should probably get outta here."
"Don't have to tell me twice," Chris agreed, pushing his bike forward to try and turn it back around.
"Wait, isn't that the home-schooled kid's bike?" Bill brought attention to the older-looking bike slumped in the grass next to the car. Chris only half knew who Bill was referring to. Rumors spiral and all Chris knew of the homeschool kid was rumors.
"Yeah, that's Mike's," Eddie confirmed.
Despite everyone in town knowing of Mike, Chris would've placed his bets that no one actually knew Mike. The boy was quiet and avoided going anywhere he didn't need to. Chris didn't blame him. Mike was public enemy number one to Henry Bowers and his boys. Admittedly, every teenager avoided Mike like the plague. It was too much of a risk to be seen with a walking target.
"W━ We have to help him," Beverly hurriedly said. Chris winced, scratching the back of his head unsurely. Beverly always was the go-getter.
She could never just sit back silently.
That was Chris' entire personality in his opinion.
"We should?" Richie questioned, seeming to share in Chris' thoughts.
"Yes," Beverly said with a judgemental look on her face. Chris didn't blame her━ it was horrible to just let this poor boy fend for himself with the biggest bullies in Derry. Still, Chris liked to keep his head down. Aside from snide remarks and the occasional hallway shove, Chris' history of bullying was on the lower end. Especially compared to his twin.
Speaking of which, Beverly dropped her bike, racing toward the parting in the trees where Mike's bike was. Chris turned unsurely to the rest of the group, seeing Bill was already in the process of following. With a somewhat frustrated groan, Chris dropped his bike to the ground, running ahead of the others in an attempt to catch up with Beverly's longer legs. Behind him, he heard the sound of several other pairs of footsteps chasing after them.
By the time the twins had reached a clearing in the grassy area, they were far ahead of the others. Across the shallow part of the Kenduskeag Stream they could clearly see Henry Bowers stradling Mike with an enraged look on his face as Victor Criss and Belch Huggins stood watching in amusement. Chris began to understand Beverly's panicked rush to find the homeschooled boy as he observed Mike cower in immense terror.
Bowers' fist raised into the air, a sharp rock from beside the stream clutched inside his palm━ he was going to bring it down on Mike's head!
"We have to do something!" Beverly hissed out in a worried whisper. Chris pressed his lips firmly together, hating the idea that sprung to mind as he watch the scene in front.
He knew there was probably a way, way better idea. But as he saw Henry's fist about to descend on Mike's head, the whole scene seeming to play out in slow motion, Chris had no time to think.
Before Beverly could grab his arm to stop him, Chris began to sprint through the shallow water. When he was a small enough distance away, the frail boy sprung from his feet, letting out an angered shout as he tackled into Henry's side.
The two teenagers tumbled to the rocky ground beside Mike. The boy looked stunned and confused, no doubt wondering why this unfamiliar boy would do such a frankly stupid thing.
Chris himself was beginning to wonder the same, but still shouted, "Run, Mike!"
The boy snapped out of his trance and half sprinted, half crawled over to where Beverly watched her brother fearfully, her brain practically reeling for a way to get Chris back to her without making their situation worse.
The situation was getting worse either way. Chris, clutching the side of his rib where he had hit the rocky ground hard, soon felt himself be hoisted up roughly by the shoulders. The pain then spread to his spine as his back hit the rocks again, this time with the back of his head floating over the stream. Above him, Henry's enraged face snarled down at him. The bully's hand clutching the boy's collar was the only thing keeping him from being underwater.
"You ruined my fun, you fucking fairy!" Henry screamed, spit flying angrily from his mouth. Chris' shoes attempted to push along the rocks and away from Henry, but it was no use. The older boy was far stronger. "You're going to fucking pay for that," Henry growled.
Chris didn't get a chance to hold his breath before his head was pushed underwater. The stream was shallow, meaning Henry had to push the boy's head until it hit the bottom in order for him to begin to choke.
And choke he did. Chris began to splutter under the water as his chest constricted, water involuntarily sucking down his esophagus as Henry jostled him around. Chris's hands weakly attempted to pry Henry's off him as his legs wildly kicked, desperate to escape. His water-filled ears could just barely hear Beverly screaming at the top of her lungs for the boy to get off her brother.
Then suddenly, the weight on Chris was gone. The blurry image of Henry above him drifted away, and within a second Chris was pushing up out of the water, drenched and heaving for air as he coughed and spluttered. Breathing heavily, the boy peered to Henry, who clutched his now bleeding head, then to Beverly, who was already collecting more rocks. Around her, some of the others had already gathered, following her lead.
"Chris!" Eddie shouted worriedly. The young boy's voice jostled Chris from his weak daze, and the drenched boy quickly staggered across the stream and past Mike who stared around wide-eyed. The boy eventually dropped down behind the wall of his friends, all clutching rocks tightly in their fists.
At the back of the group, Richie kneeled down beside the heaving boy, helping Chris to sit up, "Man, are you okay?" he asked.
Chris went to nod his head weakly but was cut off by Henry's arrogant voice, "You losers are trying too hard. She'll do you," he nodded with a smirk to Beverly, who self-consciously rubbed her hands over her bare arms. "You just gotta ask nicely... like I did." The boy ran his hands over his crotch, grabbing it lewdly in Beverly's direction.
Chris was to his feet in seconds, his nostrils flaring angrily and his fists clenched to the point of shaking, "I'm going to fucking kill you!" he hollered, attempting to race back over to tackle Henry again.
The one thing holding him back was Richie, whose arms had immediately wrapped around Chris's torso in an attempt to stop the boy from almost getting himself drowned... again.
Luckily, Ben had a better idea than Chris. The chubby boy let out a shout angrily, tossing a rock at full speed toward Henry and knocking him in the same place Beverly had.
"What the fuck?!" Henry exclaimed. He was taken aback by the outburst. Not just from Ben, but from them all. It seemed Henry had never expected them to work up the courage to actually fight back.
And fight back they did. The others began tossing rocks as the Bowers gang proceeded to follow suit.
Richie, in an attempt to distract Chris from his plans to run across the stream and get beaten to death, screamed out, "Rock war!"
Before promptly being hit directly in the lens of his glasses and falling down beside where Mike had managed to crawl himself to. With a small gasp, Chris turned back to check on Richie. The glasses-clad boy groaned, rubbing his head with his hand.
With confirmation that Richie was, in fact, okay, Chris turned back to the fight at hand with rage in his eyes━ the boy may have looked frail enough to snap like a twig, but one was foolish to underestimate the burning rage inside his bones, which had been boiling for thirteen years. One was even more foolish to dare disrespect his sister and hit his friend in the face.
Chris ducked beneath the rapidly moving hands of his friends as they chucked rocks across the stream, stopping himself just as he reached the point where the slope of rocks hit the water.
Now at the front of the pack, Chris had the best vantage point. Immediately, he got to work throwing sharp rocks at the three bullies that tormented his friends and made him afraid each day. They had it coming for them a long time.
Each rock Chris threw managed to land. Each rock hit one of the three boys in the head. Chris had never done well in sports. He was always the last one picked for teams at school. He was always the one to sit down first when they ran laps.
And yet, once pushed to enough anger, the boy threw rocks like Babe Ruth threw baseballs.
With the onslaught of rocks thrown from all of the younger teenagers, including Mike who worked up the courage to throw some of his own, soon Victor and Belch had scurried off with their tails between their legs, leaving Henry cowering on the ground, defeated.
In the silence of the aftermath, Stan and Eddie guided Mike away through the lush greenery, soon after followed by Bill and Ben.
"Toto?" Beverly quietly called to her brother. The boy turned back, seeing his sister gesture her head in the direction the others had gone questioningly.
"You go... I just..." he turned back to Henry, who stared to the ground defeatedly, "I just want to soak this in."
Beverly nodded and left. Now it was just Henry, Chris... and Richie. The glasses-clad boy silently stood back, watching, waiting. Making sure nothing went wrong.
Chris only stood in the silence for a few seconds, scrutinizing the scene. Henry had always seemed like this large over-looming villain. Some undefeatable creature left to torment them for eternity.
But he was just a boy. A cowering, pathetic boy. Chris tutted as he shook his head, turning to leave. He stopped for a moment upon noticing Richie had waited, before continuing in the direction his sister went.
Behind him he heard Richie shout, "Go blow your dad you mullet-wearing asshole!", and a small smile involuntarily raised on his lips.
━━ AUTHOR'S NOTE
i'm back bitches.