Chapter Text
It wasn’t until Eddie turned fifteen that he started to realize how sick his mother was.
His friends all had very different home lives—Bev never spoke of her father in any positive way, which was enough for them all to understand her reasons (well, that, and the bruises). Ben’s mom was a single mother, who loved him more than life itself, but she couldn’t always find the right ways to show it, so she spoiled him with ice cream for dessert and worked too much to notice much else. Bill’s parents had been much kinder and brighter once upon a time, but since the loss of their youngest son, they had grown distant. Mike’s parents were busy, but always found time to make sure their son knew how loved he was. Stan’s parents were a little uptight, but adored Stan, despite babying him just a bit. And Richie’s dad worked a lot, but always found time to laugh at one of his jokes, or ruffle his hair, or give him a dollar for some chores, but his mother wasn’t very motherly towards him at all.
No matter how fucked up their own home lives were, each of the losers had given their two cents on Eddie’s mom, and the census was that they all preferred their crazy parent or parents to his.
“She’s overprotective, but she’s not evil,” Eddie had defended once.
Richie had snorted. “That’s not overprotective, Eds. That’s keeping you under lock and key.”
“Well, I’m here now, aren’t I?”
“Bu-but you have to be home by five,” Bill pointed out. “And if you aren’t sh-she’ll call the cops by 5:05.”
“You’re a teenager, not a baby,” Stan added.
At first, he’d wanted to tell them all how wrong they were. It wasn’t their place to talk about his mother like that, and they would never understand her reasons, anyway.
But did Eddie understand her? No, not really. He knew his father was dead, and that losing him had seemingly traumatized her. And he knew that he was sickly, although perhaps not as sick as she always told him. His asthma hadn’t acted up in weeks, although she insisted it was severe, and that the pollen should be making it worse. And yet, he could laugh and run and play with his friends easily, breathing steadily and inhaling all the goddamn pollen he wanted without the slightest ache in his lungs.
Overprotective, but not evil.
He was fourteen when he went snooping around for the thermometer, having felt warm and sickly all morning after a particularly big dinner the night before, and had found the cabinet to be full of pills and pills and pills, some with the labels peeled and scratched off, some poured into different, labelless containers, some small and colorless while some were big and blue, and behind the row of pills was window cleaner. Several bottles of it, in fact, some still unopened. They were labelless, too, but Eddie recognized the fluid in them from when he’d used it to help clean just a few days ago.
The sight of the cabinet, full of strange things that he struggled to rationalize, made his stomach churn. He slammed the door shut, and promptly vomited into the toilet.
Vomit had a particular, obviously unpleasant taste, but Eddie couldn’t help the thought that popped into his head: Beneath the stomach acid, it tasted like the chemicals under the sink smelled.
Surely, he was just sick, and not in his right mind.
“Eddie, dear, are you okay?”
His head shot up, dizzying him a bit, and he called through the door, “Fine, Ma!” The doorknob twitched, and he quickly yelled at her not to come in; he didn’t want her to know that he was sick. He was supposed to see his friends again the next day, and he didn’t want to bail on them, especially after insisting that his mother wasn’t crazy. It would make him look pretty stupid if after all that defending, she kept him locked up in the house for the next week.
When he emerged from the bathroom, she was standing in the hallway. “Are you alright? Were you sick?”
“No, Mama. I was just washing up.”
She eyed him suspiciously, moving to put a hand on his forehead. “Do you have a fever?”
Instinctively, he flinched away. “I’m fine!”
His boldness startled her back, her hand faltering and returning to her side.
Please don’t start crying, Eddie thought. Please.
She didn’t. Instead, she brought her hand back up and slapped him.
He stumbled backward, clutching his stinging cheek.
“Don’t talk to me like that!” she yelled, the lost-puppy look she usually wore in her eyes replaced with what could only be described as rage. “I am your mother! I’m just trying to protect you! Every day I worry and slave and all I get in return is your attitude! You are such an ungrateful little shit! I make myself sick with worry every goddamn day over you, and I get nothing in return!”
“You make yourself sick?” Eddie snapped back before he could think to do otherwise. “What about making me sick, Ma?”
Her blotchy face screwed up in something like shock, or indignation. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m not sick,” he said. “I haven’t had an asthma attack in months. I only throw up when I eat things that you cook me. I run faster than all my friends and never get hurt or ill. It seems the only time I’m unhealthy is in this house. How do you explain that, Ma?”
She looked so angry then, Eddie almost thought she was going to wring his neck with her large hands, but instead, her expression softened entirely.
“Eddie-bear, you’re being silly. Nausea is an entirely normal side effect of your medication, didn’t the pharmacist tell you that? You know that I would never hurt you.”
She reached out to stroke his cheek, and he let her, although his skin crawled beneath her touch.
“I love you, Eddie-bear.”
“I love you too, Mommy.”
But later that night, he stuffed his backpack with his inhaler, an extra change of socks and underwear, and comic book, and then snuck down the stairs, riding his bike off to Richie’s house, because it was his first instinct.
His mother had always been a very heavy sleeper, but he had never dared to sneak out before.
Maggie Tozier opened the door in a bathrobe, looking incredibly confused and annoyed at Eddie’s arrival, but he spit out some white lie that his mother was leaving town for a family emergency and wanted him to stay the night, and she agreed.
Richie was surprised to see him, but happy, too.
“What the hell are you doin’ here, Eds?” he’d asked, a goofy grin stretched across his face.
“Richie, language!”
“Sorry!”
Gesturing for Eddie to follow him up the stairs, Richie took off, two steps at a time. Eddie followed, his heart feeling a little bit lighter to be with him.
“So, what’s up with your aunt?”
“Nothing,” Eddie replied. “It was a lie. I...I ran away.”
Richie laughed. “Yeah, right.”
Eddie just looked at him, silently.
And then, Richie went quiet too ( for once , Eddie thought) before furrowing his brows. “Really?”
Eddie nodded, flopping down on Richie’s bed like it was his own, kicking off his white sneakers and staring up at the ceiling. “I think my mom is making me sick,” he said, almost casually. “So I left. To be honest, I was kind of scared she was gonna kill me in my sleep.” He gave a humorless, nervous chuckle.
Richie walked over and sat beside him. “Jesus fuck, Eds. And you came to me for help?”
“Of course I did. You’re my best friend,” Eddie replied seriously, putting a hand on Richie’s arm.
He didn’t notice the way his friend blushed, his mind too wrapped up with other things. “You guys were right. My mom isn’t right.”
“Is this a bad time to say ‘I told you so’?” Richie asked.
Eddie glared.
“Sorry, sorry! How do you know she’s making you sick?”
“I was snooping around for the thermometer and I found this cabinet she had full of random pills and...and window cleaner, in labelless bottles, stocked full like it was a pantry. I know it sounds crazy, but I was flipping channels on the T.V. the other day, and they were showing this documentary about parents who kill their kids, and they said that mothers poison their kids to make ‘em sick for attention—”
“Woah, Eds, slow down. You think she’s poisoning you?” Richie asked, moving to lay down beside him on his belly, his expression still riddled with confusion, and worry, too.
“Yes. They called it something weird, like mocassins disorder, or something. Moms killing their kids in slow, hard-to-notice ways so that they get sympathy for having a sick kid. Do you remember when she took me to Disney World back in elementary school? She told every single worker I was sick, so we’d get to cut the lines. And when I was little, her cooking used to make me throw up all the time. It stopped after a while, but now, sometimes if I eat dinner here when we have sleepovers, but when I go back home and eat her food again, it makes me feel really sick.”
“You sure she isn’t just a shitty cook and a pushover?” Richie asked.
Eddie nibbled the inside of his cheek. “Maybe, but I don’t really want to take that risk.”
Richie propped himself up on his elbows. “Alright then. So, what’s the plan?”
***
Before Sonia Kaspbrak could get ahold of the police, Eddie was already coming back inside. He’d left Richie’s bright and early.
“Oh, Eddie-bear! Where have you been? Are you okay, are you hurt?” she cried, running towards him before he’d even got fully through the door.
“I’m great, Ma. I’m really great,” he told her, smiling. “Wanna know why?”
Her face contorted in confusion. “Why?”
“Because I haven’t eaten anything you’ve cooked. I haven’t taken my meds. And I’ve been around my friends, not you.”
As if on cue, tears welled in her eyes.
“Don’t cry. You’re not going to guilt me into shutting up this time. No more meds, no more freaky poison food, and I go out with my friends when I want. And then, I won’t tell the police, and I won’t tell the town that you’re a psycho bitch, and I won’t talk back. Deal?”
Sonia Kaspbrak was so surprised, she couldn’t respond, tears running down her cheeks.
Eddie smirked. “I’ll take that as a deal. I’m going to Richie’s. See ya, Ma.”
Things weren’t going to be perfect. Hell, they probably wouldn’t even be good. He was a fifteen-year-old kid who was going to have to learn to cook himself dinner, and would probably be terrified to sleep in his own house until he was eighteen and off to college. He would spend nights curling up next to Richie in his bed, fighting the urge to take a puff of his inhaler as his chest grew tight with anxiety, and Richie rubbed his back and stroked his hair.
It wasn’t perfect, but he felt as though he’d saved himself, if not forever, it would be enough to buy himself time.