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It’s been five years since It was defeated. I repeat this to myself every time I close my eyes. Five years - no trace of the bastard for five years. And he’s still inside my head.
So I tell Mike. “I have to leave.”
He furrows his eyebrows at me, hand in mine as we sit on the worn sofa in my parents’ basement. The lamp casts shadows on his face and leaves dark corners that I’m too scared to look into.
“Where you going?” Mike asks, as if I were just going somewhere else for the night, instead of staying right here with him like I always do.
“No, I mean.” But I don’t finish. How can I? How can I tell Mike that I have to leave this stupid fucking town and forget? How can I leave him here, alone, the last of the Losers?
“What’s wrong?” Mike asks, and his question is too tender. I feel tears in my eyes, but they blur my vision, and I blink them away before something terrifying can appear in the haze.
“I have to leave Derry,” I whisper, looking down at my lap. Mike, to my left, has not stopped looking at my eyes, and I know that he understands.
I shake my head, just a little. A strand of hair falls in my face, and I push it away with my free hand, turning to look at Mike finally. “I can’t stay. I still see it.” I feel my bottom lip tremble just barely; out of habit, I practice not being scared. “I see it everywhere.”
Mike has barely had any reaction; I see his face blank, and I know that he’s working through this information. He’s thinking about how much this is going to hurt him, but if I know him better than anyone - and I think I do - then I know he’s also thinking about how much this town is hurting me.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and it feels useless. The words spit themselves out of my mouth and fall lifeless to the floor. Another balloon popped.
“It’s okay,” Mike says finally. “When?”
His voice is level; he’s not angry. I think he’s sad.
“I applied to Hartsworth College,” I say, “in Maryland. So next week.”
He squeezes my hand gently. His thumb rubs against mine, but I don’t think it’s on purpose. I think he just needs something to do.
And then I start to say what scares me the most. “I’m gonna - “
“You’re gonna write, yeah, I know,” Mike says heavily. He’s started looking down at our hands, intertwined.
I shake my head. I feel sadness and anger and hopelessness and fear. I hold onto him tighter. “No,” I reply. “I think I’m gonna forget.”
Mike looks up at me. “Why would you - “
“It’s what everyone does,” I say, looking him in the eyes. I feel tears coming back at the thought of our Losers Club, now everyone else is gone and nobody has ever written, nobody has ever returned. “I think it’s this place.”
“What does that mean?”
I swallow thickly. This can’t sound nearly as crazy as half the shit we went through when we were kids.
“I think,” I begin, not knowing how to finish. “I think that when you leave Derry, Derry leaves you.”
Mike looks almost like he doesn’t get it until he does.
My chest rumbles with a fear that I’ve been pretending to forget for the last five years as I say, “And I need Derry to leave me alone, Mike.”
Mike doesn’t say anything. He’s always been so quiet. I love that about him. He’s thinking; I can see the gears turning behind his eyes, I can see him trying to find a way to accept what I’m saying. When he still says nothing, I start up again.
“Mike, the last thing I want is to forget you,” I promise, turning to face him more and taking his other hand. “Or any of the others, but - but I haven’t slept in five years. I can’t close my eyes in the shower without seeing It behind the curtain. Mike, I - I can’t even look in the corners of this room.”
As if to make a point, Mike looks around the basement. Half of me is expecting him to see something behind me, and the other half of me is expecting to see something behind him. Nothing is there, but that’s never stopped anything.
It’s too quiet down here. Everything creaks, and I always think it’s It. I have to break the silence. I say, “Tell me what you’re thinking. Please.”
Mike looks back at me, right in my eyes. He says, “I understand,” and I want to hate him for it. I want to be angry that he isn’t trying to talk me into staying, that he isn’t agreeing to run away with me, that he’s making it so hard to leave. But instead I just love him. I love him like I always have.
“You could come,” I say, and part of me is so hopeful. Maybe he feels it too, maybe we can both leave this Hell and start over.
“Then no one would be here,” he says, shaking his head.
“Why does someone have to be here?” I question, feeling desperation rise up in me. “Why should it be you?”
“Because everyone else is gone,” Mike answers, his tone perfectly level, as if he’s known this was going to happen from the very beginning. Maybe he has. “And you can’t stay. So I have to.”
“Why?”
“We promised,” he says, and I think back to five years ago, blood from my palm soaking Mike’s, the first time we ever held hands. Standing in that circle, our Losers Club, vowing to be the guardians of this godforsaken town as if we knew what the hell we were doing.
“Mike, we were thirteen,” I try to say, but I know his mind is made up. “And we haven’t seen It in five years! We killed It!”
Mike shakes his head, and I feel myself sinking inside. He says, “It takes twenty-seven years.”
“You’re going to wait here for twenty-two more years because of a blood oath that a group of idiot kids made right after a life-or-death situation?”
I’m not angry at him, and he knows this. He just deserves to get out of this place.
“I have to,” he says. “It’s gonna be kids, and I - I can’t let people die like that. Not again.”
I can practically see the flashback happening in his head, to the burning building and those charred, flailing hands. And I understand more than I thought I could that Mike was always going to be the one to stay.
I lean in to kiss him once, and then I embrace him as tight as I ever have. I feel his arms wrap around me, and I know without question that when I leave Derry, I’m going to miss this, even if I can’t remember what it is.
“I’m gonna try so hard to remember you,” I whisper to him, and I feel him nod as we pull away.
“Okay,” he says, and he believes me, but it won’t matter. A part of me really believes that I can will myself to remember him and the others; another part of me knows better.
“I mean,” I say with a little shrug and a sniffle, “maybe I’m wrong. Maybe we aren’t forced to forget. Maybe the others are just assholes.”
Mike laughs at that, and I find myself laughing a little too. He leans back into the couch, and I lean back with him, resting my head on his chest. He sighs. “Yeah, maybe. But Eddie didn’t write to Richie when he left, and those two were . . .”
I burrow closer to him. “And Bev and Ben and Bill.”
“Yeah,” Mike says. He rubs my arm slowly, holding me close to him. “And if they could forget each other, there’s no way you’ll remember me.”
I cinch my eyebrows together and twist to look up at him. “What does that mean?”
Mike looks a little as if he’s been caught. “I just mean - the way they loved each other - like that - it’s stronger than how you love me. It’s older.”
I just stare at him. I recycle my emotions. Angry. Scared. Sad. And then I stop on guilty .
“How could you think that?” I ask him, but I know it’s my fault. “Mike, I - how can I explain - I’m so sorry.”
I latch onto him, clinging to him as if he could disappear at any moment. “I’m so sorry I ever gave you any reason to think I love you any less than I do. I love you so much. I love you just as much as Richie and Eddie love each other, I love you just as much as Ben and Bill and Bev love each other, I - I’m so sorry I never showed you that.”
Mike seems unsure of where to go from here. He just holds me tighter and says, “I love you like that, too.”
I sigh into the crook of his neck and don’t let go. I don’t want to leave him, but even now, I’m afraid of what I could see when I lean back and open my eyes again. I see that stupid clown and its stupid taunts behind my eyelids, and I know that I have to go, and I know that I have to forget.
And eventually, I do.