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Richie Shithead Tozier,
First of all, I know we're all supposed to call you Jax Offerman now, but I obviously refuse because it's babyish and not even fucking funny at all. It makes you sound like a competitive aerobics douche. And not even a championship competitive aerobics douche. Like a third-string competitive aerobics douche.
Did you know that when you kissed me, I would fall in love with you, asshole? Sometimes I think yes. Definitely yes. You know why? Because you think I'm a sucker for your whole charismatic jackass schtick. Well, guess what? Starting now, NOT ANYMORE.
Here are all your worst qualities:
You DELIBERATELY burp in my face and don't even say excuse me. You just assume I'll think it's funny. And if I don't, who cares, right? WRONG. You do care. You care a metric shit-ton about what I think of you, you just won't admit it.
You always call the last piece of pizza. You never ask if anyone else wants it. RUDE.
You're so good at school without even trying. Too good. You don't even study, you're just magically fucking smart and read Tolkien a lot and honestly I don't even know where you find the time to whiz through LOTR while you're on your own personal journey through the Middle-earth of HAVING YOUR HEAD ALL THE WAY UP YOUR ENTIRE ASS.
You kissed me for no reason. Even though I knew you liked girls, and you knew you liked girls, and girls knew you liked girls. But you still did it. Just because you could. I really want to know: Why would you do that to me? My first kiss was supposed to be something special. I've read about it, what it's supposed to feel like — fireworks and lightning bolts, and I didn't have any of that. Thanks to you, it was as unspecial as a kiss could be.
The worst part of it is, that stupid nothing kiss is what made me start liking you. I never even really thought about you like that before. I know some girls in our grade think you're cute, but I didn't see the dumbass magnetic allure of you, goddamn Richie "Kinky Briefcase," "Buford Kissdrivel," Aspiring Ventriloquist Tozier. Plenty of people are cute and funny and smart, you know. That doesn't make any one of them the single most appealing fucking human on the planet.
Maybe that's why you kissed me. To do mind control on me, to make me see you that way. It worked. Your dumb, stupid little trick worked. From then on, I saw you differently. Up close, your face wasn't so much cute as weirdly kind of stupidly beautiful. How many beautiful boys have you seen? For me it was just one. You. Yeah, yeah. Go ahead and suck your own dick here. I think it's a lot to do with your lashes. You have really long lashes, and they look 17 miles longer under your goddamn glasses. It's kind of unfair.
Even though you don't deserve it, fine, I'll go into all the things I like(d) about you:
One time in science, nobody wanted to be partners with Paul Anderson because he has BO, and you volunteered like it was no big deal. And after that, people started thinking Paul wasn't so bad. And, I mean, he's really not, especially if you rub some Vicks under your nose before you talk to him.
You're still in Debate, even though a bunch of other guys like Bill and Mike and Ben are in Robotics now, and Bev and Stan take band and orchestra. You even do the impromptu duet acting and extemporaneous speaking events which seem super fucking hard. And even if you fuck up, you're not embarrassed.
You were the last guy to get tall. And now you're the tallest, but it's almost like you earned it. And even though you're taller than me and yes it does kind of piss me off, sometimes I actually kind of like it a little.
After you kissed me, I liked you for the rest of seventh grade and most of eighth. It hasn't been easy, watching you with these random girls in our grade, holding hands and kissing at the bus stop. You probably make them feel super goddamn special. Because that's your talent, right? You're good at making people feel special.
Do you know what it's like to like someone so much you can't stand it and know that they'll never feel the same way? Probably not. People like you don't have to suffer through those kinds of things. It was easier after Jeremy Lin and Rebecca Newton and Tess Piccarillo and the other transfers showed up and bumped you out of my homeroom roster and into a homeroom with Ts through Zs and we started getting assigned to fewer classes together and now don’t see each other as much even though we still hang out with the rest of the Losers on weekends. At least I don’t have to hear about you and the super special random girls you’re with all the time anymore.
But now that eighth grade is almost over, I know for sure that I am over you. I'm immune to you now, Richie. I'm thrilled to say that I am henceforth immunized to the charms of Richie Tozier. All because I had a really shitty dose of you in seventh grade and most of eighth. Now I never have to worry about catching you again. God, what a relief! I bet if I did ever kiss you again, I would definitely catch something, and it wouldn't be love. It would be an STD.
-Eddie Kaspbrak
If Eddie Kaspbrak could have crawled into a hole and burrowed in it comfortably and lived out the rest of his days in it, then that is what he would do.
This letter, this excruciatingly humiliating letter, had somehow been sent to Richie Tozier. Eddie had discovered this during gym, when Richie had approached him, holding a chillingly familiar tri-folded sheet of sky-blue stationary paper, leaned in, and muttered quietly, “Just so you know, I don’t have any STDs.” (“And I didn’t mean to steal your first kiss or whatever. I mean, that wasn’t my intention—”)
Now Eddie sat hunched over the toilet seat in the far right stall of the boys’ locker room, folding and refolding the letter, masochistically stealing glances at it again and groaning audibly. After a minute, he shoved it into the pocket of his sweatshirt and flattened his palms against the cold metal walls, closing his eyes. He’d had the going-to-school-naked dream before. He’d had the going-to-school-naked-forgot-to-study-for-an-exam-in-a-class-he-never-signed-up-for combo, the naked-exam-evil-clown-trying-to-kill-him combo. This was all that times infinity.
Okay. Alright. He was fine. He would be fine. This was a moment for mindfulness. This was a moment for centering. Somewhere deep in the cool, dark recesses of his mind, Eddie heard the lilting tones of his freshman year guidance counselor entreating him to practice his Nadi Shodhanana. Get it together, Kaspbrak. Remember your breathwork. He pressed his index finger to each nostril, left, then right, inhaling deeply. It worked, to an extent. He felt a little less panicked. But still. But still. Eddie’s unendingly neurotic — though thoroughly-therapeutized — inner voice was locked in a tailspin. Holy shit Richie Tozier read my Very Secret Letter about the thing we never talked about and now he knows about my Very Secret Feelings and oh God how did this happen what the ever-loving fuck.
Eddie could still remember everything about that day, the day of the kiss, at Ben's house. It was a crisp October day, midway through their first semester of seventh grade, after that summer — the summer — that ribboned their lives apart and then double knotted them all back together. They'd been in the basement, all seven of them, and Ben's mom had ordered them pizza, and they had lounged across an array of pillows in a circle on the floor, being actively disgusting — munching pizza, shotgunning cans of orange soda, belching competitively. They talked about their favorite TV shows and debated the merits and pitfalls of various superpowers and played "would you rather?," posing increasingly absurd and bizarre hypotheticals. ("Would you rather grow pubic hair out of your nose or sweat out of your mouth?" was one that had incited particularly rancorous debate and occasional dry heaving from Eddie.)
Eddie had been wearing seasonally-inappropriate polyester blue track shorts with white piping trim, and a white polo with green and blue stripes that ran along the collar and across the chest. He had new shoes on too, and not just any shoes, but Onitsuka Tiger X Calibur GTs. He'd found them shelved haphazardly along the Marshall's back wall on a rare outing with his mother, and had practically begged her on his hands and knees to let him buy them. ("MommypleasethesearereallyreallyreallyniceshoesI'llusethemfor—" "For what, Eddie-Bear? You know I don't want you running. Think of your asthma.") It was, for him, an unsurpassed rhetorical victory that he'd managed to convince her to let him have a pair of running shoes under the pretense of "arch support."
At the end of the night, Richie and Eddie were downstairs, alone, the last two kids to be picked up. Eddie had offered to help Mrs. Hanscom wash dishes upstairs with Ben, and she had declined appreciatively ("you're a guest!"), while Richie, unhelpful as ever, had narrated the rinsing and re-shelving in a mock horse-race caller voice. Now, the two of them were sprawled on the basement’s small floral loveseat, flipping through the latest X-Men comic, with Richie throwing his voice to varying degrees of success in imitation of each character — except Professor X, who Eddie read for. Eddie kept glancing at the small rectangular window at the top of the wall, watching apprehensively for the cloudy yellow headlights of his mother's Pontiac Acadian. There was a small, guilty part of him that hoped she would never arrive.
"What'sa matter, Eds?" Richie had asked finally, and Eddie had turned to him, suddenly taking notice of the tangle of their bodies — his knee hooked over Richie's, Richie's arm stretched across the back of the sofa behind him.
"It's nothing," Eddie had said, and then, after a beat, added, "My mom'll be here soon."
Richie had looked at him, a flicker of soft recognition in his gaze. Then he blinked, and it was replaced by the usual mischievous gleam. "You think she'll recognize me with my pants on? I mean, after last ni—"
"For fuck’s — shut up, Rich." Eddie scoffed and thumped his bare heel against Richie's shin. Richie snorted. The comic book that had been balanced between them fluttered to the floor, and Eddie swiftly leaned down to pick it up.
Then, out of nowhere, Richie said, “Your hair smells like coconuts.”
Eddie was caught off guard; were they really going to talk about the fragrance of his hair right now? Unsure of how to respond, he defaulted to a smirk. “It’s that strong, huh?”
“Yup. Like straight-from-the-seashore-to-my-sniffer strong.” Richie scooted closer and took a loud, exaggerated whiff, nodding and pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Reminds me of Hawaii. Like—”
“What do you know about Hawaii, jerkwad? We live in Maine.” Eddie said dryly, flicking Richie’s nose. Eddie wasn’t sure what the coconut comment was meant to be. Was it a compliment? Regardless, it was so nakedly observational that he felt like he’d been pinned under a microscope.
For a moment, Richie looked poised to do an impression, but then instead said nothing. He just looked up and down Eddie’s face sort of blankly with half-parted lips. Richie's rare silence was usually a cherished respite, but now, it made Eddie nervous. He took it as his cue to keep talking. “My mom's making me try this special anti-dandruff shampoo, but I’ve secretly been swapping it out with this little travel-sized coconut one I found at Center Str—" Then Richie Tozier leaned right in and kissed him.
Eddie was stunned. He'd never thought of Richie any kind of way before that kiss — well, not often. He'd imagined kissing Richie a couple of times, sure; once, the night they’d defeated It, when Eddie had lay awake in bed counting his lucky stars that his best friend had lived to tell another joke, and again when he’d caught a glimpse of the initials R+E (Rebecca Newton + Eli Hayes, Eddie suspected) carved into the side of the Kissing Bridge. But he’d never really wanted it, never believed it would happen. He had certainly never anticipated anything so goddamn... direct.
Eddie was stunned, and then he was warm, and then he was closing his eyes and kissing Richie back and then Richie’s hand was tentatively cupping Eddie’s face and Eddie was sliding his fingertips along Richie’s arm — was it really there? — and then he was breaking away and coughing and raggedly gasping for air when he realized he’d forgotten to breathe.
Richie was not Eddie's type at all — I mean, for fuck's sake, this was Trashmouth he was talking about. But after he kissed Eddie, it was all Eddie could think about for months.
And now Richie knew. He knew.
Fuck.
It was going to be a long day.