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I knew I should have helped them. But I didn't. I stayed right next to him until the very last moment.
The bloodied jacket felt warm under my shaky hands as I pressed it against Eddie's mauled stomach. Bill and Bev's screams were resonating through the glacial air, fearful and desperate, as if their last hopes had been eclipsed by the shadow of the creature behind them. I was struggling to focus on Eddie, my frightening thoughts bouncing back and forth in my head. When IT blocked the exit, a part of me wanted to join them, despite my alarming heart rate and my churning stomach. But another part of me wanted to spend every second left with the boy I've always loved.
There was blood everywhere, on my shirt, in my hair, on my glasses. Parts of him I knew I would soon have to wash off, because I couldn't live the rest of my life covered in blood, although I would have done it for him if I wasn't scared of being framed for murder. Parts of him I would have to get rid of. Parts of him I would have to lose.
I had to get him out of this place. Leaving him alone in the wintry darkness of this nightmarish monster’s lair would be like throwing him in a trash can, fuck you, we don't care about you.
And I still had hope. A miracle at the hospital. A bright future. Together.
“I'm gonna get you out of here, don't worry, you're gonna be-”
“Rich.”
His soft hand slid on top of mine, waking up every atom of my skin, a gentle yet clear touch. Our eyes met, and I could read in his glance that it was the end.
Eddie slightly squeezed my hand, and I knew I would have to shut up and just enjoy the moment. Feel the warmth of his grip, notice the little details of his dainty face, count all the different shades of brown in his eyes, hear his deep laborious breaths over the shouts of the other Losers.
I had always hated silence, but in those moments, it seemed necessary to not say anything. I could have cracked a joke, I always had one in stock, but I didn't. Instead, I listened to the wind, as if all the unsaids were floating around us, waiting for the right ear to catch them.
But there was still so much to say.
July 1989
A bag of groceries under my left arm, another one in my right hand, I entered the bright kitchen. At the counter, a black-haired head was leaning over a baby blue porcelain bowl, eyes fixed on his cereals. I ruffled Richie’s hair as I passed behind him and dropped the bags on the cabinet.
He looked up for a second to show me a tired smile, then went back to staring at his meager breakfast.
His recent distant attitude had been worrying Wentworth and me, the incomprehension of his sudden mood change causing us a lot of trouble when it came to communicating with him. He had always been a cheerful, positive and energetic boy, but the last few days, he had been moody and seemed exhausted. All his free time was spent at the arcade or in his room, the only moments he would come into the shared rooms were at lunch and dinner and even then, he would take a ridiculously small amount of food and go back to bed without even touching the plate.
Stanley had been the only one hanging out with him for the last week, and I could tell he knew a lot more than I did. He was trying to get Richie’s mood up, going to the arcade with him almost every day, even if it was probably one of the places he despised the most in Derry, a close second after the water tower.
I was trying not to invade Richie’s privacy by asking him nosy questions, but it was not normal for him to only hang out with Stan. They were a group, they had always been, and they were inseparable.
But above all, the most concerning thing was that he had not seen or even talked about Eddie in more than seven days. The two of them were always together, and when they weren’t, Richie wouldn’t shut up about the new original way he had found to annoy him. Teasing him was his favorite activity and I sometimes wondered how Eddie didn’t get sick of it.
“Are you gonna hang out with Stan today?” I questioned him while putting the groceries away.
He shook his head, still looking down at his cereals. I knew I’d have to get straight to the point if i wanted to get some informations out of him, so I asked:
“What about Bill? You guys haven’t really been hanging out together lately, you should call him.”
“Perhaps I don't want to see him?” he answered, obviously upset.
“Perhaps there is a reason?”
“Perhaps.” he replied in a calmer tone.
A comfortable silence followed and Richie lifted his head up to look at what I was getting out of the bag. I had bought his favorite snack, peanut butter flavored Magic Middles, in the hope that he would try to eat more. I left one next to his bowl and he immediately seemed more hungry at the sight of the cookie and started eating it.
“So, what happened?”
“We fought,” he spluttered, his mouth full.
“That’s a first.”
“He pushed me so I pushed him back and he punched me in the face.”
I didn’t know what to tell him. They had always gotten along, he had had little fights with Stan and Eddie before, but never with him.
“He wanted us to search for Georgie again,” he muttered. “When will he understand that he’s dead?”
As he blurted out these words, there was genuine hurt in his voice. Georgie’s death had been really rough for Bill and consequently, it had been causing problems in the friendgroup, although nobody wanted to point it out. Since summer began, their new favorite activity had been searching for Georgie.
And I knew it was inevitable. They were messing around in the sewers. They were going to encounter Pennywise. It was only a matter of time until they would have to meet him, if it didn’t already happen.
And I didn’t want to do anything, to interfere with the ritual, because the clown told me Richie would kill it. I had to pretend I didn’t know what was happening and see him suffer every day, even if it was killing me inside.
“He’s gonna accept it someday, just give him time.”
He won’t have the choice. Just like Lilly had no other choice than to accept Matty’s death.
Richie went back to eating his cereals, with much more appetite this time.
“And Eddie? Why aren’t you hanging out with him?”
His expression changed right away, from a slight smile to furrowed brows and a clenched jaw.
“His mom doesn’t want me to. She says he’s “sick” and that it’s our fault he broke his arm.”
‘Oh, I didn’t know about his arm. How did that happen?”
Richie ran his fingers through his hair, seemingly caught off guard by the question. His eyes scanned the room before coming back to me.
“Good ol’ man fell off his bike,” he affirmed with his not-so-good southern accent, “ya’ll should’ve seen him, he was bawling like a frickin’ baby, got some good chucks out of me!”
His sudden switch from a serious mood to one of his voices usually meant he was hiding something, and it was enough to convince me they had already met Pennywise now, but I could feel it was not the end. I dreamt of it again the night before, its presence crawling under my skin to remind me it wasn’t over.
But, as I promised myself I would 27 years ago, I didn’t do anything.
“It’s weird not having him around,” I admitted.
“Yeah.”
He looked around nervously, as if he was scared someone was listening.
“I miss him a lot. Like a lot, lot.”
His honesty shook me for a second, since he wouldn’t normally open up easily about his feelings, it would sometimes take half an hour until I could really tell what was going on since he wouldn’t stop making jokes in between each sentence. Humor was his way of communicating, especially when it came to deep conversations, which often made it hard for him to be understood.
The realisation of what he had said hit him after a few seconds. His eyes widened, he swallowed and opened his mouth before closing it back. He opened it again and said:
“I mean, not in a I-miss-my-husband-who-got-sent-to-war-so-I-write-him-love-letters kinda way, but, you know, I miss him,” he babbled. “Stan is cool, he’s really cool, but it’s not the same as with Eddie.”
“How?” I asked.
“What?”
“How is it not the same?”
“Well, umm… when I’m with Eddie, I feel more like, umm…”
He was looking at everything but me, fidgeting with his clothes, trying to find an answer.
“I don’t know, I guess I just feel better around him, that’s it,” he finally replied.
There was more, there was always more when it came to Eddie. There was always more when it came to your first love, and it was that day I realized Richie felt the same way for Eddie I felt for Rich all of those years ago.
“Have I ever told you why you're named Richard?”
“So my nickname would be Dick?” he joked, obviously wondering why I was asking him this question.
“No,” I said, shaking my head in disapproval. “When I was your age I fell in love with this guy, Rich. Rich Santos.”
“What was he like?”
Richie was resting his head in his hand, his curious eyes behind his Coke bottle glasses asking for me to go on with my story.
“Classy. Cute. Short. Shorter than Eddie.”
His eyes lit up at the mention of the boy he loved the most in the whole wide world, but I pretended I didn’t see it and continued talking.
“He always had a smile on his face. He always knew what to do to make you feel better.”
I could still perfectly picture every detail of his adorable face after all this time. The moments I spent with him in the short amount of time we had together were engraved in my memories forever.
“Does dad know I'm named after your ex?”
“Yes, he does. And we didn't date. Now let me finish my story.”
I took a deep breath as I prepared myself to explain the darkest part of my past.
“You know what the Black spot incident is?”
He froze for a moment, then looked at me with gentle, furrowed brows and soft, compassionate eyes.
“Yes.”
“Me and Rich were there when it happened. We were with this girl, Ronnie Grogan and Mike Hanlon's dad, Will Hanlon. I remember Rich playing the drums, I think he was trying to impress me. And then the fire started. Rich helped me hide from the flames in a refrigerator... but we couldn't both fit. He got on top of it so I couldn't get out.”
I turned around for half a second and wiped tears off my face. I turned again to face my son and continued to tell the story.
“I was screaming, telling him to let me out, but he didn't. He was talking to me and... I could hear him suffocating. He was talking about something I once told him about knights. He was my knight and he needed to protect his fair maiden. He also talked about the first time I talked to him, and how pretty I was. And I could hear him cough and cough and cough. When I knew it was the end, I told him I loved him. And his last words were ‘I love you too, Marge’.”
I made a cup with my hand and put it over my right eye, the one I almost lost 27 years ago. The one Rich took care of one time, when we were just the both of us at the standpipe.
Richie got up his chair and hugged me tightly. I held him even tighter when I felt him shaking under my arms.
“There's nothing like your first love. I'm glad I told him I loved him. Cause if I didn't, it would still be my biggest regret to this day. Because he deserved to know.”
He deserved to know.
He deserved to know.
He deserves to know.
He deserves to know.
27 years later
“Eddie?”
He looked up at me with his half-closed deer eyes, his hand loosening its grip on mine.
“What?” he coughed, desperately trying to get a sound out of his mouth.
I pulled him the closest I could without hurting him, holding his hand tightly over his chest. I put my other hand over his cheek, caressing it with my thumb.
There was a lump in my throat, a lump of fear and repression and memories and slurs, a lump that tasted like Connor Bowers and Henry Bowers and his whole gang too. And the words couldn't get past the lump even if I knew they would have to soon. It was now or never.
Eddie coughed up a worrisome quantity of blood. I wiped his mouth with the inside of my wrist, feeling the warm blood sticking to my arm.
“Eddie, you're still here?”
“Yes,” he muttered.
“Good. Good.”
I took a deep breath, forcing my lungs to expand to their maximum, storing all the courage I could inside of them.
“Eddie… I-I love you.”
If it wouldn't have been so dark down there, I'm sure we could have seen his eyes light up. A faint smile appeared on his face and he replied in a soft voice:
“I love you too, Richie.”
He put his hand on my cheek, looking straight into my watery eyes. And he laughed. And I laughed. And we both laughed because we could finally stop pretending. All that mattered at that moment was that I was holding the hand of the boy who became my friend on the first day of kindergarten, when I saw him crying in his mom’s arms and went up to him and gave him a hug, and he didn't know how to react because he didn't have a lot of friends growing up. The boy I married in first grade by tying a blade of grass around his ring finger at recess. The boy I got in trouble for holding hands with and telling everyone he was my lover, and I didn’t quite understand why the adults were mad. The boy who I had to announce to that we couldn't be lovers anymore because the adults told me so and who cried because he thought I didn't love him anymore.The boy I had written Valentine's Day cards to every year since we met until I moved out. The boy I had fallen for at the age of 9, when he cleaned my glasses for me after Bowers put mud on them. The boy I jumped in a glacial pond for because he had dropped his inhaler in it. The boy I made a promise with that we would never forget each other and although the memories went away, I never totally forgot him, there had been an Eddie-shaped hole in my heart since the day I left Derry. The boy who was my first and will be my last love.
And I was kissing him.
And he was kissing me back even warmer, even softer and so much more amazingly that I could have ever imagined, ever wished.
I was hearing them, the other Losers, and I didn't care because I knew that now I was unbeatable, we were unbeatable, since I had nothing to be scared about anymore.
So I let them scream and shout at IT because I knew we would win anyway.
And I kept kissing him, telling him everything I wish I had the time to through the kisses. Whispering secrets with my lips on his, drawing hearts and signing our initials with my finger on his hand.
I kept kissing him until the very last moment.