mixtape (reddie)

Chapter 37

Richie isn't as angry as he thought he would be.

He stands on the front porch, staring at the chipping paint and peeling wood encasing the whole house. Even their home looks abused, neglected, and forgotten. Mr. Bowers sure knows how to destroy everything he touches.

Richie pauses for a moment, trying to remember exactly what it is he's doing here when he should be on his way to Curly's. He promised Beverly and Ben he'd meet them there, but instead, he's about twenty minutes outside of town, standing on property he shouldn't be standing on.

Eventually, the cold ultimately makes up Richie's mind. He's certain that he will give himself frostbite if he continues to linger outside, so he raises a steady hand to knock on the front door. He doesn't know exactly when he and Henry got on formal standards, but maybe it had something to do with the switchblade threats that were made in high school bathrooms.

Henry answers the door wearily, cracking it open just enough to investigate who is knocking. Once he sees Richie's patient face, he slams the door shut. Richie doesn't move, doesn't even flinch. He just sits, waits, waits some more, and then relaxes his shoulders when he hears the sliding of a deadbolt lock.

When Henry opens the door this time, he opens it all the way. He doesn't say anything to Richie, doesn't even mutter a weak hello. He simply avoids eye contact and holds the screen door for the freshman to walk inside.

Richie shakes some of the snow from his hair, kicking the frost off his boots in the doorway. Once standing in the foyer, he turns to look at Henry, or more so, the damage on the boy's face.

"What's the story you're telling people?" Richie asks, nodding his head towards the two swollen bruises puffing up around Henry's hazel eyes. The fingerprints engraved into his neck are a rich purple color, and there's a nasty gash running along his lower lip from where a set of teeth clamped through.

Henry looks to the side in shame, his voice lacking any of the usual anger and insanity that it always has. He sounds... broken. Like this time really did just completely break him. "Fell down at the Barrens."

Richie nods. The Barrens can be quite a dangerous place if you're not looking where you step, it's almost believable. But he knows better, he knows that Henry is a regular explorer when it comes to the muddy waters, he knows those fingertips better than anybody else in Derry. So, he asks "And the actual story?"

Henry doesn't respond, just lets his head fall and starts walking down the hall towards the kitchen. When they were younger, it was tradition for the two boys to make their own hot chocolate by heating up milk on the stove and adding cocoa powder. It always tasted like complete shit, but it was just their thing. It made them happy, and now Henry craves to taste that nostalgia more than anything.

Richie doesn't ask the question again until he sees Henry pouring milk into the pot on the stove. He feels a bit of the past flicker up inside him, but there is no way for that fire to be rekindled. Eddie made sure that the embers were all extinguished, stomped on the ashes, and kicked them around to insure that absolutely no bridge could be built there again.

"What actually happened, Hen?" Richie asks.

Henry blinks a couple times, his body curling away as if he's expecting to be hit. Richie notices the boy wearing two thick sweaters over one another, causing his brain to start fabricating images of what Henry's skin looks like. Henry's dad likes the torso the most, he can whip that with his belt as much as he likes without it showing to a single person. If he was angry enough to leave such evident bruises on Henry's face, there's absolutely no way that his torso went unscathed.

"Someone tipped off that child abuse lady," Henry mumbles. "Said my old man hits me. He didn't like when they started pokin' their nose around."

"Yeah, it's a bit shitty, isn't it?" Richie smirks, the irony of the situation presenting itself oh so perfectly. "Sucks when social services show up on your doorstep, huh?"