How We Stop It ✔️ Reddie Stenbrough Benverly

We Always Won

Mike stared at the missing poster of Dean, the young boy who lived at Bill's old house. Only a few years older than Georgie had been. He looked at another missing poster: Victoria. She was distinctive; she had a strawberry birthmark on her cheek. He looked at the newspaper clippings detailing the attacks on Don Hagerty and Adrian Mellon which culminated in Adrian's death.

'It's doing it on purpose,' Mike muttered to himself. 'It's trying to piss us off.'

A young kid like Georgie, innocent and naïve, like the Losers had once been. A young girl who other kids picked on for being different, like the Losers had once been. A same-sex couple like the one which had just been revealed to him, which reminded him of his own relationship, which he didn't even know paralleled more than one pairing amongst his friends.

He dreaded what might happen next if they didn't act fast.

His phone rang. He answered it.

'Mike?' Ben hollered into the phone. 'Mike, I've got split up from Bev.'

'What?' Mike asked. 'How? Did It take her?' His heart pounded as he thought about the last time this had happened, when she had been gripped by the throat and suspended in the deadlights, destined to live and relive the deaths of her friends until Ben's kiss saved her.

Ben rubbed his forehead. 'No, she ran. She wants to find her token alone.'

'How did this happen?' Mike asked, a little disappointed.

He swallowed, 'I had to let her go. She'd made her mind up. If I'd forced myself around her, she would have only pushed away harder.'

Mike growled low under his breath. 'Then what do we do?'

Ben gritted his teeth. 'I have an idea.'

---

Stan and Bill had circled the town and come up short, ending up back in the hideout under the ground.

'There's got to b-be something,' Bill murmured, slumping down onto the crate.

Biting his lip, Stan sat beside him. 'I just can't think. Maybe,' he started, twisting himself round so that his knee knocked against Bill's, 'Maybe if you talked to me more about yours, then that might help me find mine.'

'But you know w-what this is,' Bill said, pulling the boat out of his pocket.

'Yeah, I do,' Stan said, taking Bill's hand in his own. 'I know that's Georgie's boat. But you heard Mike talking about his. A rock wasn't just a rock. So what else is it?'

Bill whispered, 'You'll f-float too.'

'Bill?' Stan asked nervously.

'Floating.'

'Floating?' Stan queried.

'That's w-what I'm really afraid of and w-what I really hope I can always d-do. I'm afraid of Georgie f-f-floating in Pennywise's lair, I'm afraid of Bev f-f-floating in the deadlights, I'm afraid of Betty Ripsom's shoes f-f-floating in the sewers.'

Stan closed his eyes, trying not to remember.

'But at the s-same time, I hope I f-float. I hope I s-stay afloat. I h-hope that I don't drown in this. Drown in the memories or drown in the forgetting.'

For a minute, Stan thought about his body floating in the bathwater, had he climbed inside, like a sensory-deprivation tank, the feeling, the light falling away.

'Forgetting sometimes feels like being in the ocean, stranded, floating your way through, searching for an island. But remembering doesn't feel like finding land either. Remembering feels like sinking, like being dragged under, where it's dark and the pressure just builds in my ears like volume.'