TAME. ⌲ reddie

one 〰 new year new book

The familiar cool Derry breeze blew past Richie, pushing his black curls out of his face as he rode his bike to school, shivering under its freezing temperature. It was mid-September, and there was only a month till the early Derry winter began.

Richie hated winter.

He hated the cold, staying in with his broken family, having to trudge through the snow to get to school, getting sick, having an empty space under the Christmas tree; He hated every aspect of it, really.

Richie tried to pedal as fast as he can to get his blood moving and his body temperature rising. It went on like this for a solid ten minutes, the cold breeze lowering Richie's body temperature by the second and him cursing himself for forgetting to bring a jacket under his breath and speeding up his pace until he was finally allowed to pull the brakes of his bike, now reaching the school. He placed his bike in an empty slot in the bike stand and used a metal chain to secure it to the rods.

"Tozier!" He looked around to see his best friend, Stan the man Uris, surrounded by their posse: Beverly Marsh (aka Richie's girlfriend), Bill Denbrough, Caleb McLaughlin, Sadie Sink, and Gaten Matarazzo. Richie gave a slight nod before walking over to them. Stan was seated on the roof of his older brother's car, while the rest piled around it, standing.

"What's up, losers?" Richie greeted before snaking an arm around Beverly's waist, who leaned into him and gave him a kiss on the cheek. The action was too little for Richie, who turned his head and gave her a passionate kiss. It was about to turn into something more when Stan cleared his throat and the two pulled apart, still having a close proximity.

"Well," Stan began. "We were talking on how the original book was filled up completely, the last entry being me, and we still wanted to keep the game going, but the book literally has no slots left. So, I came up with this idea to make a new book. The old one was started back in '80. It's been 011 years since then. Let's be the class that starts the new book that lasts eleven more years."

'The book' was what the group called the playbook, which was a beaten up, old composition notebook that was handed down from the graduating class to the rising senior class every year. It was a secret to everyone except the most popular groups of each class, and in case you haven't guessed it, the senior class of 1991's most popular group was the one Richie belonged to.

The playbook was a special notebook that was filled page to page with thousands of tables. It was where the history of the game and the points of the players lay.

What game and what points, you ask?

Well, that's the interesting part.

'The game' was a game of risk and challenge in which you were given a dare that always went too far, and a set number of points for it. If you accept the dare, you have to do a spit handshake with the person that requested the dare, to act like a promise, saying that you will complete the dare. Then, when you complete the dare you earn the number of points.At the end of every senior year, on the last day of school, every group that played has to count up each of the player's points, and the player with the most points receives $300 in prize money.

It was no little amount, and everyone wanted it.

But, alas, only one person could get it.

To prevent cheating and betrayal, the requester themselves have to write in the playbook and a witness has to watch them to make sure they're writing the exact number of points the duo agreed on. Any person caught cheating would be exempt from the game.