Lisp • Richie Tozier (1)

4

The five boys and I stand on the edge of the cliff. I fold my arms across my chest. I can feel them all staring at me. I'm starting to regret coming. But still, it's better than being at home. We take turns spitting into the water. Then, we argue about who won. "I'll go!" I hear a bike drop and we all turn around. Beverly takes off her dress and sprints into the water. "Sissies." She laughs.

"What the fuck?!" Richie yells.
"We just got shown up by a girl."

I stand alone on top of the cliff and watch the boys jump in one by one. 
Richie's about to get a running start when he sees me standing there. "Come on.... we'll jump together." I glare at him. "What? No!" He shrugs. "Whatever. If you aren't gonna jump with me... I'll have to push you. You choose." I squeeze my eyes shut. "I'm not touching your hand- who knows where it's been!" He chuckles. "I can show you if you want." I pretend to barf. "No thanks. I'll just jump by myself thanks." He laughs again. "You're such a liar." I feel his hands push my back hard and I fall off of the cliff. I scream loudly and see him jump off right after me. "I fucking hate you!" I hit him and wipe the water out of my eyes. "You love me." He retorts. "You wish."

The feeling is great. I've never felt like this. To have friends and to have fun. It's all new to me. But as I sit on Stanley's shoulders, trying to push Beverly off of Bill, I realize that no one- man, woman, boy, girl- could have more fun than them. And me, feeling- being an outsider to them, I felt left out in a way. Beverly, however, seemed to fit right in.

Later, we all sit on a rock. Beverly's sun bathing and we've got some music. They're all staring at her so I just pretend to be looking at a really interesting rock. I see her turn to them and they all look away. I grin and stand up. Richie's digging through Ben's backpack and personal crap and he finds a postcard. I stand behind him and peer over his shoulder. My eyes quickly scanned over it and I read it in time, Richie wasn't so quick.

Your hair is winter fire
January embers
My heart burns there too

Woah, that's deep shit right there....

Ben ripped the paper out of Richie's hands. Richie shrugged and continued to go through Ben's things. "Ben- school's out for the summah." Richie said in a terrible accent while looking at Ben's papers.

"What are these?"