youngblood // p. hockstetter // 0.1

//sixteen

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Working with Henry Bowers was much harder then Rosemary first anticipated.

She'd split the work between them, telling Henry exactly what he had to do and find for research over the weekend before she talked him through what he'd found on Monday. Henry was willing to do the work, if he felt like it. And he really didn't feel like it.

"Why dear god would you willingly partner yourself with him?" Gretta asked in incredulous as they sat on the curb outside her father's store, an ice-cream in each their hands. It was the Sunday following Rosemary's decision and Gretta had kindly taken her after Sunday church to spend the day with her. They'd spent several hours talking at the library and park before getting ice-creams on the uncomfortably humid spring day. Still dressed in her church clothes with her cardigan tied at her waist, Rosemary sat with her heels together atop the slate of the sewer channel in front of Mr.Keene's pharmacy, her hair tied in an intentionally messy bun atop her head.

"Henry's been polite to me since I arrived, I thought I'd help him pass Social Studies" She replied, shrugging slightly as she leant against Gretta's shoulder.

"Never thought I'd hear polite and Henry in the same sentence. You know he's a nutjob right?"

Rosemary shrugged, licking from the cone of her ice-cream. "He hasn't been that bad to me yet, maybe a little straight forward but he isn't rude or anything" Gretta huffed in amusement. "What's he done that's so bad?" She looked at Rosemary in shock.

"Other then carving a kid's stomach up last year? I'd say that's enough!"

"Is there any proof that it was him? If someone was carving someone up in broad daylight, why did no one stop him?"

"Probably because his dad's a cop? I don't know!" The pair where silent once again, Gretta practically inhaling her ice-cream. "And that's not all, him and his 'gang' are just bullies! They beat up Stuttering Bill and his friends all the time, especially Tozier" Rosemary sighed, not responding to the names she didn't recognise.

"As far as I'm aware, they're just rumours until proven otherwise" The sun had begun to sink lower into the sky, the clouds washing out any chance of colour with dreary layers of gray. A fine sheen of sweat coated them both as the uncomfortably humid weather intensified and Rosemary couldn't help but shift as a light draft of hot air blew against her ankles from the sewers.

"I think I'm going to head home" Rosemary said after a minute, carefully balancing what remained of her ice-cream as she stood.

"Really? My dad can give you a lift if you want, his shift ends in about twenty minutes?"

"It's fine, I'll see you tomorrow"

Truthfully, Rosemary wanted time to herself because she was bothered. Not in a physical sense (though the sweat collecting beneath her dress was becoming more and more of an issue), but because in the three weeks she'd been in Derry, she hadn't touched herself once. She missed the feeling of touching herself between her thighs and the dominant issue was not that she wasn't in the mood (because god knows she was) it was because Nathaniel and Jude didn't leave her alone long enough for her to do her business.

As her head swam with hormonal thoughts, she failed to notice the car driving alongside her until Victor stuck his head out the window and called out to her. "Ey sweetheart, lookin for a ride home?" Victor jested in a horrendously overdone western accent. Rosemary giggled, turning to face them whilst Belch smiled at her from the driver's seat.

"I'm droppin Vic off and then I can swing by your place and drop you off if you want?"

"Anything to escape this heat" Victor watched her cardigan sway around her petite waist from the side mirror as she moved to slide into the backseat, only noticing Patrick's lanky, slim figure when she ducked her head down to hop into the car. Draped across a seat and a half, Patrick's only form of acknowledgement came from the slight flicker of his eye when she sunk into the seat beside him.