When Eddie got home from his routinely checkup that afternoon, he carefully threw away his remains of that days lunch and kicked off his shoes.
"I'm running out of hand sanitizer," he informed his mother, who was reclined lazily inside of a chair in the living room. He tried desperately to get a final serving from the bottom of the bottle he had been keeping clutched in his grip all day.
"Pick some up when you get your prescription from Keene's later. Charge it on the account," she responded flatly, painting her nails and blowing on each one afterwards.
Always painting those damn nails, and for what? It's not like you ever take them anywhere other than work, Eddie internally hissed. He only nodded with a repetitive sense of understanding. "Okay, well, I'm headed to my room now."
"Alright, now make sure you-" Sonia began.
"Keep the door open 3 inches, incase I'm having an asthma attack and need your help, I know," he finished for her habitually. His tone of voice carried the words with a spark of something that comforted Sonia.
'Need'. He needs me. Nobody else.
"You know I love you, Eddie-Bear," she reminded slowly. She could say the words a million times, but in the end, they'd never live up to the true form of love she had a sinking deficit of. The kind that doesn't lie to him or twist the reality of things so that he'd stay away from them.
"Love you too, mommy."
His small mouth moved so sporadically and neurotically that you could hear how the tip of his tongue was high on all of the medications she had been giving him.
He wandered down the empty hallway and through the doorframe that was placed at the end of it. His room had been held on the first floor since the day he was born, spending his first few days inside of a cradle while his newborn eyes slit open and filled him with heavy amounts of light. The stairs were too much of a risk to his paper-thin bone marrow as a child, his mom always said, so Eddie resided on the first floor.
His room was neat. Almost too neat. His twin-sized bed was blanketed in a soft quilt that he had a habit of washing twice a week, and on shelves where other children would display their sports participation trophies, he held his collection of health books. He'd kept them all throughout the years and you could see how the assortment shifted from simple picture books on how to wash your hands that he learned to read when he was 5 to serious human anatomy encyclopedias that ranged up to a thousand pages. He sat on the corner of his neatly-made bed and unzipped his fanny pack. Then, he pulled out a small package of bandaids.
"I'm so sick of Bowers' fuckface" he mumbled to himself. "I hate that... that motherfucker." The word crossed his tongue with hesitance at first, but then tied his lips in a smirk while feeling the rush of euphoria he got after saying it more freely.
He only used this sort of language, for the most part, when he was alone. But for good reasoning, of course. Everything he did had to have good reasoning. Eddie was one of Henry's favorite victims. He was small, obedient, and easy to wear out without having to do much work.
Today, he had taken the liberty of grabbing Eddie by his heaving chest and shoving him into a concrete wall. "Gonna stomp on those bones like crisp autumn leaves," Henry threatened thoroughly, his voice hurting delicate eardrums like nails on a chalkboard. Eddie had begged, cried, to be put down, only adding fuel to Henry's cruel fire of bitterness that drove himself to insanity. His nails took the small hand in his grip and sunk into the soft surface, breaking the skin when he supplied enough pressure.
Eddie was frantic to disinfect it, not feeling true panic until he discovered that he'd run out of that, too, just like his hand sanitizer. He usually kept spares in his locker but they'd all been taken from the restraint and dumped out recently, courtesy of the ruthlessness given by the Bowers gang. Now, he sat on his bed, patching up the small wound with the only supplies he had left. He couldn't sneak more from the stockpiled medicine cabinets in the bathroom. If Sonia were to see the abrasions marked on her sons hands, he's worried he'd end the day inside of the police station while she sat in handcuffs in front of him.
8:00 rolled around with no respect to speed at all and the late-summer sun had only just set, allowing small strokes of light blue to still be seen in the wash of dark color that had infused the sky above. There wasn't too far of a walk from his residence to Keene's pharmacy and drugstore, though, so he didn't feel the need to worry about possible crack addicts or methheads that he had been informed about. Still, he kept his house keys clutched between his fingers. With that, Eddie made his way, leaving the endless lecture that was Mrs. Kaspbrak's mantra behind his oak front door.
When he arrived at Center Street Drug (dubbed "Keene's Pharmacy") only 10 minutes later, he swaddled his hand inside of his shirt and hooked it around the doorknob, using his classic red polo as a barrier between himself and all of the gruesome bacteria that must be harboring there. He pulled the glass door open with all the force he could manifest into himself.
Keene's pharmacy was a second home to Eddie. He'd gotten his first prescription from there when he had come down with that wicked case of bronchitis back in '76 and in the 12 years proceeding that, hadn't stopped picking up familiar orange bottles of little yellow pills since. It was strange to all the Derry citizens, of course. Seeing such a small kid pick up that many prescriptions and other medicinal products every week was alarming.
Visibly, there was nothing wrong with Eddie. Sure, he was a little small. But other than that, he had a vibrant glow in his doe-like eyes, keratin rich brown hair that swept across his head in a neat haircut, and tanned skin, smooth as porcelain that was doused with healthy freckles. Just like Richie's.
Yet on the inside, his lungs shook at any sign of oncoming anxiety, his bones could shatter like glass under a high pitch, and his immune system caved in on itself at any sign of intruding bacteria. Sonia had told him all of this, but he had never heard it from any of the doctors he visited regularly.
"Hello Eddie," Mr. Keene addressed with a timid, fake smile that was deprived of any genuineness. Again? You're here again? What now? He perched himself over the prescription counter in a bright white lab coat. "You here for the Hydr0x?"
Eddie nodded. "And some hand sanitizer."
Mr. Keene pointed perpetually to an isle on his right. "You know where to look. I'll be right back with that." He gave another vague, closed-mouth smile and disappeared into the shelves of medicine to pick up Eddie's placebo.
"It's a damn shame he's going through this," Mr. Keene always sympathized quietly. "That mother of his is an absolute lunatic. The kid isn't sick. She is, though. Mentally."
Eddie sauntered steadily through the isle and carefully inspected every brand of hand sanitizer there was to offer until his eyes laid sight on his favorite one. Without hesitating for a single moment, he piled up bottles high in his small arms (with an extra bottle of liquid disinfectant at the top like a star on a Christmas tree for good measure) and made his way towards the checkout.
"This is going on the account?" Mr. Keene questioned. It wasn't really a "Is this going on the account?" type of statement, more of a "Let me guess," inquisition. He already knew the answer to that, of course, but it was policy to ask. Eddie nodded again.
While he punched numbers into the blocky cash register, Keene's mouth twisted with fine contemplation. The only sound that could be heard were the clicks and snaps of the buttons under his touch.
"Hey, Eddie," He finally interjected, leaning over the prescription counter again. Eddie looked up at him with curious eyes.
"Just out of curiosity, do you have any idea what's in these medications that you're taking?" He pondered.
The boy pulled a face that showcased his vivid inner-attitude. "No. Not really. I don't have a Doctor of Pharmacy degree. Isn't that your job?"
Mr. Keene sighed in misunderstanding. "Yes, but Eddie-"
He was cut-off by the thick chiming of his visitors bell.
Four boys piled in.
YOU ARE READING
Lover | Richie Tozier
Fanfiction"Her soft lips pulled into the corner of her cheek as she watched him mouth the lyrics to the song she claimed to love, and Richie couldn't help but hope that she'd begin to love him the way she loved that song. Maybe that was the whole point." ____...
