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- six

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❝ hey you guys! ❞

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It was approaching 10:45 in the morning when Richie reached his next destination, and the snow was starting to fall more heavily. He couldn't even see the grass of the Neibolt Street baseball field under all of this white powder, but he trudged onto it anyway, glancing around at the fenced-in area with a nostalgic smile. He was only getting further from his destination— but he had a few hours. He wasn't too concerned.

He stood in the middle of the field and stared around, a soft smile settling onto his lips. For a split second he thought he caught the shadow of an old building— a house— in the corner of his eye. But he whirled around, and across the street, where his old nightmare used to stand, there was just the same old wreckage as they had left behind two years prior. There was the sound of a footstep crunching through the snow— but he turned again, and there was nobody there, either.

"Stop scaring yourself," he grumbled.

His own footsteps were the only sounds after that aside from the wind, which only seemed to be getting stronger. Branches flailed against it, and snow continued to fall harder still. What had been a dusting just an hour earlier was now reaching his ankles and still climbing.

Richie approached the dugout that his team had always occupied when they were kids and couldn't help but chuckle as he squatted down in the small gap between the roof and the ground. The bench was still attached to the wall, but he was afraid to put any weight on it as he strolled down the steps into the confined space. He had to duck a little bit and realized he finally understood why Coach had never wanted to hold any team meetings in here— the roof hung very low.

Richie looked at the back corner where he had spent most of his time, unless he was on the field. It was the prized spot to be— if you sat there, you were one of, if not the most liked on the team, and Richie had inhabited it longer than almost any of the others with his sets of wisecracks and hearty swings of the old wooden bat that always clattered around when you dropped it.

Looking back now, Richie wondered, if the boys on his team had liked him so much, why had he never hung out with them?

But deep down, in a place that he hadn't worn on his shoulder then as he did so now, he knew.

And he remembered.

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Derry, Autumn of 1994

The game was over.

Richie sat in the corner of the dugout furthest from the exit, visor of his hat hanging low on his forehead, shielding his eyes from the sun that tried to peek through the gap between the ceiling and floor. A few boys clapped him on the shoulder, wished him well— "Hey, man, we'll miss you. Wish you didn't have to graduate!"— and God, Richie felt old.

They had lost. It was the last game of the season, and they had lost. But Richie had played his heart out, and he was exhausted— and as the last of his teammates' voices faded from the field, he still sat.

He wasn't sure how exactly he felt.

Sad, for sure. This team had been with him since the little league, for Christ's sake. Some of these boys had been his friends since there were still training wheels on their bikes. And watching them walk away, watching them hang up their uniforms for the last time? That— That was something.