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( 🦇 ) ━━ chapter four, Beverly lies stretched out on a towel, chunky shades covering her eyes as music drifts from the boom box. She's all fiery red hair and soft freckles — the kind of girl that's effortlessly pretty. The kind of girl that becomes the muse of poets. To pine for unimaginable girls that are made of pure honey. Beverly Marsh has always been a bit of a dream girl — maybe not the kind that you'd bring home to meet the parents, but definitely the kind of girl that everyone wants to know.
And then there's Eliot who sits with one leg underneath her and the other propped up so her book rests on her knee. She's the poet — driven mad by the world and reduced to painting it in words that will never perfectly describe it. Always the poet, but never the muse. Her thumb is shoved between her teeth, biting at the nail that weakens from the grinding. Her stolen sunglasses sit on the bridge of her nose, slightly too large for her narrow face. There's a peeling band-aid on her elbow. Eliot isn't a dream girl. She's more akin to something from your nightmares — all bruised knees and inhospitable demeanor.
"You don't like me do you?" Beverly inquires and turns her head slightly in Eliot's direction.
She doesn't look up from her book and Beverly wonders if she'd heard her. "I like you as much as I like anyone else."
"Which is not at all?"
"Less than that, if you'd believe it."
Beverly quirks a brow at the blonde girl's brutal honesty, but she's not wounded by the statement. "Well, I'd get if you hated me. There's been some pretty nasty rumors spread about me — none of which are true though."
More silence.
And then: "I didn't peg you as the type of person who cared about what others thought of her."
"Well, I don't—"
"You obviously do if you felt the need to clarify that they weren't true," Eliot responds monotonously.
Now Beverly falls silent.
"It's not like there aren't any rumors circulating about me. It'd be hypocritical of me to judge you for that. I'm not exactly a saint in the eyes of Derry either." And she's right. All kinds of ugly lies had been spread about Eliot and even her mother. For Eliot, a lot of the rumors came from her peers who viewed her as too strange and unwelcoming to be one of them. And for Christine, the rumors came from the bored housewives that she sat around at book club with, pretending that she could actually ever be one of them. Eliot never wanted to be like her.
Beverly nods understandingly. Eliot glances at her. It's not much, but it's something.
They both look at the boys who turn away quickly, though neither girl is fooled by their shameful attempt of a recovery. Richie grabs at Ben's backpack and starts rifling through it in a typical Richie Tozier manner. "News flash, Ben. School's out for summer."
