𝐏𝐔𝐑𝐏𝐋𝐄 *.☽ .* 𝐑𝐄𝐃𝐃𝐈𝐄 𝐒𝐎𝐔𝐋𝐌𝐀𝐓𝐄 𝐀𝐔

11

Kaspbrak Residence, Derry, Maine
5:46 pm
Tuesday 30th August 1992

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It's a cruel, cruel summer,
Leaving me here on my own,

The words seems to bounce off of every wall in Eddie's box bedroom as he lay idly on his back on his bed that was hollowing due to the amount of time he now spent just lying on it. Sonia had forbidden him to leave the house all summer and it was starting to feel even more like a prison cell than it had ever done before.

Not only were the words echoing around his minuscule room, but they were echoing around his mind, the lyrics taking new meaning now that they actually were true to Eddie. This summer had been cruel to him; that was an understatement.

As Eddie stared upwards at his blank white ceiling, he thought of all the fun the losers were having without him. Although he received calls from each of them pretty much daily (which made the boy light up with joy to think his friends cared about him so much), it just wasn't the same as seeing them.

His telephone may have been yellow as the sun, but it only seemed to rain on his parade when he would hear Bill's voice on the other end of the phone while Stanley and Richie giggled in the back, or when Beverly rang and Ben could be heard having a philosophical conversation with Mike ever so faintly. It all reminded him that he wasn't there, and it was starting to feel like they didn't miss him, or so his brain had convinced him.

And it all sucked even more since it felt like this was one of his last years to be a kid. This summer was supposed to be his last chance to mess around and bask in what little childhood innocence he had left before leaping off the cliff's edge into the quarry below, but instead of hitting the water, he'd be hitting a new stage of his life: adulthood. And that thought was one that scared little Eddie, Eddie who was still only 5'4" and would be turning 17 in a few days.

It's a cruel, cruel summer,
Now you're gone.

The song ended.

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Kaspbrak Residence, Derry, Maine
5:51 am
Wednesday 31st August 1992

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Richie stumbled down the halls of the school which people seemed to be slowly filtering out of, until eventually he was alone. The walls of the corridor seemed to be getting smaller and smaller, threatening to squash him, whilst the stinging in his eye and the ringing in his ears weren't settling down.

All of a sudden he felt small. As if being the new kid wasn't hard enough, this Henry dick just had to make things worse.

His throat seemed as though it was closing in too, his mouth suddenly feeling very parched, crying out for a drop of water. Wearily, he rubbed at his untouched eye and walked wherever his feet took him until, at last, the Holy Grail. There was a water fountain just ahead of him.

He scrambled towards it - never had he ever ran towards a water fountain so quick - and leaned forward to drink some of the crystal cool water. He then took his hand and cupped some of the liquid before gently patting his injured eye, hoping to take some of the sting away. He winced in pain.

***

Eddie was almost done with taking his stuff out of his locker when he saw the kind boy from earlier. His messy curls bounced so adorably as he bounded down the corridor.

Eddie thought that maybe he'd seen him too and was running towards him, but figured that couldn't be true when the boy stopped in front of the water fountain and acted as though he'd been on a trek through a desert and hadn't seen water for days on end.

The small boy watched the other with curious eyes. He was strange, Eddie would admit, but he was incredibly interesting to watch.

The boy with the raven curls seemed to be done with the water fountain now as he stood up to his usual posture and shook his head, his curls once again bouncing around.

Eddie smiled.

The boy turned his head. He saw Eddie.

And he smiled too.

Soon enough, this perplexing boy began to walk over to little Eddie with a toothy grin etched onto his features. He stuck out his hand.

"Hey, I'm Richie," he beamed.

Eddie's smile quickly faded and his eyebrows furrowed as he noticed the bruise that was forming on Richie's eye. It was beginning to bulge and turn a painful shade of deep purple.

Eddie reached out a podgy little finger towards Richie's face. Gently, he placed it on the wound, watched as Richie's brows curled upwards slightly at the contact before resuming back to their natural expression, and softly murmured,

"Purple."