mixtape (reddie)

Chapter 10

Richie is anxious to follow Bill to the lunch table, mainly because he's scared of having to see Beverly after ignoring the girl for so long. He loves her, he does, and he craves to feel her presence again, but he just cannot deal with her indifferent attitude when it comes to other's problems.

On top of that, there's a mixtape in his back pocket that burns a hole through his leg.

Bill talks easily about the bar mitzvah that he attended for Stanley, and how he watched Stan become a man. Usually, Richie would make some snarky comment about how they probably sliced the tip of Stan's dick off, but his nerves seem to get the best of him.

You're okay, Richie Tozier he tells himself. Everything is okay.

And Richie quickly finds out, yeah, it is okay. The lunch table that Richie was so worked up about only has one other occupant sitting at it when Bill sets his books down and tells Richie he'll be back in a second. Realizing he was nervous about nothing, Richie takes a seat next to Stan and turns to make conversation.

"Where's Bev?" Richie asks.

Between bites of his unidentifiable home lunch, Stan responds "She has third lunch."

"And Mike?"

"He's homeschooled."

"And Ben?" Richie already knows the answer to this, but he asks anyway.

"Studies in the library instead."

The words finally leave his mouth, and it's obvious that he's trying to sound as casual as possible as he says "And Eddie?"

"Right here," the small boy announces his arrival, plopping a lunch box down on the table, causing Richie to jump at its clatter. "Sorry. Bowers was giving me shit, so I had to walk the long way here."

Richie opens his mouth to reply, but Stan interrupts him and asks Eddie something completely irrelevant. Richie looks over the contents of Eddie's lunchbox, a completely balanced meal for a boy of his height and weight. The off putting part of it, however, is the ziploc baggie of brightly colored pills that takes up a third of the lunch box.

At first, Richie assumed they're gummy snacks. But as Bill returns and joins their conversation, Richie watches the way that Eddie swallows one tablet at a time, a swish of his drink to make the ride down more smooth.

"Why do you have so many pills?" Richie asks the second that there's a break in conversation. Stan and Bill seem caught up in a heated discussion about birds, so Richie takes this time to steal Eddie away.

"They're vitamins," Eddie explains. "Most of them. Some of them help me take dumps more easily, but some of them make sure that the dump isn't too intense."

What a charming mouth he's got.

"You know, I've never touched a vitamin before in my life and I'm pretty healthy," Richie says pointedly.

"Perhaps," Eddie shrugs, swallowing his next pill. "But you're at high risk for lung cancer with the way that you suck cigarettes down."

"Maybe all those pills stunted your growth, Eds," Richie ruffles Eddie's hair, getting lost in the soft feathers and wanting nothing more than to let his fingers tangle in the webs. That would be unfair, however, because he would knock Eddie's halo askew if that were to occur.

"Don't call me that," Eddie responds habitually. "Where's your lunch?"

"Don't have any lunch money," Richie shrugs, trying very hard to think about anything else other than the fact that his parents up and left for the week with no note or money to survive. Richie will make do with what's in the house, but carefully, so that he does not dip into some of his mom's favorite coconut Girl Scout cookies.