Red Soul | Eddie Munson

𝕍. 𝔸 ℂ𝕠𝕞𝕗𝕠𝕣𝕥 𝕀'𝕧𝕖 ℕ𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕣 𝕂𝕟𝕠𝕨𝕟

"I can't sleep and
I miss your face."
╰── ⋅ ⋅ ── ✩ ── ⋅ ⋅ ──╯

I had just barely fallen asleep when I heard arguing coming through the wall from Jonathan's room. I curled up into a ball and focused on what was happening.

"You're just making things worse, like always," Jonathan said.

Lonnie scoffed. "Worse? She took down that wall with an axe! She said that Will was inside and that he's talking to her!"

"Yeah, maybe he was," Jonathan told him.

"This isn't some kind of joke!" Lonnie yelled. "Your mom was half frozen to death when I got here. Trembling, scared out of her mind. You come in here and you start feeding into her hallucinations, or whatever the hell you want to call it, you're gonna push her right over the edge. Not to mention your damn cousin Julie is already feeding into it too!" Jonathan didn't respond and he sighed. "Look, I'm on your side. I'm here to help. I'm gonna make things better around here for all of us."

"Well, thank god you're here," Jonathan responded sarcastically.

"Do me a favor. At the funeral tomorrow, you and Julie need to behave. If not for me, for your mother."

The funeral. Jonathan must have gotten the casket anyway before he and Nancy went to figure out what was in the photo.

I wasn't sure how that was going to play out. The three people closest to Will now believed he was still alive. I'm sure tears would still be shed at the thought of him actually being dead, but we would be wasting time at the funeral when the three of us could be figuring out how to help him.

I knew I would no longer be able to sleep, and obviously there was nothing we were able to do tonight, so I decided to leave. To avoid seeing anyone, I climbed out of my window and grabbed my bike off the porch.

Eddie showed me where he lived during our late night drive the night before. I pedaled as fast as I could to his house, hoping he was still awake. My clock read midnight when I left and it would take me at least thirty minutes to bike there.

I was out of breath by the time I reached his house, and I was frozen. I didn't even think to grab a jacket in my hurry. I knocked on the door and prayed he would answer.

Thankfully, he did.

He opened the door shirtless and in plaid pajama pants. "Julie?"

"I couldn't sleep," I stated.

"Apparently you couldn't put on a coat either," he said. "Jesus, come inside."

He rushed me into his house and back toward his bedroom where he immediately wrapped a blanket around me and sat me on his bed. I shivered into it as he leaned up against his dresser and crossed his arms.

I took in his room. There were metal band posters everywhere, a guitar on the wall, and... handcuffs hanging by his closet? It was a bit messy, but nothing out of the norm for a teenage boy.

"I'm sorry I blew you off," I told him, breaking the silence. I also needed to look away from the handcuffs.

"You really don't need to be sorry," he reassured me. "You just lost your cousin. I shouldn't have expected you to drop anything to hang out with little old me."

"It was still shitty."

"Listen, I knew from the moment we met we were going to best friends." He grinned. "Didn't you see the side of your shoe?"

"The guitar?" I asked.

"No," he chuckled. He bent down and picked up my left foot, gently turning it inwards so I could read it. Written toward the back of it was 'E+J.' "You're stuck with me, Jules. You could spit in my face and I would come see you the next day with a slushie to say sorry for whatever I did."

"Why me?" I blurted out.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, I literally showed up at your friends house to buy weed, cried on his couch within five minutes of meeting you, and blew you off after knowing you for not even forty-eight hours," I explained. "I wouldn't want to be acquaintances with me, let alone best friends."

"I don't know," he shrugged, sitting on the bed beside me. "I saw a spark in you."

"A spark? In me?" I laughed.

"Yeah." He seemed dumbfounded that I couldn't see what he was talking about. "Shit, you literally recognized me because of the D&D club I started. Then you told me that you're learning how to play it? You're cool as hell, Julie Byers. But it wasn't just that. On our drive last night, you sang along to almost every song I put on. Not even my other self-proclaimed metal-loving friends could do that."

Eddie managed to make me speechless. I stared at him, my mouth slightly open. "I don't know what to say."

"Just agree that you're cooler than ninety-nine percent of this town," he said. "I'm the other one percent, for obvious reasons."

I smiled at him. "Thank you."

"No need to thank me for anything." He waved me off. "Do you like scary movies?"

"Are you kidding? They're my favorite kind of movies."

"Let's watch one." He dug around in a drawer and pulled out a stack of movies. "Your pick."

He gave me the options of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Psycho, The Omen, Halloween, and The Shining. I shuffled through them for a minute.

"Let's do Halloween," I decided.

"Sounds like a plan. Stand up."

I stood up off the bed and he grabbed his comforter and walked out to his living room. I followed behind him like a puppy.

"Are we going to wake your parents up?" I asked.

"My uncle," he corrected me. "And no. He works the night shift at the plant, so it's just us."

He made us a bed on the couch and popped Halloween into the VCR. We started off the movie just sitting next to each other under the comforter, but by the middle of the movie I ended up with my head in his lap. I was exhausted. He absentmindedly played with my hair while he randomly quoted the movie every so often.

I fell asleep before it ended and woke up to sunlight glaring through the windows.

Eddie didn't move at all. He let me sleep with my head right on his lap while he eventually fell asleep still sitting up, his arm around my body and his head laid back on the back of the couch. He was snoring softly.

I slowly sat up and looked at the clock on the wall. It was nine o'clock and Will's funeral was at ten.

"Shit!" I yelled.

Eddie jumped awake, startled by my outburst. He wiped the drool off his face and blinked rapidly to adjust to the light. "What'sgoingon?"

"I'm gonna be late for the funeral!" I told him frantically.

"Everything's fine," he said. He immediately stood up, went to his bedroom, then into what I assumed was his bathroom, and came back out fully dressed with a toothbrush in his mouth. "Let's go."

He drove me home and put my bike on the porch while I quickly threw on one of Joyce's black dresses that she had laid on my bed for me, brushed my hair and pulled it back into a bun, and brushed my teeth. If he noticed the gigantic hole in the house from Joyce, he didn't mention it.

We made it just as the crowd was gathering around Fake Will's burial site. My heart pounded in my chest.

"You can come if you want too," I offered.

"Definitely not dressed for a funeral," he said. "And I didn't even know Will."

"I can't do this," I said, more to myself than to him.

He grabbed my hand and squeezed it. "It'll be okay. I promise. I'll be back at home if you need to come by after."

Eddie was sweet. I knew he was thinking I was afraid to see my younger cousin be buried, and I would continue to let him believe that. I would never tell him I was afraid to go because that's not Will.