𝐁𝐎𝐘𝐈𝐒𝐇// 𝐄𝐃𝐃𝐈𝐄 𝐌𝐔𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐗𝐎𝐂

𝐱𝐥𝐯𝐢𝐢𝐢. ✭ 𝐁𝐎𝐘𝐈𝐒𝐇

SEPTEMBER 1, 1978; EDDIE
12:04 - 12:25 p.m.

"Hey, Freak!" Jason called out to me through cupped hands. It was the first day of fifth grade. The first day back to school. The first day without Chance by my side at Hawkin's elementary. "Yeah, you, Eds!" He mocked the nickname Chance had used for me, something that would become a new specialty of his. "Where's your ugly girlfriend?"

I looked back at him in the schoolyard. The wind blew warmth across my cheeks. Jason had two other friends with him, stalking toward me with a long, gnarled twig in his hand.

"She moved to go live in Texas with her Grandma!" I replied, twisting my head over my shoulder. He was getting closer and closer but I couldn't seem to care. My body was tired. My brain was tired. Everything was tiring.

Without Chance around my life had taken a drastic change. My routine, everything I usually did was different. I didn't go out. I stayed inside my trailer, watching whatever came on TV on the couch while cradling bowls of cereal in my lap. My skin had lost its color, retreating to an impressive paleness from all of my time out of the sun.

Quite frankly, The rest of summer had been boring without her. That's what happens when you're a boy who loses his playmate. I filled my remaining days with fantasy books, comics, and learning new songs on Wayne's acoustic.

I had tried calling Chance's grandma's number that Thomas had given us but no dice. The yellow telephone attached to our wall would ring and ring and ring but no one ever picked up.

Wayne had put me on letter writing, telling me that's how he kept in touch with his old buddies. My letters vanished in the mail but none ever returned. The contact between Chance and I was a fraying cord that had finally snapped.

"Really?" Asked Jason, having caught up with me. His sandy blond hair swooped down to his eyebrows. "Did she really leave?" His fingers tightly clutched the twig he had in his possession.

"Yup."

I turned to leave but was stopped by Jason. He pulled me back, refusing to let me go. His friends crowded around me. They trapped me in a circle.

"Can't believe she didn't say goodbye." Jason's lip curled, his eyebrows arching. "Is she really that scared of me?"

"She's not scared of you. No one's scared of you." I shot back, pushing against his chest to break out of the circle. He shoved me backward, sending me into one of his friends. My clothes were messed up from their attack, the material wrinkling to my frustration. "Let me go."

The twig in Jason's hand rotated, the end of it bouncing on the asphalt.

"You know what the best part is about that red-headed leprechaun leaving?" His question was rhetorical, nevertheless biting. Jason's stormy eyes glinted cruelly, locking on mine. "The best part is that she left you."

"Shut up." My gaze was unfocused, stinging from his words. "Shut up," I mumbled again, sucking a breath in. He was voicing the thoughts that had been stewing in my head the last half of summer and I fucking hated it.

"Yeah." A sharp laugh left his mouth. "She left you. Now every time we beat the crap out of you no one'll say anything." Jason lifted the twig up, stroking it against the side of my calf. "She's not here to stop it..." He moved it up to my knee. "To lick your wounds."