We All Float in Hawkins

23) Already Gone

"Only the margin left to write on now. I love you, I love you, I love you." — Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle.

Bill had spent his time trying to figure out how to drive.

Mike's truck was old, and puttered in a way Bill wasn't familiar with, but it ran. It worked. It'd take him to the Losers, to Hawkins. It would take him to It.

But first he had to learn how to drive.

Ben had been teaching him the rules behind driving. What each sign meant, what to do in this situation, and always use your blinker when turning. But Ben didn't know how to actually drive, either.

Then Ben was off with his mom, spouting out quickly and almost incomprehensibly about Bev.

So, Bill was alone. He didn't know how to drive. He didn't have anyone he could ask.

It was just him, his parents, and the ghost of Georgie.

Except it would've been easier if there had actually been a ghost. Someone to talk to, to laugh with. A bright smile in a yellow rain coat.

Georgie was dead, yet was still an active presence in the Denbrough home. Bill's parents' every move had Georgie in mind. And thus, Bill was often pushed out of their view.

Sometimes he felt like he'd been the one to die that horrible day, only no one was mourning for him.

Grief hit hard and at the most unexpected times. You could go months without that weighty feeling dragging you farther into your mattress, maybe even years, until it came back, rearing its tear-streamed head.

Bill, now feeling more alone than ever, was wracked with grief for his dead baby brother. When the Losers had been with him, he'd been fine. There'd been moments here and there, anniversaries and birthdays, that the lack of Georgie had made him cold and teary, but they hadn't compared to that initial grief when he heard his mom scream from downstairs. When he looked out the window to see who had knocked, and saw a man, one of his dad's friends, holding something six-year old sized wrapped in a sheet soaked with rain.

The closest he'd came to that feeling since the month or so after Georgie died was the summer of It. He'd been in Georgie's abandoned room, watching, sitting, wasting away, and had looked in the little scrapbook his brother had so adored. He'd seen a clown in one of the pictures, had watched It move. Later, he'd asked Richie to come look, and they'd sat and stared in awe and terror as Pennywise, before they knew It was Pennywise, danced around between cars and light posts, laughing audibly through the photograph. Bill, dazed, had went to touch it. His fingers had sunk through it, turning as gray as the photograph was, and Richie had pulled him out of it. He'd cried, not from the long, bloody cuts that had decorated his fingers, but because he had gotten blood on Georgie's album. Because there would be no new photos in the album. Because he'd lost his baby brother, and he was never going to get him back.

There hadn't been anything like it since. He'd grieved, and had accepted his death. He was sad about it, of course, but he had moved on.

Then Ben had left, and Bill was alone.

He sat on the floor of Georgie's room, staring at the scrapbook that was still lying in the corner of the room Richie had thrown it to. The red cover was stark against the baby blue walls, and Bill looked down at the scars on his fingers, crying.

He missed the Losers. He missed his parents. He really, really missed Georgie.

And he wasn't ready to give up the baby blue walls, cowboy printed bedsheets, and LEGO turtles yet. He wanted to be. He wanted desperately to be moved on again, to be able to take Mike's truck and drive away from his family of ghosts to his friends. But he felt tied down, and he couldn't sever the ropes until he said goodbye.