𝐁𝐎𝐘𝐈𝐒𝐇// 𝐄𝐃𝐃𝐈𝐄 𝐌𝐔𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐗𝐎𝐂

𝐥𝐱. ✭ 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄 𝐖𝐈𝐋𝐋 𝐓𝐄𝐀𝐑 𝐔𝐒 𝐀𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓

AUGUST 28, 1978; EDDIE
10:15 - 10:20 a.m.

"It's her," I whispered to myself, sitting on a paint-peeled bench in the schoolyard of Hawkins elementary. The sandwich that Uncle Wayne had slapped together for me was peanut butter and jelly. The white bread was squishy in my hands, soft, and malleable. Two bites had been bitten off. Two delicious bites.

However, as wonderful as the sandwich was, my attention had been captured elsewhere. There, across the yard, playing hopscotch with her back to me was a girl with amber hair. Her locks fell to her barely forming waist, swishing as she jumped along the concrete. I only knew one girl with that particular shade of orange, and she was a very special one.

She's back.

My heart thudded, it leaped with hope, jerking my body up with it. The sandwich I had been nibbling on lay discarded on the bench, still in its ziplock bag. I, on the other hand, was floating.

Thomas said it would only be for a little while.
That it was just that Chance hadn't seen her grandma for a long time and needed a vacation away.
Now she's back.
All those times she never phoned me back don't matter now.
They don't mean nothing.
Now I have the real thing!
She's back!

"One, two-" The hand I set on the little girl's shoulder, halted her counting. She stood in her hopscotch square on one foot, frozen until she hopped around to face me.

Her eyes were green, not brown. Her face was thin, it didn't have that charming chub surrounding her cheeks. Her nose turned up to the sky, it didn't sit like a button with the rest of her features.

Most noticeably, the girl was dressed in a buttercup yellow sundress with pockets that stuck out prominently on the sides. She was not shoved into rough-and-tumble clothes.

Oh, how could I be so stupid?

"Sorry, I thought you were-"

"Ew! Cooties!" The strange girl recoiled from me, casting an accusatory finger in my direction. "Eddie has cooties!"

The children surrounding us whipped their heads in our direction. Cooties was the unspeakable disease that ran rampant among the social rejects of elementary school and pretty much like our very own personal black plague.

I cringed at the stares that had been cast upon me. My face was so hot, sure to be flushed from the unwelcome attention.

I'm never touching another girl again.

MARCH 24, 1986; EDDIE
9:27 p.m. - 9:05 a.m.

"Let's look over here!" A voice cut through the night fog, coming from the opposite way o was running. They were after me. All of them. Cops had swarmed the scene shortly after Patrick...well whatever happened to Patrick.

Jolts of adrenaline drove their way into my body with every pump of my arms and legs. Sprinting in a forest was no easy feat, especially since I was in nothing but my boxers. Trees mocked me from their great height as I escaped, siding with the police. Their wicked branches continually reached out to claw me, scratching my exposed skin.

There was only one place I could think to go while being nearly naked and cold beyond compare. It was a sweet place, somewhere familiar, nothing like its evil counterparts that had attacked me throughout my journey.