"I've realized that..." he started, then took a shaky breath. "Earlier today, when Stanley pulled you aside... seeing you two so close and secretive, I hated it." The words tumbled out in a rush. "I don't like how others make you smile..." He traile...
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°•Eddie's POV•°
The car door slammed shut behind me, the sound unnaturally loud in the stifling quiet of my life. The pharmacy air was cool and sterile, smelling of antiseptic and old paper. Muzak, some insipid, string-heavy version of a pop song, oozed from the speakers, each note deepening the pit of sadness in my stomach.
"Here for the refills, Eddie?" Mr. Keene asked from behind the counter, his voice a practiced monotone.
I just nodded, not trusting my voice. I couldn't stop thinking about them. About her. I hadn't been allowed to leave the house, hadn't been allowed to make a single phone call. My mother had thrown the lock on my life, and I was trapped inside, wondering if Vanessa was okay, if she was scared, if she hated me for disappearing.
Mr. Keene disappeared into the back. I stared at the floor, at the scuff marks on the linoleum.
"You know it's all bullshit, right?"
I looked up. Greta Bowie was leaning against the magazine rack, a nasty little smirk on her face.
"What is?" I asked, though I had no desire to engage with her.
"Your medication," she said, her eyes glinting with malicious pleasure. "They're placebos."
I frowned. "What's placebo mean?"
"Placebo means bullshit," she said, drawing the word out like it was something delicious.
I looked down at the cast on my arm, my mind flashing back to the basement on Neibolt Street. The searing, white-hot pain. The terror. And then... Vanessa. Her hands on my face, her lips on mine. It hadn't been how I'd imagined our first kiss, not even close, but in that moment of agony, it had been everything. It had been real. Not like these pills.
"No friends, huh?" Greta needled, pulling me from the memory. I stayed silent, hoping she'd get bored. "Your cast. No signatures or anything?" she pressed, walking over. "So sad."
"I didn't want it to get dirty," I mumbled, the lie tasting pathetic even to me.
"I'll sign it for you," she said, and before I could pull away, she snatched a pen from the counter and scrawled a single, ugly word across the white plaster: LOSER.
The word burned. It wasn't her stupid graffiti that hurt; it was the truth of it. I had let them all down. I had let her down. I was a loser who hid behind his mother's lies.
Mr. Keene returned and handed me the small paper bag. I took it without a word, my fist clenching around it. The bag felt impossibly light. Weightless. Meaningless.
The car ride home was a silent movie of blurring green trees and gray pavement. My mother prattled on about my "delicate constitution," but her words were just noise. All I could hear was the echo of that word. Loser.
Lunch was a silent affair. A sandwich sat uneaten on my plate. I pushed the crusts around, my appetite gone, replaced by a restless, churning energy. The quiet of the house was suddenly suffocating, broken only by the oppressive tick of the grandfather clock.
Then the phone rang.
The sound was like a shock to my system. I slowly got up and walked to it, my heart beginning to thud against my ribs.
"Hello?"
"Eddie!" It was Richie's voice, stripped of all its usual bravado, raw and frantic. "It got Vanessa and Beverly! We need to save them!"
The world dropped out from under me. Vanessa. The image of the clown's hand on her throat in the basement flashed behind my eyes. A cold terror, sharper than any I'd ever felt, seized me.
"Okay," I heard myself say, my voice surprisingly steady.
"We're all meeting up at Neibolt."
"I'll meet you there."
I hung up the phone, my hand trembling. I took a deep breath and tried to walk casually through the living room toward the front door.
"And just where do you think you're off to?" My mother materialized in front of the door like a specter, her arms crossed.
"Out with my friends," I said, the words feeling foreign and powerful on my tongue.
She shook her head, her expression a mix of pity and iron will. "Sweetie, you can't go. You're getting over your sickness, remember?"
"My sickness?" The question came out quiet, dangerous. "Okay, what sickness, Ma?" I pulled the bag of prescriptions from my pocket and held it up. "You know what these are? They're gazebos! They're bullshit!"
I hurled the bag to the floor. The bottle cracked open, and a cascade of tiny pink pills skittered across the hardwood like worthless beads.
My mother stared at the pills, then back at me, her face a mask of wounded defiance. "They help you, Eddie. I had to protect you."
"Protect me?" The dam broke. All the frustration, the fear, the loneliness of a lifetime spent in a sterile bubble came rushing out. "By lying to me? By keeping me locked inside this hellhole? I'm sorry, but the only people that were actually trying to protect me were my friends! And you made me turn my back on them! You made me turn my back on Vanessa when she needed me! So I'm going."
I stepped around her, my body thrumming with a resolve I didn't know I possessed. My hand closed on the doorknob.
"Eddie! Eddie! No! You get back here!" she shrieked, her voice rising into a hysterical wail.
I yanked the door open and strode out into the blinding, beautiful afternoon sun. I grabbed my bike from where it was leaning against the porch.
"Sorry, Mom," I called back, my voice clear and strong. "I gotta go save my friends."
I kicked off, the wheels crunching on the gravel driveway. Her screams followed me down the street, but I didn't look back.
"Eddie! Don't do this to me, Eddie!"
Her voice faded behind me, swallowed by the wind and the sound of my own pounding heart. I was riding toward Neibolt. I was riding toward my friends.
