cue: confusion [IT FANFICTION]

richie almost drowned that one time

On weekends like these, lying on my bed listening to whatever was on the radio, my mind tended to slip to one of two things:

1. The inevitable future

2. All the mistakes I've ever made that could keep me from achieving literally anything

But on days like this one, when I was already feeling a bit low, I didn't allow myself to dig a deeper hole. I find my consciousness drifting to better times, before life became complicated and everybody else started making decisions for themselves.

I guess you could say I focused on the past to avoid dwelling on the future, but even then sometimes I was reminded of the absurdity of it all by the time I had a wide smile on my face and a happy sigh escaping my lips.

Today was one of these days.

Though I admit, I often found myself at a dead end when it came to Stanley Uris.

The gnawing knowledge that things would never be the same made me embarrassingly weary, but it's better to focus on the good things anyway, right? And I admit there were a lot of memories that made me smile.

It wasn't that I was trying to change my view of him, but— you know the feeling you get about a person you've known for so long, and then they just change? Actually that's pretty vague, but I mean the feeling where you thought you knew how their mind works and if they hadn't started making dumb decisions for themselves and redefined what it would even mean to be around them then you would've totally been fine with them changing?

Yeah. That feeling.

I had always dreaded my own inevitable growing up, but I didn't realize how deeply that fear rooted in the possibility of my friends realizing they didn't need me anymore; that they would be all grown up, and stable, and god knows they were already more emotionally mature than I was.

There I go again. A tangent about childhood fears, of all things. These were things to worry about later in the night— later in the week, later in my life.

I directed my mind to a sunny afternoon in the summer of '89. It was one of those summer afternoons that seemed to stretch on forever, the kind that only existed before high school looked on the horizon, before the world began to change in ways that were impossible for me to predict.

The sun has hung low in the sky, casting golden light over the otherwise unpleasant town of Derry as we gathered at the quarry.

I was sitting on a large, sun-warmed rock, my sneakers dangling above the water as I took in the view. I leaned back on my hands, listening to the laughter echoing across the water. Richie, a natural actor as always, was in the middle of some wild story, his arms flailing as he acted out different voices, while Eddie, who had been roped into the performance, rolled his eyes but couldn't hide the smile tugging at his lips.

"I'm telling you," Richie said, using a ridiculous, gravelly voice, "the monsters are real. They come out of the sewers at night, looking for unsuspecting children with inhalers."

Eddie simply retaliated with a shove that nearly knocked Richie into the water.

"Eds, you're going to fucking drown me!"

"Can't you swim, dickhead?"

On the other side of the quarry, Stan was sprawled out on the grass, flipping through a birdwatching book. Occasionally, he'd glance up, half-interested in Richie's antics but too wrapped up in his own world to join in. It was typical Stan, always there but always a little distant. Yet, I had found it comforting. Stan was like a constant—calm, controlled, just... there.