Strange as IT Seems

Chapter 61: Fast and Furious

"This is garbage!" Richie shouts, slamming his hands on Frogger's controller. "It's f*cking rigged!"

His voice can barely be heard over the beeps, generic music, and the various other sounds of Palace Arcade. While his mother insisted that he be outside to enjoy the warm air, he grabbed his allowance early and ran to the only place he actually liked in this crappy town.

Life since the disbanding of the Loser's Club had been pretty boring, despite Richie's refusal to admit it. School was nothing but misery, as there were no clubs he liked enough to join, and some of the older basketball jerks had taken to teasing and bullying him whenever they encountered him in the hallway...

His mind flashed back to the most recent event.

...

"Give it back you motherf..." Richie shouted as several of the much taller basketball players managed to rip the glasses from his face. He reached forward trying to throttle these brainless morons but could barely see anything and all they did was shove him around. He'd resorted to trying to kick them in the crotch but all he managed to do was kick the lockers. It was like Henry Bowers and his idiots all over again, except these guys were going to get "scholarships" and not end up convicted and in prison. At least... not yet.

It was the end of the school day and desperate to escape this prison system, Richie rushed to his locker to get ready. Unfortunately, his locker was close to where all the jocks got their "special lockers" which was just an extra shelf for sports equipment. It didn't make anything special, but these assholes felt entitled enough to go over and grab Richie's glasses from his face for no reason.

"Got the mouth of a sailor, don't you?" the meathead he'd come to know as Andy taunted him, keeping the glasses out of the freshman's reach. Despite being half blind, Richie knew that this blur was Andy because he always wore a stupid baseball hat. "Maybe you should go to church to cleanse yourself of these sins."

"Cleanse this," Richie said, flipping them both off and he continued to string as many insults as he could manage into one sentence.

"You know," the other moron named Chance chimed in. "We could give you your glasses back if you asked nicely."

"No, f*cking way," Richie hissed. "I'll take that hat and shove it where the sun doesn't shine."

Another basketball player came up to the scene.

"Come on guys, cut it out," the player Patrick said. He was the only one who didn't take time out of his day to torment the trash mouth.

"Want to get in on this Patrick?" Andy said, shoving Richie away as he grabbed the glasses.

"No way dude, just leave the kid alone," Patrick said. "He's half your size."

"Instead of pointing out the obvious, a little help would be nice," Richie hissed to the least asshole of one of the group.

And yet another loser jock blur joined the fray.

"Come on, Andy knock it off," the blur said before managing to grab the glasses from his teammate. "He's just a freshman."

The blue then hands it to Richie who snatches them back and puts them on his face. He realizes the fourth meathead was the Captain of the said group of morons, Jason Carver. The one who had the shred of human decency to give him the implements he needed to see. Standing next to him was the guy's girlfriend, a cheerleader named Chrissy.

"Whatever man," Andy said and turned to walk away with Chase.

"You okay dude?" Jason asked.

"Where were you five minutes ago?" Richie snarled. "Watching the show? You, prim pretty boy didn't want to mess up his nails."