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AMELIA CLAMBERED OFF THE BICYCLE SEAT UPON Eddie veering it towards the home's iron fence. She nearly tilted the bicycle over onto the sidewalk in her haste to leap off it, and Eddie scrambled to halt her before she stomps over to Bill on the porch.
She passed through the wisps of weeds in the yard towards the Denbrough boy, a limp to her step and ripples of distress from it. Every step felt like a bomb exploding in her leg. If it wasn't for the circumstance at hand, Amelia would have returned home, gladly forgotten all about the menace that hovered over Derry, and proceeded on with having a typical summer. But, no. That couldn't - and would never - happen.
And she'd never forget the summer of 1989.
At the sound of Amelia trudging through the growth, Bill twisted around on the veranda, which whined under his light movement. Anxiety sat below his resolved appearance as he squinted in the afternoon sun towards her.
"Nuh-nuh-no, you aren't going in t-there," he asserted, giving away the worry he meant to mask and shook his head, "You're hu-hurt."
The others gradually laid away their bicycles behind Amelia as she looked at him with narrowed eyes. She was close to done with these boys and their obstinacy.
"I don't want to see missing posters being taped to electrical poles anymore, Bill," she cried in confession and her breath got caught in her chest, "Especially when there's a possibility it could be one of us soon."
Richie then grumbled from where he bent against his bicycle, fumbling with the bell, "This is still insane. You two dumbshits will just kill yourselves and the rest of us."
"T-Then stay ou-out here, all o-of you, I-I'm going in there a-and putting this t-to an end," Bill sputtered out in a flash of annoyance at Richie, dark eyes welling with tears, "No more Georgie's, Betty Ripson's, or o-one of u-us will be tuh-tuh-taken. I-I don't want your families to feel the pain their families have."
He sniffled and the muscles of his chin slightly trembled like a small child's as he faced away from them. Amelia could hear herself wobble on a sob and she suppressed the salty drops in her eyes, not desiring to waver right now when she was already so nervous.
She sniffed in a breath of the humid air and shifted herself next to Bill.
"You aren't going in here alone. You just said that there will be 'no more Georgie's taken', and that includes you," Amelia only murmured, hushed enough for the boy to hear as the pair held themselves before the ravaged door, "Just to tell you."
