Hold Me (Reddie)

The Worst of the Losers

Eddie Kaspbrak had always been good friends with Richie Tozier. In fact, Eddie had always been closer with Richie than any of his other friends. Stan and Stuttering Bill had also always been friends with Eds and Richie. Though they didn't know how much Richie meant to Eddie, of course. That kind of thing? It was purely a secret. Eddie didn't have an exact reason, but he always felt wrong for appreciating Richie the way he did. His dumb jokes and big round glasses were everything to Eddie. Eddie would even go as far to say he felt bad for Richie. Richie had always been different than anyone else. And Eddie knew the source of the preteen's loud mouth. Of course, it was his mother. Eds didn't know much about Mrs. Tozier, but he knew that she was never ever there for him. Eddie assumed that it was because of her that Richie was so strange.

But then again, that's what made the losers losers. Richie had a loud mouth, Stanley was Jewish (and Eddie couldn't see why that made him strange), Bill had a bad stutter, Ben was heavy, Mike had darker skin, and Eddie was...Eddie. The only loser Eds didn't understand was Beverly Marsh. She was pretty. After she moved away to Portland, Eddie thought about her more. What had made her a loser, exactly? There were the rumors of course, but Eddie hadn't exactly believed them. He knew there were rumors about him too. Rumors didn't mean shit.

If anything, the only real loser in the losers club was Eddie. He was a big loser. He had never won any games, his mother didn't let him take gym class. And he was smart, but he didn't want to sit around and be smart all the time. There were so many things he wanted to do. He wanted to be a runner. He wanted to learn how to fish like most boys his age. He wished he wasn't always sick. Maybe if he wasn't he could do those things. Those things were, after all, exciting things. More exciting than sitting on his bicycle trying to remember everything that happened in the summer of 1989.

Most of it was a blur. He remembered the way he felt, like he was paralyzed to the core with fear, like he was already dead. He remembered one dumb summer day walking into the abandoned house that he had seen the clown in front of. He remembered his arm breaking, although he didn't remember how. That's how it was. Most of the losers started to forget. They all did, for the most part. Bill seemed to forget the most, claiming that he didn't even really remember the house when Eddie had mentioned it around Christmastime. Stan seemed to remember the most. Stan was the reason they all stopped talking about what had took place. Whenever someone even mentioned that summer his entire face would grow pale, like he was seeing something no one else was. Stan remembered it the most...the worst.

But Richie had changed that summer, like most of the losers had. He had changed a tiny bit. Not like Bill, who started to stutter less. Not like Ben, who did more and more research about work and shit like that. And not Eddie, who had rather grown silent after all that had went down. People called him the 'mute boy'. He talked to Bill and Richie when they were biking, and he talked to Stan a lot too. He just never really spoke inside the school. No, Richie didn't change like them. He changed in his own way, a tiny way Eddie shouldn't have even noticed.

He didn't do anything drastic, like cut off all his hair or stop joking. He'd always be joking. No, it was the smallest little change. He stopped wearing his watch.

It was insane how Eddie had caught the detail. But maybe not. Richie Tozier, even from age six, always wore watches. But after the historic summer of 1989 he for some reason stopped. Eddie never bothered to ask why, but let's just say he was completely baffled and bewildered by the situation. He payed too much attention to Richie.

One could even say he admired Richie. He always had. It was just who he was. And even though it was insane, Eddie would even go as far to say as he loved Richie Tozier.