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richie scanned the pharmacy's magazines, eyebrows furrowed in hopes of finding something at least the slightest bit interesting for eddie. he felt awful, like a sinking feeling in his gut whenever he was away from eddie. eddie was just so... alone. who knew how long he had been there.
richie shook the thought off, resuming his selection of books for eddie. he felt the twenty bucks in his pockets shuffle around, the coins that he had found in his house and the crumpled up ten clashing against one another, creating a quiet array of jingles.
he grabbed a copy of the maze runner and a planting book; eddie seemed like the type who kept little cacti in his room and watered them daily with a little spray bottle.
"hi!" a chirpy voice broke through richie's daydream. he turned to see a boy around his age with darker skin and black cropped hair. come to think of it now, he was perhaps the first black kid richie had seen in derry. beside him was a redheaded girl with short hair and bright blue eyes. she was extremely pretty and richie tried to limit his gawking. "i'm mike, this is beverly, and you're..."
"richie," he pushed up his glasses that had been slipping down. he curled instinctively onto himself, wishing he could just talk to the newly dubbed mike and beverly. new people made him fidget and blurt out something widely inappropriate.
mike's smile grew even larger until his eyes became squinted. "richie! yes, you just moved into the nebolt house, didn't you?" he asked, brown eyes widening. beverly seemed to share the same interest, nodding along to everything mike was saying.
"yeah, my parents, you know," richie tried to explain but failing with a sigh. he gripped his books even tighter to his chest, his fingers slowly turning white. mike nodded along slowly, trying his best understand what richie was saying for the poor boy's sake.
"so um-" mike started before glancing past his shoulder and stopped. his broad shoulders became ridged and tense. richie curiously turned around and saw three girls walking towards them, perhaps a few years older than them. the girl at the center had long brown hair pulled back into a loose pony tail that framed her dark green eyes well. her body was fit, bigger at all the right places. not that richie noticed.
beverly tugged on mike's sleeve, pleading softly, "mike, can we go?"
the taller boy nodded, watching beverly's eyes dart back and forth between the girls and the ground.
"w-well, we gotta go, see you around richie," richie barely registered his voice, too caught up in the girls that approached him. "it was nice meeting you."
