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THE SUN DAWNED bright on the 4th of July, with pale blue sky and scorching sun making it seem like everything in the town was picture perfect, with the manicured front lawns. (Summer had spent an hour doing hers the night before, after all, her mother had done absolutely zero around the house for Summer's upbringing lately.)
Her mother had, however, come downstairs on that morning, and opened the curtains, an unexpected contrast to the usual dark state she kept the house in. But her mother was an American, and Summer guessed she had to do that or something. Maybe she felt bad for destroying the only link Summer had to her father.
Leaning against the flowery wallpaper, freshly dressed in a yellow t-shirt and her (possibly unwashed) overalls, she took a breath. She needed to stop overwhelming herself with painful memories and thoughts. It wasn't good. Her mother was upstairs, in a rare decent mood, but Summer knew it was only a matter of time before she sunk back into fits of anger and tears. Her mom was stuck in the mud, stuck in a terrifying, devastating mindset that thrived on other people's tears to make her feel better about her own.
When she got the call, from Stan this time, telling her to meet in town, she flung her arms up as soon as the phone was back on the hook. She felt free, freer than she had felt since the winter, ever since they had rescued Mike. The 'Losers Club' felt complete.
Mike was the missing link. He was what chained them all together, the last puzzle piece that had been crawling around in the back of their minds, that they wouldn't have admitted to feeling. It felt like some greater presence, some overarching power that had changed the group's entire dynamic.
Riding into town on her board beside the Losers, she grinned at the backs of Ben and Stan's heads. It was the Fourth Of July. It was cheerful.
The festivities were big and over the top, as usual. Derry was a conservative All-American town that loved to celebrate the fathers of the nation, and did so with various stiltwalkers, jugglers, and, to Summer's horror, clowns.
Rolling through an alley, they all stopped, dismounting various bicycles and poking each other in the sides.
"Wanna go get some ice cream with me?" Eddie asked, and she nodded, following him out of the alley to an ice cream vendor handing out cones to kids and parents. He was a fairly attractive teenage boy, and Summer saw Greta Keene stomp past with an ice cream cone clutched angrily in her fist. She wondered what the boy had said to make Greta so upset. She didn't really care.
"So about yesterday," Eddie began, as they lined up. "What were you going to say?"
"What do you mean?" Summer asked, reaching a hand up to work out a knotted muscle in her neck. She feigned dumb, with a feeling she knew what Eddie was talking about.
"On the stairwell at Bev's." Eddie reminded her gently. Summer's stomach sank.
"Oh, um..." She bit her lip. "Just forget it, it doesn't really matter." She'd only known him for two weeks, for crying out loud! What was she supposed to say, he kept making her heart skip stupid beats? And what if he didn't feel anything for her? A highly unlikely prospect considering whatever the fuck had happened so far, but she'd never been good at reading boys. This could be some stupid infatuation that would go away soon, like her crush on Chris Dunfeld in fourth grade. Besides, Jesse-
