THE GHOST IN YOU - IT [2]

chapter eight

Since the summer of 1989, Jaime had scarcely been alone.

That summer, Richie decided to make a home glued to her hip. He was everywhere; in the hammock, in the phoneline, in her skin. She relished in the attention being lavished upon her. After all, she'd been a lone wolf for nearly five years. Unable to keep anyone close, purposely pushing herself away before she accidentally pushed herself away. Then having the audacity to feel lonely. It had been pathetic.

After she kissed Richie goodbye that day in late '92, she resided with her mother. Who never, ever allowed her to be alone. If she wasn't babysitting her younger step-brothers, she was spending time with her mother and her barely-present husband. Jaime fit into the atmosphere of the house snugly. Between the engineering textbooks was doing the dishes, moping once a week, scrubbing the bathroom now and then. But she had friends in New York. She met Priya, who took her to parties and loosened her suffocating shell. She drank in moderation and mingled with boys who didn't have bottle-eyes and skinned knees.

The blowout with her mother on her seventeenth birthday had resulted in Jaime packing a bag and heading to Victor's apartment. Victor's soon-to-be-wife, Amara, took pity on her boyfriend's younger sibling immediately. Until Jaime's eighteenth, she crashed on the living room couch. And then she was living with Priya. And then she was moving across America with her best friend. Then moving in with a man who swore he'd keep her frail heart safe.

Jaime liked her solitude mildly, yes, but she had never been alone in hardships such as this. She always had someone to keep her safe, but now, she was roaming the streets of Derry in solitary, the late morning sun beating on her bare arms. The wondering of where her relic was didn't last long; she knew what it was the moment her gaze landed upon the Derry Goodwill. It hadn't always been a Goodwill; once it was Marty's Thrift, where Jaime liked to buy her clothes. She had no sense of style in her early teens due to not having a motherly figure around. So she'd ask her dad for clothes money, he'd slap thirty bucks in her hand, and she'd thrift all of her clothes. Four dollars and fifty cents for jeans with grapevines embroidered in them. She had worn those things to death, even though Richie thought they looked 'momish' and Jaime had accidentally gotten bleach on them one day when cleaning the bathtub.

But those weren't her relic; she had trashed them years ago when the seams finally tore. As she pauses in front of the Goodwill, she knows exactly what her relic is.

July 3rd, 1989

Jaime ducks into Marty's, thankful to be out of the heavy rain. Her brunette hair stuck to the skin on her arms and neck in wet chunks. In her old sneakers, her toes squelched against the soaked cushion. Grimacing, she chooses to ignore the sound her shoes make as she walks into Marty's Thrift. Due to the minimal light outside, the flickering orange lightbulbs above were the main light source. She zigzags between the circular racks of poorly sorted clothes until she's at the register.

"Is Marty here?" She asks the bored teenager behind the counter politely. He doesn't spare her a glance, his eyes furiously moving across the pages of his comic.

"He stepped out for a day. Something about taking his dog to the vet." He replies monotonously, as if automated. Jaime shrugs and turns away, ready to find something new to wear. Her clothes from the prior summer were too tight now, a sure indication she was finally growing a bit. When she had been in Beverly's apartment not too long ago, she had, admittedly, snooped in her room a bit. The girl had a rugged, boyish sense of style, lots of male dress shirts she had cut the sleeves of. Jaime didn't want to steal her style or anything, but she wanted to dress just like that. (If she had the courage, she would've invited Beverly with her today to help with her shopping journey. But every time she picked up the phone and began dialing the Marsh number, she faltered.)