loser (stenbrough)

Four

- STAN'S P.O.V. -

"You met him, right? You saw him?"

Mike turned to me with a secretive grin on his face. "Yep. I had a whole conversation with the kid and everything. He bolted, though, that's why I couldn't bring him to you. Thought I was working for Henry, maybe." Mike sat down on his couch, slinging his backpack on the floor in front of his feet. It landed with a thud.

I sighed, sitting down in an armchair across from him. Bill Denbrough. That was quite the name. Bill never wanted to meet up with me, despite me asking multiple times. He wouldn't call or show me what he looked like either. Part of me wondered if he hated me, or didn't care about us ever meeting, but that wasn't it. We talked almost every day. He was nice, funny... he sounded like he had interesting friends, too. There were some he talked about a lot, like Richie, Beverly, and Ben. It had been tugging at me for the past few days. Bill and I went to the same school- walked the same exact halls- and yet he always managed to make an excuse to not meet up.

That was why I sent Mike to go talk to him. He did want to beat up Henry in the end, but I persuaded him to talk to Bill first, and tell me about him. The plan either didn't work out or Henry bailed, though, because he texted me and told me to come to his house. So much for that.

"So what does he look like?" I finally asked, breaking the silence. I wasn't so sure I wanted to know. Maybe it would be better to wait until we finally met up somewhere after school, but the whole plan in the first place was for me to know how he was. In real life.

Mike smiled at me, leaning back and setting his hands behind his head in that relaxed football dad kind of way. He propped his feet on the table. Mike knew about my crush on Bill without me even having to tell him.

He stood up. "What grade would you like to begin with?" Mike asked, walking over to his TV stand. The shelf underneath his TV was full of pictures of him in elementary and middle school, and he had a ton of yearbooks. I suddenly felt stupid for forgetting that. I could've just looked in those to start off with!

"I don't know," I answered, looking down at my hands. There was a loose thread my fingers had discovered and I was now playing with it. My mom hated when I did stuff like that, she said I was ruining my clothes. But she wasn't here now, was she?

"The beginning is the best place to start, right?" Mike said.

He sat down next to me on the couch, pulling out yearbooks and stacking them down on the coffee table in front of me. I still wasn't sure if I wanted to see what Bill looked like, but I knew that if I didn't look in the yearbooks with Mike, I'd be wondering about it all night. "Okay. Kindergarten," I answered. Mike must've sensed my hesitation, because he gave me a reassuring smile. One that said, he's cute, okay? But Mike wasn't gay. How would he be able to determine if Bill was cute or not? Bill could've been his type instead of my type. Did Mike even have a type?

He flipped through all of the higher grade classes and landed on what I could only assume was Bill's kindergarten class, scanning through the D's for his last name. Mike then pointed to a kid with a small, chubby looking face, and looked at me. "There he is!"

I craned my neck to look down at the page, glancing over at the names to see if I was looking right. I was. There it said, plainly, William Denbrough. The boy had dark brown, straight hair, and he was looking at the camera as if there was a gun pointed at him from behind it. That made me laugh.The boy was cute enough, but he could've changed a lot since kindergarten. For better or for worse. Part of me wanted to stop now.

Mike then handed me another yearbook, one that was flipped open to a more recent year. Last year. I stared down at it, not quite looking for his face, but instead trying to prepare myself.

What was I even worried about? Bill being ugly? I looked over at Mike as if he had the answer for me. "Did you find him?" he asked, but I just looked back down at the yearbook.

William Denbrough. Fourth one down. My eyes scanned the row, landing on a boy- well, Bill- who...

I squinted a little. He was cute, way cuter than I'd ever expected him to be. His hair was styled the same way as his kindergarten picture, which I found a little weird, but he had clear skin and a cute, sort of petite face...

"Well? How's your little loverboy?" Mike asked, staring at me with that grin on his face. If I had any less sense I'd probably be crushing on Mike, too.

I showed him the picture. "He actually looked like that? When you talked to him?" I asked, assuming he must look either way better or way worse in person. School pictures always did everyone an injustice- including me. "Be honest."

Mike smiled. "Well, he definitely looks better in real life. You think he's cute, based on the picture?"

I nodded my head, putting the book down onto the table. "He's hot, Mike. He's hot, and he isn't gay, and he doesn't even want to meet me. How many times have I asked him to meet up somewhere? Do you even know? He always says he's busy." Groaning in frustration, I sank back into the couch cushions and stared at Mike's coffee table. It would be fine if he didn't like me romantically. Just meeting him as a friend would've been enough for me.

"Do you think he's scared, maybe? Or his parents are strict?" Mike suggested.

I pulled my phone out, deciding to text Bill. "If his parents were strict, he would tell me. He would. Then everything would make sense. There's something else."

Me: Hey Bill. I hope you're safe, I heard about the Bowers thing.

Me: Anyway, when you get back on, I need to talk to you. Respond when you can.