paper cranes | stanley uris

FOUR

The afternoon was warm and comfortable the next day as Stanely climbed the front steps of Sam's house. There was no doorbell, so he had to open the screen and knock directly on the light teal painted door. There was a bit of shuffling inside, the sound of footsteps, and then the door opened. Instead of a parent standing there, like he'd expected, it was Sam.

Her hair was wet, as if she'd just stepped out of a shower, the blonde part underneath the brown practically disappearing, and she wore shorts and a Looney Toons shirt with Taz's face on the front, and her feet were bare. The freckles dusting the tip of her nose popped in the sun, and her green eyes glowed golden. Her left hand rested on the doorknob and had a bandage on it.

"Hey, Stanley." Her eyes shifted over his shoulder and her body leaned slightly to the right so she could see the rest of the losers waiting with their bikes on the road. "What's going on?"

Instead of answering her, Stanley's eyes stayed on her presumably injured hand. "What happened to your hand?" Her eyes immediately flew down to the bandage, and then back up to meet his. "I… I burned it." That answer didn’t seem to satisfy Stanley, evident by the furrow of his brows and the little wrinkle in between them. Sam tried to smile to reassure him. “Anyway, what are you guys up to?” she continued.

“Beverly called,” he began, gently glancing passed her and into the house. From where he stood, Stan could see the stairwell with a black cat perched and stretching on the banister before hopping off, as well as into what he was assuming as the living room, but it was mostly dark, only the fluttering light of the television and what light could come through the heavy curtains keeping the area visible. There was a picture on the wall directly behind her though, one with a baby with Sam’s nose and dark hair and an older woman who had her green eyes and looked tired, and a woman even older than that, grey streaks in her hair. He assumed that was her, her mother, and her grandmother. They all seemed happy.

His eyes shifted back to her. “Uh, she asked us all to come over, to her apartment. She didn’t say why, but… it sounded important.”

Sam nodded a little and glanced over her shoulder, into the house. “Okay. I’ll be right out.” Before he got a chance to say anything else she closed the door and was gone. “What’d she say?” Richie yelled from the road as Stan took steps away from the door and turned back to face his friends. “She said she’ll be right out!”

And she was, as promised, stepping out of the house and locking the door with a silver key she then tucked into her pocket. She had shoes on her feet now, those same dark converse with shoestrings that were just a little too long, and her hair had been half tied up like yesterday, in the little bun, and now he could see the blonde again. “Okay, sorry. Let’s go.” The careless way she grabbed the handlebar of her bike from resting on the railing as she hopped down the steps seemed so casual and easy and practiced, like this was something she did everyday, and Stanley didn’t realize he’d been staring until she was seated on her bike and looking back at where he still stood on the porch. “You coming?”

He nodded quickly, ignoring the sound of Richie snickering, and climbed onto his bike, and then the six of them were off, chatting across bikes as they rode through the streets of Derry. Sam was mostly quiet, and he could tell she was holding her left handlebar more loosely in her bandaged hand than she normally did. She really must be hurt.

Richie and Eddie were arguing again, as they turned their bikes down the alleyway that would lead them to where Beverly lived, Bill leading the pack, but Stanley didn't intervene or make a sarcastic comment like he normally would have. His mind was elsewhere, on a gauze wrapped hand, a dark living room, an old faded picture, a girl with a tasmanian devil on her shirt.