go west ( reddie )

chapter three

In Chicago, their first evening there, Eddie calls his mum. He's in a cramped phone booth and it's twilight and every inch of the booth is covered in scribbled graffiti, daisies and smiley faces and spirals scrawled with free hands. Awful stuff too, like the stuff written on the kissing bridge in Derry, stuff that makes Eddie want to press his fist against his teeth or bolt or duck his head under water and hold it there. He shuts his eyes instead, carefully adjusts his hand on the receiver, making sure he's only touching the tissue he's wrapped around the handle. He listens to the dial tone. He tugs at the belt loops of his jeans.

She doesn't answer. The dial tone flatlines and Eddie bites back the childish mummy that threatens to spill when the recorded answer message starts. She recites their number instead of a name, because Mrs Cooper across the street told her about people getting stalked after random missed calls. Of course she doesn't answer. Eddie slams the phone back down onto the receiver, kicks out at the corner of the booth. It overbalances him and he nearly falls, but the thought of touching the dirty glass or the ugly words makes him twist away at the last second and take his footing back. He shoulders open the door and stalks out into the twilight.

Richie seems to sense it hadn't gone well, because he doesn't say anything. He's waiting with food back at the motel, greasy burgers and fries that are kind of exactly what Eddie needs. The sort of food his mother would hate. She had strange rules about food, would buy every sort of packaged processed sweet thing, marshmallow fluff and Twinkies and Ding Dongs, but would balk at the thought of ever getting takeaway food. She was comforted by mass production. They survived on Lean Cuisine.

So Eddie eats his burger and his fries and he pretends it's another sort of rebellion. Even more than leaving Derry. Even more than leaving her. Even more than doing it all with Richie Tozier, who she hates more than any of his other friends, except maybe Beverly. Not that that's the reason he's doing it with Richie. No, it was always going to be them, together. Eddie and Richie with ketchup at the corners of their mouths and salt on their fingers, sitting on twin beds in a shitty motel. Eddie wouldn't really want it any other way.

"You're disgusting," he says anyway, wrapping up the remains of his food, the grease paper and crumbs.

"You too, Eds," says Richie, batting his eyelashes, crumpling up his paper and aiming for the bin across the room. He misses totally, it hits the wall and falls down next to the TV and he groans dramatically, throws himself backwards onto his bed, hands over his face.

"You should be in the NBA," says Eddie, grinning at him, and then he misses the bin too and Richie crows in triumph and they both fall into laughter.

In the morning, they go into town. It's straight up and down, the biggest city either of them have ever seen, like something from a movie, and they spend the day wandering around, necks craned upwards, rows and rows of windows, concrete and glass, and then sky, so far away Eddie can almost pretend there's another world up there, in clear blue. At the Sears tower, they take the elevator to the skydeck, and Richie holds his breath, cheeks puffed out, and Eddie shuts his eyes, imagines all his insides sinking to his feet, and then they're in that other world themselves. It's too much, almost. Too much space to look at all at once. Richie darts around the room, pressing his hands to the glass, pointing out anything he even vaguely recognises, leaving smudgey fingerprints and puffs of breath behind. Eddie blinks until his vision blurs, watches clouds, because they look so different up high, more solid, like tissue paper instead of cotton wool. Then he taps the back of a fingernail against the glass, tilts his head to try and see the edge of it, that sharp grey-blue you only find with cut glass, that shows how much space there is between you and the outside. He imagines it dissolving under his hands, the split second before he falls, when he's just held in space, like a breath, and then gone.