go west ( reddie )

chapter four

They stay in Chicago longer than they'd planned. Eddie still feels a bit like he's walking on eggshells and Richie is still kind of subdued, as subdued as Richie ever is, and spending all day in a car seems a little bit like letting a wound fester. So they go to the Field Museum and hum the Jurassic Park score in the dinosaur rooms, quiet at first but louder with every step they take, and they go to shit fountain and waste almost a whole pack of polaroid film taking dramatically posed pictures with it, Richie's hand held thoughtfully to his chin and Eddie's brow furrowed, and on their last day there, they go to the Shedd Aquarium and play a game.

"Oh fuck, fuck Richie I win, I definitely win, look at that thing." Eddie points excitedly at a lumpy yellow blob hovering near the bottom of the tank. "That is easily the ugliest fish I've ever seen."

"What is it? Richie asks, joining him to stare, expression dubious. "I think it's a sponge, sponges don't count."

Eddie, shaking his head, turns away, to the sign describing all the fish in the exhibit.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he says, "I present to you the... the longlure frogfish, Antennarius multiocellatus, ugliest fish in the Shedd aquarium."

"Okay, okay, don't get ahead of yourself Eds, your frogfish-"

"Richie Junior."

"Richie Junior," Richie continues, without missing a beat, "my first born son, has to go through the judging process just like any of them, this isn't a fucking charity contest."

"Oh my god, he's obviously the winner, he's literally a lump of vomit, you're-"

"Full marks for physical ugliness, sure, okay, but his moral ugliness is currently undetermined."

"He's camouflaged himself as a sponge and he's got a little fishing line on his head for luring other fishes to their death," says Eddie, tapping furiously at the sign. "These fish eat their own babies, Richie, he's got plenty of moral ugliness."

"Just like his dad," says Richie, fondly. "Fuck, fine, unless we find something truly spectacular before the end, Richie Junior is the winner of the 1996 Chicago pageant of aquatic ugliness, congratulations."

"What's my prize?" Eddie knows what he's gonna say. It's always the same, whatever's in his pocket or a kiss.

"Seventy five cents and a ticket stub to the Shedd aquarium," says Richie, holding his hand out flat, dirty coins and a crumpled paper, "or a kiss." He leers extravagantly.

Eddie rolls his eyes. "Gross, keep it," he says, pushing passed him. "Let's go see the piranhas."

They continue through the aquarium and Richie presses his face up against the glass of one of the tanks and knocks his glasses off and Eddie is startled into hysterics by a bunch of tiny yellow and white eels, sprouting up from the sand like striped reeds, and they leave early after being told off by security for swearing too much around kids, which isn't inaccurate, but it is annoying.

They go to the beach after that. Hollywood beach, because Eddie kind of thinks they have too. Not a date, just a nice place to go.

It's gold and iron, completely different to the beach they visited in Portland. There are buildings on the shore, squared and tall and grey against the sky, and the sand is the colour of French vanilla ice cream. It's late in the afternoon and the sun is falling, but it's crowded still. The south end of the beach. Rainbows and Speedos and the threat of skin cancer in every oiled tan. Eddie puts on sunscreen, smears the leftover cream down Richie's arm, making him screw up his face.

They swim, for a little while, in the cold still lake. Richie always looks kind of weird without his glasses, kind of naked, kind of open, kind of bright. His freckles stand out starkly against his skin, across his face, over the slope of his shoulders, like the water has washed him clearer. Eddie throws himself in as deep as he can, as fast as he can, but Richie, screaming, charges passed him immediately. Because he's taller, can fight the tide better. Whatever. Eddie crouches down in the shallows instead, picks up a handful of wet sand, coarse and slippery. Different to the quarry, the school pool, the sand at the edges of the ocean in Portland. Lake sand is colder maybe, more distinctly formed, larger grained and more annoying under fingernails.