Rolling Around The Smoke

one

Finally, fucking finally. Today is the day Eddie Kaspbrak is leaving Derry, Maine. Granted, he is still stuck with his mother, but it is better than nothing. After packing almost everything in their house, they waited for the pick-up truck to come and then they followed behind and headed to New York. It was difficult for Eddie to persuade his mother to let them move, but after there had been a spike in lung cancer, by about 2 percent, Sonia Kaspbrak couldn't have been more desperate to leave.

Eddies father, Frank Kaspbrak had died before Eddie was born. Lung cancer. His father used to smoke when he was a teenager, or that what his mother said. In the pictures his mother has, Eddie looks just like him, big brown eyes and a defined jaw. Lucky for him that he inherited his father's looks. Sonia Kaspbrak is... well she's not the prettiest. It was difficult for Eddie to understand why he would go for her and not someone prettier. He looked like he had the whole world at his feet. Eddie just assumed it must have been his mother's personality, but if she was anything like what she was now. He just, couldn't understand it.

He knew his mother loved him, maybe too much. Maybe it was the outcome of his father's death or maybe it's just who she is. She used to shove pills down Eddie's throat, never let him join any sports or have friends, something he always wanted. He was okay with this, maybe because he didn't know any different, then everything changed. Mr. Keene, an old man who worked at the local pharmacist, confirmed that his suspicions about his medication being fake were true. They where placebos. He had been lied to, his whole life! He confronted his mother about this, he screamed at her. it was the first time he ever did that, it was scary but exciting. They came to an agreement, in the end, Eddie would continue taking his placebo pills and in return, his mother would let him do what he wants. He joined the track team. He made a friend, named Stacey, a girl who was the same age on the volleyball team. His first friend. His mother hated her. She thought that this young girl was stealing her Eddie-Bear away from her. Eddie had no interest in her, no romantic interest, and the same goes for Stacey. She had a girlfriend, called Kay. That was the most scandalous thing Eddie had ever heard about. However, a year into their friendship Eddies mother found about this and forced Eddie to swear that he would never speak to her again. From there on out it was sad glances in the corridor or a quick catching of eyes in maths class.

The car ride to New York wasn't all that bad. For the first hour, they sat in silence. Sonia was reminiscing about the time they spent in Derry, whilst Eddie was thinking about everything he couldn't wait to do once he leaves that judgemental, bitchy town. The next few hours were spent gently bopping their head to music Eddie had put on through the aux lead. A mix of 90's music, pop music, and kpop. It had taken Eddie a few months to persuade his mother to buy his an iPhone, she read an anti-iPhone propaganda article stating that you could get eye cancer from phones. But he persuaded her in the end. They stopped at a service station twice, for Sonia Kaspbrak that is a record number. The first time was for toilet breaks and lunch, his mother had made chicken sandwiches and some salad, the second was for a rest. For the rest of the journey, Eddie spent it listening to an audiobook about two guys who fall in love. There's more to it than that, but that's the moral of the story.

His mother tried to get him to have a nap on the journey, but he couldn't. Was it paranoia? Or just not being able to sleep in cars? He didn't know. He didn't feel safe with her. He needed to see the signs on their journey, he needed to know that they were still going to New York and she wasn't going to kidnap him. He hadn't been on his morning jog today, maybe that was why. Or maybe it was because he was too excited about his new house, he had already come up with a thousand different things that he wanted to do, things he wanted to wear, friends he wanted to have, he couldn't wait. He was restless nonetheless.