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“Richie,” he whispered.
“What?” Richie was down on his hands and knees, staring at him desperately.
“Don’t call me Eds,” he said, and smiled. He raised his left hand slowly and touched Richie’s cheek. Richie was crying. “You know I…I…”
“I hate it when you call me that.”
Eddie opened his eyes. White. He was lying on the ground, spread eagle. And alone. He pushed himself off the ground and felt something bulky enclosing his right arm. A cast.
He laughed, his light gasps echoing off the white walls. The last time he had a cast was in the summer of ‘58, when he met his best friends. They had all signed it, and he remembered how naked his arm looked without their signatures. The Lucky 7, that’s what they called themselves. But they were also the Losers’ Club, because they were all, well, they were all losers in the eyes of goons like Henry Bowers. They were a very unlucky band of misfits, but lucky that they found each other. He wished that it stayed that way.
Tap, tap, tap.
Eddie was shaken out of his thoughts. He lifted his head at the sound, and saw the bench in front of him. It wasn’t there before. And it was occupied. Seated there was a young boy with a halo of dark curls, a blue button-down, and ironed brown shorts. He had a book seated in his lap, and was slowly paging through, his sneakered foot tapping against the ground. He glanced toward the nonexistent sky, and mumbled something to himself.
“Stan?”
Eddie didn’t know what prompted him to say that, but he knew it couldn’t be anyone else. It had to be Stan, the boy with the bird book. His old friend. He took a few steps forward until he was standing right next to the bench.
“Stanley?” he repeated.
The boy looked over to him, and gave him a soft smile.
“Hi, Eddie,” he said pleasantly. “You can sit if you want.” He patted the empty seat next to him.
Eddie accepted his invitation, and sat next to him. He noticed he wasn’t wearing slacks and leather shoes as he had been earlier, but sneakers and shorts instead. Kid clothes. The boys sat in silence for a minute or so, until Eddie gained the courage to speak.
“What’s happened? Where are we?”
Stanley looked over at him and shrugged, closing his bird book. His arms had faint white scars, like two pale t’s on his skin. Eddie’s stomach sank at the sight of them.
“Stanley…I thought you were dead,” Eddie whispered, tears welling up in his eyes. His breath hitched.
Stan placed one of his hands on Eddie’s shoulder.
“I could say the same for you.”
And with those words, the tears began to flow. Stan rubbed his back while he sobbed, the result of having finally found out what had happened.
He’s dead.
“I don’t really know what this place is. I remember the bath, and then I woke up here. Why did I take that bath? You guys needed me, and I was a coward.”
“What are we? Are we…ghosts?”
Stan shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. I mean, kinda, but not in that way. It kinda reminds me of what my mother used to say about guardian angels.”
Oh, thought Eddie.
Stan continued. “I mean, I did what I did. But when I was done, I was here, and I saw everything that happened to you all. I saw Ben drinking his life away at a bar, and Richie having a breakdown, and Beverly getting her ass kicked by that sonofabitch husband of hers, and your wife screaming after you not to leave, and Bill telling Audra about his brother. And I watched you all back in Derry together, how IT was torturing you all again, and how you went into the sewers for the last time. IT may not be able to get me here, but it still won’t let me go. Do you understand what I’m getting at?”
Eddie nodded slowly as it all came together in his mind. “So…even if we’re dead, we can still see what happens to the others?”
“Yeah, I’m not really sure how, but yes. I guess I just really concentrated hard, and I saw it all.”
Eddie closed his eyes and concentrated. He thought of their smiling faces and warm hands and fluttering laughter. And it all came to him.
He saw the four of them exiting the sewers, not in great shape but alive.
He watched them laugh and cry with Mike in the hospital, telling him all that had happened.
He watched Beverly and Ben hold hands under the table, both of them finding another at last.
He watched Richie cry in his hotel room, two of his best friends were gone.
He saw Bill with Audra, riding through the streets of Derry on Silver, that bike that finally fit Bill like a glove.
He watched his friends go their separate ways, but agreeing to keep in contact.
He saw Beverly and Ben’s wedding, and their children come into the world.
He watched Mike open a new part of the library, and reading to all the kids.
He saw Richie, wrapped around an unknown woman, drunk and giddy and joyful, because he’s actually made it.
He watched all the children together, little Edward and Stanley and George, playing in the sandbox while their parents and their best friends smiled so hard that the world broke.
He had cried right then, because he knew that they were happy, that they were happy and okay. He felt Stan’s hand brush against his and he grabbed it, connecting them together like a chain link.
The two boys, no older than thirteen, sat on that bench and thanked the world.