Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The first thing Richie Tozier did when his plane touched down at LAX was find his way to the PF Chang’s and order himself a stiff drink with some pad thai.

The second thing Richie Tozier did, once he finished his food and two more drinks, was push his way into a bathroom stall and dry-heave sob into his elbow.

Then, once he had pulled himself together enough to walk, he dragged his suitcase out onto the sidewalk and called an Uber.

When he got home, he left his bag just inside the door of his apartment, dropped his keys on the counter, and crawled into bed, clothes on and all.

He didn’t get up for another two days.

_______

The thing was, when Richie hadn’t remembered the Losers, he had missed them. He had constantly felt like he was forgetting something, like he’d misplaced his keys or missed someone’s birthday. But then he remembered them, and Stan and Eddie’s losses ripped a hole in his chest.

But then, in a way that escaped his notice until it was too late, Richie forgot.
_______

Richie was standing in front of the audience, reciting a monologue that had been written with little input from him. The writers at SNL were eager to work with him, but when Richie didn’t have much to contribute, they took over completely. He didn’t feel like there was much left in his brain, these days.

But he made sure not to drink so much that he couldn’t read the teleprompter, and he only swallowed half the pills that he wanted to, so he recited the monologue with ease.

“I used to talk a big game when I was a kid,” Richie said, carefully morphing his face into a shit-eating grin. “Really, no one made more ‘sex with your mom’ jokes than me.”

It truly wasn’t very funny, but the audience ate it up anyways. Richie wondered how much of it was their bad taste in humor, and how much of it was an obligation to laugh in this setting. Either way, it made his stomach roll.

“The worst part about it was,” Richie said, looking side to side, eyes scanning over the people without actually seeing any of them, “I made all those jokes while looking like this.”

The picture they showed was one Steve managed to get from his mother. Richie outright refused to ask her, he hadn’t spoken to his mother in months, but his manager tracked down her phone number himself and had her email him as many embarrassing childhood photos as she could spare.

The one that the audience, both those in person and those sitting at home in front of their televisions, saw was one of Richie, his glasses so thick they made him look like a bug. The picture was blown up so just Richie’s face was visible, but someone’s arm was wrapped around his shoulder, and another was wound around his elbow. Richie didn’t remember who those arms belonged to, and he didn’t remember who had made him smile that wide.

If he weren’t so high or so drunk, Richie might have felt a shift in that moment, that exact moment he looked into the camera and shrugged that aloof shrug he was so well-known for. But he was, so he didn’t notice.

That was the beginning.

_______

In the days that followed his SNL appearance, Richie flew back to California, dodged a few calls from his mother and his agent, drank himself almost into a coma, and stared at his bedroom ceiling.

He’d been having more frequent days like that, days where he didn’t want to think a single thought and hated his own skin.

Steve had been trying to get him into rehab the past few months, but there wasn’t much he could do, not without Richie’s consent when he wasn’t a provable danger to himself or others. Richie wasn’t in enough denial to pretend like he wasn’t wasting away, but he knew that rehab would do little to help it.

When he finally answered his phone, it was because Sandy was on the other end.

“Hello?” he asked groggily. He had no idea what time it was or when he had last used his voice.

“Richie,” Sandy said, and her voice nearly snapped him completely out of the haze. “What’s wrong with you?”

“You’re going to need to be a bit more specific, Sandy,” Richie said.

“I just watched your episode of SNL,” she said, and Richie groaned. “I missed it when it aired, I was supervising a sleepover for Margot’s birthday.”

“Did she get the card I sent her?” Richie asked. Even though he was drowning in self-pity, he hadn’t forgotten to send his goddaughter a birthday card with a generous monetary gift inside.

“Yes, she did, and you spoil her too much,” Sandy said. “Now, stop trying to change the subject.”

“I’m not,” Richie said, lying through his teeth.

“You sound like shit,” she said, “and you looked extremely strung-out.”

“Gee, thanks,” Richie said, using the last of the energy he had left to transform his voice into the Voice of a British naval officer. “Just the thing a guy wants to hear from his ex-lova.”

Richie and Sandy dated for over two years nearly fifteen years ago, and it was the closest Richie had come to getting married. They broke up because their careers were leading them in different directions, but they kept in touch. He’d gotten a vasectomy during that relationship, neither of them wanting kids. Richie still didn’t want children, but Sandy got married and spawned, leaving Richie with a goddaughter.

“Richie, I’m serious,” Sandy said, sighing. “Are you alright?”

“I—” Richie started, but he stopped himself. He couldn’t lie to her, and he knew it, but he also couldn’t tell her the truth. The truth that he didn’t know if he was alright, and he didn’t know why he was feeling this way.

Luckily for him, before he could think something up, the doorbell rang.

“Sorry, Sandy,” Richie said, pushing himself out of his unmade bed. “Someone’s at my door.”

“I would accuse you of lying if I didn’t just hear the doorbell,” Sandy said. “You better call me back.”

“I will,” Richie said, keeping the phone pressed to his ear with his shoulder as he struggled to pull a pair of sweatpants over his boxers.

“And Richie,” she said. “I love you.”

“Love you too,” Richie said. “Tell Margot happy birthday from me, and tell her I’ll come out and visit soon.”

“She’ll be happy to hear it,” Sandy said. “Please take care of yourself, Richie.”

Richie said goodbye once more before hanging up. He rounded the corner to his entryway and just before he grabbed the doorknob, he hesitated.

He really wasn’t that famous, not famous enough for groupies or stalkers. But, he wasn’t expecting anyone. He shook his head, and the fog cleared with the paranoia. He gripped the doorknob and twisted, pulling the door open.

In front of him stood a woman who looked to be around his age, wrapped in a raincoat and white-knuckling an envelope. She was much shorter than him, and he could see the gray roots peaking through the artificial blonde. Her hair was cropped, her glasses fogged, and her hands shook.

“Richie Tozier?” she said, and her voice wobbled almost as much as her hands.

“Yup, that’s me,” he said. “Sorry, do I know you?”

“No, no,” she said. “You’re a difficult man to track down, you know.”

“That’s intentional, believe it or not,” Richie said, crossing his arms. “Celebrities usually don’t want people showing up at their homes, looking for an autograph or hoping to snap a picture of them in their underwear.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not a fan, and I definitely don’t want pictures of you in your underwear,” she said quickly. “Your humor punches down a bit too much for me.”

“I don’t write my own stuff,” Richie said, as if that fact would change anything.

“I don’t think that makes it any better,” the mysterious woman said.

Richie shook his head, furrowing his brow. “Well, this personalized critique-o-gram has been fun and enlightening, but if that’s all—”

“It’s not,” the woman said, holding out the envelope.

Richie took it, vaguely concerned that she may be trying to poison him, but when he decided the risk was low enough, he tore it open.

No poison, no anthrax, no anything was inside the envelope, except a photograph. He didn’t recognize it at first, to him it just looked like a photo of a bunch of children, of strangers. But, once he scanned each person, examining their small faces, he came across one he recognized. Himself.

“What—” Richie started. “How did you get this? Did you hack Steve’s email or something?”

It was the picture they’d shown on Saturday Night Live a few nights ago, except it wasn’t just Richie and his bug eyes, it was a whole friend group. A whole group of people that, for the life of him, he couldn’t remember.

“No,” she said, and she pointed at the boy with his arm thrown around Richie’s neck. His curly hair looked as if it was brushing against the corner of Richie’s eye, and his smile was wide.

“I don’t understand,” he said, his voice reduced to a mere whisper.

“My name is Patricia Blum Uris,” she said before she tapped the picture of the boy’s face again, “and I think you knew my husband.”

_______

Somehow, Richie managed to usher Patricia (“Call me Patty,” she said to him, a shy smile on her face) inside and to his couch without puking all over the carpet. He also somehow got her a glass of water without passing out. His stomach still rolled, he felt dizzy, but he sat down across from her and let her speak.

“Stan,” Patty said. “Stanley Uris. Amateur ornithologist and professional accountant.”

“Your husband,” Richie said, and he looked down at the photograph again. He tried to remember the context of the photo, tried to remember just one thing about this boy he seemed to know so well, and came up blank.

“It took me nearly half a year to build up the nerve to go through his things,” Patty said, wringing her hands together in her lap. “I just couldn’t face it. I kept everything exactly where it was, exactly where he last put it. I still haven’t put away the finished jigsaw puzzle he left on the coffee table. I don’t think I ever will.”

“What happened to him?” Richie asked, eyes glued to the picture. They looked so close, but he couldn’t recall a single thing about him.

When Patty didn’t answer, Richie looked up. Her cheeks were wet and she wiped at them furiously.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Six months later and I still can barely say it.”

Richie placed the picture in his lap before reaching over and taking Patty’s hand, wet from tears, in his. They sat quietly for another minute, Richie trying his best to offer quiet comfort, no matter how much it went against his instincts to be loud and abrasive.

“He killed himself,” Patty finally said, and Richie nearly dropped her hand in surprise. “One day, he just got in the bath and— and—”

And despite the fact that Richie had no recollection of this man, this boy, his childhood friend, he felt his stomach sink.

“I’m sorry,” Richie said, and it didn’t feel even close to enough. “I’m so sorry.”

“I honestly don’t know why I came here,” Patty said after she took a minute to recollect herself. “I flew all the way here from Georgia, just because I saw that picture, the picture I found just last week in a cardboard box under Stan’s side of the bed, on Saturday Night Live of all places.”

Richie opened his mouth before he closed it again. He couldn’t offer anything to this grieving widow, he didn’t have anything to give her. She had come here looking for something, for answers, that Richie could not provide.

“Stanley never mentioned you,” Patty continued. “He never kept anything from me, but he never mentioned you. You’re a famous comedian who was apparently his childhood friend, and he never told me anything about you.”

Richie looked back down at the picture again. He studied it, tried to pull even a hint of a memory from his brain, but he came up empty.

“But based on your reaction to this photograph, I can guess that you don’t remember Stan at all,” she said. “He never could recall much of his childhood. I always wondered if something had happened to him, something his brain was protecting him from.”

“I don’t know,” Richie said, but he felt himself turning green. Because, he could never recall his childhood, he doesn’t remember anything concrete before the age of eighteen. Sometimes, it felt like he was asleep his entire life until he woke up, fully aware for the first time, in his college dorm room.

“I was just hoping someone could help me fill in the pieces,” Patty said. “I’ve come to realize that I’m never going to know anything new about him ever again. His life just… stopped. I was just looking for something new to hold onto.”

“I’m sorry,” Richie said again, helplessly.

“It’s alright, Richie,” she said, and she smiled unconvincingly. “I’m sorry I showed up on your doorstep and dropped all of this on you. I should’ve thought this through before I got on the plane.”

She moved to stand, but Richie placed his hand on her wrist. “Wait,” he said. “Wait a second.”

“Richie—”

“Patty, you said Stan didn’t remember anything about growing up?” Richie asked, and when Patty nodded, Richie tried to swallow around the lump in his throat. “How old do you think we were in this picture?”

“I don’t know, thirteen? Maybe a little older?”

“Do you remember your best friend from when you were thirteen?”

Patty nodded. “Her name was Sarah,” she said. “She moved away after the summer we both turned fourteen.”

“Right,” Richie said, and this time, they were his hands that shook. “I have to tell you, I don’t remember a single one of these kids. I don’t remember their names, I don’t even recognize their faces. In fact, I don’t remember a single thing about my childhood.”

“Just like Stan,” Patty said. “But what does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” Richie said, and he rubbed his hands over his face.

“Stan wasn’t acting like himself the night he died,” Patty said, and tears flooded her eyes again. “I mean, at first, he was fine. He was doing his puzzle, we had just booked a trip to Buenos Aires. But then, he got a call.”

Richie really was going to puke this time, he could feel the bile inching up the back of his throat. He didn’t want to ask, but he had to.

“From who?”

Patty sighed. “I don’t know,” she said, and she ran her hand through her hair, her fingers getting caught in tangles halfway down. “Stan said the name Mike, but we don’t know a Mike, not from Atlanta anyway.”

“Mike,” Richie said, and the dizziness was back. “Mike from Derry.”

“Yes, I think that’s right,” Patty said. “Mike from Derry, Maine.”

“Shit,” Richie said, and it was pure luck alone that he made it to the sink before puking his guts out.

_______

Patty ended up spending the night on an air mattress on the floor of Richie’s bedroom. Richie hadn’t had a sleepover that wasn’t directly related to sex in nearly two decades, but Patty made relatively good company.

After Richie had thrown up in the kitchen sink, they decided to order pizza. They didn’t speak of the photograph. Instead, Patty told him about her husband Stan, a man who loved birds, puzzles, and his wife more than life itself.

When Patty couldn’t speak of Stan any more, when the sadness made her throat thick with grief, she asked Richie about his life.

“Well, Patty dearest, it is a harrowing tale of soul-selling for profit and drug addiction,” Richie said, a piece of veggie pizza half-eaten in his hand. “My mother is very proud.”

“I’m sure she is,” Patty said, smirking at him. “I’m sure she’s pinned one of your pussy jokes to the fridge right next to your report card.”

“Goddamn,” Richie said, snorting in surprise. “Patty gets off a good one!”

Richie laughed with this complete stranger, this woman who had been married to a childhood friend that he didn’t remember. He doubled over, holding his guts while she teased him like she was an old friend.

And then, after Richie dug the air mattress out of the back of his closet, back in the part where he kept the suits he didn’t wear and the holiday decorations he had failed to put up the last few years, they went to bed.

Well, Richie crawled into bed, but he couldn’t sleep. He stared up at his ceiling, like he had for so many hours before. He assumed that Patty had dosed off, so he nearly jumped out of his skin when she spoke.

“Richie,” she said into the dark from her spot on the floor. “Does the name Beverly Marsh mean anything to you?”

At first, Richie wanted to say that he’d heard of her, that she was a big name in the fashion world, that he had never worked with her but he knew people who had. But then, the thoughts flooded in.

Beverly Marsh. Beverly Marsh with the flaming red hair and the beautiful smile, with the best aim out of all of us, with nearly the least amount of fear. We were all a little in love with Beverly Marsh, especially that summer.

“Why?” Richie managed to croak out. “What makes you ask that?”

“I was just thinking back to the days after Stan died,” she said, and Richie wished more than anything that he could see her. “I was in such a haze, my world was shattered. So many people called me, mostly old friends of ours. I was in a fog and I couldn’t say much, but I knew them all. But there was one person who called that I didn’t know, and I forgot about it until just now.”

“Beverly Marsh?” Richie asked, stupidly. He rolled over and looked over the side of his bed, but was still met with darkness. He couldn’t even make out the shape of her in the dark.

“That’s what she said,” Patty said. “She said she was an old friend of Stan’s.”

Richie felt his stomach roll again, and the pizza he’d just eaten threatened to make a disgusting reappearance. He thought of the picture, sitting on the coffee table in his living room, of Stan, the curly haired boy to his left, of the lonely red-headed girl on the end, her arm thrown around a short, chubby boy that Richie couldn’t remember.

He also thought of the boy on his other side, the boy with his left arm tucked against young Richie’s elbow, his right one casted and resting against his front. Richie couldn’t help but think, That boy is important to me. He didn’t know what any of it meant.

“Get some sleep, Patty,” Richie said. “We’ll think about it some more in the morning.”

Patty was quiet for a moment. Then, “Good night, Richie,” she said. “It’s been a pleasure meeting you.”

_______

The next morning, Richie went out for coffee and came back home to an intervention.

And even though it was most definitely an intervention, it was a sad excuse for one. Patty was standing at the island in his kitchen, flipping through a magazine. Inexplicably, Steve Covall stood next to her, apparently attempting to make small talk.

“Uh, Steve?” Richie said, kicking the door closed behind him. “If I knew you were coming, I would have gotten you one. But since you didn’t call ahead and I don’t have mind-reading abilities, you’re shit-outta-luck, my friend.”

“Rich,” Steve said, crossing his arms. “Where have you been?”

“Here,” Richie said, and he passed Patty her coffee, an iced latte with caramel syrup. “I’ve been right here.”

“I can see that,” Steve said, and he looked pointedly at Patty.

“This is Patty Uris,” Richie said. “She’s the wife of a childhood friend of mine. She’s visiting for a few days.”

“So she told me,” Steve said, and he glared at Richie in a way that usually made Richie laugh.

“Excuse his manners, Patty,” Richie said. “Steve here was raised in a barn.”

“Shut up, Tozier,” Steve said. It was low-hanging fruit, teasing Steve about being from the midwest, but it always set him off. “Can I speak with you?”

“Sure thing,” Richie said, but he felt his palms start to sweat.

He led Steve away from the kitchen and to the only place where they could speak privately, Richie’s bedroom. When Steve closed the door and Richie flicked the light on, Steve groaned in disgust.

“Seriously, Richie?” Steve asked, kicking a dirty shirt of Richie’s to the side. “You had a woman in this room last night? It reeks.”

“First of all, it does not,” Richie said, although there was a distinct possibility that he just didn’t notice the stink anymore. “And second of all, it’s not like that with Patty.”

“Right,” Steve said, voice dripping with sarcasm. “I’ll admit that she’s not your usual type, but if she’s your childhood friend’s wife, where’s the friend?”

Richie paused. He knew Steve well, probably better than he knew anyone those days, and Steve knew him too. Steve wasn’t trying to be cruel, but sometimes, when he became overprotective, he came off that way.

Steve met Richie at the start of his career, at an open mic comedy event that Richie signed up for almost immediately after arriving in Los Angeles for the first time. Richie pretty much bombed, he only got a few laughs, but when he stepped off the stage, Steve cornered him.

“Your jokes need polishing,” Steve had said. “Your impressions need more practice. But there’s something about you, kid.”

Richie, the naïve child he was, signed the contract Steve offered him without even reading it over. What followed was decades of telling jokes that he hadn’t written and that he fundamentally disagreed with, while skyrocketing to fame like he had always wanted. Soul-selling for profit, just like he’d told Patty.

But Steve, the bastard who had offered a twenty-two year old the deal of a lifetime, a deal with the devil, remained one of Richie’s closest friends.

Richie thought about lying to him, and the urge to do so was inexplicably overpowering. But Steve had known him for years, and he could read him like a book.

“He’s dead,” Richie said. “He died a few months ago.”

Steve’s face fell, but he shook his head and recovered quickly. “I’m sorry for coming here. As your agent, what you do in your free time is none of my business.”

“Okay, but to be clear, I wasn’t doing anything—”

Steve held up his hand to cut him off. “But as your friend, Richie, I’m concerned about you.”

Richie stared at him, words escaping him. He knew what he looked like, Sandy had told him as much. But he hated when people were concerned about him, hated when people saw right through him, when people saw the rot taking hold inside him. It was the main reason he’d stopped taking his mother’s phone calls, she always had the ability to strip him bare and show him how disgusting he truly was.

“You’ve been a mess for months. I haven’t seen you this bad since 2005.”

2005 was the year his father had died. Laryngeal cancer was what took him in the end, and Richie had taken close to half a year off of work to watch him slip away in his parents’ home.

Richie couldn’t cope with it. His father was too young, and he was too young to lose him. His mother fell apart in an organized way, and she’d arranged for her family and friends to catch her when she collapsed. Richie, in true Richie fashion, flew back to LA and developed an addiction to prescription pain killers and whiskey.

He and Sandy had already ended things, but she was still the one, along with Steve, to dig him out of the dark hole. They forced him into therapy back then, and while Richie would never admit to anyone that it worked, he landed back on his feet after a few months.

“And I don’t know what’s causing it this time, but you can’t go on like this, Rich,” he said. “Not if you want to keep living.”

“Is that a threat?” Richie said, pressing his hand to his chest. “Are you threatening me, sir? You better work on your martial arts skills because I won’t be going down without a fight.”

Steve sighed, like he always sighed when Richie tried to joke about something serious. “I can’t tell you what to do in your personal life, but I can tell you what you need to do professionally.”

Steve reached into his pocket and pulled out a pamphlet before tossing it onto Richie’s unmade bed. Richie couldn’t read the writing, his vision worse now than it was when he wore those glasses as a kid, but he recognized the blurry outline of his body.

“Don’t forget that you’re headlining this event tonight,” Steve said. “You can’t miss this, not if you want to keep your career.”

“You are threatening me,” Richie said, his jaw dropping open a touch. “Are you serious, man? After the amount of money I’ve made you?”

“Get yourself together,” Steve said. “Be there tonight. And please, take a shower. I can smell you from here.”

Steve turned to leave, and Richie’s brain raced with the implications of the conversation, when he paused.

“Rich, is Patty’s husband the same childhood friend you lost a few months ago? The one that had you blanking out at the Laugh Factory?”

“What?” Richie asked, the question leaving his mouth with all the air in his lungs.

“Is it the same guy? The one that had you running offstage and puking during the biggest show of your career?”

Richie stared at Steve blankly, and he felt his heart race in his chest. “What are you talking about?”

Then, it was Steve staring blankly at him.

“Are you being serious?” he asked, and when Richie didn’t answer, he sighed again. “Six months ago, you were puking your guts out backstage and then you insisted that you needed to go home of all places, and when you came back, you were totally fucked up about something. You told me that your childhood best friend had just died. I had to do some major damage control for that little stunt, but I fixed it without question, because it was obvious something had fucked you up.”

Richie felt once again like he was going to pass out, so he sat on the edge of his bed, crumpling the pamphlet under him. Richie remembered doing a show at the Laugh Factory, sure, but in his memory, the last time he had a set there was close to two years ago. He was sure of it, or at least he had been.

“I haven’t been back to Chicago in almost three years,” Richie said. “My mom keeps bugging me about it. I’m pretty sure I would remember going home if I’d been there in the last year.”

“Not Chicago,” Steve said, shaking his head. “You told me you were going to Maine.”

Richie felt his soul evacuate his body, and he knew for sure that he was going to throw up again. He tripped over another dirty shirt and the corner of the half-deflated air mattress before launching himself into his ensuite and vomiting up half the coffee he’d drank.

“Gross,” Steve said, and once he’d nearly burned his esophagus with the acid from his stomach, he looked sideways up at Steve. “What kind of hardcore shit are you on, Tozier?”

Richie shook his head, but he couldn’t come up with a better answer than, “I don’t know, man.”

_______

Before Steve left, he wrote down two numbers and left them on the island in Richie’s kitchen. The first was a number to a discrete rehab, one where all the stars go to get clean, and not one Richie was likely to call. The second was a number to the therapist Richie had seen back in 2005. When he stood in front of Richie’s front door, he said goodbye to Patty and threatened Richie once more.

“Show up tonight,” he said. “Show up and be sober enough to be coherent, okay?”

With that, he left and slammed the door shut behind him.

“Are you alright?” Patty asked, having moved from the kitchen to the couch.

“Patty, something’s wrong,” Richie said. “I think something bad happened to me.”

Patty furrowed her brow and patted her hand against the cushion next to her. “Sit,” she said. “Tell me.”

_______

After Richie recounted what Steve had told him, Patty dug through his side table drawers until she found a pen, flipped over the home improvement magazine she’d been reading through, and made a list on the back.

What we know:

-Stan’s call from ‘Mike’

-‘Beverly Marsh’ — the fashion designer?

-Richie’s mystery visit to Maine

-Richie (and Stan’s) memory loss

“What if—” Richie started, but then cleared his throat. “I don’t mean to be condescending—”

“Oh boy,” Patty said, and she laughed. “Lay it on me.”

“What if you’re— we’re— seeing things that aren’t there?” Richie said. “I mean, I’m the first to admit that I had a drug problem.” If Patty raised her brow at the past tense he chose to use, he ignored it. “Maybe I just fried my brain cells more than I realized. Maybe I completely forgot about my trip to Maine because I was tripping balls the entire time.

“Maybe, none of this means anything. Maybe I wasn’t as close with these kids as it seems in the picture and they just faded from my memory. Maybe Stan was struggling more than he let on, and it was a coincidence that someone from Derry called that night.”

“Maybe,” Patty said, looking down at their list. Her voice was downtrodden, but when she looked up, she was smiling. “Or maybe, we’re seeing something that is there.”

“Patty—”

“Look, Richie. I’ve been through the denial part of this, I’ve come around to accepting that Stan is gone. I know that he’s not coming back. But if any of this, any of this stuff that doesn’t make sense, offers me answers, then I want to find out.

“That’s the whole reason I came to find you. I want answers, I want more information, I want the whole picture. I don’t know what any of this means, but if discovering the truth about it means I get to have something of Stan’s, then I’m going to do it. But I won’t force you to help me.”

“Of course I’m going to help you, Patty,” Richie said, scoffing and waving his hand, as if brushing away the ridiculous notion. “I’m your ride-or-die now. Think of me like herpes, you’re never getting rid of me.”

“Gross, Richie,” Patty said, repeating those two words that Richie had heard most of his life. “But I appreciate the sentiment.”

“Are you going to be alright?” Richie said. “Dredging all this up? Because I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not super great with the whole ‘emotional awareness’ thing?”

“Oh believe me, I noticed,” she said with a smirk. “Don’t worry about me. I’ve had enough therapy in the last six months to set me up for success, and I have her number on speed dial.”

“Good, good,” Richie said, his mind slipping to the phone numbers decorating his faux-granite countertop.

“So,” Patty said, looking down at the magazine in her lap. “Where do we start?”

Richie looked at her before he shrugged. “I honestly don’t know, Patty-cakes.”

“Well,” she said, looking at their list on the back of the magazine. “Why don’t we start with Beverly Marsh?”

_______

For some reason, Richie had expected it to be easier to get in contact with Beverly Marsh. He figured he was famous enough to use his connections and set a meeting with her, but it turned out that the fashion designer was a hard woman to find.

Once he realized that he was going to need Steve’s help, he knew that he couldn’t blow off the show that night, no matter how much he wanted to. He felt like his world had shifted sideways, and he didn’t know how he was supposed to go up on stage and make jokes that he didn’t even find funny.

He didn’t want to bring Patty, he didn’t want her to have to sit in the audience and listen to him spew bullshit for an entire evening. But, much to his chagrin, she insisted.

“I’ve seen your specials before,” Patty said. “You’re not going to scandalize me.”

So, Richie dragged himself on stage, hands and forehead sweaty. He usually zoned out during his routines, because although Steve advertised his events as improv, they never were. So he tried to think of something else, but he was so aware of the fact that Patty was sitting out there in the audience, that he couldn’t.

He was glad that the lights were so bright, and he was grateful that he didn’t know where she was sitting, because he knew he couldn’t get through his “college girls are so easy” routine if he could see her face.

Trashmouth Tozier was still fucking college girls, prowling for barely legal blondies with fake IDs in dive bars. Richie, as different as he was from his alter ego, hadn’t so much as looked at a college girl since he was in college himself. In recent days, when he found enough energy to get out of bed, he’d actually been seeing mostly men. But that was not something the fans of Trashmouth wanted to hear, so that wasn’t what Richie told them.

Richie wasn’t sure if Steve knew that Richie sometimes slept with guys. He knew about Sandy, but Richie hadn’t really had a relationship since Sandy, and Steve wasn’t the kind of friend who wanted to hear about his casual hookups, no matter the gender. Maybe Steve knew, but maybe he didn’t. It didn’t matter either way, because whether or not Richie was out to Steve, Trashmouth would never be out to the people who watched his shows.

Not that Richie wanted to be out to the asshole misogynistic homophobes who cheered him on, but it didn’t matter. And really, he wasn’t any different from them, standing behind the microphone and giving a voice to those same people he pretended were more immoral than he was.

There was always a big laugh after the joke about the difference between sorority and fraternity initiations, although Richie himself was still too much of a loser in college to have been involved in any sort of Greek life.

Almost everything he said as Trashmouth was a lie. Back when he was twenty-two, he would have done anything, would have become anyone to be someone that people liked, that people laughed with instead of at. At forty, Richie just wished he could get his soul back.

He finished the set with a long-winded story about the first girl he had a crush on. It was one of his best-known routines, but his writers tried to change it up, add more details, keep it interesting. That routine was the one piece of the set that Richie had any writing input on. Until that very moment, he thought he had made it up completely.

Until the moment he said the well-rehearsed line about her broken arm, her hypochondriac mother, the bully who wrote Loser in ugly, block letters on her cast, how Richie puffed out his chest and tried to be her knight in shining armor, how this crush, the one he had so long ago, shaped his future taste in women.

The picture was sitting on Richie’s countertop, right where he left it, next to his basket of fake fruit. That boy is important to me.

It took all of the willpower that Richie had left to not blow chunks all over the douchebags sitting in the front row.

_______

Richie had almost completely forgotten about the reason he dragged himself out of his house until he saw Patty sitting next to Steve on the couch in his dressing room back stage.

“To be honest, Rich, that was much better than I was expecting,” Steve said. “You only fumbled for a second.”

“Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence, Steve,” Richie said.

“Although, the part you did fumble is your most rehearsed bit,” Steve continued, and Richie looked at Patty.

Although Richie hadn’t known Patty for very long at all, he knew that she could read him like a book. He wondered if she’d figured it out. If he had to guess, based on the look on her face, she had.

“Okay, I did the show,” Richie said, looking back at Steve.

“Which is part of your job, so I don’t know why you’re looking at me like I should be grateful.”

Richie pinched the bridge of his nose. “Steve—”

“We need a favor,” Patty said, interrupting what was likely to be a stuttering mess of a proposal. Asking for help was never one of Richie’s strong suits.

“A favor? What sort of favor?” Steve asked, looking between them, eyebrows raised.

“Could you get us a line with Beverly Marsh?” Patty asked it as if she was asking for an extra cream to go in her coffee.

Steve opened his mouth, closed it, and then opened it again. “Beverly Marsh? The fashion designer?”

“Got it in one, Steve-y boy,” Richie said, grabbing one of the complimentary waters the venue had left sitting on the table.

“Richie, you always look as if you’ve just rolled out of bed,” Steve said, crossing his arms. “What do you need with a fashion designer?”

“That’s harsh. I put the utmost effort into how I look, thank you very much,” Richie said with a straight face, even thought he knew he was wearing a graphic tee-shirt with the words I fucked your mom in bright neon green letters under a flannel he hadn’t washed in at least a month.

“We just need a phone number,” Patty said, steering them right back on track. “A direct number that is likely to get us to her.”

Steve watched Patty like he was expecting her to change before his eyes. “I can’t get a read on you,” he said, pointing at her. “And I don’t understand this,” this time, flicking his finger back and forth between them.

“I already told you,” Richie said, channeling as much petulance into the phrase as he could.

“Yeah, I heard what you told me,” he said. “Fine.”

“Fine?”

“Fine,” Steve conceded. “I’ll ask around and I’ll get you that number.”

“Thank you, Steve,” Richie said. “Seriously, thank you.”

“And if you ever feel like cluing me in on what’s going on with you,” Steve said, tapping away on his phone as he finally stood up, “that would be great.”

Richie didn’t even bother lying, didn’t bother telling him that nothing was going on. Instead, he just nodded. As soon as Steve was out of the room, Patty stood.

“I’m sorry,” Richie said, and he looked down at his hands.

Patty didn’t say anything for a long moment, and Richie didn’t dare look at her. He was ashamed, plain and simple.

“It’s not a particularly high-brow form of humor, is it?” Patty said finally, and if Richie didn’t know better, he would almost say that she sounded amused.

“No? But that’s what I was going for. I was hoping my material was fit enough to land me an audience with the Queen of England one of these days,” Richie said, placing his hand on his chest in faux-horror. When he finally looked at her, she wore a small smile.

“I expected worse, if I’m being honest with you,” Patty said.

“I don’t see how it could get much worse,” Richie said, sobering with a shrug.

“That last bit, the one about your childhood crush,” Patty said, and Richie stomach swooped. “That was sweet.”

Richie felt as if Patty had ripped him open and taken a peek at his soul. “Patty…”

“You don’t have to say anything,” Patty said, and she reached out before grasping his wrist in a gesture that Richie didn’t know how to process. “I won’t say anything, either.”

“God, Patty,” he said, rubbing his sweaty palms over his face. “I don’t even remember his name.”

“Well, we’re going to figure it out and then you’ll know,” Patty said, waving her hand as if she were shooing away a fly. “Simple as that.”

“Man, I bet you were so good for Stan. He was always wound too tight,” Richie said as he patted on top of each of his pant pockets. “Have you seen my phone?”

“What makes you say that?” Patty said. She nearly whispered it, and it stopped Richie in his tracks.

“What do you mean?” Richie asked, mentally scrubbing his brain for any stupid words he could have said in the last two minutes and came up blank.

“You said that Stan was always so tightly wound,” Patty said. “How do you know that?”

“I—” Richie started, and he furrowed his brow. “I don’t know. I just do. Stanley wanted everything to make sense, it stressed him out when it didn’t. It’s a miracle he didn’t give himself an ulcer by age thirteen.”

“Holy shit, Richie,” Patty said before promptly bursting into tears.

“Hey,” Richie said, and he led them to the couch. Once he got them sitting, Patty dropped her face into her hands while Richie tried his best to be comforting, rubbing a supportive hand on her back.

“All this time,” Patty said, voice thick, “every day for the past six months, I’ve been chasing this missing piece of him.”

Richie didn’t know what to say. He still couldn’t remember, but at least he knew the gap in his memory was there. Somehow, it made a difference. And somehow, without him noticing it, the rough edges of his forgotten childhood started to smooth itself out.

“He was no-nonsense, but he had the strangest sense of humor. I never understood what was making him laugh, probably because he always knew so much more than me,” Richie said, the words spilling out of him. “I can’t remember most of it. I can’t remember most of him. But he’s in my head.”

“Good,” Patty said, and when she lifted her face, she smiled. The tear tracks on her cheeks started to dry. “I’m glad. Stan always was the best man to know.”

_______

“What do you know about Beverly Marsh?” Richie asked later that night as Patty sat across from him in an Italian restaurant that was likely too fancy for the way Richie was dressed.

“Does it look like I know anything about Beverly Marsh?” Patty said, gesturing to her outfit, a white sweater and oversized jeans.

“It’s more likely you than me,” Richie said. He only ever did laundry when it was absolutely necessary, or when Sandy or Steve told him he looked homeless.

“So, neither of us know anything.”

“Seems that way.”

“Too bad neither of us have a small device that can give us all the information we’re looking for,” Patty said, shrugging while she picks up a breadstick. “I guess we’ll just have to sit and wonder.”

Richie hummed before fishing his phone out of his pocket. He typed the name into the search bar while the waiter placed their drinks in front of them. When the results loaded, Richie was struck dumb by the first picture of her. She was, for lack of a better word, beautiful.

But it wasn’t her beauty that made him pause, it was her fire-red hair.

“Patty, look at this,” he said, spinning the phone around. Patty studied the picture before looking up at him.

“Do you think—”

“That she’s the girl in the picture?” Richie said. “You betcha, Patty-cakes. I think our hypothesis is correct.”

Patty wrinkled her nose. “I draw the line at ‘Patty-cakes’. Sorry, Rich.”

“No, I agree. Not my best work,” Richie said, taking his phone back. He scrolled down further and clicked on an article, skimming the contents. “Well, this is interesting.”

“What is?”

“Ms. Beverly Marsh has gotten herself a divorce,” Richie said. “Rather suddenly, it seems.”

“That’s not that interesting. People get divorced all the time,” Patty said, and she smirked when Richie shot her a scowl.

“Yes, Patty dearest, but Ms. Beverly Marsh filed for divorce six months ago.”

“Six months?” Patty repeated.

“Six months,” Richie confirmed. “It could be a wild coincidence.”

“I’m beginning to think that coincidences are rather unlikely.”

“Agreed.”

“But what does it mean?” Patty asked. “What does any of it mean?”

“I don’t know,” Richie said. Richie had spent most of his life not knowing, but it had never felt quite so helpless.

“Hopefully Steve can get us that number,” Patty said, breaking off another piece of bread.

“And hopefully, she answers.”

_______

As luck would have it, Steve was able to get them the direct number to Beverly Marsh’s office by the next morning. As luck wouldn’t, Beverly Marsh was not in.

“I’m sorry, but Ms. March is on vacation this week,” the receptionist said. “Can I please take a message?”

“Do you know when she’s going to be back?” Richie asked. “It’s kind of urgent.”

Richie didn’t know exactly why he was in such a rush to uncover whatever happened six months ago, but with every passing hour he itched, he needed to know. He also felt like he owed the world to Patty, and he wanted to give it to her.

“I’m sorry,” the receptionist said again. “She’s not taking business calls at this time.”

Richie rolled his eyes. “This is not a business call. As I said, it’s urgent.”

“Mr. Tozier,” the receptionist said, and any hope that his name would give them any advantage vanished. “All I can do is take a message and promise you that it’ll get to her.”

“Fine,” Richie said, and he looked over at Patty, who had her thumbnail in her mouth and was chewing anxiously. “Could you tell her that I called looking for her because I had a few questions about Derry, Maine?”

“A few questions about Derry, Maine,” the receptionist repeated. “Is that all?”

“I suppose it is,” Richie said. “Thanks, I guess.”

“Of course. I’m sorry for any inconvenience,” she said, and then she hangs up before Richie could get in another word.

“Well, that was an enormous waste of time,” Richie said before clicking his phone off and tossing it onto the couch. “I would bet half my net worth that the message doesn’t even reach her.”

“I’ll take that bet,” Patty said. “I think it was just a cryptic-enough message coming from a famous-enough person to pique her interest.”

“Maybe.”

“Come on, don’t tell me you’re giving up already,” Patty said. “We just have to give it some time.”

“Maybe,” Richie said again as morosely as he had before, and Patty threw a couch pillow at his head.

“Stop, Rich,” Patty said. “Let’s go out.”

“Out?” Richie laughed. “I haven’t gone out since I kicked my coke habit.”

“Not out out, we’re too old for that,” Patty said, and she waved her hand to stop his retort before he could make it. “Let’s go do something fun. We could go to the movies or something.”

Richie was about to protest, was about to argue the merits of crawling under the covers and never coming out again when an idea came into his head, fully formed and on wheels.

“You know what, Patty? I think that’s a brilliant idea.”

_______

Richie took Patty to the pier. The place was most definitely targeted for children and teenagers, but when he saw the light-up machines, he was transported back to a time that he barely remembered.

If Rich was worried about Patty judging his choice of entertainment, he didn’t need to be. As soon as they stepped through the automatic doors, her face lit up.

“Oh, hell yes,” Patty said. “Stan and I used to go to the arcade all the time back in college.”

“Really?” Richie said. For some reason, one he could not make sense of, that surprised him.

“I never understood why, either. He never really played, he just liked to watch me, but he always suggested it,” Patty said, and she looked up at him. “Now though, I think I may know why.”

Richie opened his mouth, but stuttered. “But, he didn’t remember me,” Richie said.

“No, he didn’t,” Patty said. “But maybe, actually, some part of him did. Like muscle memory.”

When Richie didn’t say anything, Patty gave him a soft look before leaving him, standing on the faded neon-printed carpet, to go buy them tokens.

Richie remained stuck in that spot. The thought that Stanley Uris, a man that was wiped from Richie’s brain, frequented arcades when he didn’t really want to because some part of him led him there, paralyzed him. Some part of him remembered that Richie loved the arcade, loved the game Street Fighter almost more than life itself. Some part of him, some brain muscle brought him to a place that made him nostalgic for someone he no longer knew.

He wondered about his own life. He wondered if he had similar brain muscles for the other kids in that photograph. He wondered how much of his life had been shaped by them.

As he listened to the sounds of the machines beeping and the overwhelming music from the games, he found himself in a memory.

“Richie, don’t drop me,” the girl with red hair shrieked.

“I won’t,” Richie said, more confidently than he actually was, as he wrapped his arms around her waist.

“Richie!” she said the second Richie had lifted her off her feet.

“Bevvie, stop yelling! I’ve got this handled,” Richie said, even though he most certainly did not. His noodle arms wobbled as he lifted her, and her weight strained against him.

Bevvie, Beverly, Beverly Marsh, the girl with the fire-red hair, screamed in his memory, kicking her legs wildly until he dropped her back on the ground.

“You do not have it handled,” Bev said. “You have to do it like the guy in the movie.”

“I’m trying,” Richie said, letting go of her and placing his hands on his hips in defiance.

“Not hard enough, asshole.”

“Fuck you, slimeball. Watch me never do anything for you ever again.”

“Settle down, fellas,” another voice said, and Richie turned his head. There, at the base of a tree, nose deep in a book, was curly-haired boy wearing a kippah. “No need for hostility.”

“And fuck you too, Stan,” Richie spat out. And then the boy was Stan, the quiet, even-tempered Jewish boy who knew a lot about the world in general and a lot specifically about birds. Richie remembered him, he was more funny than Richie by a long shot, and he was Richie’s best friend.

“No, thanks,” Stan said, and Richie stuck his tongue out at him. “But Bev is right, you need to do it like that guy in the movie. Get some momentum so you can lift over your shoulder.”

Richie scowled but he couldn’t deny that it made sense. So, after pouting for a minute or so, he grabbed Bev’s hands. “Okay,” Richie said. “Like the guy from the movie.”

Richie and Bev moved their feet, spinning around quickly. She spun underneath his arm, and straightened hers, and then she was as far away from him as she could be while still holding hands. They locked eyes. Richie spun her around. He used the force of it to pull her close and flip her backwards over his shoulder. He let her go.

But the memory stopped there. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember what happened next. He couldn’t remember the name of the movie they were talking about, he couldn’t remember the dance they were trying to mimic, and he couldn’t remember if Beverly stuck the landing.

“Hey,” Patty said. She was standing next to him, and she had a hold on his arm. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” Richie said, shaking his head. “Yeah, I’m good.”

Patty watched him, and he could tell that she didn’t believe him for a second. Instead of questioning him further, she squeezed his arm. “Come on. Let me beat your Street Fighter score.”

Richie laughed, tossing his anxiety to the back of his mind. “Oh, you’re on, Patricia.”

“I’ll kick your ass, Richard.”

“Damn, Patty gets off another good one!”

_______

Three days after Patty beat Richie by an embarrassing margin at the arcade, Richie’s phone rang.

When it did, Richie was sitting on his back deck, looking at the script of his next show that Steve had forwarded him. It was truly abysmal and likely to be some of his worst work. He wanted to show Patty, but she was on the couch, fast asleep.

He didn’t even bother looking at the caller-ID because he figured it was Steve. Steve always called after emailing, knowing that there was a fifty percent chance that the email would sit in his mailbox unopened.

“Y’ello,” Richie said, scrolling back to the top of the document.

“Um, hello?” A male voice, one that was decidedly not Steve, said on the other line. “Is this Richie Tozier?”

“Unfortunately, it is,” Richie said. “And who is this?”

Richie’s number was unlisted and only people in the know had access to it, so phone calls from random people rarely made him nervous. Usually, they were people in the business who got his number from Steve. This man’s voice, however, stirred up a flutter of anxiety in his gut.

“Did you call Beverly Marsh’s office asking about Derry, Maine?” The voice asked, and Richie felt his stomach acid fighting its way up his throat.

“What’s it to you?” Richie said, shutting his laptop and placing it on the ground.

After a pause, the man on the phone said, “My name is Ben Hanscom. I think we may have known each other.”

Richie was throwing up before he could even process the words. In a disgusting display, Richie blew chunks all over his lounge chair and deck, barely missing his laptop. He coughed, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.

“Um, are you okay?” The man, Ben, asked.

“Yeah, man,” Richie said. “I’m good.”

“Are you sure? It sounds like you just got sick,” Ben said, voice filled with deep concern.

“That’s been happening lately,” Richie said. “You think we knew each other?”

“I— I actually don’t think, I know we did,” Ben said. “Bev remembers more than I do.”

Richie sat with it for a second. He recognized the name, but just like everything else with the whole affair, he couldn’t place him. He thought, fought against the barrier his mind had thrown up, and thought some more.

“Oh my God,” Richie said. “Haystack?”

Ben went quiet for a moment before bursting into borderline hysterical laughter. “Holy shit,” he said. “I haven’t heard that nickname in forever.”

“It’s really you,” Richie said, letting out a breathless laugh. “But how—” Richie trailed off, thought about the conversation so far. “How do you know Bev remembers more? And how do you remember her? And how did you get this number?”

“Uh, funnily enough, all three questions have the same answer,” Ben said, and Richie could picture his round face, reddened with embarrassment, like that time Richie discovered his New Kids on the Block albums. His head ached from the memory. “We’re… well, we’re together.”

For a moment, the words meant almost nothing to Richie. But then, he was flooded with another memory, one where Richie and Ben sat on a bench in the center of town, waiting for the others, other people he cannot recall, to return from getting ice cream.

“You know, you’re not subtle at all,” Richie had said before kicking a rock across the green.

“Huh?” Ben asked.

“You wanting to bang Bev,” Richie said like it was nothing. “Not subtle at all.”

“What?” Ben sputtered, face turning beet-red. “What? What?”

Richie threw his head back and laughed. “It’s fine, Haystack. Big Bill also wants to bang Bev, so you’re not alone. You guys could start your own, gross club.”

“Beep beep, Richie,” Ben said, face still furiously red. “Does— Um, does Bev know?”

“No,” Richie said, kicking another rock before looking at Ben. Richie liked Ben, liked how kind he was, liked how he fit into their group. “No. She’s too hung up on Bill to notice anything but him, these days.”

“Oh,” Ben said, and he looked down at his shoes. There was a hole by the toe, and they were caked in mud.

“It’s okay, Haystack,” Richie said, laying a hand on his shoulder. “You’ll bloom into a beautiful butterfly someday, and then you’ll have your chance.”

Ben shoved him off, but he was finally smiling. “You know, you’re not subtle either.”

It was Richie’s turn to blush. “Fuck off, Haystack. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

In the present, Richie said, “No shit, Haystack. You finally got the girl! Took you long enough. You must have finally grown hair on your balls like the rest of us.”

“Beep beep, Richie,” Ben said and Richie laughed. He’d forgotten until thirty seconds ago that his friends used to yell that at him all the time. Richie knew Sandy would get a kick out of that, and he made a mental note to tell her.

“God, I just remembered that,” Richie said. “No one’s said that to me in a long time.”

“Tell me about it,” Ben said. “So, um, the reason I’m calling, other than the fact that you left Bev a message, is because I don’t really understand what’s going on in my head.”

“That makes two of us, pal,” Richie said.

“Richie, I’m scared. Bev is scared too. She’s been locked in the office practically since we got back from vacation and Grace gave us your message. I finally decided I had to call you if she wouldn’t,” he said. “How is it that I’ve seen you on TV but I forgot that we grew up together? How did I forget that Bev and I grew up together?”

“I know about as much as you do,” Richie said. “Which is next to nothing.”

“As next to nothing as you can get,” Ben confirmed. “Although, Bev does know more, I can tell. She’s just scared to say it out loud, I think. Which leads me to my next question.”

“Yes?”

“How soon can you fly out to Chicago?”

Richie looked down at himself, at the vomit on his shirt, on his chair, on the ground, before glancing over his shoulder, through the glass door into the living room. From there, he could see Patty and her chest, rising and falling in a steady motion.

“If you give me an hour, I can pull myself together and be there by tonight.”

“Really?” Ben asked, and Richie would have been worried about being an imposition if he didn’t sound so relieved.

“You got it, Haystack,” Richie said. “And I’m bringing a guest.”

“Who?”

Richie thought about it for a minute, before saying, “I think it will make more sense if I explain it in person.”

“Alright,” Ben said. “Sure. It’s not like this could get any weirder. You have my number, so just text me your flight info. Bev and I will be there to pick you up.”

“Okay, Ben,” Richie said. “I’ll see you soon.”

After Ben hung up, Richie sat with his thoughts for a while. He hadn’t realized he’d zoned out until the sliding glass door swept open and Patty cleared her throat behind him.

“How long was I out?” she asked, rubbing her eyes. When she dropped her hand, her face scrunched up with concern. “Is that puke?”

“Yes, Patty, it is,” Richie said, standing up and ignoring the mess on his front.

“Are you okay?”

“No, Patty, I’m not,” Richie said. “But I could be very soon.”

“What are you talking about?” Patty asked, eyes still focused on the bit of sick staining his shirt.

“I got a call back,” Richie said, and Patty’s eyes widened. “We’re going to Chicago.”

_______

After a phone call to Steve (“Richie, I swear to God, if this is some sort of midlife crisis, please keep it out of the tabloids.”), a shower, and the fastest packing job of all time, Richie and Patty found themselves on a plane.

Once the plane was in the air and the lights in the cabin were unceremoniously turned off, Patty passed Richie one of her headphones without a word. For the short duration of the flight, Richie listened to the soft hum of Patty’s music, and closed his eyes.

_______

Richie felt like puking again as soon as they stepped off the plane. For once, Patty didn’t look much better.

“Not too late to go back. We could probably get you a flight back to Georgia by morning,” Richie said, but secretly hoped that Patty said no, that she never left.

“Not on your life, Rich,” Patty said, but her hands trembled.

“Okay,” Richie said. “Ben said they’d be just outside the doors.”

Patty was the first one to move, taking the first step, and Richie had no choice but to follow her. When they stepped out into the cold air, Richie took a deep breath, trying to fight off the wave of nausea threatening to crash.

He didn’t see anyone he recognized, didn’t see anything close to a familiar face at first. He saw a man leaning against a black SUV, but he didn’t think anything of it until he started waving.

“No fucking way,” Richie said and he adjusted his glasses, making a show of it. “No fucking way that’s you, Haystack.”

When the man, the tall and handsome man, threw his head back and laughed, Richie dropped his bag on the pavement and rushed at him. Richie hugged the man he had forgotten about until a few hours before, and Ben hugged him back.

“Shit, Richie,” Ben said. “You got tall.”

“Says you,” Richie said. He pulled back and looked him up and down before letting out a long whistle. “Seriously. What the fuck, man?”

“I know,” Ben said, clapping his hand on Richie’s shoulder.

“You were always cute, cute, cute, but damn. Ben, you got hot!”

“Hate to burst your bubble, Rich, but Ben here is a nearly-married man,” a voice from behind him said. Richie whipped around and found himself face to face with Beverly Marsh, grown-up and beautiful.

“Bev,” Richie said before reaching for her.

“Careful,” Bev said as he wrapped his arms around her and squeezed. “I just walked through the airport for this coffee. It’d be a shame to lose it.”

“You haven’t changed at all,” Richie said, holding her for another second before pulling back. “You got hot, too! That’s not fair.”

Bev shoved his shoulder with her free hand before glancing around him. “I’m sorry, we’re being rude,” she said, and Richie turned when he remembered Patty was still standing there next to their luggage.

“Sorry, that’s my bad,” Richie said. “Ben, Bev, this is Patricia Blum Uris. Patty, this is Ben Hanscom and Beverly Marsh.”

“Hello,” Bev said, holding out her free hand, and Ben offered Patty a polite smile. When they shook hands, Bev frowned. “I’m sorry, have we met before?”

“Not in person, no,” Patty said, and Richie noticed that her hands were still shaking.

“What—” Bev started, but she stopped herself. She looked at Richie and raised a brow. “Do you have any answers?”

Richie swallowed, his throat suddenly painfully dry. “Why don’t we find somewhere to sit down?”

_______

Somewhere ended up being an Applebee’s not far from the airport. Richie thought about making a joke about their combined net worth and their restaurant of choice, but they ordered a round of drinks and appetizers, and Richie was decently appeased.

“So,” Ben said when their nachos arrived. “Are we going to talk about the elephant in the room?”

Richie hummed. “I don’t know what you mean, Haystack. This is a perfectly normal lunch meeting.”

“Seriously, Richie. No one’s called me that in…” he trailed off. “I don’t even remember.”

“Yeah,” Richie said, looking down at his plate. “Well, to be honest with you, I don’t really know what’s going on. We’re still trying to fit the pieces together.”

“Patty, forgive me if we’ve met and I just don’t remember,” Bev said, “but how do you fit into all of this?”

Patty glanced at Richie before taking a sip of her drink. “I spoke to you on the phone, six months ago.”

Bev stared at her, jaw dropping open. She looked at Ben, but he shrugged. “You did?”

“Yes,” Patty said. “You were asking me about my husband, Stan.”

Richie saw the confused recognition pass over Bev’s face.

“Stan?” Ben said, frowning before widening his eyes. “Stan Uris. Right?”

“We were supposed to go to his bar mitzvah,” Bev whispered. “I can’t remember why we didn’t.”

“Excuse me, but I definitely went,” Richie said. “I was front and center. I was convinced they were gonna cut his wang off.”

Patty looked at him, lifting her brow. More memories, more brain muscles. He shrugged.

“Stanley Uris,” Ben said wistfully. “He liked animals, didn’t he?”

“Birds,” Bev said. She met Patty’s eye and her smile fell. “It was birds, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Patty said, choking on the word. “Yes, it was.”

“Patty,” Ben said, “where’s Stan now?”

Patty opened her mouth, but all that came out was a strangled cough. On the table, Bev gently grabbed onto Ben’s hand.

“He’s… he passed away, didn’t he?” Bev asked. “Is that’s why you called me? To tell me?”

Patty audibly swallowed and glanced at Richie out of the corner of her eye. “No, not exactly.”

“I can’t remember,” Bev said. “I hate that I can’t remember. It feels like I’m reaching for something and straining a muscle.”

“It makes me puke,” Richie said. “The barely-remembering.”

“Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me,” Bev said, and Patty smiled.

“It is pretty disgusting,” Patty confirmed. Then, she sighed, running her fingers as best as she could through her tangled hair. “I didn’t call you, Beverly. You called me. From Derry.”

Richie watched as vague confusion transformed into barely-remembering. Bev reached for her head, her fingers pressing into her temples. Ben covered his mouth and rubbed his stubble.

“Derry,” Ben said, letting a long breath out through pursed lips. “When were you in Derry, Bev?”

“I don’t know,” Bev said. “I don’t remember.”

“We were all in Derry,” Richie said. “I don’t know why, or how, but we were.”

“The three of us?” Ben asked, but Bev was shaking her head before Richie could answer.

“No, there were more of us,” Bev said. “Bill was there. Do you remember Bill? I didn’t until your phone call, Richie.”

Bill. He had remembered a Bill, vaguely, when he had remembered Ben. In that memory, Bill was a boy Bev had a crush on. Richie felt his stomach roll.

Bill Denbrough. Bill with his big heart and his debilitating stutter. Big Bill who was the bravest boy Richie had ever met. We were all a little in love with Bill that summer, too.

“Bathroom,” Patty said, moving her legs out of the way while Richie stumbled over her. He rushed to the back of the restaurant and made it into a stall before upchucking. He puked up his appetizers and the two drinks he drank, throat burning until he was done.

There wasn’t much else he could do other than rinse his mouth out and pray that his breath didn’t stink too badly. He splashed some cold water on his face before leaving, doing a walk of shame back to the table. When he got there, he crawled over Patty and settled before clearing his throat.

“Uh, sorry,” Richie said. “That’s what I meant, though. It tends to happen.”

“I suppose puking is more inconvenient than the migraines I get,” Bev said, rubbing her forehead. “Or Ben’s hives.” As if on cue, Ben itched his arm.

“So, Bill Denbrough?” Ben asked.

“Wait, the author?” Patty asked. She reached into her purse and pulled out the group picture, the picture that had led her to Richie’s doorstep.

“Fuck, that’s right,” Richie said. “I think I’ve read some of them.”

“They’re disturbing,” Ben said. “We have a few on our bookshelf at home. I can’t believe I didn’t realize.”

“Somehow, I think I did,” Bev said. “Somehow, I think while I was standing in the bookstore, some memory I didn’t even know I had compelled me to pick them up. That would make sense, since it’s not really my genre.”

“Which one is he?” Patty asked, turning the photo around to show Bev and Ben. They hunched over, scanning the photo.

“Those glasses, Rich,” Bev said with a laugh.

“I forgot you had your hair so short,” Ben said, pressing his arm against Bev’s. “I can’t believe I forgot that I knew you when we were this little.”

“You were so cute,” Bev said, making Ben blush, before laying the picture flat on the table. “This one is Bill. He and I both had red hair.”

Richie looked, upside down, at the boy Bev pointed out and suddenly, he himself knew that he was Bill, and that Bill was their leader.

He found himself in another memory, one where he was sitting behind Bill on his bike.

Bill bellowed “Away, Silver, away!”

Richie didn’t remember why, but in that moment, he was terrified.

“Holy fuck, Bill. I nearly shit myself!” Richie had said. “What the fuck was that?”

“A werewolf, I think,” Bill said. “But that was it.”

“It?”

“We have to go back,” Bill said, pedaling faster. “Once we have a plan.”

“You are off your rocker, Big Bill,” Richie had said before grasping him tighter.

Back in the present, he couldn’t make sense of the memory, as short as it was. The context was long gone, buried with the rest of Derry.

“Damn, Bev. What else do you have in that head of yours?” Richie said instead of trying to make sense of the past.

She pointed her manicured finger at the boy on Richie’s left. “This is Stan, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Patty said. “Although I never knew him that young.”

“When did you meet?” Ben asked, and Richie couldn’t believe he’d never thought to ask her something like that. He felt shame color his face for a moment, but Patty tapped his wrist under the table, as if she was reading his mind.

“College,” Patty said. “I was in love with him almost the second we met, but he took some time to come around. His parents never liked me.”

“No? Stan’s parent’s loved me,” Richie said. “If only he’d accepted my passionate proposal.”

“That is a blatant lie,” Bev said with a smile. “They hated you almost as much as they hated me. You were way too vulgar.”

“They hated you because you were a girl hanging around with a bunch of boys,” Richie said. “My parents weren’t your biggest fan either, if I remember correctly. As if you could ruin my reputation more than it already was.”

“Good, church-going Richie Tozier,” Bev teased.

“I think the only parents that didn’t hate you were Mike’s,” Richie said, “and that’s only because you used to volunteer to help out on the farm with him while the rest of us goofed around.”

Ben scratched the side of his neck. Bev closed her eyes.

“Wait,” Richie said, and when he looked at Patty, she was looking down at the picture.

“Mike Hanlon,” Ben said.

“Which one is he?” Patty asked, but when Richie looked, he didn’t know. He felt acid climbing up the back of his throat.

Bev kept her eyes squeezed shut for another second before squinting. She pointed to the Black boy, the one standing on the end by Beverly’s side. “Him,” she said.

“You’re right,” Ben said. “He used to come to the library with me. He was as much of a book nerd as me.”

“I remember now,” Bev said, smirking. “His parents did like me.”

“That’s six,” Patty said. “We’ve identified six out of seven. You guys are incredible.”

“Yeah, we’re a regular Ocean’s Eleven,” Richie said, although it made little sense. He was barely paying attention, his eyes focused on the last boy, the one they could not place, the one with the cast. “But who is that?”

Richie looked to Bev, the one who knew more than the rest of them, the one who had put most of the pieces together so far. She shrugged, and his heart sank.

“Don’t get discouraged,” Bev said, and she kicked him lightly under the table. “Six out of seven is not bad for our first day.”

“A solid 86%,” Richie said with a conceding nod. Bev raises a brow at him and he shrugs. “I rounded up. I thought that was fair.”

“You always were smarter than you seemed,” Ben said.

“I am going to reluctantly take that as a compliment, Haystack,” Richie said.

Their waiter appeared out of thin air, and said, “Another round of drinks for the table?”

And before anyone else could say anything, Richie twirled a finger in the air. “Oui, garçon, s'il vous plaît!”

“Your Voices have improved,” Ben said, once the waiter walked away.

“Thanks,” Richie said with a smile. “I’ve been practicing.”

_______

When Patty saw the hotel room Richie had booked, she slapped him, hard, in the arm.

“Richie, this is too much,” she said.

“Nothing is too much for you, Patty-cakes.”

“What did I say about Patty-cakes?”

“I can’t quit it, just like I can’t quit you!”

“Richie.”

They dropped their bags in the room, an expansive penthouse with two king beds and a soaker tub, before meeting Ben and Bev down in the hotel bar. When they rejoined them, Bev was on the phone.

“Great,” Bev said as Richie slid into the seat beside her. Patty sat next to him and waved over the bartender. Richie didn’t hear what she ordered, but whatever it was, she asked for two. “Perfect. Thank you, Grace. Seriously, I owe you one.”

When she hung up the phone, Richie rested his elbow on the bar and leaned on his hand. “So, who’s Grace?”

“My executive assistant,” Bev said. “You spoke to her on the phone, I believe.”

“Oh, yes,” Richie said, nodding. “I’m pretty sure she considers me her enemy after that call.”

“Trust me, she deals with worse than you on a daily basis,” Bev said with a small smile.

“Grace got us a meeting with Bill,” Ben said, his arm resting on the back of Bev’s chair.

“Apparently, he’s adapting one of his books to film,” Bev said. “His manager was giving Grace a hard time, but no one pushes Grace around.”

“Including me,” Richie said. The bartender returned and placed a glass in front of him, and one in front of Patty. When Richie took a sip, he realized it was water. “Well-played, Patricia.”

“Grace is also booking us a flight to LAX tomorrow,” she said. “Hope you didn’t have grand sight-seeing plans.”

“Naw, I know this city like the back of my hand,” Richie said, waving away the suggestion. “This is where I moved after Derry. Until I started remembering my cursed childhood, this was the only home I knew.”

“I didn’t know that,” Patty said.

“That’s because I didn’t tell you, Patty-cakes,” Richie said before blowing her a kiss, which she turned her nose up at.

“Do you still have family here?” Bev asked, and Richie pressed his lips together in a thin line.

“My mom is still here,” he said. “No one else is, though.”

“Do you want—” Bev started, but Richie shook his head.

“Nope, I’m good,” Richie said, and he smiled, the way he always smiled when he was hoping to take attention away from himself. “I’ll have to show you two around LA, give you the tour Richie-Tozier-style.”

“Sounds exclusive,” Ben said with a smirk.

“Only the best for my best,” Richie said, and was rewarded with groans from his friends.

But Richie didn’t falter. He smiled, for real that time. He had never had friends to groan at his jokes, not in his memory.

He liked it.

_______

On the plane, en route to Los Angeles and reclined in a first-class seat, Richie’s brain muscles strained themselves a little more.

He was sleeping, dreaming one of those dreams that he was aware of, but not awake enough to snap out of. He sunk into it, allowing it to wash over him.

Richie was pretty sure he was sitting in hay. His thighs itched, and when he leaned back on his hands, his palms were met with small, stabbing pains.

“We really don’t have to,” a voice to his right said. “I mean, you were the one who suggested it.”

Memory-Richie looked up, and he instantly recognized the kind face of Mike Hanlon. He was youthfully handsome, and he smiled like he had never seen anything bad in this world. Of course, Richie knew that wasn’t true, but the feeling was contagious.

“Shut it, Mike,” Richie said. “I’m not scared.”

“I didn’t say you were,” Mike said. “I just said we didn’t have to. I’m fine either way.”

“Well, you better pucker up, Mike,” Richie said. “This is going to be the best first kiss in the history of first kisses.”

“Richie, it’s not a competition—”

Richie, somewhere in the past, leaned onto his arm and pressed his lips against Mike’s. It was uncoordinated, and messy, and overall not a very good kiss, but Richie felt himself smiling.

He pulled back, some of Mike’s spit on his bottom lip, and he looked at Mike.

“Look at us,” Richie said, unable to help himself. “No longer kiss-virgins.”

Mike shoved his shoulder, and Richie fell, before he snapped out of the memory.

He was in the air, on a plane, with the complementary eye mask covering his face. He ripped it down and sat up in his seat, trying to keep himself breathing. There was a joke in there somewhere, something about the mile high club, but Richie couldn’t pull one together.

Instead, he just focused on breathing, in and out, until he exhausted himself and fell into another restless sleep.

_______

Los Angeles was the exact same as it was when Richie left it. Somehow, Richie expected it to feel different in some way, with Bev and Ben joining Patty by his side. But it was still the same muggy city.

Grace arranged for a car to meet them at the airport, and the four of them piled into the back while the driver put their bags in the trunk.

“Cozy,” Richie said, and when he squirmed, he accidentally elbowed Patty in the ribs. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Patty whispered back. “Are you alright?”

If Richie answered her honestly, he would have told her that he was absolutely terrified. The faded and incomplete memory was the only thing he remembered about Bill, and the only emotion he remembered feeling was fear.

But, because Richie was Richie, he said, “Yes, I’m fine.”

_______

It turned out that Bill didn’t want to meet them in the office, and the address that his assistant had given Grace was a movie set.

Richie had been in a few movies in his time, so for once in his life, he was more comfortable in his skin than his friends were in theirs. He knew Bev was frequently recruited by costume design for major Hollywood blockbusters, so she also walked with confidence, but Ben and Patty were so obviously starstruck that it made their group stick out like a sore thumb.

“Is that Audra Phillips?” Patty whispered as she clutched Richie’s arm. Richie, as subtly as he was able, looked to his right and saw a beautiful woman with red hair. If Bev weren’t walking on his left side, he would have thought that she was Bev.

But then he remembered the movie she was in the previous year, the thriller where she ended up being the murderer at the end in a surprise twist. He had seen it with Sandy, while Margot and a few friends went to see the new Disney movie the next theater over.

When Audra, who must have sensed the four pairs of eyes staring at her, turned to face them, Richie was hit with another wave of nausea.

“Audra!” someone was yelling, but Richie couldn’t see who. He was too busy staring at at his hands. Inexplicably, they were covered in blood.

“Mike, you have to help me carry her,” the voice, which Richie then realized was Bill, pleaded. “Please. We have to get her out of here.”

“We can’t,” Richie said. In the memory, Richie didn’t look up from his hands. “We don’t have enough strength to carry both of them.”

“Richie,” he heard Bev say, and he felt her hand on his arm. He didn’t turn to look at her, and he didn’t take his eyes off his bloody hands. “Honey. He’s gone. Audra’s still alive. We have to take her.”

“He’s not gone,” Richie snapped in a way that he couldn’t recall ever speaking to Bev. He looked up at her, and she was a sight. Her hair was shorter, and she was covered head-to-toe in blood and grime. “He’s not.”

“Richie—” Bev started, but she was interrupted.

“She’s alive, Richie. We’re taking her,” Bill yelled. “We don’t have time to argue about this. Ben, Mike, someone help me get her down.”

“We can’t just leave him down here,” Richie said. He was trying to yell, but his voice was shaking too much. “We can’t just leave him. It’s too dirty.”

But no one was listening. He watched as Audra inexplicably floated above them, and as Mike and Ben pulled down by her ankles. Bill rushed forward to grab her, and Richie could see Audra’s face, her eyes wide open, her features frozen in terror.

In the present, Audra scanned their group before meeting Richie’s eyes. First, she furrowed her brow, then her eyes popped open. She gasped, loud enough for them to hear, before her legs were collapsing underneath her.

“Audra,” a familiar voice shouted, and in an instant Bill, Big Bill, Billy, Bill Denbrough was at her side, cradling her head to lift it off the ground. “Are you alright?”

Unlike in his memory, Audra blinked. Then, she lifted her hand and pointed at them. Bill turned his head, and Richie felt the peanuts and club soda he’d had on the plane climb their way up the back of his throat.

“There’s a trashcan behind you,” Patty said, her eyes fixed on the display in front of them. Bev reached for her head, and Ben scratched at the back of his neck.

Richie barely made it to the trashcan in time. When he was done, he wiped the back on his hand and looked up.

Bill was staring right back at him.

_______

“I have to admit, this is a surp-p-prise,” Bill said. They were in his trailer, sitting on the crammed couch while Bill poured them each a drink. “I was told I had a meeting this afternoon, but I didn’t realize it wa-wa-was with you.”

“Well,” Richie said, taking a vodka soda from Bill’s hand. “It is. Sorry for disappointing you.”

“I-if you had told me yesterday that I would be meeting with Beverly Marsh, the fashion queen, and Richie ‘Trashmouth’ Tozier, I would have thought we were filming some t-t-terrible adaptation of my worst novel.”

“Should we be offended by that, Bevvie?” Richie asked, taking a swig of his drink while Bill sat down next to Audra.

“It’s possible,” Bev said, smirking over the lip of her own glass. “But I think you would make a great horror lead, no matter what Big Bill thinks.”

“Big Bill?” Audra said, and Richie had honestly forgotten she was there. She looked more out of place than Patty, sitting next to Bill with a cold cloth on the back of her neck. Her British accent made her stick out even more, and maybe that was what drew Bill to her in the first place. She seemed as far away from the Derry that Richie remembered, except for the face she shared with Bev.

“A nickname we gave him as children,” Ben explained with a shrug. “I can’t remember where it came from, though.”

“I can,” Richie said, but Patty, as if she read his mind, hit the top of his arm.

“Beep beep, Richie,” Bev said, but she laughs.

“Oh m-m-my God,” Bill stuttered. Richie remembered that stutter, he remembered how words often got trapped somewhere between Bill’s teeth and his tongue. He thrusts his fists against the post, and still insists he sees the ghost. “I can’t believe I f-forgot we gr-grew up together.”

“All of you are from Maine?” Audra asked, and Richie shook his head.

“Patty isn’t,” he said, and then he whipped his head to look at her. “Patty-cakes, after all this time I can’t believe I never asked you. Where are you from? Did you grow up in Georgia?”

“No, New York,” Patty said with a soft smile. “Born and raised in Queens. I lost most of the accent after living in Atlanta all these years.”

“Trashmouth,” Bill said, crossing his arms and leaning back in his seat. “I don’t t-think I saw in any t-tabloid that you were m-m-married.”

Patty groaned next to him and Richie placed a hand over his chest in faux-offense. “Patty, I, for one, would be honored to be married to you.”

“Gross,” Patty said, and Richie gasped for effect.

“Rude,” Richie said. “See, Big Bill, you are correct that I am still an unmarried bachelor. This is Patty Uris.”

“S-s-s—” Bill started, but the stutter wouldn’t stop and the word wouldn’t come out.

“Bill, are you alright?” Audra asked, dropping the towel from her neck and grasping Bill’s hand. “What’s happening? Are you ill?”

“He has a stutter,” Ben said. “At least, he used to.”

“I didn’t know that,” Audra said, and she ran her free hand through his hair. “You’ve never stuttered in front of me.”

“S-S-Stan,” Bill said, face red with either effort or frustration. When the word finally left his lips, he looked up at Patty. “You’re—”

“Yes,” Patty said. “Stan and I were married for twenty years.”

Richie heard her voice tremble as she said it. Richie knew that Stan and Patty were young when they got married, but when he did the math in his head, he realized that they must have been freshly out of college.

Bill stared at her and cleared his throat. “W-were? Where is he n-n-n-now?”

“Big Bill,” Richie said, clasping his hands together. “We have things to discuss.”

And when Bill looked back at him with a scared look in his eye, Richie thought You should be scared, Big Bill. You should be scared.

_______

Bill’s stutter waxed and waned as the night went on, as did the hives on the back of Ben’s neck and Bev’s migraine. Richie’s stomach rolled enough times for Patty to find him a small bucket to hold in his lap, but he managed to hold his stomach contents in.

They moved from Bill’s trailer on the movie set to his house, no, his mansion that he shared with Audra. As soon as they arrived, Audra fixed a tray of water glasses and ordered Indian food. They settled in the living room, which was stiff and well-decorated and somehow felt so incredibly wrong.

Once Richie had a stomach full of chicken tikki masala, he looked up and met Audra’s eyes for the first time since she fainted on the movie set. The color drained from her face once again, but that time she had the advantage of the sofa, and she leaned back into it.

Ben was telling some story about him and Bev living in Chicago, but Richie’s ears were ringing too loudly for him to hear it. When he couldn’t bear it any longer, he held up his hand and spoke.

“Audra,” he said. “Forgive me if I’m wrong, but I think we’ve met before. Haven’t we?”

Audra opened her mouth and closed it several times before placing her hand on her forehead. “Bill, darling, I don’t feel well.”

“You were there,” Richie pushed forward, pushed through the look on her face and the nausea in his gut. “You were in Derry with us, six months ago. The time that none of us can remember. You were there.”

“W-w-what are you t-talking about?” Bill said. They hadn’t gotten to that part of the story yet, the part where they all traveled across the country to their old hometown and none of them remember a thing about it. Bill looked frantically between Richie and his sickly pale wife.

“I—” she started, and this time, it was her that stuttered. “I don’t know. I don’t remember. But when I saw you, I felt…”

“You were there,” Bev said as she pressed her eyes closed. “I think I remember you being there.”

“I don’t know,” Audra said, but she closed her eyes. “Bill, the room is spinning.”

“A-Audra,” he said, “lie back. C-close your eyes.”

“I can see it when I close my eyes,” she said, her voice wobbling as she leaned back in the chair. “That horrible, dark, dead place.”

“Okay,” Bill said, grasping her hand. He looked up at Richie with a fierceness he had forgotten that Stuttering Bill, Big Bill, Leader of the Losers possessed. “S-s-someone t-tell me what’s going on. Right n-n-now.”

Richie swallowed and pushed his glasses up, the way he used to when he got incurably nervous. “Okay, Big Bill,” Richie said. “It’s like this, pal.”

_______

Later, after Richie, Ben, Bev, and Patty told their tale popcorn-style, Bill sent Audra to bed and poured them all another stiff drink. While he sipped his whiskey, he looked at Patty’s picture.

“I remember S-S-Stan,” Bill said, after ten minutes of silence. His gaze was still fixed on the picture. “Richie used to call him Stanley Urine, because Richie was an asshole.”

“Hey!” Richie said, and at the same time, Patty said, “Was?”

“I’ve seen your stuff, T-Trashmouth,” Bill said. “It’s not very good.”

“No, it’s not,” Richie conceded. “Does it help if I admit that I didn’t write a lick of it?”

“N-n-not really?” Bill said.

“Okay, well you’re one to talk, Billy boy,” Richie said. “You can’t write an ending to save your life.”

“You’ve read my stuff?” Bill said, not a syllable stuttered.

“Of course I have,” Richie said. “You’re one of the best-selling horror writers of all time.”

“I’ve read them too,” Bev said. “Ben too.”

“Stan had some of them,” Patty said. “It was never really his genre, but he always picked one up when we went to the bookstore.”

Bill stared at them, his gaze roving over the four of them. “H-how did I f-f-forget about all of this?” He furrowed his brow, and to Richie’s surprise, he choked out a sob. “How did I forget about G-Georgie?”

In an instant, Richie remembered the catalyst, the spark that set everything in motion that summer: Georgie Denbrough, Bill’s little brother, going missing and turning up murdered, missing an arm.

“I f-f-forgot about my own b-brother,” Bill said, eyes wet with unshed tears.

“Oh, Bill,” Bev said.

“Georgie,” Richie said, the words uttered under his breath mostly as a reminder to himself. He could picture him, the short boy, no older than six years old, always wearing that yellow raincoat.

He could see him then, running alongside Bill’s bike, trying to keep up with them. Richie sat high on the handlebars, gripping the metal as Bill peddled down the hill. He was so lost in the feeling of the wind in his hair, feeling like he was flying, that he almost didn’t hear the sound of skin on pavement, the soft cry from the younger boy.

But Bill, the big brother instincts always sitting just below the surface, braked his bike so hard that Richie almost went flying off the front of it. Before Richie was steady on his feet, Bill was at Georgie’s side, helping him sit and looking at the new rip in his jeans from the fall.

“I-it’s okay, G-G-Georgie,” Bill said, and he brushed Georgie’s bangs off of his forehead. The younger boy’s face was wet with tears, and he wiped his running nose with the back of his hand. “D-does it h-h-h-hurt?”

Georgie looked up at Richie briefly before dropping his gaze, cheeks flushing pink with embarrassment. “No,” he said, voice small. “I’m bleeding on my pants.”

“That’s alright, kid,” Richie said, shoving his hands in his pockets. “It’s the new style, see. All the other kids will be jealous.”

“Mom’s gonna kill me,” Georgie said, and more tears overflowed.

“N-no s-s-she’s not,” Bill said, and he wrapped his arm around his shoulders. “The only t-thing Mom is gonna care about is that y-y-you’re okay.”

“I’m okay, Billy,” Georgie said, and Richie could see that he finally believed it. Bill had always had that instantaneous effect on people, he was like a walking reassurance contagion.

“Good,” Bill said. “S-s-should we go down to the B-Barrens?”

“Absolutely, Big Bill,” Richie said, and he reached down and offered Georgie his hand. “Coming, little Denbrough?”

He hesitated for only a second before taking it.

“H-how could I f-f-forget?” Bill said in the present as he dragged his fingers through his hair. “He died. He was m-m-m-murdered.”

“By who?” Ben said suddenly. “Did we ever find out?”

Richie knew why he was asking. Georgie’s death was the beginning, he could remember that much. The beginning of what, was the mystery.

“We did,” Bev said, but she looked grave, hopeless.

A silence fell over the group, and Richie didn’t know what to do with his hands. He settled for clasping them together and tucking them between his knees in an effort to stop himself from moving too much.

Minutes later, it was Patty who spoke.

“Who was it?” Patty asked. “If you don’t mind me asking, of course.”

“I can’t remember,” Bev said, but she was far too pale, as if all the blood had drained from her.

“I-I-I can’t either,” Bill said. “I should r-remember, s-shouldn’t I?”

“The murder was the start,” Richie said. “Right? That’s what we’re all thinking? That the reason why we can’t remember a thing comes back to the murder?”

Ben exhaled before scratching the back of his neck. “We have to find Mike. Something tells me he knows, that he can tell us the answers to our questions.”

“Mike Hanlon,” Bev said before pulling out her phone. “If anyone can find him, it’s Grace.”

“We’re going to have to send her a fruit basket after all of this,” Richie said. “Maybe a gift card too.”

“Trust me, she is more than well-compensated for her time,” Bev said as she typed away at her screen.

“Guys,” Bill said suddenly. “W-what is th-th-this? W-what is happening h-here?”

“I don’t know, Bill,” Richie said, and he looked over at Patty. She fit in well with them, as if she had always been there beside them. “But we’re going to find out.”

_______

The next morning, an email from Grace was sitting in Bev’s inbox. Attached was an article from the Derry Herald, which featured a farewell to the longtime town librarian, Michael “Mike” Hanlon. The man in the accompanying picture couldn’t be anyone else than the boy in Patty’s picture. Secondly, she sent along an address.

“I am going to kiss your administrative assistant straight on the mouth,” Richie said as he read over Bev’s shoulder. “I am gifting her my firstborn. Seriously, whatever you’re paying her is not enough.”

“One, she would most likely not appreciate that, especially after that first impression that you made,” Bev said, raising a brow. “And secondly, I have already doubled her holiday bonus.”

Richie and Bev were the only ones awake, the sun still sitting on the horizon. Richie did not sleep more than a couple of hours the night before, and the sleep he did get was restless. He came down after hours of tossing and turning to find Bev standing in the kitchen, leaning against the counter with a cup of coffee in her hand.

“How are we getting to Florida?” Richie asked, taking a sip from his own coffee. She had brewed him one, using Bill’s machine like it was her own, and Richie added a splash of the oat milk he found in Bill’s fridge.

“Plane, I would assume,” Bev said, and Richie bumped his shoulder against hers.

“Yeah, I figured that much,” Richie said. “I don’t know if Audra would be okay with sending Bill on a cross-country road trip with us.”

“She seems nice, doesn’t she?” Bev asked. She wasn’t looking at him, but outside at the rising sun, with a wistful look in her eye.

Richie didn’t think that he had enough information to qualify whether Audra was nice or not, but he found himself nodding anyway. “Yeah, she does.”

“Bill deserves someone nice,” Bev continued. “So I’m glad that she seems to be.”

Richie hummed and took another sip of his coffee. He felt a distant guilt eating away at his gut and for a moment, he considered letting in consume him like he usually did. Instead, he opened his mouth.

“I think I did something to her in Derry,” he said.

Bev slowly moved her glance back to Richie’s face, and Richie swallowed three times in quick succession in an effort to keep his coffee in his stomach.

“What do you mean?” she asked him, and he swallowed once more.

“I don’t know, exactly,” Richie said, looking down at his socked feet. “It’s not a full memory. But I think that I wanted to leave her down there.”

“In the sewer,” Bev finished. “I remember. Not much, but I remember that.”

“I was trying to save someone, I think,” Richie said, “which is very unlike me.”

“Don’t sell yourself so short,” Bev said with a small smile. A few moments pass, and her smile drops with it. “It was the other boy, the one we can’t remember. It must have been.”

Richie had suspected the same thing, but hearing her confirm it made his stomach drop. “Bev.”

“It’s okay, Richie,” Bev said, and she slid her hand across the counter, placing her fingers on top of his. “You don’t have to say it.”

“We don’t even know who he is,” Richie said, looking down at their joined hands. “We don’t even have a name.”

“Maybe Mike will know,” Bev said with a small shrug. “Ben seems to remember him knowing an awful lot.”

At the mention of Ben’s name, Bev smiled in a way that told Richie she didn’t even know she was doing it.

“Ben treats you well?” Richie asked.

He couldn’t remember everything, couldn’t remember why he felt like he needed to ask that question, couldn’t remember why he needed to know the answer immediately with such a fierceness. But he needed to know that Bev was safe, that she was happy.

“Better than well, I dare say,” Bev said, her cheeks flushing with a happy blush.

“How did that happen anyway? I always thought Ben would die before growing a pair of balls,” Richie said, and Bev disguised her snort as a cough. After a few quiet moments, Bev’s face dropped to a frown.

“You know what, Richie?” Bev said. “I don’t know how it happened.”

Richie felt sick to his stomach again, but for different reasons than usual. He felt like he was missing something vital, like his lungs or his heart. Something had been taken away from him, just like the beginning of Ben and Bev’s relationship, and he didn’t know what it was. It made him feel dizzy.

“Bevvie,” Richie said, “I really wish I knew what the fuck is going on. But I also wonder if we’re better not knowing.”

“Maybe,” Bev said, and she set her mug down on the counter. “But it’s not living if we don’t know it all, right?”

“Maybe we’re better off,” Richie said. “I’ve tried to explain this to Patty, that the answers might be worse than the questions. Maybe we really are better off not knowing.”

Part of him actually believed it, that he could live the rest of his life in blissful ignorance and never find out what had taken his memories away, what was haunting him. But then he thought about Patty, about her quest to find answers, about her need to understand fully what happened to her husband. He also thought about the boy with the broken arm, the one that no one could remember, the one that Richie knew, deep down in his bones, meant the absolute world to him.

“We’re not,” Bev said. “Don’t you feel it? The parts that are missing?”

Richie didn’t have time to respond with a reluctant yes, because Ben rounded the corner into the kitchen at that very moment.

“Hey,” he said, crossing the room and pressing a kiss to Bev’s cheek. “What are you two doing up so early?”

“Bev, we can’t lie to the poor man anymore,” Richie said, placing a hand over his heart. “Haystack, I’m sorry, but Bev and I have been having an illicit affair since the 80s.”

“Damn,” Ben said with a small smile, “Well, I guess I won’t stand in your way.”

“Thank you for being so understanding,” Richie said with a solemn nod. “What do you say, Bev my love? Join me on my next tour?”

“Only if I get to pick your outfits,” Bev said with a smile. “Your style is abysmal, Rich.”

“What on Earth do you mean?” Richie said, before looking down at the shirt he’s currently wearing, displaying the words My eyes are up here. “This is one of my cleanest shirts.”

Ben laughed before wrapping his arm around Bev’s waist. The domesticity, the softness of it made Richie’s heart hurt in his chest.

“Seriously, though,” Ben said. “What are you doing up?”

“How do you feel about Florida, Haystack?” Richie asked.

Ben raised a brow. “Is that where Mike is?”

“You betcha,” Richie said.

“Well, then, I feel great about Florida.”

_______

When they boarded the plane to Florida that afternoon, Audra stayed behind.

“S-she’s really fr-freaked out about th-th-this,” Bill said as soon as she was out of earshot. “To be fair, I am t-t-too.”

Richie sat in an aisle seat with Patty by his side. They both agreed that it was prudent that he have a direct route to the bathroom should he need it. Truth be told, Richie had felt constantly nauseous since the second they touched down in LA. Something about putting the pieces of the puzzle together was making his body revolt against him.

It wasn’t just him, either. Bev had been taking migraine pills around the clock and Ben’s rash had traveled from the back of his neck to his chin and the top of his chest. Even Bill wasn’t feeling great, having to stop to catch his breath several times on their walk through the airport.

“Are you okay?” Patty whispered as she pulled her headphones down. The plane took off only five minutes before and she had already picked a movie.

“Yeah,” Richie lied. “I’m good.”

“Your lying is almost as shitty as your comedy,” Patty said.

“Rude,” he said as he leaned back further into the faux leather of his chair. “And how are you doing, Miss Patty?”

She shrugged, leaning back in her chair to match him. “I’m okay, I think,” she said. “For the first time in months, I feel like I’m doing something productive.”

Richie hummed and held himself back from telling her not to get her hopes up. For one, she didn’t need to hear it from him once again, and for another, he was starting to think that him telling her was really him telling himself. Unfortunately for him, Patty had learned him quickly.

“Richie,” Patty said. “I’m not being overly optimistic.”

“You’re putting words in my mouth, Mrs. Uris,” Richie said, but he couldn’t find it in him to put more effort into his sarcasm.

It was Patty’s turn to hum, and she did so loudly. “In fact, there’s nothing to be optimistic about. I’m only in search of answers, and I have some already.”

“And?” Richie asked. “Was it worth all the trouble to find it?”

“Any new information about Stan is worth everything,” Patty said. “Plus, I’m not the one who develops physical symptoms every time I recall the town I used to live in.” She paused, frowning. “You know, now that I say that out loud, it really is fucking weird.”

Richie barked out a laugh. “It really is,” he said, sighing deeply. “If I’m honest for a second, will you think less of me?”

“Yes, obviously,” Patty said immediately with a smile. “But do it anyways.”

Richie offered her half a smile before clasping his shaking hands together. “I’m fucking terrified.”

He felt the words clawing their way up his throat right next to the bile, but he couldn’t force them out. Luckily, Patty was gifted with patience, so she waited for him.

“Something bad happened to us there. Both when we were kids and six months ago. Something so bad that it was wiped from our brains. But it can’t just be trauma making us forget, and we all know it. Something is waiting for us in Derry, and this ends with us going back there.”

“It does seem like this is some dark magic shit,” Patty said.

“And I can’t shake the feeling that something bad happened to that boy,” he said, and he suddenly and inexplicably felt close to tears. “The boy that none of us can remember.”

“Richie,” Patty said, and she placed her hand on top of his clasped ones.

“And I know that when — if — I do remember him,” Richie said, willing himself not to cry as the man across the aisle side eyes him, “it will destroy me.”

“If I’m honest for a second, will you think less of me?” Patty asked, and Richie shook his head. “Alright, then. Would you rather never find out what this boy meant to you, even if learning the truth hurts like a motherfucker? If I somehow forgot about Stan and only had some vague idea of a person who I loved very much, I think I would want to know.”

“He’s not my Stan,” Richie said, and he bit the side of his cheek hard enough to bleed.

“How do you know?” Patty countered, and that made Richie want to throw up in a completely different way. She seemed to sense that Richie didn’t want to, or really couldn’t, talk anymore, so she slid her headphones on and pressed play on her movie.

Richie closed his eyes, listening only to the buzzing in his ears. He did not sleep.
_______

Unlike the previous travels where they were able provide some sort of warning, no one could get in contact with Mike Hanlon before they showed up at his place of work.

Grace, in her infinite wisdom and skill, (“She’s an amazing woman,” Richie said. “Do you think if I proposed to her she’d say yes?”) had located the library where Mike worked in Florida on his LinkedIn profile.

For a group of reasonably smart people, the five of them could not formulate a better plan than showing up at the library in their rental car and walking into the children’s read-along, looking as out of place as five adults with no kids at a children’s event could.

Mike didn’t see them at first, which Richie thought was probably for the best. He was sitting with his back to them in a chair far too small, his knees close to his chest, while he read a book to a small but enraptured group gathered on a rug.

Richie recognized the story as A Series of Unfortunate Events, one of Margot’s favorite series. He’d gotten her a box set for Hanukkah last year, and she’d curled up in the corner and devoured the first book in only a couple of hours.

The five of them stood back, waiting in the shadows until Mike finished the chapter and closed the book. Both the kids on the rug and their parents standing behind them clapped for him, while Mike stood from his tiny perch.

“Thank you,” Mike said, and his soft, familiar voice sent a bolt of lightening down Richie’s spine. He looked around and located the nearest trash can, next to the desk, and kept it in mind.

When Mike turned around and saw them, Richie was surprised to see that Mike wasn’t surprised. Instead, he dropped his head in a way that suggested he was resigned, that he felt like he should have seen it coming.

He approached them, book still hanging loosely in his hand. “Hi, friends,” Mike said, gaze bouncing over each of them. “It’s nice to see you again.”

_______

“No,” Mike said, once he had led them to a back conference room and they all found their seats. “I didn’t remember you until I saw you.”

“But you didn’t seem surprised,” Ben said.

“Well, as soon as I saw you, I remembered you. And when I remembered you, I realized that I should have anticipated this.”

“S-so, you r-r-remember what happen-en-ened,” Bill said, hopeful, but Richie didn’t hold his breath.

“No,” Mike said. “No, I don’t. But Derry did its number on all of us.” He paused, and then he looked at Patty, who was sat snuggly between Richie and Bev. “Although, I don’t remember you.”

“Oh, sorry,” Patty said. “I’ve been rude. I’m Patty.”

“Patty Uris,” Mike said, and he nodded. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Say Mike, how did you know that? Do you have some super human power the rest of us don’t?” Richie said, attempting a Voice before abandoning it halfway through.

To that, Mike furrowed his brow. “That’s strange, I don’t actually know how I knew that.”

“Strange doesn’t really cut it, Mikey,” Richie said.

“Mike, I believe you called my husband the night he died,” Patty said soberly. “Really, I think what all of us want, are answers.”

“I wish I could give them to you,” Mike said. “Truly. But I don’t think I can help.”

Patty, as always, was undeterred. She reached into her purse and pulled out the picture. She slid it across the table until it sat in front of Mike, who picked it up and inspected it closely.

“It’s us,” Mike said, a small wisp of a smile on his face. “We were so young back then.”

Ben opened his mouth, and Richie watched as Bev elbowed him, shaking her head. She mouthed something that Richie thought looked like Let him think.

“One of us is unaccounted for,” Mike said, finger tracing over where Richie knew the boy with the cast to be. “Is he your next stop?”

“He would be, if we knew who we were looking for,” Richie said, keeping his voice as steady as he could.

Mike looked at him for a long moment, so long that it was almost awkward. Just when Richie’s brain started itching to make a joke to fill the silence, Mike reached across the table and took his hand.

“Look at us,” Richie said, suddenly back in the past. “No longer kiss-virgins.”

Mike shoved his shoulder, and Richie fell back into the hay. After a second, Mike joined him.

“I’m sorry,” Mike said. When Richie had looked over at him, he had been struck by his friend’s earnest expression.

“What for?” Richie asked, and he blushed. “It wasn’t bad.”

“Not for the kiss,” Mike said. “I’m sorry it wasn’t with Eddie. Your first kiss, I mean.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Richie stammered, and he remembered the feeling of the straw breaking the skin on his palms when he pushed himself up frantically.

“Richie, it’s okay,” Mike had said, and then he was sitting too. He put his hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay.”

Richie, ashamed, hid his face in his elbow. “Does he know?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Mike said, rubbing his hand back and forth over his back. Richie remembered Mike’s silent strength, his ever-present support. “You don’t need to be afraid, Richie. It’s okay.”

“Eddie would kill me and you know it,” Richie said. “He’d be afraid of me.”

“He could never be afraid of you,” Mike said, and because it was Mike saying it, Richie almost believed it. “You’re his best friend. He loves you.”

“Don’t,” Richie had said, and he’d fought back a sob.

In the present, he did much of the same thing.

“Oh god,” Richie said, and he tried to swallow past the lump in his throat. “What the fuck, Mike.”

It was like Mike had turned on the tap, and the memories flooded in.

“It’s okay, Haystack,” Richie had said, sitting on that bench in the park. “You’ll bloom into a beautiful butterfly someday, and then you’ll have your chance.”

Ben shoved him off, but he was finally smiling. “You know, you’re not subtle either.”

Richie flushed. “Fuck off, Haystack. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Rich,” Ben said, so young but no less wise. “You know none of us would be mad, right?”

“Eddie would be mad,” Richie said, and he slammed his mouth shut. After a minute, he whispered, “I can’t believe I just said that.”

“Me either, Trashmouth,” Ben said, “but I’m proud of you.”

“Ben, stop,” Richie said, and because he was thirteen, he licked his finger and stuck it in his friend’s ear.

“Blurgh,” Ben sputtered, and he shoved his hands against Richie’s face, pushing his glasses askew. “Gross.”

“No, you’re gross.”

Next, Richie was terrified, holding on tight to Bill while they raced away from something.

“A werewolf, I think,” Bill had said. “But that was it.”

“It?”

“We have to go back,” Bill said, pedaling faster. “Once we have a plan.”

“You are off your rocker, Big Bill,” Richie had said before grasping him tighter. “How do you even know that it was it?”

“What else could that have been?” Bill countered, and Richie truly couldn’t argue with that.

“But it was different than what Eddie saw,” Richie said, and his voice shook. “Eddie saw a leper.”

“I think it shape-shifts,” Bill said, as if it wasn’t a crazy thing to suggest. He peddled on, picking up the pace as they approached the hill. “I think it’s what we fear the most.”

Richie remembered first thinking that Bill was too smart, too wise beyond his years. Secondly, he remembered thinking that if Eddie was scared of lepers, he would do anything in his power to keep the sickness away from him, no matter the cost.

Next, Richie was standing in the woods, the girl with the red hair in his arms.

Richie and Bev moved their feet, spinning around quickly. She spun underneath his arm, and straightened hers, and then she was as far away from him as she could be while still holding hands. They locked eyes. Richie spun her around. He used the force of it to pull her close and flip her backwards over his shoulder. He let her go.

Richie heard a gasp — Stan’s — behind him, but he couldn’t take his eyes off Bev’s body, flipping through the air.

It seemed like slow-motion, and Richie held his breath.

Bev’s feet hit the ground, she stuck the landing, and she threw her arms in the air.

“Holy shit, Bevvie,” a voice, neither Richie’s nor Stan’s, said from behind them. “That was awesome.”

When Richie turned, he finally remembered Eddie’s face.

His arm was casted, and he held it protectively against his chest. His chest, which was covered in a salmon short-sleeved polo shirt, was almost as distracting to a barely-pubescent Richie as his legs were in the short shorts he was wearing.

His hair was parted and gelled, and he was looking at Richie and smiling. Richie remembered him, and he loved him.

Past-Richie was used to that feeling, and he wasn’t struck mute by it. “What about my moves, Eddie Spaghetti?”

Eddie rolled his eyes before leaning against the tree Stan was sitting under. “Alright, Trashmouth. That was pretty alright. Where did you learn to do that?”

“The movies, Hellzapoppin,” Bev said before reaching for Richie’s arm. “Let’s do it again.”

“What about you, Eds?” Richie asked, smirking to hide his genuine smile. “Want to give it a whirl?”

Richie remembered hoping Eddie would say yes, even though he knew he wouldn’t. Teenage Richie would have given anything to dance with Eddie, he would have done anything to hold his hands.

“No chance in hell, Richie,” Eddie said, but he was still smiling.

Then, Richie was in the sewers.

“She’s alive, Richie. We’re taking her,” Bill yelled. “We don’t have time to argue about this. Ben, Mike, someone help me get her down.”

“We can’t just leave him down here,” Richie said. He was trying to yell, but his voice was shaking too much. “We can’t just leave him. It’s too dirty.”

And Richie remembered that it was dirty, his pants were soaked in gray water. Eddie had gagged the whole journey down. But where was Eddie?

Richie looked down, and there he was.

Eddie Kaspbrak, Eds, Eddie Spaghetti, the absolute love of his life, dead in the water, hole in his chest.

“Eds,” Richie whispered, and suddenly he was back in the library conference room, with Mike’s hand in his hand. “Eddie.”

Bev gasped and Bill muttered a soft “f-f-fuck” under his breath. Patty reached for his other hand.

“Oh, fuck,” Richie said, feeling dangerously on the edge of complete panic. “He can’t be our next stop. We can’t go and find him. He’s dead.”

Luckily, Patty caught his head before it slammed into the table.
_______

When Richie came to, he was in a bed that he didn’t recognize, and the air was so sticky he struggled to take a breath.

“It’s okay,” a voice said, and Richie peeled open his eyes to see Patty sitting on the edge of the bed. “You’re okay.”

“What happened?” He asked, and his voice was scratchy, like he hadn’t spoken in quite a while.

“You passed out at the library,” Patty said. “You’ve been pretty much catatonic all afternoon.”

“Fuck,” Richie said. “This remembering thing is one hell of a drug.”

Patty looked at him, studied him, for a long moment. Richie felt himself shrink under her gaze, and he pulled the covers up to his chin.

“I’m sorry about Eddie,” Patty finally said.

“Me too,” Richie managed to say without bursting into tears. He reached out and took her hand.

He didn’t remember all that much, if he was being honest. But the thoughts he had, the feelings he had, were still there. They had been lurking beneath his skin for the past six months, for the past thirty years, for his entire life, and now he finally had a name for it.

Part of him wished he could go back to being ignorant. Part of him wished he could think of something to say to Patty. Instead, he just held her hand like the lifeline.

Richie zoned out again, and didn’t come back to himself until there was a knock on the door. When he looked up, Bill and Mike appeared in the doorway.

“Hey, Richie,” Mike said, leaning against the doorframe. “How are you feeling?”

“Like someone ground up my brain in a food processor,” Richie said, letting out a sigh. “A little better after the coma. My apologies to whoever had to carry me back here.”

“It was a group effort,” Mike said, and Bill stepped further into the room.

“R-Rich,” Bill said. “We’re g-g-going back to D-Derry.”

“No,” Richie said without hesitation.

“Richie—” Mike started, but Richie sat up and shook his head.

“No, I’m not doing it,” he said. “I can’t.”

“Y-you c-c-can,” Bill stuttered, but Richie shook and shook his head, so hard that it hurt.

“Don’t you feel it? How it’s killing us?” Richie asked. “We’re on the other end of the country and it’s squeezing us to death.”

“We won’t be doing it alone, we’re in this together,” Mike said, and his blind optimism made Richie laugh.

“Apparently, we did it together last time and now there are two less of us,” Richie said, and in that moment he looked at Patty. “This is why Stan did what he did, Patty. That’s your answer. It was always Derry. We can’t beat it, and I refuse to go back and try.”

Patty looked stricken, and Richie couldn’t stand it. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt her. He looked away.

“We made it this f-f-far,” Bill said. “ We c-can’t st-stop now.”

“Go without me,” Richie said. “If you insist on going, you can do it without me. I bring nothing to the table anyways. Whatever you’re looking for, you’ll have more luck finding it without me.”

Bill’s face reddened with frustration and he opened his mouth to presumably argue with Richie, but Mike laid a gentle hand on his upper arm.

“We’ll let you rest,” Mike said, and he pulled Bill with him out of the room. Patty stayed, sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at the wall.

“Patty,” Richie started, and realized that he didn’t know what he wanted to say. So, he settled on, “I’m sorry.”

Patty didn’t move and she said nothing. After a minute of silence, Richie laid back down, pressing his head back into the pillow.

“Don’t you want to know?” Patty finally asked, just as Richie was fading back to sleep.

“Know what?”

“Everything, Richie,” Patty said, and she finally looked at him. “I mean, do you even know who you are? You don’t know anything about yourself. You have no origin story.”

“If I’m completely honest with you, I don’t care at all,” Richie said. “I think the world is better off not knowing the recipe that made this shit sandwich, myself included.”

“You’re wrong,” Patty said. Richie was about to dig his heels in and throw a fit like a toddler, but she shook her head. “It wasn’t just Derry that made Stan do what he did. It was the not knowing, it was eating him alive. The entire time I knew him, it was eating him alive.”

“Patty.”

“Richie,” Patty said, meeting his challenge and striking him down. “You don’t have to come to Derry, but I’m going.”

In that moment, Richie knew that he had become dangerously intertwined with Patty’s. Because in that moment, he felt so much fear in his chest. He couldn’t let her go back there, he couldn’t let Derry chew her up and spit her out, he couldn’t let that hell of a town pull her under.

He found himself thinking about Eddie, thinking about the small pieces of him that he remembered.

This, Richie knew, is how it was always supposed to end.

“Fine,” Richie said. “But I’m not sitting next to anyone on that plane but you, Peppermint Patty. Nothing, not even Big Bill, will break up our sordid love affair.”

“Fair enough,” Patty said, and she reached over to squeeze his hand.
_______

It was laughable, after all the drama, after the car was late picking them up from Mike’s house, after Bev got pulled by security for extra questioning, after someone spilled a coffee on Ben’s shirt, that their flight got cancelled.

“All flights to Boston have been cancelled,” the flight attendant told him. “There’s a storm off the coast, it isn’t safe to land.”

“What about New York?” Mike asked.

“I can look into it for you,” she said.

It was even more laughable when the flight attendant gave them the wrong gate. When they arrived at the destination they were told, they realized it was not a flight to New York City but a flight across the sea to France. No amount of running could have gotten them to the right gate in time, but they tried.

“Th-this is r-r-r-ridiculous,” Bill said.

“Almost like something is keeping us from getting on a plane,” Richie said, pushing his shoulders to his ears in a dramatic shrug. “Oh well, time to give up, I guess.”

They all pretended like they didn’t hear him.

Big Bill’s next big plan was taking a train halfway up the coast and catching a plane from there. As soon as he spoke the words into the universe, a major train derailment had all tracks closed leaving Florida.

Richie didn’t have to say anything about that, he just left the room, the news coverage of the disaster droning on while his friends watched.

“Bill rented a car,” Bev said, standing in the doorway of Mike’s guest room.

“Great,” Richie said. “Now we get to die in a fiery wreck, or something equally as terrible.”

“Rich,” Bev said. She sat on the edge of the bed with him, just like Patty had the day before. “You’re either in or you’re out. We’re all scared, but we’re so close to the end of this.”

Richie nodded, he’d already agreed, he wasn’t going to let his friends do this on their own. But he couldn’t help but wonder what the end looked like.

_______

It took three days longer than it should have to reach Maine.

To Richie’s surprise, they avoided a car crash, but almost every other obstacle they could have faced, they did.

First, nearly the second they crossed into Georgia, the car ran out of gas. In fact, the car ran out of gas so suddenly that the mini van, the only car left at the rental place, sputtered to a stop in the middle of the highway.

When Richie trudged along the highway, following Mike to the nearest gas station, he turned to Patty and said, “We can drop you off at home on our way, Patty-cakes. If we ever get back on our way.”

Patty smiled and shook her head. “Not a chance in hell, but nice try.”

Their tire popped three separate times, once in South Carolina, once in Virginia, and once in Pennsylvania. Mike and Ben took turns switching the tire out, while the rest of them stood uselessly on the side of the road.

“I c-c-can—” Bill started, but Richie laid a hand on his shoulder.

“No, Big Bill,” Richie said. “We must leave this task to the gym rats.”

“I can change a tire,” Patty said, sipping from the vanilla coke Bev bought her at the last rest stop. “One time, Stan blew a flat on his way home from work and I had to find him on the side of the road and save him.”

“Valiantly and humbly, I assume,” Richie said. “So why aren’t you down there with them, Patricia?”

“The view,” Bev answered, and she looked shamelessly at Ben, where he was kneeling next to the car. She shot Richie a smile. “I can change a tire, too.”

In New Jersey, their engine overheated. In North Carolina, their heater broke and they had to seek refuge at a hotel for the night while it was being repaired.

“Why do none of us have real jobs?” Richie asked, several drinks in, while the other Losers and Patty communed in his room. “Like, what are the odds that we have four famous people in one group?”

“I have a real job,” Mike said, smiling as he brought his bourbon to his lips. “But I see your point, Richie.”

“I don’t know if I count myself as famous,” Ben said, and Richie snorted.

“Of course not, Ben,” Richie said. “I was talking about Stan the Man. Most famous accountant in the state of Georgia.”

“Funny,” Patty said. “But you’re not actually that far off.”

“For real?” Richie asked.

“He had an ad running and everything,” Patty said, and the smile on her face could only be described as proud.

“Stan the Man,” Richie said, lifting his glass up in a toast. “Look at you.”

When they hit Massachusetts, they sat in bumper to bumper traffic for close to ten hours.

“Ben, if you don’t change the music, I will come up from the back seat and kill you myself,” Richie said, his knees at his chin, folded up tight to fit in the space.

“Sorry,” Ben said, hands on the wheel, “I can’t hear you over this masterpiece. Besides, driver picks the music.”

Richie pressed his palms to his ears in an attempt to muffle out the New Kids on the Block. He fell asleep like that, stuck halfway through Massachusetts, head against the window, listening to Ben’s insufferable playlist.

Once they hit Maine, they lost the radio and phone service.

As soon as they crossed through Augusta, they found themselves at a road closure.

“How can 95 be completely closed off?” Mike asked, although none of them had the answer. Richie kicked the road closed sign over with a clang.

“Why don’t we just drive? Who’s going to stop us?” Ben asked.

“They w-w-will,” Bill said, pointing down the road. Miles down, at the horizon, were red and blue police lights.

“We can take the 202,” Mike said, looking at the map he was smart enough to bring. “It’s a little out of the way but it’ll get us there.”

“Fellas,” Richie said. “May I address the court?”

“What Voice is that?” Bev whispered, while Patty said, “What is it?”

“Where, pray tell, are all the cars?” Richie said. He swiftly kicked the sign again, leaving a footprint on the reflective orange. “We’re just outside a city, but there’s no cars. We’re in the middle of a busy motorway, and there’s not a soul in sight.”

The Losers, and Patty, all looked at Richie, as shocked by what he had said as they were about Richie not making a joke about it. After a long, somber moment, they did what they always did, and they turned to Bill.

“L-L-Let’s g-go,” he said, and they did what they always did, and followed him back to the car.

_______

Derry made a mess of all of them. It wouldn’t let them get close.

“A flood,” Mike said. “Of course.”

All of the roads leading into Derry were flooded. According to the police officer they spoke to at the barricade, it was unprecedented. A dam broke, and every road was impassable.

“Fuck,” Bev said. “This isn’t fucking funny anymore.”

“You thought any of this was funny?” Richie said, scoffing. “And I thought I was the expert in comedy.”

“Maybe you thought that,” Patty said, laying a good-natured hand on his arm, “but I don’t think anyone else did.”

“Damn,” Richie said, as somber as he felt, “Patty gets off another good one.”

Ben was still talking to one of the officers, nodding along to whatever he was saying. Richie was stricken by how out of place the man looked, how out of place all of them looked, standing just outside their hometown. When Ben returned to them, he shoved his hands in his back pockets.

“He gave me the name of a motel,” Ben said. “It’s about a mile back the way we came.”

“S-so, w-w-what’s the pl-plan?” Bill asked.

“I say we go there for the night and regroup. The roads should be cleared by tomorrow afternoon,” Ben said.

“Sure, then an asteroid will fall from the sky and obliterate Derry where it stands,” Richie said. “Maybe that would be a good thing.”

But Richie was an idiot, and he knew it, so he followed his friends to the car. He knew he would follow his friends anywhere, and that was the problem.

_______

There were only two rooms left at the motel, and they split themselves in half. Richie ended up on a too-small pullout sofa with Mike and Bill sharing the queen size bed. Patty took the couch in the second room, graciously giving the bed to Bev and Ben.

Richie was quiet at dinner, but everyone was buzzing with so much nervous energy that no one noticed. No one, except for Patty Uris.

She stopped him, grabbing hold of his elbow, between their two rooms.

“Are you alright, Rich?” Patty asked.

“Honestly? No,” Richie said. “But I haven’t been alright in a long time. I’ll manage.”

“We’re close,” Patty said. “We’re so close. I know you feel it too.”

“I know,” Richie said, and he did know.

They were so close, but there was a glaring obstacle blocking their way. Richie had a feeling that he knew how to fix it.

“Good night, Patty,” he said.

“See you in the morning,” she said, smiling softly, before disappearing into her bedroom. Richie retreated to his.

He got ready for bed in a methodical way, brushing his teeth and changing into the only pair of pajamas he thought to bring. He pulled a blanket off the end of the bed and wrapped himself in it. Mike was already asleep, exhausted from the journey, and Bill was nose-deep in a book. Bill noticed him staring, and peered over the top of his novel.

“G-going to sleep-p-p, Rich?” Bill asked.

“Yup,” Richie lied.

“Good n-n-night,” Bill said. To Richie’s surprise, he dog-eared the page he was reading, closed the book, and leaned over to turn out the light. Richie wasn’t used to people accommodating the space he took up in the world.

“Good night, Big Bill,” Richie said.

He waited until Bill’s breathing deepened and evened out until he sat up. He was careful with the door on his way out, and he tried not to let any light in from the parking lot.

As soon as his feet hit the ground, he wished he remembered shoes, but he didn’t turn back. Instead, he oriented himself to the road, and took off running.
_______

Richie hated the woods, hated the dirt and the bugs, but the part of him that remembered his childhood knew that he used to live his life out in the wilderness. He moved through the trees, and the only thing lighting his way was his cell phone.

He wasn’t naïve enough to think he was the key to all of it. He didn’t think any of them were, except maybe Patty. But he was the one who was most expendable, and he refused to stand by and watch Derry destroy them, like he suspected it had destroyed them twice before.

The truth of the matter was, Richie was worth the least. He had nothing to go back to, he was nothing worth keeping. A shit sandwich, like he’d told Patty.

Truthfully, he trudged forward because he knew that Derry would never let them in all together. They were too powerful, somehow. It meant too much that they were a club, that they were the Losers.

He would sacrifice himself to Derry if it would make it all stop, if it would stop Derry from going after his friends.

He stepped on a stick and it snapped under his foot. If it hurt, he didn’t feel it.

Richie thought of Beverly Marsh, the girl with the red hair, the girl they all loved. He thought of her quick wit and her fierceness, and the way she danced in the woods. He thought of Ben Hanscom, a gentle giant, a romantic, and lover of terrible music. He thought of Mike Hanlon, his first kiss, the kindest boy who grew into the kindest man. He thought of Bill Denbrough, Big Bill, the one they all followed, the boy they all loved.

He thought of Stanley Uris, the boy who loved birds and his wife, the boy who always wanted answers. He thought of Patty, the woman who crossed the country on a chance in hopes to give him some.

And he thought of Eddie Kaspbrak, the fragments of him that he had. Richie didn’t remember enough, he didn’t think he would ever remember enough, but he loved him. It was undeniable.

Richie swore as a rock rolled under the sole of his foot. He was practically sprinting, which was not one of his usual activities. He was sweating, and his hair stuck to his forehead.

Richie forgot a little more with every step he took away from them.

What color was Patty’s blouse, the one she was wearing just that morning? What had he eaten for breakfast? Lunch? Dinner? What was that woman’s name, the one with the fire hair? What about the men, the three of them, the ones he shared drinks with just days ago? Who was that curly-haired boy, the one who observed Shabbos and loved birds, the one who was Richie’s best friend? What about the boy with the cast, the man with the hole in his chest, the love of Richie’s life?

It all escaped him. He kept moving.

He couldn’t remember what it was all for. He kept moving.

He didn’t know where he was. He kept moving.

Deep in the woods, Richie tripped over a root, and he crossed into Derry Township without even realizing it.

_______

Richie blinked. He was flat on his back. It smelled like shit and rot. His pants were soaked with gray water. Inexplicably, Eddie Kaspbrak was on top of him.

“Richie, I did it,” Eddie said. “I killed It.”

End of Part I