Archive of Chapter 1 of 'circular motion'
Dec. 29th, 2019 01:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stanleyuris“The LORD GOD said, “It is not good for a man to be alone; I will make a fitting helper for him.” (Genesis 2:18; JPS)
“Oh how my heart yearns for you.” (‘Peggy Sue’; J. Allison, N. Petty)
1959
I. Richie Tozier Finds His Soulmate
Richie was eleven years old when his soul-mark appeared. This was neither particularly early or particularly late for a soul-mark, and it appeared in a conveniently discreet place, curved over the bone that jutted out of his hip. He touched the mark, and the skin there was hot (like he’d always read it would be) but it didn’t hurt to press (he’d heard that too, but hadn’t really believed it).
There was no particular reason he did not make this information immediately public. It was simply that, while Richie liked to run his mouth, he also felt that what was private was private, and needn’t be shared around like the latest drug-store comic.
It was his secret; a new curious fact known only to him. In a way he was like a character in said comic-book, with a secret power or something and -- after the events of the summer of 1958 -- it was sort of nice to have something that he kept to himself without it feeling like a horrible weight pushing down on him.
He did want to know who it was. The things about soul-marks was that they were -- even in the scientific age of the 20th century -- still so unknown. They could appear before you met your soulmate, or after, or you could never meet them at all, because they died or something morbid like that. So he wanted to know, but in a vague sense -- he wanted the knowledge in the same way he curiously wondered where he’d live in the future (not Derry, Hell, not Maine -- no way José --), but he had no plan about actually trying to figure it out. If he had a soulmate, he’d have to marry her, right? His mom and dad got married and then they had kids and now his dad went to work and paid boys two and a half dollars to mow the lawn and Jesus himself knew Richie was not anywhere near ready for that.
So. No harm in waiting, then.
Life had other plans for Richie Tozier, though, and -- as the river flows -- he saw who his soulmate was not three weeks after his own mark first appeared.
One of the only rules of soul-marks that was universally acknowledged was that both of the partners would manifest the mark at the same time, no matter where they were or what they were feeling or not feeling. So Richie was aware that, whoever she was, she’d probably already seen her own mark, and that was kind of weird -- did girls look at their own bodies the way Richie looked at his?
He was thinking about this in the Barrens, trailing a few steps behind Eddie and Ben as they wandered towards the clubhouse. Richie was ignoring their conversation in favor of contemplating whether to ask Beverly if girls looked at themselves. He was pretty sure that she’d make fun of him for the question, but it was for his soulmate, so…
“Wow!” Ben’s voice cut into his internal debate. “Hey! It worked just like I thought.”
Richie looked down to see that he was referring to the drainage creek-slash-protective moat he and Bill had been talking about building to add an extra layer of protection around their clubhouse. An obvious enough idea, but Eddie had still been on-edge from the incident with the dam. The results were in, though; there was now, essentially, a lovely ol’ moat that stretched around the perimeter of what was undeniably their territory.
“Huh,” said Richie, “Maybe ya shoulda thought to build a bridge, too, Haystack.” Richie puffed up his chest and swept an arm out towards his friends, deepening his voice in his best frontiersman impression, “Well boooys! How’re we gonna ford this here roarin’ rapids, huh? Huh? ”
Eddie and Ben responded to this new Voice with well-practiced indifference. “It wouldn’t be too hard to put together a makeshift bridge from this side,” Ben said, thoughtfully, already looking around for supplies. Richie rolled his eyes. He was not gonna get stuck playing construction worker on a day so full of possibilities!
“Cowards, th’ lot of ya!” He’d kind of lost the plot on what accent he was going for, but that wasn’t important. He bounded forward, hopping from foot to foot as he tugged his shoes off.
“Less- go ! A real man isn’t stopped by such paltry things!” He rolled his trousers up as far as he could get them, and tied his shoelaces together to loop his shoes around his neck. Good fortune that he’d worn lace-ups today! Blessed Providence! He laughed, and started to take a step forward, only to be snagged by a small hand.
The hand belonged to Eddie. “Whaaat?” Richie complained. In just his regular voice, now.
“You’re gonna go in there barefoot? You’re gonna cut your feet open!”
Richie rolled his eyes. “On what, the mud? I helped dig it, remember?”
“The stream could’ve carried rocks and things down with it,” Ben said reasonably but unhelpfully.
“See!”
“Man must conquer nature and likewise his own fears,” Richie said, solemnly, and then he climbed into the stream.
The water was flowing faster than he expected, but the mud was soft but sturdy against his feet. He turned towards his friends, and grinned.
“Come on in, boys! The water’s grrreat! ”
He had them at that, he knew it. Logic couldn’t stop fun. Almost immediately, Ben laughed and sat down to pull off his own shoes and socks. Eddie scowled at the both of them. “Fine!” he said. “But I’m not taking off my shoes!”
“Well, if you wanna explain to Mama Kaspbrak why her baby’s shoes are all muddy, that’s your choice…”
“Shut up!” was all Eddie could come up with to that, and Ben and Richie both laughed at him a little. There was something fundamentally hilarious about Eddie painstakingly rolling his corduroys up over his knees while his stark white socks were about to get soaked by muddy storm-water. He climbed in gingerly, and Richie thrust a stick he’d grabbed into the air like it was a staff, shouting “Onwards Christian soldiers!” as he let them upstream. Ben laughed behind him, and then said, “Wow, the walls are holding up pretty well.”
“Yeah, yeah, we get it, you’re a genius…”
“It’s cold in here,” Eddie complained from their tail end. “Can’t we just cross!”
“Wouldn’t wanna ruin your shoes too much, right?” Richie grinned, but Eddie was right -- the water was cold and Richie was well-aware that he was not actually a hardy-tough-macho frontiersman.
“If we must,” Richie said. “Lead the way, Eds.”
“Don’t,” Eddie said, sharply, at the nickname, and then he climbed swiftly up the band and back onto dry land.
When it came down to it, it was only by coincidence that Richie saw it at all. He kept thinking about that, after, how he could’ve missed it, and then maybe it would’ve been a while for his next opportunity to glance at it, and the Spring of 1959 could’ve felt so different.
But he had been watching Eddie for his reaction to ‘Eds’, so he was looking, and Eddie took a big step up, and there was --
there was a little silver mark on the back of his leg. Right above the bend of his knee. It was shaped like a bridge, with a little circle each above and below it, and it looked exactly -- absolutely fucking exactly -- like the one on Richie’s hip.
What? thought Richie. Hey, what? Huh?
Eddie climbed the rest of the way and there it was again -- clear as day -- impossible to miss it once you knew what you were looking for.
Eds? Richie thought.
“Are you guys coming or what?” Eddie said, hands on his hips. Ben was stepping forward, but Richie was just standing there like an idiot. He bit down harshly onto his own tongue to prevent him from letting it run amok and do something real dumb like tell Eddie what he’d just realized, in front of Ben and God.
“Yeah, I’m comin’, hold your horses,” he said, and if any of the Losers noticed he was more sedate than usual for the rest of the day, they must’ve counted it as a blessing and moved on.
The day after Eddie and Bill arrived together and when the got to the moat Ben and Richie were already hard at work constructing the bridge -- Eddie had laughed at that.
“I thought the water was great, Richie! What happened to Man vs. Nature?”
Richie had scowled. “Shaddup...I’m such a good guy that I gotta show support for my weaker friends, right?”
“Sure, sure,” Eddie said, nodding wisely but ruining it by grinning. “Let me give you a hand with that, Richie.” And then both sets of their small shoulders had borne the weight of the boards, and Richie had spent long afternoon hours thinking about everything and nothing.
II. Beverly Marsh Hears a Secret
The Spring winds hadn’t yet turned warm, but it was still a nice night out. The stars above Beverly Marsh and Richie Tozier were bright pinpricks in the sky. It had been cloudy for several days and it was like she was looking at a new sky now, constellations finally visible again. There was nothing in particular that was special about this tree in Memorial Park, but it sort of felt like there was -- maybe because it was an imposing tree during the daytime, and it was after dark. Not late after dark, mind, her parents still worried, and she suspected that the Toziers thought their son was still his room instead of lying in a slightly damp patch of grass. The murders were over, though, and it was like the people of Derry were...forgetting.
Even she forgot things, sometimes, but then she’d see her friends’ faces and feel that tight pang of them, of the Losers-as-a-unit. And she’d remember everything, even the parts she didn’t really want to.
“I have a mark,” Richie said. His voice was just a thin whisper in the grass.
She’d been waiting for him to speak -- he was obviously working up to it -- but that wasn’t what Beverly had been expecting. She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting, though. “Yeah?” she said, tentatively.
Richie paused, blowing smoke out of his mouth. He was trying to learn how to make rings, but he couldn’t do it yet.
“It’s on my hip,” he said. “Which is great, right? ‘Cause then no one can see it.” He stopped again. He was obviously stalling, and she waited him out.
“The thing is,” Richie Tozier admitted to her, while grass pricked at both their backs and the smoke from their twin cigarettes mingled above them, “I know who my soulmate it. I’ve seen the mark.”
“Okay,” she said. She still didn’t quite understand her role in this conversation. She wondered if Richie was about to tell her his soulmate was Greta Bowie, or one of the other girls who could be so cruel to her.
“It’s Eddie,” Richie said, in a terrible, quiet voice.
What? her mind produced.
“What?” Beverly said.
“You know,” Richie said, vaguely, like he wasn’t talking to her, just thinking aloud. “Some people say -- ‘cause you know, not everyone gets a soulmate -- and even those who do , sometimes the soulmate is just friends.”
“Right,” she said, uneasy. She’d never seen a soul-mark in real life. Soul-marks happened in books and in movies and TV shows, not in actual everyday living. Not to her friends.
“So it’s --” Richie said. “So it’s okay. If Eddie is my…you know. “
Beverly didn’t know what to say. If it wasn’t just friends, that would be a whole ‘nother thing entirely, she knew that…her father talked enough about it, and she heard other people say things, too. She wasn’t an expert but she thought she’d never have reasons to wield the words those people hefted at her friends, no matter what.
She stayed quiet, and so did Richie, for a long, uncharacteristic moment.
“But.” he said, finally. He had finished his cigarette, and stamped out the stub on the dirt. “I don’t think Eddie is my friend soulmate. I think he’s my...soulmate. Just that.”
But it wasn’t just that, she thought. Oh, Richie… Because if that was true it would mean all sorts of things were true. Oh, Hell. She was in over her head.
“Why are you telling me this?” she said, quietly. She didn’t know how she was meant to react.
“I don’t know,” Richie said. “It’s only that I couldn’t tell the other guys. I just couldn’t.”
She could understand that much, at least. The tension of gender, of boys-and-girls...it was there, in the Losers, whether she liked it or not (and she didn’t much like it --)
“I don’t know what to say, Richie,” she said.
He shrugged, his back arching in the long grass. “Yeah. Sorry.” He was so disconcertingly calm, soft-spoken. All of a sudden she longed very keenly for him to make a stupid joke and carry away the silence, take the weight of speaking off her back.
But it was clear to her that tonight it was Richie who needed her support. He was usually so unflagging; always valiantly pretending that he had his emotional responses pressed tight under his thumb; but tonight he was telling her something he’d never told another person. Her heart fluttered wildly under her breast, and she felt a deep fondness for her friend.
“I think you’re good, Richie Tozier,” she said, carefully. “I mean… you’re too loud and too rude and really annoying sometimes --” (it was a mark of how closely Richie was listening that he did not protest) -- “You are all those things but you’re my friend, too. I don’t have that many of those...so thank you.” She was peeling something of herself up, with that admission -- that she had some driving need was difficult enough to admit, but that it was emotional closeness itself that she craved -- Beverly was a child still and couldn’t think about it as an adult, but she could feel the thick, adult, weight of it, all the same.
“Wonder if he would think that,” Richie muttered, into the night, and despite her reassurances, all Beverly could think was, I hope nobody else ever finds out; I hope Derry never knows you, Richie Tozier. She knew that it was a dangerous thing indeed, to be known. And if Richie was -- well.
She had another cigarette tucked into her blouse, and she offered it to Richie, even though she’d never seen him smoke more than once in a day’s span.
“Thanks, Bevvie,” he said, and she struck at her matchbox for the second time that night; looked Richie in the eye as the tiny flame curled into the darkness. She still didn’t know what he needed, or if she could give it at all.
III. Stanley Uris Tells a Story
It was different if a boy knew. Richie Tozier couldn’t articulate to himself how so, but it simply was; he understood this as easily as he understood any other fact of life.
But -- the thing was, Stan would know about soulmates. He’d already talked to Beverly but she hadn’t known much in particular because she was uneasy with the concept herself; Richie was no shrink but the fact of that was simple enough to uncover. (He was pretending he didn't know that about her at all. The admission had been hard, pretending he hadn't done it was easy.) Stan, however, was a romantic.
Oh, he was quiet enough about it. But Richie saw the way his smile tucked up when he saw a romantic scene in a movie, or read one in a book. Stan was the sort of man who would grow up to have a wife and children and a little house with a fence, and Richie could poke fun of that all day but it also meant that if any of their little gang knew about soul-marks, it’d be him.
“Stan!” Richie crowed. He didn’t feel very much like crowing, or even making jokes. He felt that if he let himself talk like normal, all sorts of secrets would come tumbling out like a stuck tap that couldn’t be turned off. “Stan the Man! Where’re you off to now, huh?”
Stan was holding a pair of binoculars, and he sighed and raised them, like it was obvious. (Probably he did this because it was, in fact, obvious).
“Bird-watching,” he said. “You can’t come.”
“Didn’t want to anyway!” Richie said, unbothered. “I still don’t know what makes birds so int’resting. It’s not like in a film where they might do something cool. They mostly just sit around, in real life.”
“You wouldn’t understand,” Stan said with the easy patience of someone who’d defended his interests countless times, and had eventually given up trying to convince anyone else of their worth.
“Surely I wouldn’t,” Richie said, easily enough. “Look, I won’t keep ya, Stan-the-Man, and I promise I won’t scare your birdies off. I just wanna walk with you, yeah?”
“All right,” Stan said, looking uneasy. “But I’m not answering any more questions about my dad.”
“Not about your dad, Stanley,” Richie said. “He’s boring anyway. It’s about me, a far more important topic.”
That made Stan laugh a little, and some of the tension between them eased. Stan started off down the road, and Richie slipped into an easy pace beside him.
“So,” Richie said, after giving Stan a minute or two in which to feel safe. “You got a soul-mark, Stanley?”
That got a big reaction -- bigger than you’d expect from Stan, unless you really knew him, Richie thought smugly. Stan veered a bit to the side, and then looked back sharply. “A soul-mark?”
“Yeah. A sign of your God-ordained soulmate, a symbol of undying love… all that bull-hockey. Ya got one?”
Stan peered at Richie. Richie let his eyes flit away from the stare, whipping off his glasses and furiously polishing them on his grimy shirt. Without them, Stan was just a mass of colors and spots, and largely non-threatening.
“Do Jews have soul-marks, even? ‘Cause you know, the reverend at my church says --”
Stan sighed, and Richie cut himself off, and shoved his glasses back on. Beep-beep, asshole. Don’t be a dickwad. Stan’s your lifeline, here.
“Sorry,” he said. His inflection even approached sincerity. “I just -- uh.”
Stan sighed again. Then he said, softly. “I don’t have one. Yet.”
“But ya want one.”
“I guess so.”
“‘Cause it’s romantic. ”
“My parents are soulmates,” Stan said. He sighed again. Richie felt kinda bad for making him sigh so much. He sounded like an old man. “It doesn’t mean you’ll be happy all the time or anything. But I…” he glanced sidelong at Richie. “Well, I don’t know. I want it.”
Richie kicked aggressively at a rock on the side of the road. He watched it roll away into the underbrush. “You want it, I got it, Stan the Man.”
Stan stopped stock-still. “You have a mark?”
Richie kept walking forward for a few feet. There were so many convenient reasons not to look Stan in the eye. “Yup,” he said, not turning around.
“But Richie,” Stan said, jogging forward -- and boy howdy, Richie could feel the excitement just radiating right off him -- “Do you know who it is? Are you gonna tell her? Did you already tell her?”
Richie swallowed. Here came the hard part. “Yup,” he said. “I know who it is. And nope! I haven’t said a thing.”
“But Richie!” Stan said again, and Richie couldn’t help but grin a little at that even though his insides were still all topsy-turny. It was always fun to see ol’ Stan worked up. “You can’t -- this is your chance, Richie.”
“Chance at what, though?”
Stan frowned at him like it obvious, blindingly obvious. Richie supposed that it was…
“At love,” Stanley said, simply. ‘Cause, of course. Stan grinned, out of no-where -- it was like the sun. “Amazing that someone as obnoxious as you would have a soulmate, Richie, I’d be sure to appreciate it if I was you --”
“Shut up!”
Stan laughed. “Nah. I think I won’t. You never do --”
“Shaddup! ” Richie said, in an oddly accented Voice that didn’t have a name yet. “You leave me a-lone , ya hear?”
Stan smiled at him, and it was even sort of fond. Richie found that if you got Stan alone he softened, and he was counting on that now.
“‘Sides,” he said, airily, like it was no big to him either way -- “I’ve got one of them platonic soulmates -- sorry, Mr. Romantic.”
Stan’s mouth parted in a little ‘o’. “Platonic?”
“Yeah. Means ‘friends,’ smart boy.”
“I know what it means. Just didn’t think you had any friends, I guess.”
“Hey!” Richie leapt forward, punching Stan lightly on the arm. “We’re best fuckin’ buds, pal.”
Stan took a step closer to him, and laid a hand on his shoulder for a brief moment, before pulling it back. “I mean, I guess. Losers gotta stick together…”
Damn, Richie thought. Woulda told ya sooner if I knew I’d get this kinda reaction, Stanley --
“But -- friends-soulmates,” Richie offered, tentatively, “I mean -- is that real?”
Stan hummed a little, to himself, and suddenly they were walking again, albeit slow and easy. “‘Course it’s real. Some of the greatest soulmates of all time have been friends...don’t they teach you that at Church? It’s in the Bible.”
“It is?” Richie was fascinated. He was aware of the differences between the Tanakh and the Christian Bible in the same way he was aware of the difference between blue jays and sparrows -- i.e., he wasn’t, but he knew that Stan was.
“I mean -- King David alone --”
In another context, Richie would’ve said, Who? But he couldn’t pretend he didn’t know who that was, that his heart hadn’t sped up at the naming of him.
“The lad who killed Goliath, aye?” He said, his Irish accent even shakier than usual. “I ken…”
Stan studiously ignored the accent, which was fair. “Yeah. King David and the son of Saul, Jonathan…they were brothers in arms, you know? They met before David was king. Jonathan was the prince, then, and heir to the throne -- but when he met David, their soul-marks appeared…and Jonathan gave up the throne for him.”
Stan’s face screwed up, as if trying to remember something. “Their souls were bound up in one another,” he said, solemnly. “The line is something like that, in English.”
Richie’s heart went THUMP-THUMP, THUMP-THUMP, in his chest. Was that how Eddie felt when he was about to have an asthma attack? It was pretty rough, if so. His head felt disconnected, like he was floating above and just watching Stan talk. Eventually, he remembered that he needed to reply.
“Huh,” he said. It sounded less like a word and more like a rush of breath coming out.
Stan smiled at him. “Yeah, it’s heavy stuff. And King David is the greatest king of Israel, and he wasn’t soulmates with any of his wives. Just with his friend. So that proves platonic soulmates pretty handily.”
Richie had a sudden vivid vision of the future, where he was grown up and married to a woman who wasn’t his soulmate and what, Eddie was -- just there? Gack! Bad-bad!
“Wonder how his wives felt about that?”
Stan shrugged. “I think a lot of people in those days married people they didn’t really love. Not that not being soulmates doesn’t mean you don’t love each other! But…”
Not everyone had a soulmate. But if you did have one, they were your most important person. That’s what everyone always said, anyway.
“So what happened to Jonathan?”
“Oh,” Stan said. “Well, he died.”
Fuck! Thought Richie, with a sudden spark of wild fear. Hadn’t Eddie nearly died last summer, the danger and the heat of thing, Bowers coming after them like a wild animal, as well as something deeper, older, something hard to contemplate? But it was too awful of a prospect to linger on.
“Yeah?” he said, going for casual.
“Yeah,” Stan said, nodding to himself. “And when he died, David couldn’t handle it…he tore up his hair and his clothes.”
Richie shuddered. For some reason a biblical king in mourning seemed wrong , but then; any adult in mourning was disconcerting to Richie (-- he was uncomfortable around the Denbroughs for several reasons, that included --) but mostly it was uncomfortable because grief was terrifying. He was eleven years old and lucky enough not to know it yet; and the possibility of it was nearly unbearable.
“Jiminy Cricket,” Richie said, and he could only hope that his voice didn’t shake. “I mean, I hope being friends-soulmate doesn’t doom ya to that, eh?”
Stan laughed. (God, whatta noise! At a time like this? ) “Don’t panic, Richie. I don’t think it’s a moral necessity that a platonic soulmate die, or anything. That’s just one example. But they really did love each other...even though David outlived Jonathan, that relationship was still foundational for him, you know?”
The way Stan talked sometimes, it was nearly impossible to believe he was a whole grade behind them; he was an intelligent, well-spoken boy. Richie felt bolstered by what he said because if he said it, it must be true...particularly about the Bible, as Richie was pretty sure Stan had more knowledge about that than most Christians at his Church, at least...and in general his soft voice seemed very sincere. Richie was suddenly intensely glad he had chosen to tell him, even if he’d confessed barely anything at all.
(No-one can ever know, he had thought to himself when he made that original discovery. But he was discovering already, with these friends, that that was not entirely true.)
IV. Mike Hanlon Shares a Memory
The earliest facts that Mike Hanlon learned about soul-marks were these: you and your soulmate had matching marks; that they could look like anything; and that it hurt like hell when they manifested.
It was not until he was ten years old that he learned that the last one was not in actual fact true.
(Mike’s father, who’s mark had manifested as the Black Spot burned, had protested, “Hey, I was aflame myself, who am I to know a stray ember from the mark manifesting on my knuckles, what the Hell --” and his mother had been laughing big with her hand over her mouth. “You dramatic thing!” She had said. “You had to’ve known Mikey’d learn the truth someday!”
Mike barely understood what they were talking about -- he wasn’t yet familiar with the story of the fire -- but he liked when his mother called him Mikey.)
His father had admitted eventually that no, in generally-accepted belief at least, a soul-mark forming was not a painful thing.
It was still a dangerous thing, though. His parents didn’t say that, but Mike thought it was true all the same. If the bonding itself didn’t hurt you, the bond surely could…even in the case of his father, whose soulmate was a man called Trev Dawson, before Mike even knew the details about the Black Spot he knew his father would’ve died for that man, if need be, and vice versa. When bonded mates were close, they knew each other’s pain, literally, and who would want to accept that burden? It was a heavy thing to bear for a child, too heavy, and knowing it could happen to him in the future scared him. Before the Losers, he had friends, but he didn’t think they were those sorts of friends.
But the Losers were. That was undeniable. Not only would they die for each other, they very nearly had...it was hard for all of them to grasp, but any vestiges of childhood innocence that would’ve left them unable to grapple with the heady weight of mortality were gone by the end of 1958. The terror of dying that started with seeing the drag-marks by the water, or maybe with Henry Bowers saying he had killed Mike’s dog...it hadn’t left. Mike was beginning to see that it never, in fact, would.
Alone in his room at night, Mike shuddered. Was it worth it? But he knew that his answer to that didn’t really matter. The seven of them were a collective, parts of a whole...and there was something that tied them together, even unto suffering and death.
Besides, he thought, his father was a happy man, even with a mark on his hand that said, I’d do anything for another person. He hurts, I hurt. Mike curled up, and ran a nervous thumb over the scar where Stan had opened their palms. This mark meant much the same, didn’t it?
“What happens if you never get a soul-mark?” Bill said, one evening, as they were all sitting around a campfire in the Barrens. “I mean, are you just -- alone?”
“No,” Mike said, because his parents weren’t soulmates but they were some of the two most in-love people he knew. “There’s always friends and partners and…” he searched his mind for other words he’d read in books, “teammates, and comrades.”
“I don’t know,” Beverly said doubtfully, critically examining in her mind the difference between love and acknowledgement. “What if it means we never get a lover?”
“Oh, someone will love you,” Ben said immediately and genuinely, temporarily unaware of the sensual weight behind his words.
Sitting at a distance from the group -- and up ‘till that point uncharacteristically quiet -- Richie made a skeptical noise. “As if, ” he said. “Losers is losers, huh? We gotta stick together, ‘cause who else will have us?” Without meaning to and without thinking about it, his hand drifted to the gentle silver mark on his hip. It was just another thing he would have to ignore.
Stan shook his head at Richie, although he was smiling gently -- he was amused, not annoyed. “One day even you will grow up, Richie,” he said, not unkindly. “We all will. And it’ll be different.”
It’s already different, Mike thought. Across from him, he watched Beverly chew her lip, and he thought she might feel the same.
“Even without soulmates,” Eddie said -- surprising Mike a little; Eddie usually sat these talks out in favor of staring moodily into the distance. “We can still be friends.”
“Yeah,” Ben said, smiling (at Beverly, not Eddie, Mike noted with amusement). “After all this we’ve got to be.”
Bill nodded, sort of solemnly, and they all relaxed in some minute way -- Big Bill agreed, and now, it must be true.
Richie sprang to his feet with that sudden energy he seemed to explode with. (Mike liked Richie because he liked all the Losers, but he would admit to being awful confused by him, sometimes). “Yeah, right! I’ll be too busy being a faaamous rock’n’roller to deal with you lot!” He launched into a rendition of ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ that was so bad that Stan winced and covered his ears, but Mike couldn’t help but laugh, and he saw that Beverly was giggling into Ben’s shoulder as he sat, stock-still and blushing, beside her.
“Who’d wanna be friends with you?" Eddie said in disgust as Richie rocked his hips like Elvis did. “Be serious,” Stan said, annoyed, at the same time.
Perhaps stymied by their boos, Richie slowed to a stop and rounded on Eddie, grinning. “But I’ll still hang out with you, Eds...because you’re so cute! ” He pinched at Eddie’s cheek quick enough that Eddie barely had time to roll away, shrieking.
“I don’t know if Richie’ll ever grow up,” Mike heard Beverly murmur to Ben, who laughed. Mike looked up and saw that Bill was smiling, all soft and fond, at all of them. For an instant over the sparking fire their eyes met, and Mike and Bill grinned at each other. Without noticing that they were doing it, both of them rubbed, simultaneously, at the still-healing scars on their palms.
V. Eddie Kaspbrak Considers Some Possibilities
It wasn’t so much that Eddie had anything in particular against his friends talking about soulmates -- it was kind of just one of those things that everyone talked about; sometimes casually, sometimes seriously, and on any and all occasions -- and he suspected that it would probably always be that way. It was just that he had nothing to contribute. He thought about soulmates sometimes, but it didn’t seem to be in the same way his classmates and friends did. For instance, he didn’t want a soul-mark, and he barely ever heard anyone say that. (He thought Beverly might’ve once, but she’d been talking to Bill, so he wasn’t sure.)
Eddie didn’t want a soul-mark because, quite simply, he was scared of them. To his young mind, they were dangerous things, like a hot stove...something for adults to deal with. His mother could handle having a soulmate who was dead because she was an adult, but Eddie wouldn’t able to do something like that...he was not so strong as his mother. And he did know that it hurt her terribly. Soulmates could turn out all right, like Richie Tozier’s parents, but you might also never meet them (there were rumors of a teacher at Derry Elementary having manifested a mark already faded, and Eddie thought that probably wasn’t possible, but what if it was ?), or you could meet them and be happy and then lose that. You could meet them and then they could get sick and die horribly and you’d feel it, all the way down. And what if, like some other parents he knew, you weren’t soulmates, but one of you had a mark, and then you met your soulmate -- what then?
There were simply too many variables, and no easy way to protect yourself. That was a sharp-edged thing if Eddie ever saw one, right there.
So the day that he discovered the soul-mark on the back of his leg (which had in fact manifested several days prior, without him noticing) he felt no excitement and a lot of dread. The idea of telling his mother was considered, but swiftly dismissed...he didn’t even know what she’d do, but it couldn’t be good. And so it, quickly and quietly, became Eddie’s secret. He probably wouldn’t’ve told his friends anyways (Stan and Ben and maybe some of the others, Mike perhaps? would be excited, and he didn’t want that any more than he wanted his mother’s panic --), but he felt that somehow his friend’s knowing was already too close to his mother knowing.
There was no room amongst the steady panic that the mark invoked in him for any of the usual excitements of childhood soul-bonding -- Eddie did not wonder who it was, he did not fantasize about marrying her; in fact the kindest thought he had to girl who must share his mark was I hope she doesn’t get hurt, and that was because he didn’t want to feel it too.
(He did feel things, from time to time, but they were subtle -- like his soulmate just scraped her knuckles, or something. In those moments he’d wring his hands together, or hop from foot to foot, or sit and read a comic -- anything to distract himself from it, pretend he wasn’t noticing her suffering.)
And so it would be years before his mother would see the mark that sat proud and silver on the back of her son’s knee. By that time, without him even knowing it, he was already beginning to forget the boy who shared that mark.
VI. Richie Tozier Sees the Future
If Eddie Kaspbrak ever laid in bed ignoring his soulmate, what he didn’t know was that his soulmate was lying in bed trying to do the same thing -- unsuccessfully. 1959 was full of restless nights for Richie Tozier; before and after the manifestation of his mark. The killings that had torn through 1858 were over, but somehow it still wasn’t quite enough. (Years later, Richie would think, was that a premonition? ) Now, the real terror began -- the terrors of growing up, the weight of living.
Having a soul-mark wasn’t supposed to feel like you had a ball of lead tied ‘round your ankle, dragging you down to some forgotten depths. Of that, he was fairly sure...but he couldn’t help the anxiety that filled him when his mark did appear; he couldn’t help it if his soul-mark and -mate labeled him as Other.
Richie had a bad dream one night, and it was only a bad dream ‘cause they’d killed It, but -- it felt so fucking real and he woke up terrified all the same --
JUST FRIENDS, RICHIE? The clown said, in the dream. It wasn’t laughing, but there was that inflection in its voice -- like it wanted to be, like it was laughing in its heart, if it had one. IS THAT SOOO?
WHY DON’T YOU TELL EDDIE THAT, THEN? LITTLE EDDIE-BEAR? DON’T YOU THINK HE’LL BELIEVE YOU?
And that was the question, wasn’t it? Why didn’t he tell Eddie? He’d told Bev. He hadn’t told Stan but he thought it might be a possibility. Friends was friends. Losers stick together. It wasn’t that big a deal, really, except for how it was.
He didn’t tell Eddie because, simply, he knew not to. The reasons why were more felt than known by the Richie Tozier that existed in 1959, but by 1985 he would have a more articulate grasp on it. Derry could be a cruel town, perhaps because of Pennywise or maybe it would’ve been that way despite of him -- but regardless it was impossible to imagine the place without the alien being literally carving out the earth of it; the crater of It landing forever a fixture of the underground of Derry, Maine.
Derry, Maine, where Adrian Mellon would be murdered after walking out of a bar with his soulmate; where you couldn’t even buy some ice cream or go to the movies without someone shoving you around, shattering your glasses or even your arm. Where six children grew to be adults who forgot and one child grew to be an adult who remembered.
Eds? Was what Richie thought in one of the last thoughts of Eddie Kaspbrak he’d have for quite some time, Are you waiting for me like I’m waiting for you? In the truth of it, Eddie was not, but such was the way of things; even the existence of soulmates did not cause happenstance to cease her weary work. Richie would wait, and Eddie would wait for something completely different, and -- for a time -- that was that.
“Hey-uh, Eddie, catch --” And Richie tossed Eddie’s aspirator to him, gently, intending as stated for him to catch it.
Eddie did, face flushed bright-red. “Not funny, Trashmouth,” he said in one long exhale of breath, even though it was him who dropped the damn thing in the first place, and Richie was just passing it back.
“Ain’t meant to be funny, Eddie-my-love,” Richie said, easily. He thought maybe it was odd that he could continue to tease Eddie like this, knowing what he knew about himself, but -- honestly -- when he was with Eddie it just came back automatically, simple as anything.
“Good, ‘cause I ain’t laughing,” Eddie said, moodily, but his elbow prodded at Richie’s side, friendly and familiar.
I ain’t laughin’ either, Richie thought. Hell! If this is a mistake, or damnation, then -- whatta way to go!