Milk
If he had remained in New Jersey , Marshall Teller would never have come to associate dairy products with loss. If he'd never come to Eerie, he wouldn't have met Devon Wilde or accidentally unleashed the ghost of Tripp McConnell.
If his new home town hadn't been quite so different, he wouldn't have flinched every time the milk truck drove past his house.
Puberty
"X is the variable, a way of expressing an unknown quantity. Its parameters can only be defined by reference to the surrounding equation. For example, when the equation involves a TV studio and a shotgun, X is equal to 'very bad things, usually involving bodily injury and/or death,' yet in conjunction with a werewolf and creepy sacrificial rites, X can also be a force for good, even if he won't admit it and acts like a total jerk if you ever bring it up…"
Marshall picked up the hefty textbook in one hand, weighed it thoughtfully, then sent it flying across the room to land with an ignominious thump nowhere near the far wall. Simon looked up from his own homework, flashing that wry smile that seemed far too old for him and contained understanding and amusement in equal measure.
"Algebra?"
"Puberty."
Touch
Dash X does not like to be touched. Red-haired femme fatales in low-cut cat-suits, toothy-grinned Mayors in mothball scented tweed, zealous salesmen in zany patterned ties and tragic midlife ponytails – he keeps a careful distance, shies away at initial contact, keeping to that inviolate zone of personal space. He can't stand to have his hair ruffled or a proprietary arm slung across his shoulder, as though he's some precocious school kid being subtly chastised for speaking out of turn.
Somewhere there might be a mother whose hand on his face doesn't make him flinch with revulsion, a father whose congratulatory slap on the back won't feel like an encroachment. He thinks sometimes of that old guy tending bar at the Loyal Order of Corn, wonders if there's something for him in that neon-lit world inside the TV.
But here in Eerie there are consolations, glossy brown hair and a half-embarrassed, half-excited grin, and a quick kiss, chaste and feather-light and holding the promise of things to come, that feels, for a moment, like home./
