When Bill opened his eyes, and saw himself on a Ringling circus stage, it didn't register as confusing in the slightest. If one could embody a whole feeling that was described by the expression 'oh', then Bill was feeling it as he sat up and looked around.
Dreams were funny that way.
Instead, Bill took interest in that he was, essentially, in an enormous circus tent that had peculiarly solid-seeming walls with vertically stripped wallpaper that flared out the higher and higher those same walls rose. The world around him was colorful, full of popcorn-yellow and jaunty green and soft, but still vibrant blues as cartoonish elephants balancing on tiny bouncy balls and lions roaring on podiums before juggling bears and fiery hoops were depicted on all sides.
Bill swore that the longer he looked at the pleasantly-drawn scenes, the better he could hear them happening faintly from somewhere unseen. At the same time, he felt a tug of something unsettling in his stomach at how he'd seen these kinds of things before. Not here, but somewhere – somewhere that one was sure to find Georgie, whom loved wholesome circus things of all kinds.
This wasn't Georgie's room, but it was similar. Being inside this enlarged, altered version was wonky too, like being at the bottom of a popcorn container or at the end of a tent that was somehow managing while it was propped upside down.
Bill felt a tap on his shoulder, and likewise with waking up in a circus of some sort, the boy felt no sense of surprise at seeing his little brother behind him.
Georgie smiled, not in hospital clothes but while dressed in his bright yellow rain slicker and his green galoshes. Bill turned and opened his arms, feeling happiness like a balm in the middle of his stupor, as though he and Georgie had known they would be split apart for some time and were simply reuniting.
'Billy!' Bill held onto his brother tighter, and noted that the smaller boy was solid and warm just as he would be in reality.
'Did you like 'em?' The little boy asked innocently, after pulling back to beam at his older brother. His raincoat was dripping all over the floor, despite there being no rain pouring down anywhere.
'Like what?' Bill asked.
'The balloons! It was Penny's idea to get 'em for you, since I couldn't. I thought it was a good idea though!' The little boy looked proud. 'I had good in-put. Are you still sick?'
Bill thought back as Georgie bounced up and down in front of him, but it was hard to remember anything outside of this. 'Who's Penny?'
Georgie huffed a frustrated sigh, so sensitive that he was prone to changing emotions in record time. The same old Georgie. 'Pennywise! My friend. Don't you remember when I told you about people talking under the sidewalk?'
'The… sewer…' Bill tested out the memories coming to him in a trickle. 'Nobody lives in the sewer.'
Georgie frowned deeply. 'Penny does! He does, and I can prove it!'
The hands that had been keeping Georgie in place fell as the boy took Bill's hand and started tugging.
Bill could hardly follow, still remembering. He ground his heels into the stage beneath their feet. 'Wait! Georgie, wait…'
The younger boy looked over his shoulder, confused and yet, it only helped Bill put things back together again. 'We can't go. You're supposed to be home. We're supposed to be home.'
'Yes…' Bill nodded to himself. That sounded right.
'But Bill, it's easy! If you come with me,' Georgie pivoted back around and blinked owlishly, face pensive yet pleading. 'You'll float too.'
The dusky shadows that had formed an overlay against the wallpaper around the two boys was falling away into a darker haze, like the beginning of storm clouds as they reached the epitome of ire and set the sky ablaze with lightening. It was more than daunting, but it didn't appear to frighten Georgie whatsoever.
'We can teach you!' Bill's mouth hung open as his baby brother grew more excited at the prospect of being reunited, and at them both being taught how to 'float', whatever that meant. 'Then we can all be together!'
'G-Georgie.' Bill's stutter was returning as the clouded platform they were on grew morose and fragile. 'I want us to be to-together, but you need to come home!'
'No!' His smaller counterpart looked ready to stomp one of his galoshes into the blackening stage in a fit. 'Home hurts! I don't feel good when I try to go back. And I don't… like it at home.'
His little voice trailed away, giving into what might've been shame or fear, and Bill didn't like it one bit – but he understood where his brother was coming from. Feelings of loneliness and the more pronounced feeling of being a very real, very sorry excuse for a burden, seemed to void every other sense Bill might've had in this imaginary realm.
His mind was less focused on an entire roster of things and more clot with emotion. Though he tried to fight it, Bill felt like he was the seven-year-old boy now, unable to overthink and reason with the way Mom and Dad seemed to… regret the existence of Georgie and himself. At the plane of reality, Bill had grown taut and ready to justify his father's distrust in his sons' capabilities or his mother's flippancy when it came to who was raising them.
Bill could be content, for a little while, with his process of thinking so long as he thought in an adult way, where he knew larger words that never came stuttering when they formed in his brain. He could overlook being there for Georgie ten times the average amount a boy would be there for his little brother, or find comfort in being stronger because of the resilience that he, Bill, had to keep living every day while being less valued.
That's what adults did – they put off reality as much as they could. And so did kids, although it was usually with a safety net, and far less jeopardizing.
Bill wasn't an adult, though. Bill was still a kid, and so was Georgie. A phantom or a specter of a kid in a dream, maybe, but of no less value to Bill because of it.
Bill could excuse a lot in real life, because he had to, but if he knew anything it was that he needed to take care of Georgie, and that his baby brother needed him, too.
'Georgie…'
'You can be here with me, Billy! Penny will teach you how to float so we can just stay with him! It's nice, you just gotta learn to float, too!' Something above them was thundering, like a wheel over pavement or something heavy and clopping over aged floorboards.
'Bill. You can! Come with me and you'll float too!' The younger boy reached out, heedless to the sound and the frightful change of the room.
Georgie reached out with one arm, hand turning through the air desperately. He was fading from view as a drawing might, were it being erased rather hastily. Bill's eyes flickered around in fear as the scenery started to give way completely, and his mind stuttered to a brief stillness at the shadow of pipes dripping like leaky faucets above them. Darkness began to clash with fingers of light from an unknown source above the boys, searching until they gained a proper hold on Georgie and Bill was tumbling like a leaf to the wayside.
He could no longer see his little brother in the confusing haze.
'You'll float too!'
'You'll float too!'
You'll float too!
Beverly shifted awake, and missed hitting the bathtub faucet with her forehead by an inch. Though it was abrupt, she'd stirred with enough reason free from sleep-addled disquiet to see it suspended above her sleeping form.
She ducked before carefully crawling around the spout and sitting up in the tub, feeling a familiar pressure at the back of her neck that did nothing for the light train of nausea tunneling in her cranium. At least the cold that was sweeping over Derry didn't discriminate when it came to making her and her father's crummy apartment as frigid as possible. The blanket she'd taken was thin and didn't prevent her skin from turning to gooseflesh in barren environment.
Intellectually, Beverly didn't care. Cold was good for concentration and clarity.
She didn't consider it strange unless she looked at it from a distance, but Beverly felt the most comfortable sleeping in the bathtub or on the tiled floor with just a pillow and a patchwork quilt. Her own bed was fine, she supposed, but if she lingered on that object as well it only left her feeling ill and empty.
That was never the case with the bathtub. Though now… as she drew her legs up and curled her arms around them to seek as much inner-warmth as she could – as while her brain showed no love for heat that made one lethargic, her body craved it – Beverly felt restlessness in her bones.
She wanted to call down the sink for what felt like ages now. It was inexplicable, but she was hesitant to ask if her friend was alright after enduring a period of absolute silence since the last incident with her father.
But she hadn't, as whenever the courage worked up between her lungs, Beverly felt strangely naked whenever she had the nerve to try. Her words came out clumsy, and Beverly didn't feel like she had her proverbial footing in trying to reach down into the pipes with spoken words alone. Communication, she knew, was a two-way street and honestly, if the Voice was fantastical in some way, shape, or form, it had to be one-half of the whole that made their bond work. Didn't it?
To Beverly, it was like she didn't have the power to make things happen without the Voice for support… even if all she wanted to do was ask if the Voice was okay. Well, that and she missed having another person to talk to, but that was far less altruistic and probably shameful, somehow.
The girl rubbed her eyes, feeling childish for thinking that way. Beverly arched her back, stretching her legs out over the rim of the tub before sliding around to stand on the floor and leave her unconventional bed. She inhaled deeply then, as close to silently as she could get, she exhaled and looked around. It was probably dawn, or a little later. Her father was no doubt passed out on his armchair after drinking himself into nothingness.
Beverly shrugged, bones popping beneath her rumpled dress – it was time for school.
She lit a cigarette whilst leaning against the back wall of the school, and held it expertly between her fingers before taking a drag. And already, the young girl could feel herself warming up inside, feeling a pleasant shiver due only to the familiar pall of smoke drifting down to her lungs and lightly toasting the back of her throat.
A car swerved into the parking lot – smooth, glossy and probably as new as new could be by Derry standards. Although, while Beverly didn't follow the popularity behind cars, she estimated it to be only a couple of years old compared to the sodden fords and vans that littered the high school lots. Hand-me-downs from parents to rowdy adolescents with licenses and jobs of their own.
Beverly couldn't say for certain if the fresh paint on Dr. Tozier's car was any indication; but she could tell by the slump of his shoulders and the way he pushed his thick glasses up the bridge of his nose like it was a nuisance told her that little had changed in Richie's home life. His mouth jetted open enough to be visible from a distance as he hopped out of the back seat (oh, poor baby, being relegated to the back like a toddler) and let the car door slam behind him.
His mouth was a mess. Not an unfixable or hideous mess – not a 'Patrick Hockstetter' mess – but one that had nothing to do with the raunchy jokes that funneled out every day. The worst part of it, seeing it openly, was that his family had the means, the direct means, to fix it but never did, no matter how many one-liners Richie had up his sleeve.
Irony. The poor kid was beset by irony.
Richie turned on his feet, just enough to make Beverly feel genuinely sorry for him as he nervously pushed those glasses up again and waited for several seconds. Bev watched with a cocked head and squinting eyes while the boy stayed quiet and still for once in a blue moon, in case dear old Dad had any nice sentiments to give his son.
But the tinted glass didn't roll down, and Richie barely had any time to back away before his father's car was peeling out of the school and leaving exhaust fumes in his wake. A spike of spitefulness pinned Beverly's heart like a spear in that moment, as the boy played it off like nothing had happened. Very few kids including her were milling about, sleep-sand at the corners of their tired eyes, but it mattered to Richie regardless.
Beverly's mouth worked while he stepped closer, away from the hurt and embarrassment, and she almost missed her chance before blurting. "Hey, Bucky Beaver."
Never let a taunt, cruel or playful, escape the scrutiny of Richie Tozier. The trashmouth boy's shoulders rolled and his lips opened in a breathless scoff, but when he looked at her fully, Beverly felt like she was under the heat of a spotlight.
"What do you want, Marsh?" His tone was on the verge of complaint.
Beverly smirked. "Is that really the best you can do?"
"What?" Mouth opening wider, this time in confusion and just a tinge of awe.
"Ya know, I thought I've always thought I would meet my match if we ever had a contest over who can talk the most shit." Beverly said. "You're holding out on me."
He looked at her and pulled at the straps of his backpack and looked at her, before breaking into a tentative smile. A real smile, not a nasty one. "I can always do worse, but you probably hear 'worse' all the time."
She gasped melodramatically.
"So, what I'm hearing is, that you're afraid you'll get beat by a girl." Beverly's eyebrows rose, and she threw down her cigarette just to smush it with her flats.
Richie scoffed loudly this time. "Nuh-uh. You think I'd go easy on you just cos you got softer skin and prettier hair than me? Fat chance, Marsh."
If it were possible, their shoulders both squared simultaneously, like cats getting ready to play fight, or in Richie and Beverly's case, to throw down.
"Richie!"
Beverly followed the high sound instinctively, and had never seen Eddie Kaspbrak run so fast in all her life. The boy's tamed, spiffy hair was loose and flat around his ears, and his round, dark eyes were too wide for comfort as he barreled down from the townside entrance into the school.
What Beverly found even more surprising than that, however, was the sight of a pudgier, entirely familiar boy with him. Ben was hustling rather respectably, heedless of any self-consciousness as he raced at Eddie's side. He was pink in the face, and panting quite a bit, but Ben and Eddie were virtually side by side when they stopped in front of Beverly and Richie.
"Holy. Fucking. Shit." Eddie wheezed, but didn't reach into either fanny pack for his inhaler. Ben, also breathing harshly, patted the smaller boy's back helpfully as if he'd been the best of friends with the Derry-born kid since the womb.
Richie made a face, having made several disturbing impressions on the sight of his energetic friend, whose energy was selectively spent on telling them all about AIDS, almost falling winded onto himself and Bev.
"What the hell is that on your arm, K?" The bespectacled boy reached out, flashing warty fingers as he got a half a chance at feeling the makeshift sling bracing Eddie's arm when the boy put up a fight.
Beverly hadn't noticed it immediately, but she realized that Eddie was wearing multiple handkerchiefs (or bandanas) over a poorly put-together cast lined with duct tape.
"It's a sprain! But don't tell anybody. My mom doesn't know, and if any of the teachers find out, I'm screwed." Eddie whipped a finger to his lips, miming for them all to keep secret, and it floored Richie.
"What the hell's gotten into you, man?" Richie asked, rearing back with genuine surprise.
Eddie shook his head. "Nevermind! We're trying to tell you something!"
Beverly wanted to know as well, but she locked eyes with Ben in the middle of it all. The girl smiled with her teeth, before mouthing 'hi' at the boy. He clearly hadn't worked out how impolite (and nerve-wracking) it was to stare, but when he remembered himself, Ben gave her the goofiest, sweetest smile in return and mouthed 'hi' back.
"The crackhead house?!" Richie's exclamation broke through the lull that had fogged up Beverly's brain. "Why the fuck did you go in there?!"
"Oh. My God. Do you ever listen? Seriously, I wanna know, because if not then that would explain an assload of the shit you blurt out on a daily basis." Eddie sounded more like himself then, while looking like he was sucking on a lemon. "I told you, Bowers and Patrick and Vic and –"
"No, I got it. Bowers Gang was chasing you, so you hid in the crack house that nobody ever goes into, and then some actual freaky shit started happening." Richie stated. "I guess what I'm really wondering is how you're even still alive right now."
"Wait, what freaky shit?" Beverly asked. The three boys around her looked stunned at the mere question.
"Pa – Patrick Hockstetter," Ben shifted between an outdoor voice and an indoor voice, though it made little difference. "He went missing. Literally. He went missing right in front of us."