Author's Notes: So, I did update Ben's nickname to Benny the Giant (Andre the Giant) because I don't think an 80's kid would have any idea who Haystack Calhoun is, and Andre the Giant seems similar in size/stature to Haystack Calhoun, and he's someone 80's kids would actually know. :) Oh, and there's a bit more Benverly in this chapter, yay.
000
The sky above us is a little hazy right now, but I barely notice, because Eddie's hand is still in mine, and he's smiling at me and everything. It's just what I've always wanted, wrapped up in a neatly combed little Eddie package, and all I have to do is not screw it up.
Can you see the problem here? I mean, this is me we're talking about. As much as I like to pretend like I'm some suave, smooth guy, the James Bond of our generation, the reality is, I'm a screw-up. That's the shape of my cloud, and nothing is ever going to change that.
And Eddie, I mean... yeah, he's paranoid, and he pretty much thinks he's riding with non-stop service on the hypochondria train towards disease and death. He yells a lot, and he especially likes to yell at me. But underneath that, he's a really cool guy. Even though he finds a lot of my jokes disgusting, he still laughs at them. He's also the only one I've found who can actually keep up with me when it comes to trading insults. It's like he gets me, you know? And I get him. And on top of that he's fucking adorable, with eyes that could put Bambi to shame, and a smile that could light up every city in the world and still have some left to shine on a nobody like me.
Eddie's cloud is beautiful, and I wish I could just come out and tell him that without sounding like an idiot.
We haven't talked a lot since we left the Hanlon farm, but he keeps glancing over at me when he thinks I'm not looking. I can see him chewing his lip out of the corner of my eye, like he wants to say something, but he can't quite get it out. After a few minutes of him opening and closing his mouth like the world's biggest bass fish, he finally settles on, "What are you doing tomorrow?"
"Besides your mom?" I say, and I wince, because that just came out before I could catch it and drag it back to its cage by its collar.
He rolls his eyes. "That's so fucking gross," he says, but he still doesn't drop my hand, so maybe I actually got away with it this time.
"Wanna meet me at the quarry? I'll show you zee moon and zee stars, my love!" I sweep my free hand across the corn field we're currently walking through in what I hope is a grand romantic gesture.
"You know I can't go out past dark," he says. "My mom won't let me."
"Okay, then I'll... I'll show you the clouds," I whisper, giving him a hopeful look. It's about the closest I can come to telling him how much it means to me when he sits with me and watches the clouds.
"Do you think there will be any clouds tomorrow?" he asks, fixing me with those sweet brown eyes.
I squeeze his hand and say, "I hope so." All of a sudden my mouth feels like it's stuffed with the corn husks crunching underneath our feet.
He smiles and looks down at our joined hands, and just like the Grinch who stole Christmas, I can feel my heart growing three sizes. "I... I would like that," he says in a soft voice, the one he usually only uses when we're cloud watching.
I'm so excited at this little turn of events that I can't contain myself any longer. I yell, "Cowabunga!" and I want to beat my chest like I'm Tarzan, but that would mean letting go of his hand, so I don't. In my Monster Truck Rally Voice I continue, "Eddie 'Spaghetti' Kaspbrak and Richie 'The Trashmouth' Tozier will be b-b-battling clouds-clouds-clouds at the quarry this Sunday-Sunday-Sunday!"
"Why do you always have to add Spaghetti to my name? Why can't you just call me Eddie? It's really not that difficult," he says, glaring at me.
"But you love it, Eds! You love it almost as much as your mom loves it when I'm pounding into her in the middle of the night. I'm surprised we haven't woken you up yet, because when we're in the throes of passion, well-"
"Ugh!" he yells before I can finish, wrenching his hand away. "You know, I like you a whole lot better when you're not being a jerk!"
He pushes past me, leaving me behind in the dying summer corn. All of a sudden the hazy sky feels like it's prickling into my skin, like I'm close to something big, but I still haven't quite gotten there yet. "You like me?!" I call after him, but he doesn't answer.
000
I make my way down to the quarry, even though it's after lunch now and I didn't get to eat anything, thanks to me flubbing up the whole spaghetti bolognese thing. Part of me is hoping that maybe Eddie wound up here too, but instead I find Ben's chubby ass sitting along the bank. "Benny the Giant!" I yell, clapping him on the back.
"Hey, Richie," he says, giving me a gentle smile. "You hungry? I packed sandwiches."
"Lawd, have mercy!" I cry, getting down on my knees before him to salaam while he watches me with amusement shining in his brown eyes. "Benny, you are the best! You got any chips? Or, like, Oreos or some shit like that?" Wooing my Eds is hungry work, after all.
He laughs and starts laying a veritable feast before me: a six-pack of orange soda, a pile of pbj sandwiches, and enough packages of junk food to the point where we could stock our own vending machine down here. Benco, I think. It could be the biggest thing in the Barrens, if only we had, you know, electricity. But that's a minor detail, am I right?
"I didn't know if anyone else would be here today, so I brought extra just in case," he says, shrugging his shoulders at me. I swear, one day they're going to nominate Ben for the fucking sainthood and I will not be surprised one bit.
I tear through the food like I'm the Tazmanian Devil, while he busies himself skipping rocks along the surface of the quarry. When he sees me sit back, patting my belly and belching, he comes back to join me.
"Where's Eddie?" he asks. "I called him last night, and he told me you guys were hanging out today. He sounded pretty excited about it, actually."
I sigh and pick up a rock, tracing it with my fingers. "Yeah, we were hanging out, but..."
"What happened? Is he okay?"
"Yeah, he's fine," I say. "It's just..."
I close my eyes for a moment, not sure what I want to say, how much I want to reveal. I'm not all that close with Ben, even though he's a sweet guy and all of that mushy junk. But maybe that's why I feel like I can trust him with this, because he and I aren't super close, you know what I mean? Like, he'll understand better than Bevvie, or Bill and Stan, because he's not right there in the middle of it. He can be more impartial, like Judge Wapner when he's presiding over The People's Court.
"I'm really confused," I confess. I shoot him an anxious glance, hoping he won't laugh at me for trying to sort through the tangle of feelings that are rushing through me like the Kenduskeag rushing through the Canal.
But St. Benny, he just slides a little closer to me, laying a hand on one of my knees. "What are you confused about?"
So I start telling him about Eddie, about how I feel. I tell him about how lately I can't stop myself from teasing Eddie even more brutally than usual, because that's the only way I know how to flirt, but he doesn't seem to like it very much anymore, and I don't know why. I tell him about the Venus fly trap I bought for Eddie with my lawn-mowing money, and how much it hurt when Eddie rejected it. I tell him about the poem I wrote, and how weird it was that Eddie got so mad about it afterwards. I tell him about what happened today at Mike's farm, how I made Eddie spaghetti bolognese, and how everything had been going great, until suddenly it wasn't again. I even tell him about Eddie's last words to me, about how he said he liked me when I wasn't a jerk, and how that just made me feel even more confused.
"I just don't get it," I say, hanging my head. "What am I doing wrong, Benny?"
He looks at me for a few moments, and I know he's thinking about everything I just said, trying to make sense of it all. "Okay," he says. "Think about it. You said you've been teasing him a lot. And he gets mad when you tease him, right?"
"Yeah, but he always gets mad. He gets mad, and then I tease him even more, but it doesn't mean anything, it's just... it's just us, kidding around. I mean, that's kind of what we do, you know?"
"Okay, but you said things are different now, right? Like, now you like him? When you didn't before."
"Right," I say. "But what does that have to do with anything?"
He sighs and squeezes my knee in what I can tell is a great show of patience. "Now all of a sudden, he doesn't want you to tease him so much. Why is that?"
I shake my head. "I dunno," I say. "I really don't. I don't fucking get any of this, Benny. I'm sorry."
"Okay, think about it this way. You said you gave him the Venus fly trap, but before that you were teasing him at lunch? 'Cause I remember that day. You were driving him crazy to the point where he was almost crying, and I could tell he wasn't playing around with you then. He was really pissed at you, but you wouldn't quit singing those stupid songs."
I just look at him without saying anything, my mind trying to put together all of the puzzle pieces Benny keeps throwing at me. He continues, "Then, what happened that day when you wrote the poem? Did you tease him at all before that?"
A lightbulb goes on over my head, and for once it isn't a broken one. "Yeah," I say, leaning forward. "Come to think of it, I did. Or he thought I was teasing, anyway. I actually wasn't though. I was telling him how cute I thought he was, and he thought I was just screwing around. He asked me something like, 'Why can't you be serious for once?' And then I launched into the poem, and afterwards he... he said I was mean and that he hated me."
"So... why would he say that?" Ben prompts me.
I pause, because even though the lightbulb is on, it's still pretty faint, like grayish light way in the back of some dusty old closet stuffed with heaps of junk. "Because... because he thought..."
"Come on, you almost have it," Ben says to encourage me. "Because he thought what?"
"Because he thought I was teasing him," I realize, the light finally shining through my admittedly dim-witted mind, at least when it comes to matters of the heart. "He didn't know I was serious. Yeah, that must be it! And that's why he got mad today when I started talking about banging his mom, and why he said..."
"He said he liked you too," Benny supplies, grinning at blushing little old me: aww, shucks. "When you aren't being a jerk, anyway."
"And that's why he's been so mad at me, because he likes me too," I realize, before launching into my Edna the Saucy Newscaster Voice. "This just in: Eddie Spaghetti wants the Trashmouth in a major way. More details at eleven."
Benny laughs and gives me a one-armed hug, but I barely notice, because all I can think is Eddie likes me, Eddie likes me, Eddie likes me over and over like a hamster spinning in a wheel. I think I know what I need to do now, how to convince him that my love is true. All I really need to do is be myself, but like, better, you know what I mean? I don't need to hide anymore behind teasing and stupid your mom jokes. And I don't need to keep trying to impress him with gifts and meals and poetry. I need to show him the true shape of me, like I did with Benny today. I need...
"I wish I could've read this poem of yours," says Ben, interrupting my thoughts. "I dabble in poetry a bit, you know."
"You do?" I say, and before I can stop myself I tell him about what happened with Beverly, and how when I asked her what to do about Eddie she ran her fingers over her lips before telling me I should try poetry...
The smile spreading across old Benny the Giant's face makes it completely worth it. After all, we all saw what happened that day down in the sewers, when he woke her up with True Love's Kiss. Even though Bill told me he kissed her too, that day when we cut our palms and made the vow to come back if It wasn't dead. And Bill's one of my best friends, and an all-around peach of a guy, don't get me wrong. I mean, he's the dude I probably look up to the most out of anyone, the best one out of all of us Losers. But I know Bevvie, and now I feel like I know Ben a little better, and I really think that one day, she's going to wake up and realize that Ben is the one for her. I think he would take real good care of her, and Bev needs that in her life: someone kind, who will be patient with her, and who will treat her like the queen she is. And I only hope that I'm around to see it when it finally happens, for both of them.
As for me, I turn my head up to the sky and I'm delighted to see a single fat, puffy cloud floating along. To me, it looks like a chance, hopefully the last one I'll need. It's risky, putting myself out there and hoping Eddie won't stomp on my heart too bad. But tomorrow when I meet him here at the quarry, I'm going to let him see me, just like this one lonely cloud, drifting along the horizon.
And I'm just going to have to hope that's enough for him.
