Chapter Text
In Eddie’s journal, which he keeps hidden underneath all of the shit in his desk because it’s actually not a journal it’s a diary , Eddie has a list. It’s completely useless and an utter waste of his time and everyone else’s time and he continues updating it like his life depends on it, because maybe it really does, maybe Eddie doesn’t exist without this list. This list, that Eddie looks at once a year every year, is compiled of the defining moments of his hopeless existence.
He doesn’t need the list because this are all things that he’s lived, the moments of his life that have moulded him into the tiny angry boy that he is. Eddie justifies himself adding onto this list as, When I die it’s something for people to remember me by, but no one wants to read the list even to remember him because again: it’s completely useless and an utter waste of time, but it’s also kind of sad and personal and Eddie would never let anyone read it anyways.
So here it is, the Four Things That Make an Eddie:
- His birth. That one is a given, and yet it’s still quite important to him; it’s the reason Eddie only has one parent who’s still alive. When he thinks about it, really thinks about it at the dead of night when the only sounds are his dad snoring in the next room over and the gentle brush of wind against his window, Eddie feels like shit. He feels guilty, even though technically speaking he didn’t consciously hurt his mother, there’s still an ache in his chest when he thinks about holding her hand anytime he crosses the street and having her tuck him in before bed every night and getting grounded by her when he doesn’t do the dishes. He has his dad, and he would never trade his dad for anyone or anything because that’s his best fucking friend who’s snoring in the other room, but sometimes when he sees Stan’s mom pat his curls with a soft smile and loving eyes his stomach hurts.
- Meeting his friends. Eddie thinks that back when the cosmos were still drawing lots and taking their sweet time creating their universe, whoever was in charge of Eddie’s future called dibs on four of the greatest fucking people ever planned, and sometimes he feels the burning urge to look at the stars and thank them. He met Bill first and even at the age of five Bill showed Eddie that the world was bigger than their shitty little town and the shitty little people- that they were just a blip on the radar of the universe. Stan came next, and with him came comfort in the fact that both of them needed to be perfectly clean for two very different reasons, and Eddie always felt a bit special when Stan held his hand because Stan trusted him. With Stan came Mike and with Mike came Ben and Eddie was complete. Mike showed Eddie that friendship was the most important thing in the world, that friends would do anything for each other because they wanted to, not because they had to. Ben was so, so smart and he loved explaining things to Eddie, telling him how bikes worked and helping them build their dam and talking Eddie through his essays. Together the five of them kept the world spinning and kept the stars out at night and the sun up during the day and it was beautiful.
- Coming out. Eddie had five people he needed to come out to, the ones that really mattered, and he thought about it for months on months. What if he ended back up at square one, alone and friendless with cuts on his knees and bruises on his cheeks from the big kids who thought he was too pretty to be a boy? Eddie cried each time he told one of his friends, first Mike and then Stan and then Bill and then Ben, and each time they held him and told him he was still the same Eddie, still their Eddie, still the loveliest person alive and still their best friend. And when Eddie managed to get the words ‘I’m gay’ out of his swollen, tear-slicked throat to his father, Frank Kaspbrak looked down at his son, his only son, and wrapped his arms around Eddie like it was the last thing he’d ever do. He told Eddie that the world would be cruel to him but that Eddie always had a safe, loving place to come home to and that he never had to pretend to be anything he wasn’t and that Eddie would always be his son.
- Graduation. Eddie’s getting a bit ahead of himself for this one because he still has four months to go and he doesn’t even really know if him flipping off Derry High in the backseat of Stan’s Honda is going to be life changing and character defining but it’s going to be one of the happiest days of Eddie’s life because that school is absolute shit. The people in it are terrible, especially to Eddie and by association his friends (even Mike who proudly wears a letterman with a big patch for the football team) but the four of them have never complained. If they’ve survived this long then they can survive another four months.
Eddie thinks that his list, which he’s decided to keep limited to four things for now, is going directly out of the window and straight into the trash because nothing will be as ‘character defining’ as finding a criminal in your closet. That’s the type of shit that only happens in movies and books and some weird kid’s dreams and now Eddie is living the actual fucking movie and book and weird kid’s dream. He’s there, in the present, staring at the curly-haired, brown-eyed criminal and he thinks Owl City was completely wrong because he’d believe seeing ten million fireflies before he believes this.
It goes something like this:
Eddie sits downstairs with his dad, both of them thrown precariously on the two couches that inhabit their living room, Eddie with his feet near his dad’s face and his head hanging off the edge of the seat, his hair dangling down and brushing on the obsessively vacuumed carpet.
“I think Stan likes Mike,” Eddie says, and it feels good to get it out. He’s been noticing things, the way Stan’s eyes linger and his fingers stray and his smiles growing brighter at the end of sentences when he notices Mike laughing. Eddie doesn’t mind, truly thinks that the two of them would be wonderfully perfect for each other, but it aches his stomach when he imagines never finding that, when he looks at the pictures of his life to see himself and two cats all alone forever. “I’m jealous. Not of Mike, because Stan is far too similar to me for anything between us to work out well, but I just… want that, you know?”
Frank hums softly, and his fingers close gently around Eddie’s ankles before he’s pushing Eddie’s feet away from his face. Eddie laughs and it hurts because all of his organs are hanging flipped completely around in his body but it feels good , and it makes the vise-like grip of sadness around his heart loosen slightly, letting his heart breathe.
“It’s hard to find that in this town,” Frank finally replies, his voice soft like it always is, comforting and warm like a hug, like a kiss on the top of Eddie’s head or smile saved specially for him. “I didn’t even find it here, and my dating pool is much larger than yours. This place sucks, sweetheart, but I promise as soon as you get out of here you’ll find it. You’ll find him.”
Eddie smiles at the cracks in his ceiling and holds his hand out for his dad. Their fingers intertwine awkwardly due to the weird placements of their bodies on the couch but it makes Eddie feel less alone, makes him comfortable enough to ask his next words, “Was mom the one for you?”
Frank has told Eddie everything he ever wanted to know about his mom, from the exact color of her hair to what Frank sees in Eddie that he saw in Eddie’s mom (his big brown eyes, his small ears, the way his nose slopes daintily, the freckles that dot his skin everywhere, the way his laugh warms up a room and steals hearts, how he’s not afraid to cry). This time is no exception.
“She was. I loved her more than I ever loved anything before, and I didn’t think I could love anything or anyone that much after I lost her. But then I saw you and and watched you grow up and now I can’t imagine a life without you.” Frank’s voice is softer than Eddie has ever heard it, teasing on the line of a whisper, like he can’t bear to bear to bring it any higher or it’ll hurt too much. Eddie’s glad for it because he thinks that it would hurt him, too, but this way he can let the words creep on him so slowly that it doesn’t burn when he swallows them down.
Eddie doesn’t want to sit up and show his dad the tears that are gathering so he stays exactly where he is when he says, “I’m sorry.”
Frank, apparently, doesn’t get the memo because he uses his grip on Eddie’s fingers to tug Eddie up, Eddie’s feet sliding down from the top of the couch until they’re perfectly criss-crossed beneath him. Frank does what any good dad would do and he brushes away Eddie’s tears and pulls him into a crushing hug, his arms squeezing Eddie into his chest. “Don’t apologize for that ever again. I wouldn’t give you up for the world, love. Now stop being sad and making me sad. Tell me about the rest of your day.”
And Eddie did.
That brings him to now, his door shut firmly behind him, the window wide open and his heart actively climbing up his throat, a scream rising in his chest and-
“Please don’t scream! I’ll explain everything if you don’t scream, I promise.”
There’s no book on whether or not Eddie should listen to a criminal, but there’s also common sense and Eddie finds that he is strongly lacking in that area because he does listen. He keeps his mouth firmly clamped shut, and maybe it’s because he’s too scared to open it, to blink, to breathe, his fingers hanging limply by his thighs. The room is cold because of the open window and Eddie feels a shiver beginning at the base of his spine but he refuses to move.
“Okay, thank you,” the guy says, and his hands which were held up in front of his face fall down to his sides. He doesn’t look too much like a criminal, wearing simple dark denim jeans and a t-shirt for an Indie band Eddie has never cared to look into. His hair is all over the place and his eyes are big and wild and he’s got a gun on his hip. “I’m just waiting here until my friend gets back. I won’t hurt your or anyone else if you just let me go.”
Eddie wants to take his middle finger and shove it down that guy’s throat but then he remembers the gun, big and bulky in the waistband of his jeans, and Eddie curls his hand up into a fist. “You robbed the bank, right? I heard about it on the news. They said that you were high-risk. To call the police if we even saw someone who matched your description even a little bit.”
“That’s flattering,” the guy says and the police don’t know his name, don’t know the complete details of his face but Eddie knows. He knows this is him, knows that he has big ears and big teeth and freckles and big glasses and long limbs and curly brown hair and big, big brown eyes. “You don’t need to worry about that. I said I was going to let you go, didn’t I?”
“I have a hunch that you’re lying,” Eddie replies and when he sees the slow grin grow on the guy’s face he knows that he’s right. He’s not going to see his graduation, not ever going to see Stan and Mike finally get together, not going to watch Bill’s little brother make it all the way to high school. “Before you shoot me, at least let me leave my friends a note.”
The criminal- Eddie hates saying this in his mind because it makes it all too real, makes his stomach churn and tie up in knots- laughs, like he’s just heard the funniest joke ever told. Unless he can get a glimpse into Eddie’s mind and sees that Eddie is just shy of two seconds away from pissing himself, Eddie doesn’t see what’s so fucking funny.
“You think I’m going to shoot you? This is purely decoration, dear. You can leave a note, though. You’re coming with me, got it? Get clothes, or whatever you might need. You have five minutes and then we’re leaving.”
There should be some relief in the fact that he isn’t going to die, but Eddie can’t seem to find this arrangement any better. He could die, that much is sure. He’s going to be used as a barter with the police, “promise to let me go if I give you the tiny gay man unharmed!”, and for some reason that makes Eddie’s eyes well with tears. Rather than letting him fall, he snatches a few pieces of paper from his desk and a pen, and gets to work.
Dear dad,
It’s me. Eddie. Anyways, I’m being taken hostage. Getting straight to the point so I can ramble for the next four minutes (I’m on a time limit). I have a strong feeling that this event is going to be the last chapter in my book of life, or whatever, and I’m not happy with these turn of events, but what can you do? I know you told me to not be sad because it makes you sad, but I think that the both of us are going to be sad for a long while after I write this, so why not just do it myself? I’m so sorry that you lost mom and that you’re going to be losing me. This world is incredibly selfish, and I hate that you have to be the one who suffers its greed. Mom loved you, I know she did, and so do I. You’ve been the greatest father to me and I can’t help but think that as long as I got to spend eighteen years with you I’d choose this ending to my story every time. You always tell me what an amazing person you think I am and I hope you know that’s all because of you. I learned to be kind through you and I learned to love through you. How fucking cheesy is that, right? But it’s the truth. Eddie Kaspbrak wouldn’t be Eddie Kaspbrak without good old Frank. Thank you, so, so much for always being there for me. Through absolutely everything. Thank you.
This next part is for my friends, and you can read it if you want, but honestly I suggest you don’t because it’ll just make you sadder.
To Bill: my oldest, closest friend. Thank you for everything you’ve given me. I can’t imagine what I would do if I didn’t grow up with you by my side. You were my sexual awakening (surprise!) and even though it’s weird to think about it now, but at the time your weird lips were all I could think about. I think back to them and I guess I can understand it. It wasn’t your lips that really made me like you, though. It’s your big, stupid, kind heart. You’re one of the most loving people I’ve ever met and sometimes I sit in my bed and cry because what the fuck did I do to deserve you? But then you call me when you’re sad or when you get in a fight with one of the other friends and I remember that the reason I deserve you is because you think that I do. Thank you so much, Bill. I love you, more than you’ll know. And I’m sorry for getting taken hostage before graduation (this is for all four of you!) because I know everyone was really looking forward to it.
To Stan: my sweet, frail, bird loving angel. Do you remember when you took me bird watching with you and you let me braid flowers into your hair and hold your hand and draw on your hands? That remains one of the happiest days of my life, and I hope it’s one of yours, too. We’ve always been similar in some ways, but I cherish those differences that we have. Finding new things about you that I wish I had is one of my favorite past times. Strange that I would never say these things to your face because you and I just aren’t like that, but right now I would pay to see you one last time and tell you all of these things. I hate that I held them all in, because you deserve to know how much you mean to me and to all of us. You’re a star, Stanley Uris. I love you.
Eddie nearly leaps from his skin when Richie’s voice fills the room softly, telling Eddie that he’s only got two more minutes. Richie’s whispering and he sounds sad and Eddie refuses to turn around to see if he looks guilty, because he doesn’t want any reason to believe that this man taking him away from his friends and his dad has any capacity to feel guilt.
To Mike:
Eddie’s handwriting is sloppy and mildly illegible but his hands are shaking so bad that he can barely keep the pen from slipping out of his fingers. The tears are falling from his eyes in a steady stream and some of the words on the page are getting blurry and faded and he wishes that he was stronger than this.
I can barely even think right now, Mike, so I hope you know that what I’m writing I feel times ten, okay? I could write a billion pages for you but I only have two more minutes and a billion pages would definitely take longer than that. I always used to wonder why you stayed with us. You could’ve easily hung out with the other football boys and forgot about us, maybe even taken Ben or Bill with you and left Stan and I in the dust. You never did. You wore your letterman, you played your games, you blew all four of us a kiss in the bleachers every single game and you never left. Even after you would get home bloody and beaten and hurting, you never left. I am so grateful for your friendship, Mike, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I love you so very much.
To Ben: last but absolutely least. (I’m kidding, haha, please be laughing.) You found consolation in books and I’m so happy that you shared that with me. You’re the sweetest human being I think I’ve ever met, and I just know that you’re going to do something so amazing with the world in the future. Not only did you help me with anything I ever asked you to, you gave me so much more than that. You have always been completely selfless; remember when I sat in your bedroom and cried because I didn’t have a mom and you promised to share yours with me? You said that you would be my brother and that anytime I needed a mom to hold my hand or tell me that I’m doing good, that I could come stay at your house. I think about that a lot, and anytime I’m a bit sad I just remember that you love me so much. I love you just as much, Ben.
Bye everyone. Please put me on the news. There’s not many people who look me. I love you all so much. And if I don’t come back, look in the top drawer of my desk underneath all of my papers. I put my journal (diary) in there, and I want you all to read it. Just don't publish it anywhere because that's personal stuff.
Love, Eddie.
Eddie’s fingers are cramping and his eyes burn from where he’s been holding them open so he could see through the fuzz of tears to write. He thinks that maybe he can hear the criminal moving around behind him, but the rush of blood in his ears is so loud that it echos through his brain and he can’t hear anything but that. He can feel himself breathing, can feel the warmth of tears as they track down his cheeks, can feel the pen in his hand and the papers beneath his fingers but he’s not there. He’s a million miles away somewhere lost inside his head where everything is okay.
“Kid? Hey, I need you breathing with me, can you do that?”
Eddie can feel his throat closing around the air that’s escaping his lungs, trying to catch it and trying to swallow it down and failing miserably. His hand drops the pen and he searches beneath the strewn books and spirals and loose-leaf papers that have halfway started notes Eddie thought looked too messy, and his fingers close around his inhaler. His asthma was a lot worse as a kid, a side affect of his complicated birth, but sometimes when his brain moves faster than his body everything gets jumbled up and his lungs constrict.
He takes two dizzying puffs of his inhaler, his free hand clenching at the loose fabric of his sweatpants to keep himself there , in the moment, before his brain slows down and his lungs catch up and his eyes find the criminal standing above him, a bag clutched loosely in his hand.
“Is that my bag?” Eddie asks, pointing at the little red bag he used to carry around in sixth grade. “You’re going to rob me, too? I find that to be excessive and unfair.”
The criminal looks surprised for a moment, his eyes widening comically large where they’re already magnified behind his glasses, but he smiles and Eddie hates him even more. “I packed some of your clothes. I don’t have much to share and I figure you won’t want to share with my friend.”
“Is it time to go?” Eddie knows the answer and it still makes his stomach ache when the guy nods, and he does look guilty, like he’d much rather leave Eddie there. Eddie wants to beg, wants to get on his knees and beg and plead but he knows that it will amount to him losing the few bits of dignity he plants to cart through the rest of this experience.
Eddie stands from his seat, wiping at the stray tears on his cheeks, his fingers shaking relentlessly against his skin. He takes one last glance at his room, at the unmade green and blue sheets on his bed, at the little pile of clothes in the corner of his room, at the polaroid pictures of him and Bill and Ben and Mike and him and Stan and Mike and Stan and all of them wrapped up in each other, at the framed photo of him and his dad bent over the front side of a car with grease up and down their arms, and he sends it one last goodbye.
“I’m going to climb down and then I’ll tell you how to get down,” the criminal says, and he’s speaking softly, like he’s afraid Eddie is going to explode or implode or melt into a puddle of blood on the floor.
“I know how to get down. This is my house, in case you forgot.”
Eddie swings his leg out of the window and slides down the side of his house until his feet catch on the dip in the side of his house, his fingers letting go as soon as he gathers enough nerve to leap to the ground. It’s a short fall and the bushes catch him but he still feels like he’s falling, feels like he’s never going to find solid ground again.
He stumbles when he pulls himself through the grass and onto his driveway, and it would be so easy to run down the street where the lampposts sit without light, to run and hide behind someone’s roses until the sun comes back up and his fingers stop shaking and the criminal is behind bars with an orange jumpsuit and a busted lip and bruises on his stupid fucking face. But Eddie can hear the sound of the criminal landing in the bushes and the moment is gone, blown away with the icy wind and he stares at the sky and tries to pretend he’s somewhere else.
“Are you ever going to tell me your name?” Eddie asks and he turns to see the criminal with Eddie’s bag slung over his shoulder, his glasses glinting with the silver moon. He seems even taller outside of Eddie’s room, like the lights had hunched his shoulder and bent his knees but now he’s standing at full height, looking down at Eddie with his head bent almost completely down.
The criminal nods, “Sure. It’s Richie. Your turn.”
Eddie shakes his head, and the wind tangles in his hair when he does so, brushing along the hot skin of his cheeks and making him feel cold. “I don’t think so. You can know my name when you let me go. Sound like a plan, Richie?”
“I… I guess that’s only fair. Come on, the car’s this way,” Richie says. He starts walking and Eddie follows slowly, his body still full of something similar to fear. All he could ever think about for so long was finally getting to tell Derry goodbye, to find a better place for himself and his friends and yet now that it's happening, he doesn’t want to leave. He doesn’t want to forget the quarry where he first met Mike, or the creek where he first met Ben, or the meadow with the flowers and Stan’s favorite birds, or the bridge where him and Bill carved their names when they turned twelve.
Eddie wraps his arms tightly around himself, trying to hold himself together, trying to keep the pain at bay, trying to hold in the tears that are burning at the back of his eyes. “Where are we going to go?”
Richie hums and he seems completely at ease, like he’s not all over the news, like there aren’t police looking for him right now, like he’s not taking Eddie for hostage. “I haven’t decided yet. We’ll find somewhere.”
Eddie swallows his tears and stays silent. He takes in the things that he never cared to notice on his street: Stan’s house, which is three down from Eddie’s, has a blue door that’s so uncommon it makes Eddie smile; Mrs. Allen’s garden has zinnias and marigolds and pinks and blues and yellows and reds and Eddie’s always wanted to learn how to garden; the tree where Bill got stuck for a full four hours, his feet dangling high above the ground while Eddie and Stan had to wait for their parents to get home.
“Here we are. Do you get car sick?”
Eddie blinks up at Richie because it’s oddly out of character for a bank robber with a gun on his hip to care if Eddie gets car sick or not. “Yes, on long trips,” Eddie replies because he doesn’t want to ask why Richie is just a jumbled up glob of mixed signals that he can’t begin to understand.
Richie nods and tugs the passenger seat door open, the person in the car squealing at the sudden sound and burst of light. “You can take front.”
Eddie stares back at Richie while the person in the car says who can take front?, because he thinks that him getting in this car is breaking some sort of code. Eddie will take that opening if it’s offered and go home to rip up that sad, pleading letter and throw it down the toilet. While he’s at it, he’ll even throw away his fucking diary if it’ll keep him out of harms way and in this shitty little town.
But that doesn’t happen because Richie bends down and whispers back and forth with whoever is in the driver’s seat. All Eddie catches is an exclamation of ‘what the fuck, Richie!’ before he’s being pushed gently into the seat, the door shut tightly behind him when all of his body is inside the car.
He’s surprised to see a very pretty girl blinking back at him. She has fiery red hair and big blue eyes and freckles dusting her cheeks and her nose. Eddie thought that criminals are all supposed to be old and ugly and rude but the girl smiles softly at him like she knows every little thought playing through Eddie’s head and she wants him to be happy.
“I’m Beverly,” she says, and she holds out her hand for him to shake. Her nails are painted a pale yellow and her skin his paler than Richie’s, made even more translucent with the presence of the moonlight.
It’s warm in the car and it’s just the two of them for right now so Eddie feels comfortable replying, “I’m Eddie. Don’t tell Richie that, though.”
Beverly smiles again like she understands, and Eddie wants to ask if she really does because he doesn’t even understand, doesn’t get why he’s in the front seat of a car that belongs to two criminals with his heart in his throat and his stomach full of tears. He can breathe but it hurts and he’s blinking away the water in his eyes as he clicks on his seatbelt and sits to watch Derry pass through the window like a blur.