It

he did. Five or ten minutes later Foxy would return and the entire charade would be acted out again. Foxy didn’t quite have the guts to kick them out and they knew it.
The movies were great. The Teenage Frankenstein was suitably gross. The Teenage Werewolf was somehow scarier, though . . . perhaps because he also seemed a little sad. What had happened wasn’t his own fault. There was this hypnotist who had fucked him up, but the only reason he’d been able to was that the kid who turned into the werewolf was full of anger and bad feelings. Richie found himself wondering if there were many people in the world hiding bad feelings like that. Henry Bowers was just overflowing with bad feelings, but he sure didn’t bother hiding them.
Beverly sat between the boys, ate popcorn from their boxes, screamed, covered her eyes, sometimes laughed. When the Werewolf was stalking the girl doing exercises in the gym after school, she pressed her face against Ben’s arm, and Richie heard Ben’s gasp of surprise even over the screams of the two hundred kids below them.
The Werewolf was finally killed. In the last scene one cop solemnly told another that this should teach people not to fiddle with things best left to God. The curtain came down and the lights came up. There was applause. Richie felt totally satisfied, if a little headachy. He’d probably have to go to the eye-doctor pretty soon and get his lenses changed again. He really would be wearing Coke bottles on his eyes by the time he got to high school, he thought glumly.
Ben twitched at his sleeve. ‘They saw us, Richie,’ he said in a dry, dismayed voice.
‘Huh?’
‘Bowers and Criss. They looked up here on their way out. They saw us!’
‘Okay, okay,’ Richie said. ‘Calm down, Haystack. Just caaalm down. We’ll go out the side door. Nothing to worry about.’
They went down the stairs, Richie in the lead, Beverly in the middle, Ben bringing up the rear and looking back over his shoulder every two steps or so.
‘Have those guys really got it in for you, Ben?’ Beverly asked.
‘Yeah, I guess they do,’ Ben said. ‘I got in a fight with Henry Bowers on the last day of school.’
‘Did he beat you up?’
‘Not as much as he wanted to,’ Ben said. ‘That’s why he’s still mad, I guess.’
‘Ole Hank the Tank also lost a fair amount of skin,’ Richie murmured. ‘Or so I heard. I don’t think he was very pleased about that, either.’ He pushed open the exit door and the three of them stepped out into the alley that ran between the Aladdin and Nan’s Luncheonette. A cat which had been rooting in a garbage can hissed and ran past them down the alley, which was blocked at the far end by a board fence. The cat scrambled up and over. A trashcan lid clattered. Bev jumped, grabbed Richie’s arm, and then laughed nervously. ‘I guess I’m still scared from the movies,’ she said.
‘You won’t — ‘ Richie began.
‘Hello, fuckface,’ Henry Bowers said from behind them.
Startled, the three of them turned around. Henry, Victor, and Belch were standing at the mo uth of the alley. There were two other guys behind them.
‘Oh shit, I knew this was going to happen,’ Ben moaned.
Richie turned quickly back toward the Aladdin, but the exit door had closed behind them and there was no way to open it from the outside.
‘Say goodbye, fuckface,’ Henry said, and suddenly ran at Ben.
The things that happened next seemed to Richie both then and later like something out of a movie — such things simply did not happen in real life. In real life the little kids took their beatings, picked up their teeth and went home.
It didn’t happen that way this time.
Beverly stepped forward and to one side, almost as if she intended to meet Henry, perhaps shake his hand. Richie could hear the cleats on his boots rapping. Victor and Belch were coming after him; the other two boys stood at the mouth of the alley, guarding it.
‘Leave him alone!’ Beverly shouted. ‘Pick on someone your own size!’
‘He’s as big as a fucking Mack truck, bitch,’ Henry, no gentleman, snarled. N’ ow get out of my — ‘
Richie stuck out his foot. He didn’t think he meant to. His foot went out the same way wisecracks dangerous to his health sometimes emerged, all on their own, from his mouth. Henry ran into it and fell forward. The brick surface of the alley was slippery with spilled garbage from the overflowing cans on the luncheonette side. Henry went skidding like a shuffleboard weight.
He started to get up, his shirt blotched with coffee grounds, mud, and bits of lettuce. ‘Ohyou guys are gonna DIE!’ he screamed.
Until this moment Ben had been terrified. Now something in him snapped. He let out a roar and grabbed one of the garbage cans. For just