It

because none of them liked to have their hands in it once it had turned pink.
At last Stanley backed away, looked at the bathroom with the critical eye of a boy in whom neatness and order are not simply ingrained but actually innate, and told them: ‘It’s the best we can do, I think.’
There were still faint traces of blood on the wallpaper to the left of the sink, where the paper was so thin and ragged that Stanley had dared do no more than blot it gently. Yet even
here the blood had been sapped of its former ominous strength; it was little more than a meaningless pastel smear.
Thank you,’ Beverly said to all of them. She could not remember ever having meant thanks so deeply. ‘Thank you all.’
‘It’s okay,’ Ben mumbled. He was of course blushing again.
‘Sure,’ Eddie agreed.
‘Let’s get these rags done,’ Stanley said. His face was set, almost stern. And later Beverly would think that perhaps only Stan realized that they had taken another step toward some unthinkable confrontation.
9
They measured out a cup of Mrs Marsh’s Tide and put it in an empty mayonnaise jar. Bev found a paper shopping bag to put the bloody rags in, and the four of them went down to the Kleen-Kloze Washateria on the corner of Main and Cony Streets. Two blocks farther up they could see the Canal gleaming a bright blue in the afternoon sun.
The Kleen-Kloze was empty except for a woman in a white nurse’s uniform who was waiting for her dryer to stop. She glanced at the four kids distrustfully and then went back to her paperback of Peyton Place.
‘Cold water,’ Ben said in a low voice. ‘My mom says you gotta wash blood in cold water.’
They dumped the rags into the washer while Stan changed his two quarters for four dimes and two nickels. He came back and watched as Bev dumped the Tide over the rags and swung the washer’s door closed. Then he plugged two dimes into the coin-op slot and twisted the start knob.
Beverly had chipped in most of the pennies she had won at pitch for the frappes, but she found four survivors deep down in the lefthand pocket of her jeans. She fished them out and offered them to Stan, who looked pained. ‘Jeez,’ he said, ‘I take a girl on a laundry date and right away she wants to go Dutch.’
Beverly laughed a little. ‘You sure?’
‘I’m sure,’ Stan said in his dry way. ‘I mean, it’s really breaking my heart to give up those four pence, Beverly, but I’m sure.’
The four of them went over to the line of plastic contour chairs against the Washateria’s cinderblock wall and sat there, not talking. The Maytag with the rags in it chugged and sloshed. Fans of suds slobbered against the thick glass of its round porthole. At first the suds were reddish. Looking at them made Bev feel a little sick, but she found it was hard to look away. The bloody foam had a gruesome sort of fascination. The lady in the nurse’s uniform glanced at them more and more often over the top of her book. She had perhaps been afraid they would be rowdy; now their very silence seemed to unnerve her. When her dryer stopped she took her clothes out, folded them, put them into a blue plastic laundry-bag and left, giving them one last puzzled look as she went out the door.
As soon as she was gone, Ben said abruptly, almost harshly: ‘You’re not alone.’
‘What?’ Beverly asked.
‘You’re not alone,’ Ben repeated. ‘You see — ‘
He stopped and looked at Eddie, who nodded. He looked at Stan, who looked unhappy . . . but who, after a moment, shrugged and also nodded.
‘What in the world are you talking about?’ Beverly asked. She was tired of people saying inexplicable things to her today. She gripped Ben’s lower arm. ‘If you know something about this, tell me!’
‘Do you want to do it?’ Ben asked Eddie.
Eddie shook his head. He took his aspirator out of his pocket and sucked in on it with a monstrous gasp.
Speaking slowly, picking his words, Ben told Beverly how he had happe n e d t o m e e t B i l l Denbrough and Eddie Kaspbrak in the Barrens on the day school let out — that was almost a week ago, as hard as that was to believe. He told her about how they had built the dam in the Barrens the following day. He told Bill’s story of how the school photograph of his dead brother had turned its head and winked. He told his own story of the mummy who had walked on the icy Canal in the dead heart of winter with balloons that floated against the wind. Beverly listened to all this with growing horror. She could feel her eyes widening, her hands and feet growing cold.
Ben stopped and looked at Eddie. Eddie took another wheezing pull on his aspirator and then told the story of the leper again, speaking as rapidly as Ben had slowly, his words tumbling over one another in their urgency to escape and be gone. He finished