It

Bill said. ‘Help me with B-B-Ben. He’s h-h-h — ‘
Richie joined him, then Stan and Mike. The four of them got Ben to his feet. Eddie had gone to Beverly and put his good arm awkwardly around her shoulders. ‘You did great,’ he said, and Beverly burst into tears.
Ben took two big staggering steps to the wall and leaned against it before he could fall over again. His head felt light. Color kept washing in and out of the world. He felt decidedly pukey.
Then Bill’s arm was around him, strong and comforting.
‘How b-b-bad ih-ih-is it, H-H-Haystack?’
Ben forced himself to look down at his stomach. He found performing two simple actions — bending his neck and spreading apart the slit in his shirt — took more courage than he had needed to enter the house in the first place. He expected to see half his insides hanging down in front of him like grotesque udders. Instead he saw that the flow of blood had slowed to a sluggish trickle. The Werewolf had slashed him long and deep, but apparently not mortally.
Richie joined them. He looked at the cut which ran a twisting course down Ben’s chest and petered out on the upper bulge of his stomach, then soberly into Ben’s face. ‘It just about had your guts for suspenders. Haystack. You know it?’
‘No fake, Jake,’ Ben said.
He and Richie stared at each other for a long, considering moment, and then they broke into hysterical giggles at the same instant, spraying each other with spittle. Richie took Ben into his arms and pounded his back. ‘We beat It, Haystack! We beat It!’
‘W-W-We dih-dih –dih –didn’t beat It,’ Bill said grimly. ‘We got l-l-lucky. Let’s g-get out b– b-before Ih-Ih-It d-d-decides to come buh-back.’
‘Where?’ Mike asked.
‘The Buh –Buh-Barrens,’ Bill said.
Beverly made her way over to them, still holding her blouse closed. Her cheeks were bright red. ‘The clubhouse?’
Bill nodded.
‘Can I have someone’s shirt?’ Beverly asked, blushing more furiously than ever. Bill glanced down at her, and the blood came into his own face, all in a rush. He turned his eyes away hastily, but in that instant Ben felt a rush of knowledge and dismal momentary jealousy. In that instant, that one bare second, Bill had become aware of her in a way that only Ben had himself been before.
The others had also looked and then looked away. Richie coughed against the back of his hand. Stan turned red. And Mike Hanlon dropped back a step or two as if actually frightened by the sideswell of that one small white breast, visible below her hand.
Beverly threw her head up, shaking her tangled hair back behind her. She was still blushing, but her face was lovely.
‘I can’t help it that I’m a girl,’ she said, ‘or that I’m starting to get big on top . . . now can’t I please have someone’s shirt?’
‘Sh-sh-sure,’ Bill said. He pulled his white –t shirt over his head, baring his narrow chest, the visible rack of his ribs, his sunburne d, freckled shoulders. ‘H-H-Here.’
‘Thank you, Bill,’ she said, and for one hot, smoking moment their eyes locked directly. Bill did not look away this time. His gaze was firm, adult.
‘W-W-W-Welcome,’ he said.
Good luck, Big Bill, Ben thought, and he turned away from that gaze. It was hurting him, hurting him in a deeper place than any Vampire or Werewolf would ever be able to reach. But all the same, there was such a thing as propriety. The word he didn’t know; on the concept he was very clear. Looking at them when they were looking at each other that way would be as wrong as looking at her breasts when she let go of the front of her blouse to pull Bill’s t-shirt over her head. If that’s the way it is. But you’ll never love her the way I do. Nev er.
Bill’s t-shirt came down almost to her knees. If not for the jeans poking out from beneath its hem, she would have looked as if she was wearing a slip.
‘L-L-Let’s guh-guh –go,’ Bill repeated. ‘I duh-don’t nun-know about you g-guys, but I’ve h-h-had ee-ee-enough for wuh-wuh-one d-day.’
Turned out they all had.
11
The passage of an hour found them in the clubhouse, both the window and the trapdoor open. It was cool inside, and the Barrens were blessedly silent that day. They sat without talking much, each lost in his or her own thoughts. Richie and Bev passed a Marlboro back and forth. Eddie took a brief snort from his aspirator. Mike sneezed several times and apologized. He said he was catching a cold.
‘Thass the oney theeng you could catch, senhorr,’ Richie said, companionably enough, and that was all.
Ben kept expecting the mad interlude in the house on Neibolt Street to take on the hues