IT [en]

    'Y-You nuh-nuh-know,' he said, 'that sounds rih-really n-neat.'

    Beverly sighed and Stan stirred uncomfortably . . . that was all.

    'Rih-rih-really nuh-neat,' Bill repeated, looking down at his hands, and perhaps it was only the uneasy flashlight beam in Ben's hands or his own imagination, but Richie thought Bill looked a little pale and a lot scared, although he was smiling. 'Maybe we could u-use a vih-hision to tell us what to d-d-do about o-our pruh-pruh-hob-lem.'

    And if anyone has a vision, Richie thought, it will be Bill. But about that he was wrong.

    'Well,' Ben said, 'it probably only works for Indians, but it might be flippy to try it.'

    'Yeah, we'll probably all pass out from the smoke and die in here,' Stan said gloomily. That'd be really flippy, all right.'

    'You don't want to, Stan?' Eddie asked.

    'Well, I sort of do,' Stan said. He sighed. 'I think you guys are making me crazy, you know it?' He looked at Bill. 'When?'

    Bill said, 'W-Well, nun-no t-time like the puh-puh-puh-hresent, i-is there?'

    There was a startled, thoughtful silence. Then Richie got to his feet, straight-arming the trapdoor open and letting in the muted light of that still summer day.

    'I got my hatchet,' Ben said, following him out. 'Who wants to help me cut some green wood?'

    In the end they all helped.

 

 

3

 

It took them about an hour to get ready. They cut four or five armloads of small green branches, from which Ben had stripped the twigs and leaves. 'They'll smoke, all right,' he said. 'I don't even know if we'll be able to get them going.'

    Beverly and Richie went down to the bank of the Kenduskeag and brought back a collection of good-sized stones, using Eddie's jacket (his mother always made him take a jacket, even if it was eighty degrees - it might rain, Mrs Kaspbrak said, and if you have a jacket to put on, your skin won't get soaked if it does) as a makeshift sling. Carrying the rocks back to the clubhouse, Richie said: 'You can't do this, Bev. You're a girl. Ben said it was just the braves that went down in the smoke-hole, not the squaws.'

    Beverly paused, looking at Richie with mixed amusement and irritation. A lock of hair had escaped from her pony-tail; she pushed out her lower lip and blew it off her forehead.

    'I could wrestle you to a fall any day, Richie. And you know it.'

    'Dat doan mattuh, Miss Scawlett!' Richie said, popping his eyes at her. 'You is still a girl and you is always goan be a girl! You sho ain't no Injun brave!'

    'I'll be a bravette, then,' Beverly said. 'Now are we going to take these rocks back to the clubhouse or am I going to bounce a few of them off your asshole skull?'

    'Lawks-a-mussy, Miss Scawlett, I ain't got no asshole in man skull!' Richie screeched, and Beverly laughed so hard she dropped her end of Eddie's jacket and all the stones fell out. She scolded Richie all the time they were picking them up again, and Richie joked and screeched in many Voices, and thought to himself how beautiful she was.

    Although Richie had not been serious when he spoke of excluding her from the smoke-hole on the basis of her sex, Bill Denbrough apparently was.

    She stood facing him, her hands on her hips, her cheeks flushed with anger. 'You can just take that and stuff it with a long pole, Stuttering Bill! I'm in on this too, or aren't I a member of your lousy club anymore?'

    Patiently, Bill said: 'I-It's not l-like that, B-B-Bev, and y-you nun-know i-it. Somebody has to stay u-uh-up here.'

    'Why?

    Bill tried, but the roadblock was in again. He looked at Eddie for help.

    'It's what Stan said,' Eddie told her quietly. 'About the smoke. Bill says that might really happen - we could pass out down there. Then we'd die. Bill says that's what happens to most people in housefires. They don't burn up. They choke to death on the smoke. They - '

    Now she turned to Eddie. 'Well, okay. He wants somebody to stay up on top in case there's trouble?'

    Miserably, Eddie nodded.

    'Well, what about you? You're the one with the asthma.'

    Eddie said nothing. She turned back to Bill. The others stood around, hands in their pockets, looking at their sneakers.

    'It's because I'm a girl, isn't it? That's really it, isn't it?'

    'Beh-Beh-Beh-Beh - '

    'You don't have to talk,' she snapped. 'Just nod your head or shake it. Your head doesn't stutter, does it? Is it because I'm a girl?'

    Reluctantly, Bill nodded his head.

    She looked at him for a moment, her lips trembling, and Richie thought she would cry. Instead, she exploded.

    'Well, fuck you!' She whirled around to look at the others, and they flinched from her gaze, so hot it was nearly radioactive. 'Fuck all of you if you think the same thing!' She turned back to Bill and began to talk fast, rapping him with words. 'This is something more than some diddlyshit kid's game like tag or guns or hide-and-go-seek, and you know it, Bill. We're supposed to do this. That's part of it. And you're not going to cut me out just because I'm a girl. Do you understand? You better, or I'm leaving right now. And if I go, I'm gone. For good. You understand?'

    She stopped. Bill looked at her. He seemed to have regained his calm, but Richie felt afraid. He felt that any chance they had of winning, of finding a way to get to the thing that had killed Georgie Denbrough and the other kids, getting to It and killing It, was now in jeopardy. Seven, Richie thought. That's the magic number. There has to be seven of us. That's the way it's supposed to be.

    A bird sang somewhere; stopped; sang again.

    'A-A11 r-right,' Bill said, and Richie let his breath out. 'But suh-suh-somebody has to s-stay tuh-hopside. Who w-w-wants to d-do it?'

    Richie thought Eddie or Stan would surely volunteer for this duty, but Eddie said nothing. Stan stood pale and thoughtful and silent. Mike had his thumbs hooked into his belt like Steve McQueen in Wanted: Dead or Alive, nothing moving but his eyes.

    'Cuh-cuh-come o-on,' Bill said, and Richie realized that all pretense had gone out of the thing now; Bev's impassioned speech and Bill's grave, too-old face had seen to that. This was a part of it, perhaps as dangerous as the expedition he and Bill had made to the house at 29 Neibolt Street. They knew it . . . and no one was backing down. Suddenly he was very proud of them, very proud to be with them. After all the years of being counted out, he was counted in. Finally counted in. He didn't know if they were still losers or not, but he knew they were together. They were friends. Damn good friends. Richie took his glasses off and rubbed them vigorously with the tail of his shirt.

    'I know how to do it,' Bev said, and took a book of matches from her pocket. On the front, so tiny you'd need a magnifying glass to get a really good look at them, were pictures of that year's candidates for the title of Miss Rheingold. Beverly lit a match and then blew it out. She tore out six more and added the burned match. She turned away from them, and when she turned back the white ends of the seven matches poked out of her closed fist. 'Pick,' she said, holding the matches out to Bill. 'The one who picks the match with the burned head stays up here and pulls the rest out if they go flippy.'

    Bill looked at her levelly. 'Th-This is h-h-how you w-want i-it?'

    She smiled at him then, and her smile made her face radiant. 'Yeah, you big dummy, this is how I want it. What about you?'

    'I luh-luh-love you, B-B-Bev,' he said, and color rose in her cheeks like hasty flames.

    Bill did not appear to notice. He studied the match-tails sucking out of her fist, and at length he picked one. Its head was blue and unburned. She turned to Ben and offered the remaining six.

    'I love you too,' Ben said hoarsely. His face was plum-colored; he looked like he was on the verge of a stroke. But no one laughed. Somewhere deeper in the Barrens, the bird sang again. Stan would know what it was, Richie thought randomly.