Last month, my brother was killed at the Derry Canal Days festival. I don’t know why. But I miss him. A lot. Dean was only 10 years old, and he had just finished fourth grade when it happened. The festival was all he was talking about before we went, I seriously couldn’t get him to shut up about how excited he was. I thought it was just annoying. Now I miss how his voice filled the house, how his laughter bounced off the walls. His curly-haired little head, his wide curious eyes. How he skateboarded down the street even when mom told him he wasn’t allowed. Especially when mom told him he wasn’t allowed, because he was a little rebel. I think he got it from me. He would laugh if I told him that. I miss his laugh the most. Now everything is empty. It didn’t used to be empty, right after it happened. As expected when you lose a brother, I was confused. Depressed. Angry. But I kept everything bottled up, all my feelings, all my thoughts. People went missing in Derry all. The. Time. Maybe this would be different, and they’d actually find him. It had never happened before, but it was a nice thought. But suddenly, something grabbed that thought, crumpled it up, whacked me with it, and threw it off a cliff. They’d found him. They wouldn’t even let us see him one more time. But from what we were told… It didn’t make sense. It was like… his head was… something had bitten… “R- ri- right? Quinn?” The voice snapped me back to reality. I swerved on my bike for a second then steadied myself. “Sorry, I- What?” I glanced to my right. Riding next to me, with a single eyebrow raised in concern, was one of my best friends, Bill Denbrough. Behind him on their bikes were the others- Richie, Eddie, and Stanley. Beverly, Ben, and Mike had places to be today, so there are 3 fewer of us Losers today. We were headed down the street to the quarry- where we always went when we had nothing better to do. “I- I asked if you wanted to go check out m- mai- main.” Bill cleared up. I know he understands what it feels like. He lost his brother too, Georgie, a month or two ago. He understands how it feels to not believe he’s gone. Thing is, Georgie was never found. But we know what happened to him. It happened to him. Lured him into the storm drain. Tricked him. And then… But Dean was different. They told us they found him. It wasn’t like we saw the body, but, whatever. Main Street was where the festival was held, and after I lost Dean, me and Bill used to go there all the time to look. Just in case. We never found anything. But sometimes we still go there, just in case there’s still a chance. I want there to be a chance more than anything, and I would look for Dean forever if I could. But I knew the other Losers might not want to. They might be sick of me and Bill’s stupid nonstop brother search, which I guess was fair. For them. It wasn’t fair to me. But recently I’ve learned to stop caring about myself. “It’s fine,” I muttered, stuck on the idea of not bothering the others. “I was planning on going tomorrow anyways,” I added, just to hint at the fact that I wasn’t giving up. “To the quarry it is,” Richie yelled, circling us on his bike and then racing up ahead. “Race you, Eds- And if I win you owe me!” “Owe you what?” Eddie groaned. “You’re mom’s-” “Rich, can we go two seconds without making a mom joke?” Stan cut in. “Not really,” Richie responded, shrugging and pedaling faster so that he got an unfair head start. “HEY! You know what, have fun dying when you fall off that thing- that is so unsafe, I swear to god, you are an actual idiot, Richie, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!” Eddie shouted as Richie continued laughing while making up random tricks and dangerously riding the bike. Bill caught my eye and smirked slightly. I mouthed a silent ‘race you’ to him, and he got the message. Stan rolled his eyes, but I caught the small smile on his face as he sped up to keep up with the rest of us. I won. As soon as we got to the quarry, I jumped straight in, right off the edge. The other boys followed me shortly, most of them screaming all the way down. And you couldn’t blame them, because it was a long drop. It looked longer from the top, though. Once you got down there it wasn’t so bad. It was totally awesome to look up on the ginormous storm-cloud gray cliff that we’d just plunged off of. Plus, you were surrounded by so many other things. Especially in summer, which was when we visited the quarry the most, the trees were lush and vibrant. The water wasn’t exactly clear, but it was reflective enough, and the way the sunlight caught on it could be absolutely gorgeous. We sort of just hung out in the water for a while, until at some random time our talking and laughter died down a bit. “I wish…” I started but trailed off. I didn’t really know where I was going with it, so I just let them decide for themselves what the end of my sentence was going to be. (CONT. BELOW)
“Stuff could have been different? Stuff could be normal again? Just, stuff wasn’t what stuff is?” Stan finished for me. His expression was blank, unreadable. I hesitated for a moment then nodded, sharing a look with Bill. I guess we seemed to do that a lot. “You guys think we’re ever gonna stop It?” I asked softly but determined. “Yeah, sure. Right when Eddie gets married,” Richie snorted. Eddie glared and flipped him off. I rolled my eyes at both of them. “I’m serious, trash,” I told Richie. He shrugged. “Yeah, so am I.” “That’s a first.” This was a new voice, but a familiar one. We turned around, and standing in the trees was Beverly, smirking at us in the way that she did. I smiled back automatically because that’s just what happened when Bev was there. “Y- you m- ma- made it,” Bill pointed out. The way he looked at her probably shouldn’t have made me as jealous as it did. “Yeah, I did,” She agreed. “So did I miss anything?” Most of us shook our heads - Richie opened his mouth then shut it, deciding against making a joke. “N- not really. Me and Quinn were g- go- gonna go check Main S- street tomo- tomorrow. If you wanna- come.” Bill told her. “Good to know,” Was her only answer. Bill nodded with a small smile. I didn’t know if that meant yes or no, but for some reason, I privately kinda liked it when it was just me and Bill. Not that I didn’t want Beverly there, of course. She was still one of my best friends… never mind. I was being selfish. I was supposed to stop caring about myself, remember? Eventually, we finally decided to call it a day. I got out of the water and dried off for a few minutes - then realized it would probably be smarter to just get on my bike and get dry that way. I unlocked my bike lock and mounted the old chipped paint flat-tired rusty thing. It rode well enough. I was there alone now. The rest of the group had gone home earlier. I turned back for a second to stare at the golden sunset - one of those really rare ones, which felt like good luck somehow - inhaled the warm, sweet-smelling air deeply, then started down the crumbling poorly painted street that I knew so well, closing my eyes and letting the wind run its fingers through my neck-length, dark wavy hair. I could almost hear the wheels of Dean’s skateboard rolling along next to my bike as I pedaled. Or maybe I could-? I opened my eyes, nearly falling off my bike. No- falling off my bike. I swore as I looked down at my skinny, now scraped-up and bleeding knees. Not important. Stop caring. I looked up to where I saw the cause of my new injuries. And nearly fell down all over again. Because there was my little brother, staring back at me with his big blue confused eyes. “Quinn?”
