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beverly

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It was just over a month I had been in Darrow now and while I didn't think it was fair to say I was easily settling in, I also didn't think it would be fair to say I wasn't.

It was an entirely different world from the one I was used to. I barely remembered London and what it was like to live there, although the longer I spent away from Peter, the more memories returned to me. I could see my mother's smile now, which was a far cry from just barely being able to hear the song she used to sing to me. I could also remember the fear in her eyes when my father came home from the pub, drunk and angry. But besides that, London seemed like a dream that had happened to someone else.

Peter's Island was my basis for comparison. And while there were strange things here, there were no mermaids, none of the Many-Eyed, and no pirates. It seemed like there might be fairies, but they weren't the traditional kind, the ones who had conspired with Peter. The ones whose homes I'd inadvertently burned to the ground. Darrow was less strange for me. Or it was strange in different ways and I thought I was still adjusting.

I liked the people I had met. Most of them, anyway. They were generally kind and meant well, even if the grown ups working at the Children's Home seemed to have too many responsibilities and not enough time. They tried, which was more than I had honestly expected, except for one of the volunteers I just didn't like. I felt like he looked too long at the girls, maybe even sometimes at me and Eddie, but I didn't know what to say about it, so for now I was just watching.

That the grown ups were so busy usually meant it was easy to sneak out, especially since Beverly had shown me how. I couldn't sleep tonight and so I left Eddie asleep in his bed and walked silently down the hall. Peter's Island may not have been the sort of place I wanted to return, but I had learned many things there, things that could still work to my benefit here. Sneaking out wasn't very difficult at all and soon I was standing out on the sidewalk with my face turned up toward the sky.

The night was still hot. Muggy. It wasn't that late, there were still grown ups out, walking to and from bars, laughing and holding hands. I watched curiously as a woman leaned into her partner, whispering in his ear, and he laughed and then spun them around to head in a different direction. Another couple, both of them men, were talking quietly and sincerely as they walked, but I didn't think they were angry. I thought maybe they were just... comfortable.

It was all so normal here. Liking boys, liking girls. I had no idea what I felt about any of it, but as long as I was thinking about Sal, I supposed it didn't really matter.

I hadn't thought to move on from standing right out in front of the Children's Home and it only occurred to me as I realized someone was approaching from behind, that standing here and gawking at people was the best way to get caught. I braced myself, expecting one of the staff to grab me by the shoulder and drag me back in to bed.

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Gradually, she's been spending less and less time here. She's still careful about it, of course, not wanting to ruin a good thing at Hopper's by overstaying her welcome, but Beverly can't pretend that the Home doesn't make her uneasy. She times her showers so she won't have to do so while she's staying here; she still hears things, sees things, though by now that all seems to be dismissed as normal, at least as far as she can tell. What was once unnerving is now something to get used to. The staff is bothered, or she's pretty sure they are, but there isn't anything they can do, so it continues. And she would much rather sleep somewhere she feels safe than keeping one eye open because she doesn't know what might happen.

On nights like this, then, especially without school in the morning to worry about, she likes to sneak out and smoke, or just wander around. A few times, she's even gone out to the boardwalk, quiet at this hour, everything closed. Back home, she spent nearly all of her free time outdoors. It isn't as if they keep her cooped up in the Home, but it still doesn't feel quite the same, so she might as well enjoy of it what she can.

She isn't expecting to see anyone out front, but with that being the case, she isn't surprised that it's Jamie, smiling as she walks towards him. "Relax, it's just me," she says, keeping her voice pitched low, though the odds of being heard from out here seem incredibly slim. "You gonna keep staring or do you want to get out of here?"

I relaxed when I heard Beverly’s voice and turned to look at her, a little smile at the corners of my mouth. She looked as pretty as always, but I couldn’t just say something like that, not when it felt stupid, like something obvious and well known, something only a dumb boy who was trying to impress her would say.

I was her friend. I thought that was probably better.

Being in Darrow was an odd thing. Confusing. I thought about Sal all the time, thought about how I had wanted to grow up with her, thought about our plans to return to London and take care of all the Lost Boys we could find. But then I thought about Beverly, too, and how pretty her red hair was. Or sometimes I thought about Eddie, which was weird and even more stupid.

“Okay,” I said when she asks if I want to get out of here. “I don’t even know why I snuck out. Just… just because.”

Because I could. Because she taught me how. Because the home felt a little odd at times. Because sometimes I just couldn’t sleep and would lie awake and think of Sal, not how she’d looked when we were making our plans to run away, but how she’d looked after. After Peter was done with her. After she was only just bloody bits and pieces I was forced to collect and bury.

"I know what you mean," Beverly says, nodding. This isn't like home; she isn't running from something specific. There's plenty with which to be uncomfortable within the walls of the Home, but she has at least been largely safe there, or safe from the other people who live and work there. Even so, even on the nights she does spend there, sometimes she just can't bear to stay still, too confined and too worried about what might be lurking in the walls. Besides, it's nice to know that she can, to test any possible escape routes in case it ever does become a necessity. It might well be important one day, being able to get out unnoticed.

"Come on," she adds, beckoning towards the corner. "Where do you wanna go?" She's not really picky, content enough just to wander, but it's still nice to have this kind of freedom.

"I have no idea," I admitted as I fell in step beside Beverly, following her toward the corner. I still didn't know everything Darrow had to offer, nor did I understand what was available at all times. On the Island, we did whatever we wanted whenever we wanted to do it, but Darrow had stores and activities like we had never seen on the Island. Manned by people. People who needed to sleep and have time to rest without worrying about work.

So I didn't even know what was available in Darrow at night.

"Where do you normally go when you sneak out?" I asked. It seemed like Beverly knew a lot more than I ever would and I wasn't too proud to default to her superior knowledge. Some boys would be. Peter would have been. He would have hated Beverly for no real reason at all.

"It depends," Beverly says, shrugging. "Sometimes I just wander around. Or go out to the boardwalk, it's really nice out by the beach at night." It's cooler, less crowded, which makes it seem kind of beautiful in a way it usually doesn't in the daytime. Mostly, though, she just likes being able to get out, partly because it's reassuring to know that she's able to. Where she goes is less important than that she does. "We could go out that way? Or just see where we wind up."

She's not really used to having company at times like this, but it's kind of nice, too. Before last summer, back home, she wasn't used to having friends at all. That's just one more way in which Darrow is nothing like Derry, which she definitely thinks is a good thing.

"Okay," I agreed and I didn't want to seem too eager, because I knew that wasn't cool -- which was an odd word, but I knew now what it meant -- and I didn't think Beverly would care, but I also wanted her to like me. I still wasn't over her hair, or the way she looked when she smiled, but I'd heard from Eddie she was dating some other boy.

That was okay. I was still confused over my own feelings about Sal. And Eddie. I really just wanted to be Beverly's friend.

"I'm not used to having to stay anywhere," I admitted as we walked. "I used to leave the tree all the time at night. I didn't sleep very well. I guess I still don't."

"I don't blame you," Beverly says with a small, just slightly wry smile. The Home isn't such a bad place, but she's witnessed far too much that's creepy there for her to begrudge anyone coming from any circumstances having trouble sleeping there. If he already didn't, then that just seems like all the more reason for it. She's used to being too tense and alert; she can't quite claim that she's never slept well, but she knows the feeling well enough anyway. "It's a lot. I wouldn't just suddenly start sleeping well there, either."

If anything, she thinks it helps a little, getting out like this. She feels better when she goes back, freer, more relaxed. That alone would make it worthwhile. That, and the reassurance of knowing that she could get out if it ever became necessary.

I was quiet for a little while as we walked and some of the grown ups looked at us as we passed by, some gave us a bit of space, as if they expected us to bite, and I knew we were the only kids out at this time, but I also didn't understand why that was so unusual. I had learned the school schedule, I knew it was summer, and I would have thought lots of kids would have taken the opportunity to stay out late.

But then I realized, those other children had parents. People to make sure they came home and ate dinner and went to bed.

"What were your parents like?" I asked suddenly. I could barely remember mine, but I liked hearing about others. Just because Beverly was in the Home now didn't mean she would have always been. Maybe her home before Darrow had been like all the other kids who were now safe in bed.

Though she knows he wouldn't be asking if he knew what an unpleasant subject it is for her, though she doesn't even mind saying as much, at least in vague terms, Beverly still pales a little at the question, her mouth pressing into a thin line. There are people now who know more than she ever expected to tell anyone. Some of the bullshit happening in the Home made that inevitable. It hasn't made a difference, either, or it doesn't seem to have. Eddie doesn't look at her any differently, or Eponine. Still, it's hard not to worry, not to wonder. Whatever she says, there's no taking it back. It's maybe not as much of a weight as the knowledge of what she left behind in the first place, but it's still not one she likes.

"It was just me and my dad," she says, her voice soft, a little distant, as she shrugs. "He wasn't... very nice. I was moving away, actually, before I got here."

"Oh," I said. "I'm sorry."

I was sorry her father wasn't nice and that I'd brought it up at all, although I wasn't sorry to hear she had been in the process of getting away from him. If he wasn't nice, then he didn't deserve to be able to take care of her, because Beverly was nice and she deserved someone who was kind to her in return.

"My father wasn't nice either," I offered. I had asked, after all, and I had brought up potentially painful memories. The least I owed her now was some information about my parents. "He liked to go to the pubs after work and he would get drunk and hurt my mother. We were going to run away from him with the money I made working for the book binder."

It isn't like it's nice to hear, but it does make Beverly feel a little more comfortable with the subject, knowing that he had a hard time at home, too. Not everyone gets it, or they'd just pity her, and she doesn't need pity or confusion, someone insisting that no one could possibly do that to their own child. People do. She isn't the only one who's been through that. Glancing over at Jamie, she takes a deep breath, nodding in understanding before she continues. He's told her something personal. She can trust him with the same.

"I'm sorry, too," she says, completely sincere. There's not much else to say to something like that, no way to change what happened or make it better. "It's... hard. When you don't feel safe where you're supposed to." She swallows hard. "Mine used to, um. Touch me? And then I hit him over the head with the toilet tank cover."

I knew I wasn't supposed to laugh, because it wasn't at all a funny story, but Beverly said she had hit her father with the toilet tank cover and I imagined it, pictured it in my mind, Beverly hitting a grown man, and it was funny. A little bit. It was funny in a satisfying way, because she said he used to touch her and I knew she didn't mean in a good way. I was only just now beginning to understand things like that, but I did understand, at least enough to know it was better for her not to be anywhere near her father.

"The toilet tank cover is heavy," I said approvingly. "I hope it hurt him permanently."

I didn't know what happened to my father. I supposed he was dead, given the time difference between then and now. But I didn't know if he lived out the rest of his life happily -- as happily as a man like him could -- or if he missed us enough that it hurt him. Maybe he had even been taken to jail for killing my mother.

"It was pretty heavy," Beverly says, letting out a quiet laugh despite herself, though her expression grows a bit more serious a moment later. "And yeah. I hope so, too." She remembers all the blood, even now, and the perverse satisfaction — the goddamn relief — in that. If she'd had to stay, it would probably have been a tossup as to what happened, whether he'd be scared off enough to leave her alone or try to make her pay for it, but at least that doesn't matter now. She's a long way from home, and she was getting out of Derry anyway. He'll never get to put his hands on her again.

"I guess that's part of why I don't mind it here," she adds, shrugging. "It's weird, but it feels safe."

"I understand that," I said, even though I had been afraid of someone much smaller than Beverly's father. Smaller and much more indirect in his wickedness, but like Beverly's father, someone I had thought I could trust with my life, someone I expected to love me unconditionally.

"I like it here, too," I told her. "Peter, he's the one who took me to the Island, he turned out to be so... so awful. Being here means I don't have to be around him anymore and it means I get to grow up."

Once I hadn't thought so highly of growing up, but the more time I spent with Peter, the more I realized it wasn't so bad after all.

"It kinda makes it easier, doesn't it?" Beverly asks, just a little hesitant as she glances over at him. "Not... not dealing with something like that, obviously, but I've heard some people talk about how hard it is to be here and how much they miss where they were before, and I just... don't." She misses some of the people, sure, the few friends she made over that last summer, but she was leaving home anyway, already preparing not to see them again, at least not for a long time. Here, she has Eddie, she has Hopper, she has a handful of other friends she's made, and no matter what weird shit happens, she's safe. That goes a long way.

"So, wait, were you really not going to grow up before?" It's hard not to think of certain old stories upon hearing that, especially with his mentioning someone named Peter, but she doesn't think she should jump to conclusions about it.

"Well," I said, pausing to consider it. "I'm not so sure anymore. When Peter took me from London, it was a very long time ago, and I was only eight years old. I think I might be around fifteen or sixteen now, but I spent much more than eight years on his Island. It was... I'm not sure exactly. Probably closer to thirty or forty years."

But I wasn't thirty or forty years old. I was pretty clearly around sixteen. Just as I had pretty clearly been somewhere around twelve in the months before coming to Darrow, and eight for years before that.

"But the more I started to realize how cruel Peter was, how little he truly cared for his boys, the more I started to grow up," I continued. "I think I might have grown up all the way if I had stayed there instead of coming here and I think if I did that I would have had to go join the pirates." There was nowhere else for a man on Peter's Island. And there was no way to get back home.

There's no getting around it then, the pieces of what he's said fitting together in such a way that it's impossible to ignore. Peter, an island, kids not aging, pirates — granted, she doesn't remember Peter Pan in the Disney movie ever being cruel to the other children, but he had been pretty obnoxious, as she recalls. Maybe it was just different for Jamie. That seems to happen here often enough. Hell, it's not like she can find anything too strange about it when she's dating someone whom she's pretty sure is also a character from comic books.

"Holy shit," she says, huffing out a short laugh. "Thirty or forty years? That's a long time. I can't imagine." She would have been forty if she'd had to go back to Derry like they promised. The thought is a strange, sudden one, nearly incomprehensible, but she keeps her focus on Jamie to try to keep any surprise from showing.

"It didn't seem so long then," I admitted. "But now, looking back, it feels as if it were much longer."

I could see all the horrible things Peter had done. The way he'd treated the other boys with so little care, so little respect. They were nothing to him, nothing beyond simple playthings, toys to be discarded when he grew weary of them. I couldn't even begin to tell her how many boys I had buried on that Island, boys whose names Peter had forgotten the instant they had died. I remembered them all. I was the only one to mourn them.

"Sometimes I feel very old," I said, looking at the ground. "But also like there are so many things I've never seen or experienced. There was a girl on the Island, only I didn't know she was a girl at first, and I thought- I felt-" I paused and huffed out an irritated breath. I was annoyed with myself, with my inability to say what I meant. I had never been so hesitant before. "And now there's Eddie. And I feel as if I don't understand anything at all."

Grinning seems like very much the wrong response to that, but as soon as he mentions Eddie, it's hard to help. Beverly looks over at him with a knowing sort of expression, eyes bright, not quite teasing. She doesn't want to make too much of it, doesn't want to make him feel awkward or anything like that, but she can't entirely help it. Eddie is her best friend, practically family, and she knows how far he's come these last few months. She's come to really like Jamie, too. And if there's anywhere to talk about something like this, she thinks it's here, out on the quiet streets in the middle of the night, where no one is paying attention to or likely to overhear them. They're out in the open, and yet there's something kind of wonderfully private, peaceful about it.

"Do you like him?" she asks, a little conspiratorial. "Eddie, I mean?"

"Yes," I said, the answer out before I had a chance to consider what I was saying and who I was saying it to. I knew Beverly was Eddie's best friend. All I could do was hope she wouldn't tell him. "I mean, I think I do. There's so much I don't know anymore."

No one here cared if I could kill a Many-Eyed or that I used to swim out into the ocean, silent as night, and crawl up the side of the pirate ship to catch them by surprise. No one here wanted me to snare rabbits or help them skin a deer. All the things I knew were less important and all the things I didn't know seemed to have so much more meaning. Crushes and the like had never mattered on the Island, because we were so young and all of us boys and it wasn't until Sal's arrival and my own growing up that I'd even realized such feelings could exist.

And now I felt hopeless. Like a fool. Eddie was my friend, but I knew, even if I couldn't admit it, that I liked him in the same way I'd liked Sal.

"I mean, I don't want to speak for him, obviously," Beverly says, "but I think there's a lot he doesn't know, too. Or that he's just figuring out." She's hardly about to out Eddie to Jamie if Jamie doesn't know, but she knows what a big deal Eddie's realizing he likes boys was. Besides, it's not like he has any more experience than she does. She's been clueless herself, even while starting to date someone. She doesn't think there's really any sort of guidebook to such things. While maybe there's no way to gauge who might or might not like each other, she couldn't possibly be discouraging of something like this.

"And I can promise you that Eddie is one of the best people I've ever known. He's... pretty much like family."

I would have thought Eddie was one of the best people I'd ever known even without hearing it from Beverly, but it was nice, knowing she thought so, too. Of course they had history together, a friendship from home I didn't know that much about except that they'd hung out together at the quarry. Beverly knew him so much better than I did.

"He's really easy to talk to," I admitted, looking down at my shoes as we walked. I couldn't look at Beverly and say any of this. Already my cheeks were so red they felt like they were on fire and I reached up to rub my face with my palm. "Being around him just- it makes me feel happy."

My next words were practically a whisper, but I made myself say them out loud for the first time. "And I like how he looks."

"He is pretty cute, isn't he?" Beverly agrees, with a friendly, casual sort of objectiveness, stating a fact that she has no real stake in herself. She loves Eddie dearly — loves all the Losers, really — but she's never thought about him in anything other than a platonic sense, even before he told her he liked boys. Still, it's not difficult at all to see why Jamie would think that. For that matter, she could say the same about him, too, all the more reason to think that it could be a really good thing if anything does come of this crush of Jamie's. It's hard not to be protective, just a little, but she likes Jamie enough for that not to be so much of a concern.

Teasing, she adds, "Well, you know, if you need someone to put in a good word for you..."

I thought he was more than just cute. I thought about his freckles and how dark his eyes were, how expressive he was, and the way his eyebrows arched when someone said something he didn't quite believe. But I only swallowed, my throat clicking dryly, and nodded in response. Cute didn't really cover all the ways I felt about Eddie, the way being around him made my heart leap into my throat, but I would accept it.

"Oh no," I said, horrified by the idea of Beverly and Eddie talking about me. Maybe they would anyway, maybe I couldn't stop that, but I didn't want her telling him I liked him.

"Please don't. What if he doesn't... if he doesn't think about me like that, I don't want to strain our friendship." He meant too much to me for that.

"Oh, God, no, only — only if you wind up saying something to him first," Beverly says quickly, shaking her head. "If you don't, I'll never say a word, I promise." She wouldn't have considered it anyway, but it seems worth putting it into words. Jamie's trusting her with something like this, she doesn't want to take for granted, and she definitely doesn't want him to worry that he's made the wrong decision in telling her. She's never really had a lot of friends. Before that last summer back home, she wouldn't have said that she had any. Things are different here, and she doesn't want to jeopardize that when she thinks it will probably always seem like everything could so easily go back to the way it used to be.

"Just, you know, if you do, I could mention that I think you're really cool, or something."

That made me laugh and I knew Beverly was just being kind, but it was still funny. I looked over at her as we walked and said, "I think it's too late for that. The first time we met, it was because I woke Eddie up while making a nest on the floor so I didn't have to sleep in my bed. He already knows I'm not cool."

But he was my friend anyway. That in itself felt like more than I deserved already.

It was okay if I wasn't cool. What I had learned of cool made me feel like I didn't necessarily want to be cool. Although maybe that wasn't true either. Beverly seemed cool in a way that was nice. She smiled easily and her hair looked like fire when the sun hit it and she knew how to sneak out of the Home, but she was never mean about anything. I wasn't like that either, but she never made me feel like that wasn't okay.

"Well, you're in good company, then," Beverly says, shooting him a grin, just a little conspiratorial. "He and I have never been cool." She only fell in with Eddie and the rest of the Losers Club that last summer, but it's easy to imagine Jamie fitting in with the group of them, too, just a little offbeat like the others. She can barely remember some parts of home sometimes, or the broad strokes are there and the details aren't, but that, she's sure of with utter clarity. Besides, if they brought her and Ben and Mike into the group, surely there would be room for Jamie, too.

Here, it's just been her and Eddie for ages, to the point that that's just what seems normal now. There's something odd about the fact of that, but she doesn't know what she would do without him.

"No wonder we both like you so much."

That made me smile, made me feel warm, even if I wasn't sure how to ever say something like that. I had friends on the Island, Crow and Nod had been part of my life for as long as I could remember, they'd been my best friends, besides Peter, but we were all bound through something awful.

Being here, having new friends, I had the chance at something else. A different sort of friendship. It was a good feeling. One I wished Crow and Nod could have experienced, too. They deserved it. So had Charlie and Sal. So had all of Peter's boys, except maybe Nip.

"I think being cool might not be something I want to be," I admitted. "It seems a lot of the kids who think they're cool are also cruel." They reminded me a bit of Peter.

"Yeah, it does," Beverly agrees quietly, nodding. She hasn't run into as many problems in Darrow, many of the kids here nicer than the ones from Derry, but a lot of the same principles still apply. So do the same social dynamics. It's just, maybe, a bit less of an extreme this way. More normal, maybe. There was something deeply wrong there, and she knows it. Darrow might be strange, but at least there doesn't seem to be quite the same pervasive awfulness.

She smiles, though, not wanting to put too much of a damper on the mood, and nudges his shoulder with hers. "Way better to be uncool and nice, if you ask me."

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