lost_boy | (no subject)

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This was it, my very first birthday party.

I was nervous and excited and I was probably driving Eddie and Magnus both absolutely mad with all my checking and rechecking of things. I wanted to make sure everything was exactly right, because I had never thrown a party before and although Magnus had helped me quite a bit, I still felt like I needed to make sure I didn't make a mess of it. I knew the rules -- no going upstairs, no alcohol -- and I would make sure everyone else knew it, too, because I didn't want to disappoint Magnus with any terrible behaviour. He was doing me a very big favour, letting me use his place and his pool to have a proper party and I wasn't going to take that for granted.

There was food and drink of all kinds, and plenty of snacks. The pool was lit up with different colours that would get brighter as the sun set and all sorts of inflatable toys could be found so people could just float if they wanted to. At the shallow end of the pool was a little floating basketball net and a bunch of inflatable balls to use with it. There were toys for diving, even a little obstacle course under water with rings people could swim through. The towels were big and fluffy, the chairs were comfortable, and there was even a big birthday cake with my name on it and seventeen candles, although that was for later.

All I had really wanted, I told Magnus, was for it to remind me of his party with all the colours. The one where Eddie and I had first kissed, and he had come through for me. The decorations were fun and bright and everywhere I looked there was a different coloured light.

I had invited all my friends, regardless of their age, so that meant there were little kids on the guest list and adults, too. A part of me worried some of the other kids around my age might think that was weird, but in the end I decided I didn't care that much. I wanted my friends to be here with me, all my friends, and not all my friends were the same age. I liked that about them all very much.

As the first people started to arrive, I clutched Eddie's hand nervously, beaming at him, then kissed him quickly on the cheek before going to greet people. I was supposed to be the host, after all. It was my first party.

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It really is different from swimming in the quarry. Already Beverly can feel herself wanting to come up for air, but she doesn't need to yet, and she's not about to give up so easily. Following along behind Rosie, she carefully navigates her way through the first ring once she's sure she won't get kicked in the face for her trouble, taking up as little space as she can so she'll fit through. It works, and she exhales a little, bubbles rising to the surface.

She wants to at least make it through these other two rings before she gives up, though, and continues determinedly towards them.

The first two rings are no real trouble at all. Eel-like, Rosie slips through them both, propelling herself with careful, fluttering kicks as she tries to keep well ahead of Bev, giving the other girl the space she needs to navigate the course. The third ring is set a little further back, its circumference just slightly smaller than the previous two. Though her lungs are already starting to burn with the need to resurface, Rosie forces herself to pause, just for a moment.

She can do it--she thinks.

Her feet brush the tile of the pool floor, and she uses the contact to push off a little, propelling herself towards the center of the ring. It's a tight fit; rather than keep her arms to her side as she'd done before, she extends them in front of her, her fingers tightly linked. Once she's through, she twists around to look for Bev.

It's not easy, and that's what Beverly likes about it. The first was, the second, too, but even then, she can already feel herself getting short of breath, fighting the instinct to come up for air. They're so close, though, and she's determined to get through it. Sure, there's nothing to prove, but that seems kind of beside the point. She still wants to know that she can, not to give up unless she absolutely has to, and while it's not really a competition and she can't imagine Rosie being mean about it, she also doesn't want to let the other girl win. She would much rather they both emerge victorious.

Fitting through the last ring is what proves to be somewhat difficult, mostly for determining what to do with her limbs on the way through. Once she manages it, she looks at Rosie and grins, delighted, before pushing herself off the bottom of the pool and towards the surface, sputtering a little once she gets there.

Edited 2019-09-22 04:46 (UTC)

Bev starts her push upwards, and Rosie's not far behind, kicking her way towards the surface. When her head breaks through the water, she takes deep, almost gasping lungfuls of air, then turns towards the other girl. Though her eyes have already started to go a little bloodshot from the chlorine in the water, though her hair is a damp and tangled mess of curls, Rosie smiles, bright and triumphant.

"Oh, that was brilliant."

"Holy shit," Beverly blurts out, breathless, though she still looks nothing sort of pleased as she does. Brilliant is a good word for it, an assessment she couldn't possibly disagree with. Though her lungs and eyes burn, even her limbs a little sore from swimming more deliberately than just drifting around the pool, it's entirely worth it. Swimming through several rings might be simple enough in theory, seeming more so now that they've actually done it, but it's something different and something fun, the whole idea of them a clever one.

"I don't know about you, but I feel kind of awesome right now."

"Oh, I couldn't possibly disagree with that." Rosie laughs, dipping her head backwards and letting the water slick back her hair a little in an attempt to keep it out of her face. "We did it, and that's...we really are awesome."

It's not that the word is unfamiliar, but something about it, about echoing Beverly's tone as she says it, feels a little awkward in her mouth and just slightly modern. She likes it.

"The whole party is," Beverly says, glancing around for a moment before her gaze settles on Rosie again. "I don't know about you, but I've never been to anything like this." Even having gone to other parties at Magnus's, this still feels sort of different. Those are open to everyone. This is smaller, and historically speaking, she never gets invited anywhere. She never used to, anyway, and that's a hard mindset to shake, even with as different as things are in Darrow. Once a loser, always a loser, she figures.

It's nice, though, feeling at once badass and sort of glamorous, swimming in a pool at a mansion. Being here for Jamie, one of her best friends, makes it even better.

"All the stuff in the pool isn't usually here, is it?"

"I don't think the pool is here half the time," she says, her mouth tilting up in a lopsided grin at how very absurd that sounded, even if it was completely true. "At Valentine's, there was an entire schoolyard out here, swings and slides and things to climb on. I suppose that's what you can do if you're as magical as Mr. Bane." If Rosie were still at home, she thinks she might have grown to scoff at the very idea, the older she got; here in Darrow, where strange things seem to happen every day, disbelief seemed a foolish choice.

"And I've never been to a party like this either," she admits. "Certainly not at home, not that I went to many there anyway." Once it's out, Rosie can hear the faint note of self-pity in the sentiment; she frowns, the downturn in her expression flickering across her face for a moment. "Sorry, that's...it's a very nice party."

"No, it's alright," Beverly says, strangely a little relieved at Rosie's admittance. "I didn't, either. Never really got invited anywhere." It's easier to say when it seems like she might not be the only one for whom that's the case. She doesn't keep her unpopularity at home a secret, necessarily, though she hasn't told anyone about part of the reason for it. Still, a part of her can't help but wonder if the same will happen here if people know she was a social outcast, like they'll realize she's not worth hanging out with at all, too uncool, too much of a loser.

The latter, she's taken on as almost a badge of pride, but she still doesn't want to go back to the way things were.

"But even if I did, there wouldn't have been magic parties."

"My brother always said it was because clever girls didn't have friends," she says, rolling her eyes. "I know now it was all rot, but that doesn't mean it wasn't unpleasant to hear."

If they weren't still in the pool, treading water as they hold onto the edge and get their breath back, Rosie might have reached out, given Beverly a light and sympathetic hug--some kind of solidarity from one previously-outcast girl to another. As it is, she lets out a quiet sigh, smiling over at her. "At least it's different here. Magic parties, and all the rest."

Beverly isn't entirely sure, even now, just how and why she became so unpopular. Her family didn't have any money, but they were hardly the only people in Derry for whom that was the case. She didn't dress like or enjoy the same things as the popular girls, but she doesn't think that should have been so attention-catching. The best she can come up with is the rumors that were a big part of it, though she doesn't really know where they originated, either. Someone just decided one day that it should be true, and so it was. It's just the way of the world, or so it seems.

"I don't know if I was that clever," she says with a wry little smile. "But people just didn't like me. Said a lot of things that weren't true." She shrugs as best she can while keeping herself afloat, already well accustomed to pretending it doesn't get to her. "But yeah, it's better here, mostly. This definitely is."

"Rumors," she says, the word coming out flat and a little bitter. "I know a bit about that, too." She gives Beverly another sympathetic glance, then hauls herself up out and onto the edge of the pool. However long this turn in their conversation is, Rosie isn't terribly keen on having it while bobbing like a cork in the middle of the water.

"It wasn't anything at home for me," she continues, looking down at the slow-spreading puddle around her as she drips onto the concrete. "Just here, in Darrow. I broke up with David, my boyfriend, at the start of the month. No...no great loss, really, considering." While there was nothing David had said on that horrible afternoon that had been about Bev specifically, Rosie still pauses a moment, weighing how best to phrase it all. "Seems he believed that since I used to live at the Home, I was...well, I was supposed to let him take certain advantages."

Edited 2019-10-12 19:49 (UTC)

At first, she worries that she might have said something wrong. The look Rosie gives her before she pulls herself out of the pool quiets that a little, Beverly following along with her after just a moment, but it isn't until Rosie finishes speaking that it all makes sense. Beverly feels a whole host of things at that — angry and guilty for having mentioned it and worried that her reputation might follow her here after all. It's been about a year now, maybe a little more, since she moved out of the Home, but she did used to live there, too. She wonders if people would think the same about her now, then decides that this isn't the time to question it.

"Everyone said I was a slut," she says instead, a little bitter in turn, and still a little wounded. "That I'd slept with all the guys in school. Things like that." She looks over at Rosie, her expression understanding and apologetic. "I'm sorry that happened to you."

That echoing note of hurt and bitterness in Beverly's voice is both a balm to Rosie's own woundedness and something that spurs another hot flash of anger. They aren't that far apart in age, not really, but for someone as young as Bev to have had such terrible things said about her...it makes Rosie's stomach turn.

"That's awful," she murmurs, meeting her quiet glance with one of her own. "I'm sorry we both know what that's like. Exactly what that's like, not just...that rumors are awful things."

"Me too," Beverly says, nodding in solemn agreement. It's nothing she would have wished on anyone else, and the thought of a friend being in that position hurts a little. If it had to happen, though, there's also an odd sort of comfort in having said it and been believed, in knowing that Rosie gets what she's barely ever talked about. Even with the other Losers back home, it was weeks before she ever brought up the rumors not being true, and only with Bill. Having someone on her side, so to speak — well, she would've preferred for there not to be, but since there is, she appreciates it.

"I hope that asshole gets what's coming to him. Or already did."

"Oh, he did," she says, with perhaps a bit more relish than is strictly appropriate. She doesn't particularly care, in this moment. "I don't know whether it'll matter once school starts again, when we'll be in the same place since David and I are both still in choir together--and I'm not quitting because of him, I'd never--but the day we broke up Sabrina happened to be passing by his house, and found me outside, and..."

Another detail of the story occurs to her then. "Actually, that guardian of yours already knows a bit about it. Officer Hopper, right? He got called to the house, since somehow David's nose got broken." Rosie's mouth curves up in a quick smile that again might be in poor taste; again, she doesn't really care. "Can't think how it happened, though."

Beverly can't help but grin at that, pretty confident that she knows what Rosie is getting at. "Sabrina helped me out a while back when some guy hit me with his car," she says. "So no, I definitely have no idea how that could have happened, either." It's weird as hell, knowings someone who can do the kind of things Sabrina does, but she's learned to just go with it, and it seems to have worked out well for Rosie and her douchebag ex. She doubts Hopper would have had a problem with it, either, which is weirdly reassuring. There haven't been many people she could trust like that.

"Must just be karma or something," she adds with a shrug, her voice deceptively light. "And Hopper, yeah. I hope he got it."

There is a brief, faint flicker of concern that goes through her when Bev says she'd been hit by a car, but she's here in front of Rosie now, whole and seemingly unharmed, so it's easy to let go; even to let out a short bubble of a laugh. "It'll have to stay a mystery, I guess," she says. "Oh well."

She sobers a bit, going quiet, then nods. "And yeah, he did. Hopper, that is. Took us both down to the police station, but even that was mostly for show." Rosie tilts her head, a small, bemused smile on her lips. "Honestly, I think Sabrina had such a good time being the one in the back of the police car, it wouldn't have counted as much of a punishment at all."

"Good," Beverly says, though she isn't surprised in the least. She'd lived in the Home when she first met Hopper, and though she's never told him explicitly the sort of shit people said about her back home, it doesn't seem like the sort of thing he would stand for. He might be gruff sometimes, but he's kind underneath it, which puts him miles ahead of anyone, Losers aside, she knew back in Derry. Still, whatever she might have guessed, it's a relief to know that he was good to her friends. "On both counts. It sounds like a broken nose is just what he had coming."

She bites back a bit of a wider smile. None of it is really funny, but there is something enjoyable about this sort of commiseration. "One of the guys who said he slept with me... I threw a rock at his head. Because he was picking on this homeschooled kid, but. It felt really good."

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