The first time Patrick Hockstetter really noticed Y/n Kaspbrak, she was standing outside the pharmacy on Main Street with a paperback tucked against her chest and her shoulders pulled inward like she was trying to disappear from the world around her. It was late summer, the kind of sticky Derry heat that made everyone irritable, and Patrick had only been there because Belch wanted cigarettes. He recognized her immediately anyway—Eddie Kaspbrak’s older sister, the quiet one. She had always been strange in the way prey animals were strange: too still, too careful, eyes always darting around like she expected someone to hurt her. Years earlier Patrick had been one of those people. He barely remembered the exact details anymore, only vague flashes of cornering her near the schoolyard fence, making her cry because she’d dropped her books while trying to get away from him. At the time he’d thought the fear on her face was funny.
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@ashtargaryenThe air over Derry hangs thick and wet, the kind of late August heat that presses down on the rooftops and turns the asphalt soft underfoot. Down on Main Street, the pharmacy fan rattles in its window, pushing around air that’s barely cooler than the sidewalk. Cicadas scream from the elms lining the curb. A few cars crawl past, windows rolled down, radios bleeding tinny country songs into the haze.