CHAPTER EIGHT

08. leaving you.

With the rifts under her feet getting closer and closer to making her fall, one phrase started to repeat in her head. The one that Bill had said a few minutes ago. This isn't real. None of it was. The clown was just trying to scare them off, to feed off their fear and the only way to kill it was to starve it from the very panic it tried to cause.

"This isn't real," she whispered to herself before her finger tapped the glass, watching as a single crack started to spread in the glass of the mirror that she was trapped behind, "This isn't real."

Her fist collided with the glass over and over until the cracks got bigger and bigger, shattering the whole of the surface until she fell through the glass and back into the room that she had just watched Bill and Richie leave. Andy looked to her fists to see bruises and cuts decorating her knuckles, blood dripping down her palm.

"Bill!" she screamed and jumped to her feet, taking the biggest shard of the mirror that she could see and holding it in her left hand as a weapon, she had no idea what was going to happen but if she was going down, she was going down fighting.

"Bill?" she called out, opening the door to see the hallway that stopped at the stairs. She heard her boots making the wooden flooring creak below her but she didn't care, not when she could hear screams and shouts from below her, "Bill!"

Adriana's slow pace of cautious walking turned into a sprint down the wooden stairs which she nearly tripped down but she didn't. The glass cut into her palms but it didn't worry her, the screaming, on the other hand, scared her to death. 

She entered the kitchen just in time to see the same clown with a metal fire poker through its skull, courtesy of Beverly. It started to limp towards the Losers that had yet to notice her arrival. But it pained her even more to see Eddie cradling a broken arm and Bill being protective over the fake clone of Adriana who faked being scared.

"Hey, asshole!" Andy shouted at him, making the clown turn to face her and cut Ben's stomach in the process, "There's only room for one read head in here, and that's Beverly!"

"Andy?" Bill whispered out, turning to the copy that he had been holding hands with to see that the flesh on her face started to rot and float upwards like the clown's blood had second ago, "What the-"

The Denbrough boy faced the real Adriana that backed away from the clown and towards the door that she had just ran through. Her shaky hand pointed the tip of the glass towards him as if defending herself before it closed the gap between them, the vile smell of his breath hitting her nose as they were centimetres apart.

Adriana could fight or she could accept what was going to happen. She felt her hand start to tighten around the glass in her hand. But she didn't need it.

The clown turned with the metal still in his skull. Addy felt the sharpness of it run across her cheek and cut her face to draw blood. An inch higher and she would have lost an eye. All of the Losers turned to watch as it crawled back into the door and left Adriana alone.

"Don't let him get away!" Bill shouted and started to run after the clown, completely ignoring Adriana.

The girl scoffed before skidding over to Eddie to see his arm, more importantly, the break in his arm. "Holy shit!" the girl cursed and covered her mouth, "Bill! Get in here!"

Eddie started to scream in pain as the adrenaline left his veins and the pain finally started to set in, they didn't even stop when Bill joined their side to look at his arm.

"I'm gonna snap your arm into place," Richie admitted and took the boys arm in his hands to get ready to pop it back into place.

"Rich, do not fucking touch me!" Eddie ignored the count down from Richie's mouth and continued to shout out, "Do not touch me!"

A loud crack echoed around the house, silencing them all until even more and even louder screams sounded from the Kaspbrak boy.

✘

"You! You did this!" Sonia Kaspbrak screamed at the Losers after they had just cycled, or in Andy's case skated, through the neighbourhoods to Eddie's house where his mom was waiting outside for them, "You know how delicate he is!"

"We were attacked, M-Mrs K," Bill tried to reason but she wasn't having any of it.

She opened the car door and practically pushed her son into his seat as he still cradled his wounded arm, dropping her car keys in the process, "No. Don't. Don't try and blame anyone else."

"Here, let me," Beverly mumbled politely and reached down to pick up the keys for the woman.

"Get back!" she yelled loudly, startling them all, "Oh, I've heard of you, Miss Marsh. And I don't want a dirty girl like you touching my son."

Beverly stepped back, obviously upset. Despite the girl having heard all the rumours and allegations before, they still managed to get under her skin and insult her deeply.

"That's not fair-" Adriana started but stopped when the woman turned to face her with her red cheeks and beady eyes.

"You aren't much better yourself, Michaels. You wear these clothes and that makeup and expect these boys to fall in love with this bad girl attitude that you fake," she spat towards Andy who cowered back at the harsh words, "I don't blame your parents for leaving."

That was all it took. One mention of her parents and the girl practically had steam coming out of her ears. "That- That's the stupidest thing that I've heard come out of your mouth, and trust me, there's a lot of shit that you say. My parents are fighting for this country and my mom died in combat so that people like you get to stay at home with your families and what do you do? You 'protect' Eddie to the point where he is practically suffocating!"

Eddie's mom watched in shock as the words left the girl's mouth so freely and loudly. With nothing else to say or to hear, the woman turned on her feet and made a move to get in her car and drive her son to the hospital until Bill spoke up.

"Mrs K, I-I-I-"

"No! You are monsters! All of you! And Eddie is done with you. Do you hear? Done!"

Adriana, like the others, watched as his mother got into the car and started the engine. They could even see the sadness and despair written all over Eddie's pained features as the car took off down the road quickly.

"I saw t-the well," Bill stutter and caught their attention, "We- We know where it is and next time we'll be better prepared-"

"No!" Stan shouted over him, "No next time, Bill. You're insane."

Bill turned to Andy for help but she wasn't engaged in the conversation at all. Her hazel eyes focused on the ground that she found much more intriguing than what was going on around her.  His eyes trailed down to the blood on her cheek that had dried on their journey but the wound still looked painful to him, or maybe it was the guilt of not realising that he had left the real Adriana behind and believed the illusion that the clown made.

"Why? We all know that no one else is going to do anything," Beverly preached and gained Andy's attention to draw her back into the conversation.

"Eddie was nearly killed! Andy could've lost a fucking and eye and look at this motherfucker," Richie pointed to Ben who continued to hold his bleeding stomach, "He's leaking Hamburger Helper!"

Beverly dryly laughed, "We can't pretend it's gonna go away. Ben, you said it yourself, It comes back every 27 years."

"Fine! I'll be 40 and far away from here," he responded a little louder than his normally soft voice, "I thought you said you wanted to get out of this town, too."

"Because I want to run towards something. Not away."

Richie moved his hand to draw his attention to Beverly in anger, "I'm sorry. Who invited Molly Ringwald into the group?" He earned a middle finger as a response from the girl, "I'm just saying. Let's face facts. Real world. Georgie is dead. Stop trying to get us killed, too."

Adriana gasped at his words and again when Richie stepped up to Bill and stopped him as Richie tried to walk past him, "Georgie's not dead!"

"You couldn't save him, but you can save yourself."

"No! Take it back. You're scared and we all are but take it back!" Bill got in his way again by blocking his path with his own body before shoving him back harshly.

Richie pushed Bill back until the Denbrough boy gripped his shirt and punched Richie across the face and knocked him to the ground.

"Bill!" Andy shouted and pulled on his sleeve.

"You're just a bunch of losers!" he screamed as Stan and Mike helped him back to his feet and held him away from Bill to stop the fighting, "Fuck off!"

"Richie, stop! This isn't helping and we just need to work this out instead of fighting because that is exactly what the clown wants from us, to break us apart. Divide and conquer, it's fighting 101," Adriana stood between the two as an extra precaution.

"Why are you even here Andy? No, seriously. We were doing fine without you then and we don't need you now. The only reason you came back to the Losers is to get Bill and you can't even say that it isn't! You tried to get it on with Eddie and that didn't work, we all know that he was at your house the other day. What did you do, huh?"

Of course, she knew the real reason why Richie was getting so defensive about Eddie and why he decided to bring it up in the argument. But she wouldn't bring it up, it was none of her business, "I'm here because we have a common enemy, Tozier. Don't think for a second that I'm here for selfish reasons! I could go back to my bed and not think twice about this but that isn't fair!"

Richie turned to Bill and the others instead of Andy, "You're just a bunch of losers and you'll get yourself killed trying to catch a stupid fucking clown!"

"Stop!" Beverly yelled just as Richie pushed away from the two that held him back, "Addy is right, this is what it wants. We were all together when we hurt it. That's why we're still alive."

"Yeah? Well, I plan to keep it that way," Richie barged past Bill to get his bike and was soon joined by Stan and Ben, leaving Bill, Beverly and Mike to stare at Andy who had tears brimming in her eyes.

The brunette walked to her skateboard and put her foot on it, "Andy?" Bill called out to gain her attention, seeing that the tears fell down her cheeks.

"No, Bill. I am sick and tired of this, okay? I have done nothing wrong and I get treated like shit! I have tried to help you guys but I can't help someone who doesn't want help. I get the memo," she pushed her hair out of her face, "Maybe Richie was right. So fine, I'll leave! That's what I do, right? I understand that this is 'hard' for you, so I'll just leave now instead of getting my hopes up that I actually had a chance."

Bill didn't even get to say anything before the girl that he had feelings for started to skate away from the group and back to her house. But he couldn't see the tears staining her cheeks and soaking her shirt. 

AUTHOR'S NOTE

I hope everyone is staying safe! xx