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ambrossart · 1 year

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Paper Men: Ch. 27 Preview #2

With the full release just days away (I'm gonna try to have it up by Sunday, but worst-case scenario, it'll be up early next week, and it'll be totally awesome!), here's a special preview featuring Belch and Vic.❤️

The afternoon hadn’t gone so well for Victor Criss, either.

Thanks to Henry Bowers and his little lunchtime temper tantrum, Vic was almost twenty minutes late for his sixth-period government class. He walked in just as the last two students were turning in their quizzes, and when he asked Mr. Briggs if he could take the quiz during the second half of class, Mr. Briggs said no because he didn’t want Vic to miss his lecture: “These lectures are crucial to your understanding of the course.”

No, Vic wanted to say to him, your lectures are unresearched, uninspired, and taken directly from the textbook. Half the time I don’t even listen to you.

Instead, he just glared at his teacher with an exhausted, exasperated stare, which he supposed delivered the same message.

Judging by his teacher’s expression, it had.

“Look, I’m sorry, Victor. If you want to make up the quiz, you’re going to have to come in early tomorrow. Otherwise, I’ll have no choice but to give you a zero.”

Come in early? On a Tuesday?

Screw it, Vic thought, my GPA can afford the hit, so he accepted his goose egg and chucked it over his shoulder.

He spent the rest of the afternoon going through the usual motions: go to his locker, switch books, go to class, sit down, zone out, wait for the teacher to give the assignment, start said assignment, zone out again, brace himself for the loud

BRRRRRRING!

The final bell burred directly over Vic’s head, making him flinch in his chair and drop his head into his hands. The damned thing was so loud, it might as well have been rattling around in his skull. Then came the excited chatter of thirty students talking all at once. Vic didn’t care how excited Kelly was to go to the mall or how “totally bummed” Mark was now that he had to go to detention. Vic had detention too, but you didn’t hear him complaining about it (although he was, constantly, in his head). He closed his notebook and textbook, stacked them into a pile, and tucked it under his arm before heading out the door.

The hallway seemed to go on forever. Classroom doors whipped open and closed, open and closed, releasing hordes of rowdy teenagers eager to leave. Vic kept his head down the whole time, staring at his boots, counting his steady, silent footfalls, and with each door he passed, the sound swelled around him. Every little noise—a cough, a laugh, a swish-swish of fabric—crashed together into a raging wave that flooded Vic’s senses. He could hear everything. He could hear nothing. His head throbbed and his body ached. His skin felt prickly and tight. When Vic finally reached his locker, he whipped it open, shoved his head inside the dark space above the shelf, and took a few slow breaths through his nose until he started to calm down.

Then he felt someone slump down beside him, and a grating, feminine voice said, “No offense, Vic, but your little girlfriend’s kind of a major bitch.”

Vic breathed out a sigh and even that was too loud in his current state. He buried his head deeper into his locker and wondered if she would just go away if he ignored her long enough.

But then again Christie Gibson was awfully persistent, like a fly that refused to buzz off.

“I don’t know what that means,” Vic said, annoyed, his voice echoing inside his metal cave.

“Tozier. I tried talking to her today and she totally wigged out on me! Like, I dunno what was worse: that fake nice bullshit—that was totally transparent, by the way—or her frantic babbling about coffee or whatever the fuck she was going on about. I dunno, I couldn’t make out a word of what she was saying. She said she wanted to give me advice or something, and I was just like, What? What are you even talking about? You know, she should be thanking me! I totally kicked her ass in the student council vote, but someone made me drop outta the race…”

“You don’t care about student council,” Vic said, his voice a low rumble.

“So? You never know, I might’ve been good at it.”

“Trust me, you wouldn’t have, and besides, you don’t care about student council.”

“Whatever… still might’ve been fun.”

Her hand landed on his shoulder like a slithering worm. Vic shrugged it away.

“Look, here she comes now. Watch this, Vic.”

Vic reluctantly pulled his head out of his locker and turned around, squinting as his eyes adjusted to the change in light. Evelyn had just come around the corner in his mother’s bright yellow dress, her arms crossed in front of her, right hand rubbing and squeezing her left bicep. When she got within earshot, Christie said, “Hey, Tozier!” and Evelyn turned her head to acknowledge them. By now, it was practically an instinct for her, like muscle memory or something. Whenever someone said her name, Evelyn sprang to life like a wind-up doll, just like she was doing now. Her eyes popped open a little wider and brightened. Her mouth transformed into a picture-perfect smile, began to deliver an enthusiastic “Hi!” but then it just stopped and hung open, as if a pebble had gotten stuck in one of her gears. Evelyn drew back a step. Her eyes darkened, went to Vic, then to Christie, then back to Vic, and she gave them both a polite but noticeably stiff, “Hi,” before shuffling past them.

Christie snapped her fingers and pointed at Evelyn’s back. “See? Bitch!”

“Don’t call her a bitch,” Vic said, but even he had to admit that was a little odd. “Hey, what were you talking to Evelyn for, anyway?”

Christie raised her eyebrows at him. “Huh?”

“Why were you talking to Evelyn?”

Christie shrank away from him, then folded her arms over her chest and burrowed inside her oversized denim jacket. “Hey, I can talk to whoever I want, Vic. It’s not like I need your permission.”

Vic’s eyes hardened. “Why were you talking to Evelyn?”

“I just wanted to say hi and compliment her dress, that’s all. What? I’m not allowed to be nice to my fellow classmates?” She stuck her thumb between her lips and started chewing on her nail. Under her breath, she said, “Jeez, I was just trying to do you a favor…”

“You wanna do me a favor?” Vic said. “Stop talking to Evelyn.”

“Oh, fine! Not like I’m dying to talk to her again, anyway…” Christie took her thumb out of her mouth and shoved both hands into her pockets. “So you got my Green River CD?”

“Yeah. Here.”

Vic pulled the CD out of his backpack and handed it to her.

“Well? Thoughts?”

“Uh… not really my thing,” Vic said, but honestly, he couldn’t even remember what the band sounded like.

Christie clutched her chest in distress. “Really? Green River isn’t your thing? Boy, you are a tough nut to crack, Criss… but I’ll getcha, oh, I’ll getcha. I will find your music soulmate and you’ll live happily ever after, just like me and Stevie Nicks.”

She clasped her hands together in a silent prayer of thanks. Right now, Vic was saying a little prayer of his own: to be rid of Christie Gibson and have a few seconds of peace and quiet.

“Y’know your roots are startin’ to show,” Christie said. “You want me to touch ‘em up for you?”

Vic ran his hand through his hair, thinking.

It’s weird, and it’s ugly, and it doesn’t suit you at all!

“I dunno.”

“Oh?” Christie tipped her head curiously. “What, you thinkin’ about goin’ back?”

“I dunno… maybe.”

“‘Cause I can take you back if you want. Won’t be quite the same as your natural color, but I could probably get it pretty damn close.”

“Maybe,” Vic said, and they both turned to greet Belch Huggins.

He walked up to them while shaking his head, looking tired and frustrated, but he perked up a little when Christie Gibson’s eyes met his. Her smile was like sunshine. It always made his stomach flutter.

Nevertheless, he said, “Can you believe I got another day of detention over this bullshit?”

“Yup,” Vic said. He had gotten another day added to his sentence too, and all so he could watch Henry Bowers sulk in the front seat like a three-year-old until Evelyn Tozier gave him exactly what he wanted: attention. “I don’t even care anymore. They already gave me three weeks, what’s another day?”

Christie scoffed at them both. “God, you two are poster boys for the dangers of peer pressure… Hey, why’d you boneheads take her shirts, anyway?”

“I dunno,” Belch moaned. “Why do we do anything?”

It was just supposed to be a harmless prank, something to get Henry and Evelyn talking again. The last four months had been unbearably tense. Henry had been strangely quiet and extra irritable all summer, and Belch knew it was because of Evelyn (because somehow it was always because of Evelyn). He thought if he took her shirts, Evelyn would go to Henry to get them back, and they would finally squash whatever happened between them. He wasn’t expecting Henry’s temper to flare up and explode like it did, and he definitely wasn’t expecting Patrick Hockstetter to pour more gasoline on the fire. Lots of mistakes were made that day. Belch Huggins regretted every single one of them.

Because, boy, did it put a damper on his sex life.

Now Christie Gibson was turning to him with that familiar twinkle in her eyes. “Hey, can you give me a ride home from work tonight?”

“I can’t, remember? I’m not allowed to take the car out without my mom’s permission.”

“Oh, come on, please!”

“I can’t!”

“You’re really gonna make me walk home by myself that late at night? Past that creepy house? Reggie, I thought your mom raised you better than that.”

“Oh, don’t pull that card…”

“I’m just saying… next time I see your mom, I’m gonna tell her you made me walk home and I don’t think she’s gonna be very happy with you. I mean, what’s more important? Blindly following some rule? Or being chivalrous and seeing a young lady home?”

“Chris…”

“Please, Reg! I’ll even call your mom and tell her if it’ll make you feel better.”

“Okay, okay, fine. I’ll pick you up.”

“Oh my god, thank you!” Christie lunged toward him, caught herself at the last second, and rocked back onto her heels, a deep blush rising to her freckled cheeks. She pressed the CD case to her nose in a vain attempt to hide it. “So, umm, I should probably get going, huh? Okay, well… have fun in detention, you guys!”

She spun around and sped off down the hallway.

Vic shot Belch a little smirk. “So you’re gonna give her a ride, Reg?”

“Shut up,” Belch said. He took off his cap, swiped his hand through his hair, and put it back on.

Now he was looking at Vic with a troubled frown. “Hey, what are we gonna do about Henry and Evelyn? ‘Cause what happened back at lunch, that was really freaky, wasn’t it? I mean, I’ve never seen him like that. Never. Not even at his worst. He was just… gone, man. You could see it in his eyes.”

Vic shrugged. “I wasn’t really planning on doing anything, honestly.”

That was Henry and Evelyn’s problem. It had nothing to do with him.

“Okay, yeah,” Belch said with a nervous chuckle. He started rubbing the back of his neck. “I mean, this will all blow over, right? Patrick had his fun. He pissed Henry off, got him to explode. Now we just gotta wait for the dust to settle and things will eventually go back to normal, right? ‘Cause things will go back to normal. They have to, don’t they? There’s no way Evelyn would… She wouldn’t actually…” He broke into a confident, almost cocky laugh. “No… No way! I’ve seen Patrick pull off some crazy shit with the girls here, but Evelyn’s way too smart to fall for his bullshit. Yeah, there’s no way she’d ever…”

Silence fell around them. In it, they were both thinking the same thing:

She didn’t push his hand away.

Vic slammed his locker shut. The sound made Belch jump.

“Hey, I gotta go, man.”

“Huh?” said Belch. “But we got detention.”

“Yeah, I know. I’ll be there. I’ve just, uh… I’ve got some shit to take care of, that’s all.”

Now more than ever, Victor Criss needed to release some tension.

After throwing Belch a quick nod goodbye, Vic went down the hallway, marched straight through the junior locker area, and briefly locked eyes with the quivering, whimpering Seth McFadden.

Without breaking his stride, Vic said, “Let’s get this over with, Seth.”

#bowers gang #henry bowers #patrick hockstetter #victor criss #belch huggins #fanfic #it fanfiction #it 2017 #it stephen king #paper men #preview #fic preview #ambrossart #the wait is almost over #thank you for being so patient

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