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“I want to go to Florida.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. It’s just someplace I want to go.”
Mike’s seventeenth year was the hardest of his life, and no one around him seemed to notice. And why would they? He’d already watched his parents die. He’d survived death threats, verbal and then literal and then the stuff of nightmares. How could the worst be anywhere but behind him?
But seventeen. His seventeenth April, specifically, when Mike realized that the other Losers were all leaving Derry. They’d staked their claims: Ben to art school, Bev long gone. College for the rest of them, except Richie, who’d declared he was f’ing off directly to New York to flip burgers. Mike had quietly begun some scholarship applications from U of Maine, but that night, the night he realized he was going to stay, he pushed them to the back of his desk drawer and planned to fake sick the next morning. (He didn’t end up having to fake it: two steps into the kitchen before he vomited in front his aunt and uncle, forkfuls of eggs paused midair.)
Derry would be his responsibility for the next twenty-seven years. Until Mike could be sure they’d actually killed It, or rally the troops.
Actually, Mike decided, staring up at the blank, black ceiling above his bed, he was the perfect Loser to stay.
At thirteen, he’d dreamed of Florida, but by seventeen, Florida had started to feel out of reach. He was a homeschooled farm kid. His aunt had never mentioned the SATs. If he went to college, he’d be entirely on his own.
And maybe Mike was too shy and too square for public school, but he had other qualities. He was patient. He was optimistic. Even before the clown, he’d endured more horror than most people endure in a lifetime. What was one more endurance run?
But Mike knew those were excuses, and his forehead was sweating, and he kicked his sheets into a knot at the foot of his bed. There was a real reason, and it burned in his desk drawer next to the scholarship forms.
The postcards from Bev. She’d sent a bundle to Bill for all the Losers, and, the first time he read her loopy scrawl, Mike thought she was being a bit flippant. Thanks for all the good times last summer! And I’m not going anywhere near my dad but I’d give practically anything for that fucking strawberry funnel cake from the fair.
There were a couple possibilities. One, Bev had gotten a taste of freedom from Derry, and the relief was so immense that nothing could drag her back. Or, two—and he had no evidence, but he did have a horrible, hard feeling in the pit of his stomach like a peach pit—she had started to forget.
Mike paid a pittance for his perch on the third floor of the library. He was the youngest clerk by forty years, but the job wasn’t bad: Shelve books, be friendly. Soak up as much sunshine as he could during the day to keep the sourness from his heart, sourness characteristic of the hearts of adults in Derry.
And at night. Research. Police channels, municipal records. Books with even the barest promise of information. Beer to keep the sourness at bay.
Mike thought of Bev’s postcards again when he left Derry in search of the Ritual. He shoved one note in the glove compartment, stuffed another in his sock: RETURN TO DERRY. Then he wrote it on his leg in permanent marker in case the ink ran in his shoe.
Derry hemmed its citizens in, but It did not call them back once they’d left. After all, if they returned, they’d probably be armed.
Thirty days before Adrian Mellon died.
The sourness was overtaking the sunshine and the beer.
On his hasty trips to the grocery, the people of Derry whispered about Mike. They always had, but now it was practically in his ear. Madman. Killed his parents. Horrible things, but he had no way of confirming if they were being It-racist or just Derry-racist.
But it clouded Mike’s head nonetheless. Was it possible he had killed his parents? He couldn’t have. How could a toddler start a fire? And the things they said about his mom and dad—they’d been good people, right? How did he really know? The fire was practically his first memory. Otherwise he had was the smell of Cheerios. Pieces of the Sesame Street song.
It’s an endurance run, he reminded himself.
You’re almost at the end.
Come on.
When they won, Mike started remembering things.
He’d been certain he was the only Loser who hadn’t lost any memories. But after It finally died, he began to remember who he was before his vigil began.
He’d been a sweet kid. Not just unobtrusive, not just polite, but sweet. Happy. The kind of kid who never would have called himself as a leader, but, in retrospect, hadn’t he been all along? He’d always tried to lead by example. Please. Thank you. After you. He had always believed that if he was kind and conscientious, then other people would be, too. Eventually.
All Mike had ever wanted was to be kind. It came so easily to him, even in Derry, a town of unnecessary cruelty.
Mike left Derry with the windows rolled down, sun bouncing off the roof of his car. Mike the thirteen-year-old had led by example, but he was forty now; Mike Hanlon just led.
The light changed from red to green. He had a map in the passenger seat, but he didn’t really need it as he leaned on the gas, his sweet heart beating louder now, the wind breaking in his ears like waves, down the south highway, away from Maine.