lunch hour arrives as a catalyscm , a surge of lockers slamming and sneakers shrieking and voices stacking atop one another until language itself liquefies into noise and pressure. sonic hail rattling against the thin glass of her concentration. it is too bright and too loud and too full of elbows. and here, eleven compresses.

this is not a metaphor: she physically reduces herself, chin ducked, knees angled inward, fingers driven hard against her ears as if she may pin the sound in place and keep it from crawling any deeper. richie tozier, who tends to enter rooms like a thrown chair, reduces himself into a boy standing a respectful several feet away. it isn't looming, it's just there and eleven feels the attention before she'd acknowledged it, eyes flicking upward only after her fingers hover away from her ears.

adrenaline skitters far along his nerves, electric residue of almost-loss of too-bright corridors and carrion sweet air. residue of him, sir trashmouth, improv martyrdom, standing where the world tried to fold him in. time has not resumed so much as limped, dazed, back into its own pacing. and lucas, jaw locked, shoulders squared, speaks. “  yeah well, stop putting your ass in places that need saving. ”

its a line that's harmless on paper, maybe, but here does it detonate: soft-grenade of adolescent fury braided into grief, the kind that knows exactly what a body looks like when it doesn't come back. max pale in hospital light. eddie in rust, the chalk-outline memories a town pretends doesn't exist.