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At thirteen years old, Stan Uris got attacked by a child-murdering monster in the sewers under his hometown, terrified that his friends had abandoned him. At thirteen, he also made a blood oath with six of the kindest, most supportive, most loving, most batshit insane people he’s ever had the honour of knowing.
At sixteen years old, Stan Uris got high for the very first time. It was a very welcome change from the drama of his life up until that point.
He’s had the opportunity to get high more than once in the past, but he had always turned it down — mostly because the offers often came from people with the wrong intentions. People think he’s too uptight, too tightly-wound, too anxious; he just needs to smoke a blunt and chill out, man.
Even when it’s said jokingly, it doesn’t sit right with him. Nobody who could say something like that about him is someone he trusts to treat him kindly while under the influence, when he’s positive he’d be more himself than he is sober.
When Beverly offers, though, it’s completely different. It goes like this:
“Hey, Stan. I know you’re not big on stuff like this, but I was wondering if you wanted to meet me at the clubhouse later and get high? It’s totally okay if you don’t want to smoke; I got a recipe for cookies from an acquaintance and I wouldn’t mind sharing with you. And you don’t even have to do it, if you don’t want to. We can just hang out like normal.”
Stan considers it for a moment. Then he shrugs. “Yeah, okay.”
Because with Beverly, he never faces any judgment. She listens intently when he talks about how nervous he gets sometimes, and how he feels so much pressure to do well and be the perfect role model that he’s afraid it’s going to kill him someday. She confides in him, too, things that they both know without discussion that the others might not understand — how much she wants to take back her life, and how she struggles to define herself when she’s spent so long just trying to fly under the radar.
Bev doesn’t seem surprised that he accepts, as he’d feared she would. She just grins at him and tells him she’ll meet him in the Barrens at eleven on Saturday, and he simply tells her that he’ll be there.
When Saturday comes, Stan gets ready, packs a change of clothes and a bottle of water in his backpack, and is waiting in the Barrens by a quarter after ten. Beverly is right on time, and together the two of them hide their bikes in the usual spot and trek down to the clubhouse.
Once inside, the trapdoor shut, the “window” open, and the light on, Beverly opens her own bag and brings out a mint tin (which Stan very much doubted contained mints) and a small Tupperware container with four cookies in it — chocolate chip, if Stan had to guess. Bev opens the mint tin and, sure enough, inside it are what appear to be hand-rolled cigarettes, though Stan knows that that isn’t what they are.
“Like I said, you can choose how you wanna do it,” Bev says. “I haven’t tried the cookies yet, but I’m sure they’re good, they just might taste a little weird because of the pot.”
Stan thinks for a moment. Then: “I think I want to try smoking, actually.”
Once again, to Stan’s relief, Beverly doesn’t act surprised. “Okay.” She selected one of the blunts from the tin, digging her Zippo out of her bag and holding it out as well. “Do you need me to walk you through it, or do you just wanna give it a shot?”
“Walk me through it?” Stan asks quietly.
Beverly smiles reassuringly at him. “Sure,” she said. She pointed at the larger end of the blunt and said, “This is the end you light, here. The smaller end is the one you put in your mouth, like this,” she purses her lips and sticks the end of the blunt in her mouth before removing it again. “That’s so it doesn’t get all wet.”
Stan gives her a thumbs up to let her know he understands.
She smiles briefly in acknowledgement. “You light the end while you suck on it like a straw and let the smoke fill your mouth. Then, once it’s caught a little and it’s smouldering, you stop, inhale the smoke, and then exhale. You don’t really need to hold it that long, and don’t worry if you start coughing or if your throat burns a little, that’s common; it doesn’t mean you did it wrong or anything, you just have to get used to the feeling.”
“Okay,” Stan says, and nods a little to himself. “Is there anything else?”
Bev shakes her head. “That’s pretty much it. It mostly stays lit on its own, but don’t be afraid to light it again if you have to.” She paused for a moment. “Do you want me to show you?”
Stan nods again. “If you don’t mind.”
Beverly put the blunt between her lips again, flicking her Zippo to life and holding the flame to the other end of the blunt. Stan can faintly hear her sucking in, and she flicks her lighter closed as the flame catches. She continues to inhale for a moment, and then her nostrils flare as she pulls air in through her nose. She takes the blunt out of her mouth and tilts her head upward, blowing smoke into the air.
“Wow,” Stan says, watching the smoke drift lazily about the room, looking almost otherworldly in the low light.
Bev grins at him and holds the blunt out, holding it between her index and middle fingers close to the smaller end.
He takes it. He places it between his lips the way she did, and copies her. His mouth fills with warmth, and after a second, he takes it out of his mouth, breathing in through his nose and feeling the warm sensation sink down into his chest. After a second or two, he tilts his head up and exhales a steady stream of smoke. It feels weird, but in a good way.
“Awesome, that was perfect!” Beverly says. “How do you feel?”
“Okay,” Stan says. He holds out the blunt the way Bev did, with the smouldering end pointing his way, and she takes it back. As she’s hitting it, he says, “Thank you, Bev.”
Beverly exhales, hits it again, and then passes the blunt back. “For what?”
Stan takes the blunt and looks at it for a moment before hitting it, gathering his thoughts. “Just… Offering. And not doing it for the wrong reasons.”
Bev smiles softly at him. “Of course, Stan.”
As he’s passing the blunt, he adds, “I think you’re the only person who’s ever offered to get me high without also telling me you think I’m too uptight or stuck up.”
Bev laughs at that, smoke leaving her mouth in short puffs. “Anybody who tells you that just doesn’t get you.” She takes a long drag. “I like to think I understand you pretty well.”
Stan smiles a little at that. “You do.” Probably the best out of everyone, except maybe Richie, he doesn’t add.
They spend a while settled in a companionable silence, just passing the blunt back and forth, and after a little while, Stan thinks he’s starting to feel it. It’s a little… underwhelming? But also a lot at the same time? He’s warm all over; when he looks down, he sees that there are large patches of flush on his forearms. He notes that his mouth feels dry, and he opens his bag to retrieve the water he brought, draining about half the bottle in one go before putting it on the ground next to his feet.
“How’re you feeling, Stanny?” Bev asks him quietly, her eyes half-closed as she leans so that her body creates an acute angle with the wall. She has her knees drawn up to her chest, and she’s resting her cheek on top of them so that she can look at Stan.
Stan hums. “Warm. A little sleepy.”
“Yeah?” She grins, and then stretches her legs out and gives her thigh a pat. “You wanna lay down?”
Stan nods, and then shifts around so that he can rest his head in her lap. It’s a level of intimacy he doesn’t allow most people — even the other Losers, sometimes — but somehow, with Beverly, it feels good. It feels right.
Bev smiles down at him fondly, lifting her hand to his head and toying with one of his curls. “This okay?”
“Mm,” Stan replies vaguely, before adding, “yeah, ‘s good.”
She begins gently running her hands through his hair, avoiding the clips that hold his kippah in place. Stan feels his whole body seem to melt.
It hits him, then, how much he trusts her. They haven’t been friends for very long, but with all that the Losers have been through together, it feels as though they’ve all known each other forever. This is more than that, though: it’s like something in Stan calls out to something in Bev, two pieces of a puzzle that, at first, don’t seem like they should fit together the way they do. The link between the two of them, it feels almost like their souls are siblings.
“Bev,” Stan murmurs. When she hums quietly in response, Stan says, “You’re like… my soul sibling. Like God cut one spirit in half and made two people from it, and that’s us.” He opens his eyes to look up at her, and he sees her looking down at him, tears in her eyes.
“Yeah,” she whispers. “That’s what it is.” She grins. “You’re my soul brother, Stan.”
Stan is relieved that she understands what he’s saying, because he’d been worried that, even though it made perfect sense in his head, it would sound weird and unintelligible once he said it out loud. He’s starting to feel like he did when he and Richie were in sixth grade and they stayed up all weekend to watch a marathon of The Six Million Dollar Man reruns — dopey, sleepy, and like he isn’t making sense — but in a way, he’s worlds better, because he didn’t need to stay up for hours. And what’s more is, even though his heart is beating hard and fast and his bones feel like jelly, he doesn’t feel nervous at all. He’s not worried his parents will somehow instantly know he’s high, or that it’s gonna make him stupid like Eddie says it will.
He doesn’t feel like Stanley Uris, the guy who’s anxious all the time and bores people to death and takes five minutes to wash his hands, or Stanley, who got attacked by a monster in the sewers when he was thirteen and almost got his face eaten; he just feels like Stan, the normal sixteen-year-old.
“I think I wanna be high forever,” Stan says quietly, his eyes closed.
“Forever is a long time,” Bev muses, still running her fingers through Stan’s hair.
Stan thinks about that for a moment. “Yeah. Not forever, I guess. Just… more. More than just this once.”
“That sounds nice,” Beverly replies. She pauses for a moment and reaches down to pick up the water bottle and hold it up inquiringly, sipping from it when Stan gives her a nod, and then putting it back down. “I usually get high by myself, or with Richie, sometimes. I wouldn’t mind doing it with you more.”
That makes Stan feel… nice. Bev doesn’t let her guard down often, and it makes his chest feel full knowing that she’s okay with doing it around him.
“I trust you a lot, Bev,” he says, figuring that if he’s gonna keep thinking about it he may as well say it.
“I know, Stan. I trust you, too,” she replies, and her voice is all soft and nice and full of love. “I… I appreciate you a lot. Mostly because…” She hesitates, and then she says, a little quieter, “Because you’ve only ever thought of me as me.”
“So have the others,” Stan points out.
Bev laughs, and Stan opens his eyes in time to see her shake her head. “No, I mean… You never looked at me different because I’m a girl. You always saw me,” she says scratching his scalp lightly. “Just. Thank you for that. Thank you for giving me that.”
Stan rolls over and presses his face into Bev’s stomach. “Love you,” he says. The fabric of her shirt muffles it a little, but he knows she heard it anyway.
“Love you too, Stan,” she replies. She puts a hand on the back of Stan’s head, the tips of her fingers just barely poking over his kippah to brush against his hair. “Y’know, Richie’s nicknames don’t usually mean anything, but I think with you he actually got it right. You really are the man.”
It’s silly, and Stan knows it, but hearing that makes him tear up a little. The part of him that always worries that he isn’t enough, that he isn’t cool or brave or interesting enough to keep up with his friends, it can’t argue with something like this. Something real .
Time passes — it must, even though it doesn’t feel like it is, because even after what he’s been through, even as high as he is, Stan is unable to conceive of a world that doesn’t function exactly as it always has — and eventually, Beverly’s hand stills in his hair.
“What time is it?”
Stan shuffles around so that he’s laying on his back and checks his watch, squinting at it to get the numbers to come into focus. He’s vaguely surprised to find that it’s already after two in the afternoon.
“About a quarter after two,” he says, and then lets his arm drop so that it lays across his stomach. “Have we really been down here that long?”
Bev nods. “Hard to believe, but yeah. It’s easy to lose track of time when you’re high; happens to me a lot.”
Stan hums quietly. He thinks that maybe he should be concerned about that, but he isn’t. Time is a concept that feels very vague to him right now, and he finds that he can’t be bothered to worry about it.
Still… “Should we start heading back, now?”
Bev thinks for a moment, resuming her idle petting as she does so, and Stan almost falls asleep before she says, “Maybe. Walking around feels nice when you’re high, and you’re probably peaking right now. Plus, you’re probably gonna start getting hungry soon, so we might as well go, that way we can stop in town and get food or something.”
Stan nods his assent, and then after a moment of drawing on all the energy he can muster, he sits up. He grabs the water bottle, drinks the rest of it, and then puts the empty bottle back in his backpack.
Bev packs up her things, and then they open the clubhouse door and climb out one at a time. Bev holds out a hand to help Stan up when he reaches the top, and he accepts it gratefully.
The first thing he notes is that the Barrens look different. The colours seem a little brighter, and the soft sunlight filtering through the trees glows in a way that Stan has never seen before.
Beverly stands next to him, admiring it for a moment, before she reaches down and takes his hand, interlocking their fingers.
“C’mon,” she says. “Let’s go.”
They hike through the Barrens for what feels like both hours and only seconds, and by the time they get back to their bikes, Stan’s heart is beating so hard he can hear it pounding in his ears. He’s starting to breathe a little heavily as they walk their bikes up to the edge of the Barrens, and Beverly must notice, because once they're up the hill, she puts down the kickstand on her bike.
“Let’s stop and take a break,” Beverly says, sitting down on the rocky outcrop.
Stan stands his own bike up on its kickstand and then comes to settle next to Bev, looking out over the Barrens.
Beverly suddenly seems to remember something, and she rummages around in her bag for a moment before handing Stan a Ziploc baggie with two cookies in it.
“For the road,” she says with a grin. “Don’t eat more than half in one sitting, they’re apparently super potent.”
Stan takes the bag and gently tucks it away in his backpack. He remembers the change of clothes he brought. “Hey, uh… Do you think I should change before I go back home?”
Bev considers it for a second. She turns her head away, breathing deeply for a moment, and then she turns back to Stan, leans in close, and sniffs him. She makes a face.
“Probably,” she says. “Riding our bikes should help a little with the smell, but it would be best for you to change.” She ponders something for a moment. “It’s not as bad as if we hadn’t left the window open, thank god. Then you’d probably be able to smell it on your clothes even through your backpack.”
Stan takes this in. “...That’s not how it is now, though, right?”
Bev shakes her head. “It’s bad enough that someone might notice, but not that bad, don’t worry.” She pulls her knees up to her chest and rests her chin on top of them. “Anyway, I brought some air freshener to spray ourselves with, just to be safe. So we won’t get any weird looks when we stop for food.”
Stan nods. “I can change when we stop, too. I brought clothes that don’t look too different from what I’m wearing, so nobody should notice.”
Beverly nods back. Then, she stands up and heads over to her bike. She waits for Stan to come up beside her, and then grins wickedly.
“Race you back to town? Loser has to pay the tip at lunch.”
“You’re on.”
The two of them mount their bikes, count down together, and then take off pedaling as quickly as they can.
As his speed tops out, Stan stops pedaling, allowing his momentum to carry him. The wind lifts his hair away from his face, and he thinks, this is the happiest I have ever been.