'I saw them, all right,' Ben gasped. 'And I never want to see them again.'

This sent them off into another storm of hysterical laughter. Richie kept expecting Henry's gang to come around the corner onto Court Street and take after them again, police station or not. Still, he could not stop laughing. Beverly was right. It had been great.

'The Losers' Club Gets Off A Good One!' Richie yelled exuberantly. 'Wacka-wacka-wacka!' He cupped his hands around his mouth and put on his Ben Bernie Voice: 'YOW-zaYOW-za YOWZA, childrens!'

A cop poked his head out of an open second-floor window and shouted: 'You kids get out of here! Right now! Take a walk!'

Richie opened his mouth to say something brilliant — quite possibly in his brand– n e w I r i s h Cop Voice — and Ben kicked his foot. 'Shut up, Richie,' he said, an d promptly had trouble believing that he had said such a thing.

'Right, Richie,' Bev said, looking at him fondly. 'Beep-beep.'

'Okay,' Richie said. 'What do you guys want to do? Wanna go find Henry Bowers and ask him if he wants to work it out over a game of Monopoly?'

'Bite your tongue,' Bev said.

'Huh? What does that mean?'

'Never mind,' Bev said. 'Some guys are so ignorant.'

Hesitantly, blushing furiously, Ben asked: 'Did that guy hurt your hair, Beverly?'

She smiled at him gently, and in that moment she became sure of something she had only guessed at before — that it had been Ben Hanscom who had sent her the postcard with the beautiful little haiku on it. 'No, it wasn't bad,' she said.

'Let's go down in the Barrens,' Richie proposed.

And so that was where they went . . . or where they escaped. Richie would think later that it set a pattern for the rest of the summer. The Barrens had become their place. Beverly, like Ben on the day of his first encounter with the big boys, had never been down there before. She walked between Richie and Ben as the three of them moved single-file down the path. Her skirt twitched prettily, and looking at her, Ben was aware of waves of feeling, as powerful as stomach cramps. She was wearing her ankle bracelet. It flashed in the afternoon sun.

They crossed the arm of the Kenduskeag the boys had dammed up (the stream divided about seventy yards farther up along its course and became one again about two hundred yards farther on toward town), using stepping– stones downstream of the place where the dam had been, found another path, and eventually came out on the bank of the stream's eastern fork, which was much wider than the other. It sparkled in the afternoon light. To his left, Ben could see two of those concrete cylinders with the manhole covers on top. Below them, jutting out over the stream, were large concrete pipes. Thin streams of muddy water poured over the lips of these outflow pipes and into the Kenduskeag. Someone takes a crap upt own and here's where it comes out, Ben thought, remembering Mr Nell's explanation of Derry's drainage system. He felt a dull sort of helpless anger. Once there had probably been fish in this river. Now your chances of catching a trout wouldn't be so hot. Your chances of catching a used wad of toilet paper would be better.

'It's so beautiful here,' Bev sighed.

'Yeah, not bad,' Richie agreed. 'The blackflies are gone and there's enough of a breeze to keep the mosquitoes away.' He looked at her hopefully. 'Got any cigarettes?'

'No,' she said. 'I had a couple but I smoked them yesterday.'

'Too bad,' Richie said.

There was the blast of an air-horn and they all watched as a long freight rumbled across the embankment on the far side of the Barrens and toward the trainyards. Jeez, if it was a passenger train they'd have a great view, Richie thought. First the poor-folks' houses of the Old Cape, then the bamboo swamps on the other side of the Kenduskeag, and finally, before leaving the Barrens, the smoldering gravel-pit that was the town dump.

For just a moment he found himself thinking about Eddie's story again — the leper under the abandoned house on Neibolt Street. He pushed it out of his mind and turned to Ben.

'So what was your best part, Haystack?'

'Huh?' Ben turned to him guiltily. As Bev looked out across the Kenduskeag, lost in thoughts of her own, he had been looking at her profile . . . and at the bruise on her cheekbone.

'Of the movies, Dumbo. What was your best part?'

'I liked it when Dr Frankenstein started tossing the bodies to the crocodiles under his house,' Ben said. That was my best part.'

'That was gross,' Beverly said, and shivered. 'I hate things like that. Crocodiles and piranhas and sharks.'

'Yeah? What's piranhas?' Richie asked, immediately interested.

'Little tiny fish,' Beverly said. 'And they've got all these little tiny teeth, but they're wicked sharp. And if you go into a river where they are, they eat you right down to the bone.'

'Wow!'

'I saw this movie once and these natives wanted to cross a river but the footbridge was down,' she said. 'So they put a cow in the water on a rope, and crossed while the piranhas were eating the cow. When they pulled it out, the cow was nothing but a skeleton. I had nightmares for a week.'

'Man, I wish I had some of those fish,' Richie said happily. 'I'd put em in Henry Bowers' bathtub.'

Ben began to giggle. 'I don't think he takes baths.'

'I don't know about that, but I do know we better watch out for those guys,' Beverly said. Her ringers touched the bruise on her cheek. 'My dad went up the side of my head day before yesterday for breaking a pile of dishes. One a week is enough.'

There was a moment of silence that might have been awkward but was not. Richie broke it by saying his best part was when the Teenage Werewolf got the evil hypnotist. They talked about the movies — and other horror movies they had seen, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents on TV — for an hour or more. Bev spotted daisies growing on the riverbank and picked one. She held it first under Richie's chin and then under Ben's chin to see if they liked butter. She said they both did. As she held the flower under their chins, each was conscious of her light touch on their should ers and the clean scent of her hair. Her face was close to Ben's only for a moment or two, but that night he dreamed of how her eyes had looked during that brief endless span of time.

Conversation was fading a little when they heard the crackling sounds of people approaching along the path. The three of them turned quickly toward the sound and Richie was suddenly, acutely aware that the river was at their backs. There was no place to run.

The voices drew closer. They got to their feet, Richie and Ben moving a little in front of Beverly without even thinking about it.

The screen of bushes at the end of the path shook — and suddenly Bill Denbrough emerged. Another kid was with him, a fellow Richie knew a little bit. His name was Bradley

something, and he had a terrible lisp. Probably went up to Bangor with Bill for that speech-therapy thing, Richie thought.

'Big Bill!' he said, and then in the Voice of Toodles: 'We are glad to see you, Mr Denbrough, mawster.'

Bill looked at them and grinned — and a peculiar certainty stole over Richie as Bill looked from him to Ben to Beverly and then back to Bradley Whatever-His-Name-Was. Beverly was a part of them. Bill's eyes said so. Bradley What's-His-Name was not. He might stay for awhile today, might even come down to the Barrens again — no one would tell him no, so sorry, the Losers' Club membership is full, we already have our speech-impediment member — but he was not part of it. He was not part of them.

This thought led to a sudden, irrational fe ar. For a moment he felt the way you did when you suddenly realized you had swum out too far and the water was over your head. There was an intuitive flash: We're being drawn into something. Being picked and chosen. None of this is accidental. Are we all here yet?