A/N: Ahhh! An update! Please R&R!

Veronica had stared at Beverly as she milled around with the others retreating to their individual classes that morning. She'd wanted to ignore it and had, to a degree, but the redhead felt those dark eyes on following her every move even after she'd taken a seat near the back of social studies class.

It was more than a little bothersome at this point, as after Myers had returned to school, she had become a withdrawn flake. A withdrawn flake whose eyes were never drawn to anything so inexplicably like Beverly Marsh as she went about her day, especially whenever Gretta or Paula snapped at her for being so distracted.

Bev didn't want to idle on what must've happened to Veronica to make her so spooked, and focused on the fact that she hadn't seen hair nor hide of Hockstetter once. She'd tuned out much of what Eddie Kaspbrak had had to say about staying in the Neibolt House for however many hours, and Beverly had no idea as to why. Regardless, she felt butterflies flapping around in her stomach over just the thought that she'd been invited to hear the full story behind what had happened to Eddie and Ben. She'd gotten up at the crack of dawn with no motivation to expect anything but the usual isolation at school.

The girl crossed her arms over her desk and laid her head against the soft sleeves of her sweater. Beverly's eyes grew heavy while Mrs. McCarty droned on about civics in the United States. She didn't know why the winner of the latest presidential election mattered to a class full of freshman and one or two sophmores. No one in the class was legally allowed to vote in the first place, and Beverly knew that if they were going to be tested on the three branches of government, that she could just go to the library to find out what she needed beforehand.

Beverly had gotten by with average grades, based solely on piecing together what made the most sense during multiple choice quizzes. The only time when taking notes was ever relevant was when… well, when The Voice wanted to know about her day. She'd take notes for her friend, just to get everything good and everything awful as accurate as possible, because The Voice cared. Beverly was grateful that she could tell the difference between when someone really listened to her and remembered her stories and someone like her father, who only asked ritualistically and accepted a recap of 'it was fine' with relish.

Beverly sighed quietly, reminded of the reason for her downtrodden spirit before being in the right place at the right time. Although she hated herself for it, Bev's hopes were up that she was getting a chance at having friends again. She pondered the possibility of getting to do normal kid-things with Ben and Richie, Eddie, Stan, and… and Bill Denbrough, too. And yet, while the chance made her heart sing, it didn't commandeer the very real fear of trading in one friend for others.

She almost wished it would, for who knew if The Voice was more than a figment of her imagination in the first place? It had come up from the sink when Beverly was four-years-old.

Beverly barely ever cried when she was little. When she'd been a tot, she'd gotten it backwards and thought, or decided more like, that adults cried a lot and kids didn't as much. Beverly had been a social butterfly once before her mommy died – or before Al Marsh claimed she'd died in that hazy before-time when she wasn't fully aware that things could mean more than what they appeared to be.

But once, when she'd been four and it had been a while since her mommy had disappeared, Beverly had tried to play basketball outside of the apartment. Daddy was hardly around then, he'd needed to stay at work for long periods of time, and he didn't care to employ a full-time babysitter.

Beverly had been skipping along the pavement, but tripped before she could run out into the open road. She'd skid against the ground in her gingham dress and cut up her knee and the palms of her hands. The tears that arose came after the constant sting of gravel in her skin and the blood oozing from her wounds, when she'd forced herself to wash away the dirt on her hands. The water made everything ten times worse, and yet Beverly had remembered to do it until the cuts were clean. Mommy was adamant about doing so before putting bandaids and kisses on booboos.

Beverly had burst into tears without warning, and cried so loudly over the basin with her red, red hair hanging down and soaking in the water. The only sound that got her to stop wasn't that of the front door opening as Alvin Marsh stomped in, but the distant, echoing jingling of bells.

Little Bevvie had woken something up in her distress.

"B… Bev… Beverly!"

The harsh whisper drove Bev to straighten up and turn in her seat, and find herself face to face with the feverish Veronica Myers.

Veronica's eyes were red and veiny just above the sinking apples of her cheeks, and her frizzy hair was straighter and slicker after not showering for several days. She looked older than her 15 years, and more than a little undone as she leaned in close to Bev's freckled face. Beverly noticed among everything else that the edge of Veronica's desk was cutting into her ribs painfully, and yet the older girl was so spastic in her desire to get to Beverly that she didn't notice it whatsoever.

Beverly was chilled to the bone in an instant, unnerved ever more so by having to look into Myers's whirlpool-like eyes directly. They were swallowing up every feature on Beverly's face, absorbing as Beverly tried to wipe the shock off her own face and replace it with a glower. Beverly knew, though it was difficult in that moment, to instinctively raise her defenses.

She had, understandably, hoped that Veronica was safe once she'd gone missing, but despite that short period of not knowing, Beverly was once again curdling over the tall girl's presence. Just looking at Veronica was enough for Bev to remember that this was one of the, if not the, closest allies of Gretta Keene.

And Gretta Keene was, as far as the hierarchy in their school dictated, a Queen Bitch.

"What do you want?" Beverly spat, piercing eyes set to narrow with blunt suspicion. "If it's anything other than 'to borrow a pencil', you can stop trying to get to me."

Veronica swallowed, but Bev was reminded of when her freshman year had begun and how, on the first day of classes, she been rammed right into one of the cafeteria tables and stained by the food she'd landed on. Gretta and Veronica's laughter had followed Beverly all the way home, and when Alvin Marsh had made big deal over it just to 'help' his daughter change out of her ruined clothes.

She remembered when she couldn't walk past the lockers without hearing whispers over how she'd fucked Henry Bowers and Patrick Hockstetter at the same time, along with a handful of boys that Beverly hadn't spoken to since grade school. The only name that stuck with her in that right had been Bill Denbrough's, but then she remembered hearing the name of a girl or two as well, in between the slurs of 'slut' and 'whore' and 'cunt'. The worst of the worst.

No, the worst was that they kept getting away with it from junior high to high school. Beverly had tried everything in the book, and had only learned one lesson after each attempt to reach out to anyone willing to listen – nobody cared.

The men and women that taught the schoolchildren of Derry held rumors of sexual conduct on her part up to a higher standard than her own account of things. They all knew her father was off and still used that to boost their beliefs that she was a "dirty girl". And Beverly, if she thought about it for more than was healthy, accepted that maybe it was easier for everyone else to blame her and not themselves.

"I've been trying to tell you for days now. I'm sorry." Veronica continued, twitching. Her expression was so visibly sincere and pained that it took Beverly by surprise to see. "I'm so sorry for what I did. What I was doing. I'm sorry, Beverly, I'm sorry and I need you to –"

Veronica stopped herself, swallowing hard just as the desk dug further into her stomach. After contracting ever so slightly as though she were being shocked, Veronica pulled back her freneticism and gave Beverly a watery smile. "I just hope… that… you can forgive me."

Beverly's mouth hung open, and she found it hard to speak for a long moment. "What are you talking about…?"

"Um… Beverly?" Said girl looked away from Veronica's bloodshot eyes and saw Ben an arms-length away, nervously playing with the straps of his new backpack – a smudged blue thing with He-Man graphics that looked like it belonged to an eight-year-old.

"Do you wanna get going? To study hall, I mean?" He asked, awkwardly trundling back and forth between her desk and the door. Beverly realized that class had ended amid two of her respective crises, and she hadn't been called out once.

"Yeah, let's go." It took energy to regain that spark of life that had been ignited in the morning before class, but the more Beverly saw of Ben's sheepishly innocent face, the more comfortable she felt in her own skin again.

"Beverly?" Veronica repeated, forcing a divide in the younger girl's attention. "I'm sorry. I hope you'll think it over."

Veronica jerked with every word, like a glitching animatronic or an overdramatic actor on the brink of self-implosion. Beverly couldn't think of what to do to get Myers to stop doing that manic movement routine, so she nodded slowly for lack of anything else to say. And Veronica deflated, smiling in a way that didn't quite reach her eyes.

"Thank you." She said nimbly, the sincerest she'd been throughout their whole conversation. Maybe, the sincerest she'd been in her entire life.

Beverly sounded weirdly flat to her own ears. "Sure."

She stood from the desk and didn't look back as she tugged Ben by the hand and had them race out of soc class and down the hall while the bell rung above them. Her braid flew behind her as they lapped around the corner and saw Stan, pacing like a jitter-bug. They'd all decided to meet in Richie and Eddie's designated classroom for study hall (God help the teacher who had to put up with not just them, but three new friends in the next minute or so).

Bev pulled Ben along, springing up and looking over at his awed look in her direction. He must've been just as excited to tell his side of the story as she was to hear it.

Bill couldn't move once he'd woken up. He found himself staring blearily at the ceiling, watching as a seam above him began to dark and expand like ink on paper. His mind was locked, unable to land on anything concrete, but he knew that it was raining again.

The water swelled in its little nook above his bed, and Bill watched it reach its maximum potential before a droplet was forced down to the ground and at the boy's side. It hit his mattress and, suddenly, Bill's limbs flailed in one second and he jolted up to sneeze loudly in the next. He covered his face and sneezed once again, and another time before he could even think to look at his bedside clock.

Bill was instantly alarmed, but felt too groggy to do anything about it. He'd slept through school – he'd slept all day! There were 20 minutes left, according to his (frustratingly silent) alarm clock, meaning that Bill had been asleep for 17 hours in total.

Bill felt like it'd been a lifetime since he'd been awake, however.