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The boat had killed George, but Richie was right — it hadn't been like handing George a loaded gun to play with. Bill hadn't known what was going to happen. No way he could.

He drew a deep, shuddering breath, feeling something like a rock — something he hadn't even known was there — go rolling off his chest. All at once he felt better, better about everything.

He opened his mouth to tell Richie this and burst into tears instead.

Alarmed, Richie put an arm around Bill's shoulders (after taking a quick glance around to make sure no one who might mistake them for a couple of fagolas was looking). 'You're okay, ' he said. 'You're okay, Billy, right? Come on. Turn off the waterworks. '

'I didn't wuh-wuh-want h-him t-to g-g-get kuh-hilled! ' Bill sobbed. 'TH-THAT WUH-WUHWASN'T ON MY M-M-M-MIND AT UH-UH-ALL! '

'Christ, Billy, I know it wasn't, ' Richie said. 'If you'd wanted to scrub him, you woulda pushed him downstairs or something. ' Richie patted Bill's shoulder clumsily and gave him a hard little hug before letting go. 'Come on, quit bawlin, okay? You sound like a baby. '

Little by little Bill stopped. He still hurt, but this hurt seemed cleaner, as if he had cut himself open and taken out something that was rotting inside him. And that feeling of relief was still there.

'I-I didn't w-want him to get kuh-kuh-killed, ' Bill repeated, 'and ih-if y-y-you t-tell anybody I w-was c-c-cryin, I'll b-b-bust your n-n-nose.

'I won't tell, ' Richie said, 'don't worry. He was your brother, for gosh sake. If my brother got killed, I'd cry my fuckin head off. ' 'Yuh-Yuh-You d-don't have a buh-brother. '

'Yeah, but if I did. '

'Y-You w-w-would? '

'Course. ' Richie paused, fixing Bill with a wary eye, trying to decide if Bill was really over it. He was still wiping his red eyes with his snotrag, but Richie decided he probably was. 'All I meant was that I don't know why George would want to haunt you. So maybe the picture's got something to do with. . . well, with that other. The clown. '

'Muh-Muh-Maybe G-G-George d-d-doesn't nuh-nuh-know. Maybe h-he th-thinks — '

Richie understood what Bill was trying to say and waved it aside. 'After you croak you know everything people ever thought about you, Big Bill. ' He spoke with the indulgent air of a great teacher correcting a country bumpkin's fatuous ideas. 'It's in the Bible. It says, " Yea, even though we can't see too much in the mirror right now, we will see through it like it was a window after we die. " That's in First Thessalonians or Second Babylonians, I forget which. It means — '

'I suh-suh-see what it m-m-means, ' Bill said.

'So what do you say? '

'Huh? '

'Let's go up to his room and take a look. Maybe we'll get a clue about who's killing all the kids. '

'I'm s-s-scared to. '

'I am too, ' Richie said, thinking it was just more sand, something to say that would get Bill moving, and then something heavy turned over in his midsection and he discovered it was true: he was scared green.

The two boys slipped into the Denbrough house like ghosts.

Bill's father was still at work. Sharon Denbrough was in the kitchen, reading a paperback at the kitchen table. The smell of supper — codfish — drifted out into the front hall. Richie called home so his mom would know he wasn't dead, just at Bill's.

'Someone there? ' Mrs Denbrough called as Richie put the phone down. They froze, eyeing each other guiltily. Then Bill called: 'M-Me, Mom. And R-R-R-R-R — ' 'Richie Tozier, ma'am, ' Richie yelled.

'Hello, Richie, ' Mrs Denbrough called back, her voice disconnected, almost not there at all.

'Would you like to stay for supper? '

'Thanks, ma'am, but my mom's gonna pick me up in half an hour or so. '

Tell her I said hello, won't you? '

'Yes ma'am, I sure will. '

'C-Come on, ' Bill whispered. 'That's enough s-small talk. '

They went upstairs and down the hall to Bill's room. It was boy-neat, which meant it would have given the mother of the boy in question only a mild headache to look at. The shelves were stuffed with a helter-skelter collection of books and comics. There were more comics, plus a few models and toys and a stack of 45s, on the desk. There was also an old Underwood office model typewriter on it. His folks had given it to him for Christmas two years ago, and Bill sometimes wrote stories on it. He did this a bit more frequently since George's death. The pretending seemed to ease his mind.

There was a phonograph on the floor across from the bed with a pile of folded clothes stacked on the lid. Bill put the clothes in the drawers of his bureau and then took the records from the desk. He shuffled through them, picking half a dozen. He put them on the phonograph's fat spindle and turned the machine on. The Fleetwoods started singing 'Come

Softly Darling. '

Richie held his nose.

Bill grinned in spite of his thumping heart. 'Th-They d-don't luh-luh-hike rock and r-roll, ' he said. 'They g-gave me this wuh-one for my b-b-birthday. Also two P-Pat B-B-Boone records and Tuh-Tuh-Tommy Sands. I keep L-L-Little Ruh-Richard and Scuh-hreamin J- Jay Hawkins for when they're not h-here. But if she hears the m-m-music she'll th-think we're i-in m-my room. C-C-Come o-on. '

George's room was across the hall. The door was shut. Richie looked at it and licked his lips.

'They don't keep it locked? ' he whispered to Bill. Suddenly he found himself hoping it was locked. Suddenly he was having trouble believing this had been his idea.

Bill, his face pale, shook his head and turned the knob. He stepped in and looked back at Richie. After a moment Richie followed. Bill shut the door behind them, muffling the

Fleetwoods. Richie jumped a little at the soft snick of the latch.

He looked around, fearful and intensely curious at the same tune. The first thing he noticed was the dry mustiness of the air — No one's opened a window in here for a long time, he thought. Heck, no one's breathed in here for a long time. That's really what it feels like. He shuddered a little at the thought and licked his lips again.

His eye fell on George's bed, and he thought of George sleeping now under a comforter of earth in Mount Hope Cemetery. Rotting there. His hands not folded because you needed two hands to do the old folding routine, and George had been buried with only one. A little sound escaped Richie's throat. Bill turned and looked at him enquiringly.

'You're right, ' Richie said huskily. 'It's spooky in here. I don't see how you could stand to come in alone. '

'H-He was my bruh-brother, ' Bill said simply. 'Sometimes I w-w-want to, is a-all. '

There were posters on the walls — little-kid posters. One showed Tom Terrific, the cartoon character on Captain Kangaroo's program. Tom was springing over the head and clutching hands of Crabby Appleton, who was, of course, Rotten to the Core. Another showed Donald Duck's nephews, Huey, Louie, and Dewie, marching off into the wilderness in their Junior Woodchucks coonskin caps. A third, which George had colored himself, showed Mr Do holding up traffic so a bunch of little kids headed for school could cross the street. MR DO

SAYS WAIT FOR THE CROSSING GUARD!, it said underneath.

Kid wasn't too cool about staying in the lines, Richie thought, and then shuddered. The kid was never going to get any better at it, either. Richie looked at the table by the window. Mrs Denbrough had stood up all of George's rank-cards there, half-open. Looking at them, knowing there would never be more, knowing that George had died before he could stay in the lines when he colored, knowing his life had ended irrevocably and eternally with only those few kindergarten and first-grade rank-cards, all the idiot truth of death crashed home to Richie for the first time. It was as if a large iron safe had fallen into his brain and buried itself there. I could die! his mind screamed at him suddenly in tones of betrayed horror. Anybody could! Anybody could!

'Boy oh boy, ' he said in a shaky voice. He could manage no more.

'Yeah, ' Bill said in a near-whisper. He sat down on George's bed. 'Look. '

Richie followed Bill's pointing finger and saw the photo album lying closed on the floor.

MY PHOTOGRAPHS, Richie read. GEORGE ELMER DENBROUGH, AGE 6.

Age 6! his mind shrieked in those same tones of shrill betrayal. Age 6 forever! Anybody could! Shit! Fucking anybody!

'It was oh-oh-open, ' Bill said. 'B-Before. '

'So it closed, ' Richie said uneasily. He sat down on the bed beside Bill and looked at the photo album. 'Lots of books close on their own. '

'The p-p-pages, maybe, but n-not the cuh-cuh-cover. It c-closed itself. ' He looked at Richie solemnly, his eyes very dark in his pale, tired face. 'B-But it wuh-wuh-wants y-you to ohopen it up again. That's what I th-think. '

Richie got up and walked slowly over to the photograph album. It lay at the base of a window screened with light curtains. Looking out, he could see the apple tree in the Denbrough back yard. A swing rocked slowly back and forth from one gnarled, black limb.

He looked down at George's book again.

A dried maroon stain colored the thickness of the pages in the middle of the book. It could have been old ketchup. Sure; it was easy enough to see George looking at his photo album while eating a hot dog or a big sloppy hamburger; he takes a big bite and some ketchup squirts out onto the book. Little kids were always doing spasmoid stuff like that. It could be ketchup. But Richie knew it was not.

He touched the album briefly and then drew his hand away. It felt cold. It had been lying in a place where the strong summer sunlight, only slightly filtered by those light curtains, would have been falling on it all day, but it felt cold.

Well, I'll just leave it alone, Richie thought. I don't want to look in his stupid old album anyway, see a lot of people I don't know. I think maybe I'll tell Bill I changed my mind, and we can go to his room and read comic books for awhile and then I'll go home and eat supper and go to bed early because I'm pretty tired, and when I wake up tomorrow morning I'm sure

I'll be sure that stuff was just ketchup. That's just what I'll do. Yowza.

So he opened the album with hands that seemed a thousand miles away from him, at the end of long plastic arms, and he looked at the faces and places in George's album, the aunts, the uncles, the babies, the houses, the old Fords and Studebakers, the telephone lines, the mailboxes, the picket fences, the wheelruts with muddy water in them, the Ferris wheel at the

Esty County Fair, the Standpipe, the ruins of the Kitchener Ironworks —

His fingers flipped faster and faster and suddenly the pages were blank. He turned back, not wanting to but unable to help himself. Here was a picture of downtown Derry, Main Street and Canal Street from around 1930, and beyond it there was nothing.

'There's no school picture of George in here, ' Richie said. He looked at Bill with a mixture of relief and exasperation. 'What kind of line were you handing me, Big Bill? '

'W-W-What? '

'This picture of downtown in the olden days is the last one in the book. All the rest of the pages are blank. '

Bill got off the bed and joined Richie. He looked at the picture of downtown Derry as it had been almost thirty years ago, old-fashioned cars and trucks, old-fashioned streetlights with clusters of globes like big white grapes, pedestrians by the Canal caught in mid-stride by the click of a shutter. He turned the page and, just as Richie had said, there was nothing.

No, wait — not quite nothing. There was one studio corner, the sort of item you use to mount photographs.

'It w-w-was here, ' he said, and tapped the studio corner. 'L-Look. '

'Jeepers! What do you think happened to it? '

'I d-don't nuh-nuh-know. '

Bill had taken the album from Richie and was now holding it on his own lap. He turned back through the pages, looking for George's picture. He gave up after a minute, but the pages did not. They turned themselves, flipping slowly but steadily, with big deliberate riffling sounds. Bill and Richie looked at each other, wide-eyed, and then back down.

It arrived at that last picture again and the pages stopped turning. Here was downtown Derry in sepia tones, the city as it had been long before either Bill or Richie had been born. 'Say! ' Richie said suddenly, and took the album back from Bill. There was no fear in his voice now, and his face was suddenly full of wonder. 'Holy shit! '

'W-What? What ih-ih-is it? '

'Us! That's what it is! Holy-jeezly-crow, look! '

Bill took one side of the book. Bent over it, sharing it, they looked like boys at choir practice. Bill drew in breath sharply, and Richie knew he had seen it too.

Caught under the shiny surface of this old black-and-white photograph two small boys were walking along Main Street toward the point where Main and Center intersected — the point where the Canal went underground for a mile and a half or so. The two boys showed up clearly against the low concrete wall at the edge of the Canal. One was wearing knickers. The other was wearing something that looked almost like a sailor suit. A tweed cap was perched on his head. They were turned in three-quarter profile toward the camera, looking at something on the far side of the street. The boy in the knickers was Richie Tozier, beyond a doubt. And the boy in the sailor suit and the tweed cap was Stuttering Bill.

They stared at themselves in a picture almost three times as old as they were, hypnotized. The inside of Richie's mouth suddenly felt as dry as dust and as smooth as glass. A few steps ahead of the boys in the picture there was a man holding the brim of his fedora, his topcoat frozen forever as it flapped out behind him in a sudden gust of wind. There were Model-Ts on the street, a Pierce-Arrow, Chevrolets with running boards.

'I-I-I-I d-don't buh-buh-believe — ' Bill began, and that was when the picture began to move.

The Model-T that should have remained eternally in the middle of the intersection (or at least until the chemicals in the old photo finally dissolved completely) passed through it, a haze of exhaust puffing out of its tailpipe. It went on toward Up-Mile Hill. A small white hand shot out of the driver's side window and signalled a left turn. It swung onto Court Street and passed beyond the photo's white border and so out of sight.

The Pierce-Arrow, the Chevrolets, the Packards — they all began to roll along, dodging their separate ways through the intersection. After twenty-eight years or so the skirt of the man's topcoat finally finished its flap. He settled his hat more firmly on his head and walked on.

The two boys completed their turn, coming full-face, and a moment later Richie saw what they had been looking at as a mangy dog came trotting across Center Street. The boy in the sailor suit — Bill — raised two fingers to the corners of his mouth and whistled. Stunned beyond any ability to move or think, Richie realized he could hear the whistle, could hear the cars' irregular sewing-machine engines. The sounds were faint, like sounds heard through thick glass, but they were there.

The dog glanced toward the two boys, then trotted on. The boys glanced at each other and laughed like chipmunks. They started to walk on, and then the Richie in knickers grabbed Bill's arm and pointed toward the Canal. They turned in that direction.

No, Richie thought, don't do that, don't —

They went to the low concrete wall and suddenly the clown popped up over its edge like a horrible jack-in-the-box, a clown with Georgie Denbrough's face, his hair slicked back, his mouth a hideous grin full of bleeding greasepaint, his eyes black holes. One hand clutched three balloons on a string. With the other he reached for the boy in the sailor suit and seized his neck.

'Nuh-Nuh-NO! ' Bill cried, and reached for the picture.

Reached into the picture!

'Stop it, Bill! ' Richie shouted, and grabbed for him.

He was almost too late. He saw the tips of Bill's fingers go through the surface of the photograph and into that other world. He saw the fingertips go from the warm pink of living flesh to the mummified cream color that passed for white in old photos. At the same tune they became small and disconnected. It was like the peculiar optical illusion one sees when one thrusts a hand into a glass bowl of water: the part of the hand underwater seems to be floating, disembodied, inches away from the part which is still out of the water.

A series of diagonal cuts slashed across Bill's fingers at the point where they ceased being his fingers and became photo-fingers; it was as if he had stuck his hand into the blades of a fan instead of into a picture.

Richie seized his forearm and gave a tremendous yank. They both fell over. George's album hit the floor and snapped tiself shut with a dry clap. Bill stuck his fingers in his mouth. Tears of pain stood in his eyes. Richie could see blood running down his palm to his wrist in thin streams.

'Let me see, ' he said.

'Hu-Hurts, ' Bill said. He held his hand out to Richie, palm down. There were ladderlike slash-cuts running up his index, second, and third fingers. The pinky had barely touched the surface of the photograph (if it had a surface), and although that finger had not been cut, Bill told Richie later that the nail had been neatly clipped, as if with a pair of manicurist's scissors. 'Jesus, Bill, ' Richie said. Band-Aids. That was all he could think of. God, they had been lucky — if he hadn't pulled Bill's arm when he did, his fingers might have been amputated instead of just badly cut. 'We got to fix those up. Your mother can — '

'Neh-neh-never m-mind m-my muh-huther, ' Bill said. He grabbed the photo album again, spilling drops of blood on the floor.

'Don't open that again! ' Richie cried, grabbing frantically at Bill's shoulder. 'Jesus Christ, Billy, you almost lost your fingers! '

Bill shook him off. He flipped through the pages, and there was a grim determination on his face that scared Richie more than anything else. Bill's eyes looked almost mad. His wounded fingers printed George's album with new blood — it didn't look like ketchup yet, but when it had a little time to dry it would. Of course it would.

And here was the downtown scene again.

The Model-T stood in the middle of the intersection. The other cars were frozen in the places where they had been before. The man walking toward the intersection held the brim of his fedora; his coat once more belled out in mid-flap.

The two boys were gone.

There were no boys in the picture anywhere. But —

'Look, ' Richie whispered, and pointed. He was careful to keep the tip of his finger well away from the picture. An arc showed just over the low concrete wall at the edge of the Canal — the top of something round.

Something like a balloon.

They got out of George's room just in time. Bill's mother was a voice at the foot of the stairs and a shadow on the wall. 'Have you boys been wrestling? ' she asked sharply. 'I heard a thud. ' 'Just a lih-lih-little, M-Mom. ' Bill threw a sharp glance at Richie. Be quiet, it said.

'Well, I want you to stop it. I thought the ceiling was going to come right down on my head. '

'W-W-We will. '

They heard her go back toward the front of the house. Bill had wrapped his handkerchief around his bleeding hand; it was turning red and in a moment would start to drip. The boys went down to the bathroom, where Bill held his hand under the faucet until the bleeding stopped. Cleaned, the cuts looked thin but cruelly deep. Looking at their white lips and hte red meat just inside them made Richie feel sick to his stomach. He wrapped them with BandAids as fast as he could.

'H-H-Hurts like hell, ' Bill said.

'Well, why'd you want to go and put your hand in there, you wet end? '

Bill looked solemnly at the rings of Band-Aids on his fingers, then up at Richie. 'I-I-It was the cluh-hown, ' he said. 'It w-w-was the c-clown pretending to be Juh-Juh-George. '

'That's right, ' Richie said. 'Like it was the clown pretending to be the mummy when Ben saw it. Like it was the clown pretending to be that sick bum Eddie saw. '

'The luh-luh-leper. '

'Right. '

'But ih-is it r-r-really a cluh-cluh-clown? '

'It's a monster, ' Richie said flatly. 'Some kind of monster. Some kind of monster right here in Derry. And it's killing kids. '

On a Saturday, not long after the incident of the dam in the Barrens, Mr Nell, and the picture that moved, Richie, Ben, and Beverly Marsh came face to face with not one monster but two — and they paid to do it. Richie did, anyway. These monsters were scary but not really dangerous; they stalked their victims on the screen of the Aladdin Theater while Richie, Ben, and Bev watched from the balcony.

One of the monsters was a werewolf, played by Michael Landon, and he was cool because even when he was the werewolf he still had sort of a duck's ass haircut. The other was this smashed-up hotrodder, played by Gary Conway. He was brought back to life by a descendant of Victor Frankenstein, who fed all parts he didn't need to a bunch of alligators he kept in the basement. Also on the program: a MovieTone Newsreel that showed the latest Paris fashions and the latest Vanguard rocket explosions at Cape Canaveral, two Warner Brothers cartoons, one Popeye cartoon, and a Chilly Willy cartoon (for some reason the hat Chilly Willy wore always cracked Richie up), and PREVUES OF COMING ATTRACTIONS. The coming attractions included two pictures Richie immediately put on his gotta-see list: I Married a Monster from

Outer Space and The Blob.

Ben was very quiet during the show. Ole Haystack had nearly been spotted by Henry, Belch, and Victor earlier, and Richie assumed that was all that was troubling him. Ben, however, had forgotten all about the creeps (they were sitting close to the screen down below, chucking popcorn boxes at each other and hooting). Beverly was the reason for his silence. Her nearness was so overwhelming that he was almost ill with it. His body would break out in goosebumps and then, if she should so much as shift in her seat, his skin would flash hot, as if with a tropical fever. When her hand brushed his reaching for the popcorn, he trembled with exaltation. He thought later that those three hours in the dark next to Beverly had been both the longest and shortest hours of his life.

Richie, unaware that Ben was in deep throes of calf-love, was feeling just as fine as paint. In his book the only thing any better than a couple of Francis the Talking Mule pictures was a couple of horror pictures in a theater filled with kids, all of them yelling and screaming at the gory parts. He certainly did not connect any of the goings-ons in the two low-budget American-International pictures they were watching with what was going on in town. . . not then, at least.

He had seen the Twin Shock Show Saturday Matinee ad in the News on Friday morning and had almost immediately forgotten how badly he had slept the night before — and how he had finally gotten up and turned on the light in his closet, a real baby trick for sure, but he hadn't been able to get a wink of sleep until he'd done it. But by the following morning things had seemed normal again. . . well, almost. He began to think that maybe he and Bill had just shared a hallucination. Of course the cuts on Bill's fingers weren't a hallucination, but maybe they'd just been paper-cuts from some of the sheets in Georgie's album. Pretty thick paper. Could of been. Maybe. Besides, there was no law saying he had to spend the next ten years thinking about it, was there? Nope.

And so, following an experience that might well have sent an adult running for the nearest headshrinker, Richie Tozier got up, ate a giant pancake breakfast, saw the ad for the two horror movies on the Amusements page of the paper, checked his funds, found them a ilttle low (well. . . 'nonexistent' might actually have been a better word), and began to pester his father for chores.

His dad, who had come to the table already wearing his white dentist's tunic, put down the Sports pages and poured himself a second cup of coffee. He was a pleasant-looking man with a rather thin face. He wore steel-rimmed spectacles, was developing a bald spot at the back of his head, and would die of cancer of the larynx in 1973. He looked at the ad to which Richie was pointing.

'Horror movies, ' Wentworth Tozier said.

'Yeah, ' Richie said, grinning.

'Feel like you have to go, ' Wentworth Tozier said.

'Yeah! '

'Feel like you'll probably die in convulsions of disappointment if you don't get to see those two trashy movies. '

'Yeah, yeah, I would! I know I would! Graaaag! ' Richie fell out of his chair onto the floor, clutching his throat, his tongue sticking out. This was Richie's admittedly peculiar way of turning on the charm.

'Oh God, Richie, will you please stop it? ' his mother asked him from the stove, where she was frying him a couple of eggs to top off the pancakes.

'Gee, Rich, ' his father said as Richie got back into his chair. 'I guess I must have forgotten to pay you your allowance on Monday. That's the only reason I can think of for you needing more money on Friday. '

'Well. . . '

'Gone? '

'Well. . . '

'That's an extremely deep subject for a boy with such a shallow mind, ' Wentworth Tozier said. He put his elbow on the table and then cupped his chin on the palm of his hand, regarding his only son with what appeared to be deep fascination. 'Where'd it go? '

Richie immediately fell into the Voice of Toodles the English Butler. 'Why, I spent it, didn't I, guv'nor? Pip-pip, cheerio, and a that rot! My part of the war effort. All got to do our bit to beat back the bloody Hun, don't we? Bit of a sticky wicket, ay-wot? Bit of a wet hedgehog, wot-wot? Bit of a — '

'Bit of a pile of bullshit, ' Went said amiably, and reached for the strawberry preserves.

'Spare me the vulgarity at the breakfast table, if you please, ' Maggie Tozier said to her husband as she brought Richie's eggs over to the table. And to Richie: 'I don't know why you want to fill your head up with such awful junk anyway. '

'Aw, Mom, ' Richie said. He was outwardly crushed, inwardly jubilant. He could read both of his parents like books — well-worn and well-loved books — and he was pretty sure he was going to get what he wanted: chores and permission to go to the show Saturday afternoon.

Went leaned forward toward Richie and smiled widely. 'I think I have you right where I want you, ' he said.

'Is that right, Dad? ' Richie said, and smiled back. . . a trifle uneasily.

'Oh yes. You know our lawn, Richie? You are familiar with our lawn? '

'Indeed I am, guv'nor, ' Richie said, becoming Toodles again — or trying to. 'Bit shaggy, ay-wot? '

'Wot-wot, ' Went agreed. 'And you, Richie, will remedy that condition. '

'I will? '

'You will. Mow it, Richie. '

'Okay, Dad, sure, ' Richie said, but a terrible suspicion had suddenly blossomed in his mind. Maybe his dad didn't mean just the front lawn.

Wentworth Tozier's smile widened to a predatory shark's grin. 'All of it, O idiot child of my loins. Front. Back. Sides. And when you finish, I will cross your palm with two green pieces of paper with the likeness of George Washington on one side and a picture of a pyramid o'ertopped with the Ever-Watching Oculary on the other. ' 'I don't get you, Dad, ' Richie said, but he was afraid he did.

'Two bucks. '

'Two bucks for the whole lawn? 'Richie cried, genuinely wounded. 'It's the biggest lawn on the block! Jeez, Dad! '

Went sighed and picked the paper up again. Richie could read the front page headline: MISSING BOY PROMPTS NEW FEARS. He thought briefly of George Denbrough's strange scrapbook — but that had surely been a hallucination. . . and even if it hadn't been, that was yesterday and this was today.

'Guess you didn't want to see those movies as bad as you thought, ' Went said from behind the paper. A moment later his eyes appeared over the top, studying Richie. Studying him a trifle smugly, in truth. Studying him the way a man with four of a kind studies his poker opponent over the fan of his cards.

'When the Clark twins do it all, you give them two dollars each! '

'That's true, ' Went admitted. 'But as far as I know, they don't want to go to the movies tomorrow. Or if they do, they must have funds sufficient to the occasion, because they haven't popped by to check the state of the herbiage surrounding our domicile lately. You, on the other hand, do want to go and find yourself lacking the funds to do so. That pressure you feel in your midsection may be the five pancakes and two eggs you ate for breakfast, Richie, or it may just be the barrel I have you over. Wot-wot? ' Went's eyes submerged behind the paper again.

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