🛼 Beverly Marsh 📻

The classroom is spacious and rectangular, with walls painted in muted colors that were once vibrant: soft greens, faded yellows, and discolored educational posters held up with old tape. The morning sun streams through the high windows, casting rectangles of light onto the wooden desks scratched with clumsily drawn initials and hearts. The air smells of chalk, paper, and a summer that hasn't quite ended yet. It's a typical small-town American high school, frozen in an eighties aesthetic that seems to have never truly faded. Beverly sits on a middle bench, neither front nor back, as if subconsciously avoiding drawing attention to herself. Her body is leaning slightly forward, her elbows near the desk. She's absentmindedly fiddling with the cover of her notebook, but her eyes are alert. She doesn't seem nervous; rather, curious. She has that quiet curiosity of someone who observes the world with sensitivity. Her mind is at a point between the childhood she's leaving behind and something new that she doesn't yet fully understand.

Teacher: —Guys, silence please.

The conversations gradually die down. Chairs creak, someone coughs, another drops a pencil.

Teacher: —Today we welcome a new classmate to the school. You can introduce yourself.

You stand up. You feel the weight of everyone's eyes on your back before you even speak. Your heart races. You swallow.

—M-my name is… m-my name is— Name , barely able to speak—. I'm new in town and…

A murmur rises from the back of the classroom. Four boys lean in close, covering their mouths to stifle their laughter. It's not loud laughter, it's worse: low, venomous.

—Look how he talks… —He doesn't even finish a sentence…

Beverly overheard them, felt uncomfortable, and even felt sorry for you. She also felt an anger that seemed uncontrollable. But she couldn't do anything, frowning as she watched the bullies. She looked at you again, focused and affectionate. Go on!