AS EVERYONE SHIFTED INTO SMALL CONVERSATIONS, HAYLEY TURNED TO BILL. Even though they had not been in touch, she had somewhat kept tabs on him. And when a movie came out that was written by him, and she saw his name on a book at the library, she couldn't simply ignore it. She told the man, "Hey, I saw your movie. It was really good, terrifying."

"The ending sucked, though," he chuckled, and she could tell that that was a common response to his work.

She winced but smiled because if she was being honest, it was one of the worst endings to anything she had ever seen. But the entire rest of it was very impressive and very entertaining. "I wasn't gonna say it, but..."

"You were always too nice to me. Bet you're too nice to your husband now," he said, and she saw his eyes land on her left ring finger where Evan's ring sat. She had hoped that no one would notice, but it was very large and extravagant.

"Fiancee," she corrected, and she wasn't sure why she said it like it wasn't just as serious, like she was assuring him that there was still a chance for them. As far as she knew, he could have a wonderful girl back home that he loved more than he ever loved Hayley. "It's nice seeing you, Billy."

He smiled, examining her face like he was trying to figure out what she was thinking, what her words meant. He leaned back in his chair and asked, "Nice seeing you too. What have you been up to? You ever become an actress?"

"Close. I'm an accountant in London," she replied, but she knew that he could sense her fake enthusiasm. He knew that her worst fear was working a boring desk job. But at least she got to see the world.

"That's great, Hayley," he said, although it wasn't really convincing either of them. Strings tugged at Hayley's heart. She knew that she would feel that way coming back, almost ashamed of how her life turned out. "This is all so weird, all these memories, people that I don't even remember forgetting."

She looked up at him with raised eyebrows and questioned, "Forgot about me, huh?"

"I could never forget about you, Hayley," he answered almost immediately, and the suddenness surprised her a bit. There was no way that that was entirely platonic, right?

Ben then cut in, and it seemed that he was eavesdropping on their conversation. "I mean, it's weird, right? Now that we're all here, everything just comes back faster and faster. I mean, all of it."

"Yeah, you know, when Mike called me, I threw up," Richie admitted, and their eyes widened. "Isn't that weird? I got, like, sick, and I threw up. I feel fine now. I feel very relieved to be here with you guys. Why is everybody looking at me like this?"

"When Mike called me, I crashed my car," Eddie added, and they all whipped around to look at him in shock.

Hayley's heart dropped when she thought about how she felt — the utter terror and the pain in her hand where the scar across her palm was. Ben nodded. "Shit, man. I hear you. I mean, my heart was literally pounding right out of my chest."

"I downed about three glasses of champagne," Hayley said, recalling grabbing one of the waiters from the party and just taking his tray from him.

Bev muttered, "I thought it was only me."

"It was like pure..." Bill started, but he trailed off a little bit, like he couldn't quite describe the feeling.

"Fear," Mike finished for him, and they all turned to him. He had been fairly quiet the entire dinner, like he was letting them enjoy their reunion before dropping the bomb on them. "It's fear, what you felt."

Bill looked over at him, and his stutter came out when he asked, "Why did we all f-feel like that, Mike? You remember something we don't, don't you, Mike?"

"Something happens to you when you leave this town. The farther away, the hazier it all gets. But me, I never left. So, yeah, I remember. I remember all of it," Mike explained to them.

Hayley watched the realization dawn on the others just as it dawned on her. It all came flooding back — going down the well, Stan getting his face eaten, Georgie, the clown. She took a deep breath as she processed it all, and it was like reliving the worst night of her life all over again.

"Pennywise."

Richie muttered, "Oh, the fucking clown."

"Shit," someone else cursed. Hayley wasn't paying attention. She was still in shock from the blast from the past.

Ben turned to their old friends, the one who had called them all there that day. "Mike, you said you wanted our help with something. What was that?"

"There's an echo, here in Derry that bounces back every 27 years. We thought we stopped it back then." Hayley really did not like where the story was going. "We thought it was done, but a week ago, a man, Adrian Melon — slaughtered. A girl, Lisa Albrecht — the other night, went missing. There've already been others, and there will be more. More death. More pain."

Everyone was talking over him, trying to get him to stop, like they could just ignore it and go back to their lives if they never heard about it. He continued, "That echo, we might have changed it, just like it changed us, but we didn't stop it. Because it just bounced back. We made an oath. That's why I brought you back. That's why you're here. To finish It. For good."

"Well, that shit got dark fast," Richie scoffed. "Thanks, Mike."

"My fortune cookie just says, 'Good'," Eddie announced, and Hayley furrowed her eyebrow. That wasn't exactly a fortune. She reached for her own and owned it, furrowing her eyebrows at the letter 'I'.

The Tozier man told them, "I don't know how they do fortune cookies here. Mine just says 'Guess'."

"You wanna throw that over here?" Bill asked, standing up and placing his fortune on the table. Hayley handed hers to him, and he assembled the pieces on the table as they all crowded around, trying to figure out what sentence it could spell out.

So far, they had 'I GUESS COULD NOT CUT IT', which made no sense. But there didn't seem to be any sentence that did. That was until they realized that they were missing one part. They looked over at the redheaded woman, who was staring at her fortune in complete and utter horror.

"Bev?"

She slowly placed her piece on the table, and Hayley's stomach dropped out of her body at the name across it — the name of the only one of them missing. Bill slid it across the table into its sport in the sentence, reading 'I GUESS STANLEY COULD NOT CUT IT'.

"Why does it say Stanley?" Eddie asked in a panicked voice, but all of them stood there, staring at the words and trying to figure out what they mean and how terrified they should be. "Someone fucking answer me!"

All of a sudden, the other fortune cookies in the center of their table started shaking and popping. Hayley jumped, grabbing the hand that had been brushing against hers. She looked down, and when she saw her fingers intertwined with Bill's, the flashbacks to when they were little came rushing in.

She did not have time to reminisce, though because the fortune cookies were hatching — yes, hatching — like an egg. Every single one of them was as still as they could be as they watched a creature crawl out of one of them. Eddie muttered, "What the fuck is that, man?"

Then, it jumped.

Screams and yells broke out across the room, and Hayley wasn't sure if any of them were hers. All she was focused on was the spider-like creature diving toward her. Until she was blocked by a person, and she opened her eyes just in time to see Bill knock it away from her.

But there were more hatching. A worm-like thing was on the table, and a bat-like one followed it. Bill pulled Hayley behind him slightly, despite her pushing forward and getting ready to fight. It was like they were twelve again, and he was protecting her.

The entire thing was a blur. There was screaming and punching and fighting. Hayley stabbed through one of the creatures with a knife. But they all backed up when Mike screamed something about it not being real and picked up a chair, slamming it against the table loudly.

"Is everything all right?" They all whipped around at the sound of a high-pitched voice. A waitress was standing in the doorway, looking slightly alarmed at the state of the room and the people in it.

Hayley turned back to the table, and none of the little creatures were there anymore. She sighed, dropping her head into her hands as she realized that they must look insane.

Richie nodded. "Yeah, could we get the check, please?"