6:30 a.m.
September 2nd, 1989

Their parents were already at work, which meant that Penelope and Stan were all by themselves when they woke up early for their first day of high school. The girl's twin brother had shaken her in order to wake up since she was the heavier sleeper of the two and, despite her whining and protesting against being woken up by the boy, she knew that she had to listen so she got up sooner than later. Her messy brown hair was tangled due to her tossing and turning in her bed all night long; pre-high school paranoia, she supposed.

She walked to the bathroom right across the hallway from her bedroom so that she could brush her teeth before she would ever get dressed. Penelope stared into her sleepy reflection in the mirror, noticing the slight bags under her blue eyes (the only physical difference between her and Stan, since his eyes were a sienna shade of brown) from where she had struggled to get to sleep the night before. And she noticed that her hair was sloppier-looking than usual, so she took her hairbrush and tried combing it through the strands as gently as possible, but it still hurt from time to time.

Sighing, she dropped the plastic hairbrush on the bathroom counter after she was done, and then turned on the sink faucet; she splashed water onto her face to rid herself of the tiredness, but it was difficult to keep herself awake. Besides, this would be her last first day at a new school before she went to college in four years and she was beyond anxious.

Penelope Uris, who used the nickname 'Poppy' for short, was a kind and gentle young girl of fourteen years and she had almost the exact same personality of her twin brother, Stanley Uris. The only difference was that she was more of a sweetheart than he was, since he had more of an anxious and careful aura about him, and she was more carefree and helpful and she was more mature. She was also born right before him so she was two minutes older than him, and she was constantly focused on things that she cared about, since she wanted to have good grades and please her parents. She was practically wrapped around their fingers with how much of a goody-goody two-shoes that she was but, then again, Stan was also a good kid so they took after one another in that aspect.

Poppy brushed her teeth as quickly and as thoroughly as she possibly could; she just wanted to get ready so that she could ride around the town of Derry on her bicycle before eventually reaching the dreaded high school. She had been nervous about the first day of a new change of scenery since the beginning of the summer three months ago, but she had refused to speak about it to her brother or any of their friends whenever they hung out. In fact, she treated the realization as if she were perfectly fine with that, but she knew that she wasn't. She only had four years of school left, and she should've been okay with the fact that she would finally be out of the shitty town of Derry, Maine.

But her problem was that she had to deal with four years of keeping up with good grades, staying away from bullies that still went after her and her friends constantly, and boring and relentless classes but she only had those years left to hang out with her best friends and be close with them before they would, inevitably, part ways. But she also had only four years until she would have to go to college and she wouldn't be able to tell a certain boy in the group known as the Losers Club how she felt about him.

That boy's name was Bill Denbrough, someone that Poppy had known since she and Stan were five; the two had been very, very close for almost ten years now ever since he had helped her when Henry Bowers had pushed her over on the playground in kindergarten. The girl dimly remembered scraping her knee on the sidewalk from where Bowers had shoved her onto the ground, and she recalled an almost six-year-old Bill running over to her and frantically asking her with his stutter if she was okay. She knew that she had blushed like the stupid girl she had been and a crush had instantly formed when that occurred.

Poppy suddenly thought about how ridiculous that she had grown a crush on the boy immediately after meeting him; but she couldn't help it back then, he was a very sweet young boy and he was really cute as well. She had expected the crush to fade away as their introduction grew into a close friendship; she was expecting to see him more like a brother that she loved to hang out with every single day, but that simply wasn't the case.

Over the course of nine years (nearing ten now, she thought to herself), Poppy had slowly begun confirming that the tiny crush that she had on little Bill Denbrough was becoming something much more than just some stupid little infatuation that happened to so many children. She couldn't exactly describe what it was, but she knew that it was something that meant much more to her than what it had been when she was five. It was dumb, she knew it, and she knew that she shouldn't be focusing on something that she liked a lot more than friends. She needed to be keeping her thoughts on school and graduation in the upcoming years, not some stupid crush!

So why was it so difficult to keep those lovely and fluffy fantasies at bay?!

"Poppy, you might wanna hurry!" shouted Stan's voice from his room down the hallway. "I'm leaving in five minutes and you're not going with me if you're just gonna be in the bathroom all morning!"

Poppy snapped out of her trance as she rolled her eyes playfully, sighing a little bit. "Whatever you say, Stan The Man!" she replied sarcastically as she giggled. "Whatever you say!"

Despite the sweetheart Penelope was, she and Stan still pretended to hate each other from time to time. It was just how brothers and sisters acted.

____________________________________

Reading the words to herself from the schedule that her homeroom teacher, Mrs. Craven, had just handed her, Penelope had begun looking for her first period class, Algebra. Great. Just great. Math was her one weakness when it came to school, and was something that she was hardly able to focus on whenever she was trying to figure it out, feeling as though it was all gibberish. And, even though she wanted to be a teacher whenever she grew up, she knew that it wouldn't be algebra related.

She kept walking down the hallways, looking at each number that hung from red signs above the classroom doors. She couldn't seem to find which room she had to go to and she only had three minutes to get there before the tardy bell. Poppy sighed with frustration, since she could never handle being late for class; she was always scared that her parents would be furious with her for being tardy even once, so she wanted to always be there early or just on time.

But it seemed as though it wouldn't be the case today.

Just my fucking luck, Poppy thought to herself begrudgingly. She combed her fingers through her brown hair, wishing that she didn't have to suffer with the embarrassment of being lost on her very first day of school.

"Need any help, Poppy?!" came a voice from behind the girl.

Penelope grinned with utter relief as she turned to her left and came face to face with the dark green eyes of a boy that she was good friends with but wasn't extremely close with. She did hang out with him often, but that was only when she was with their other friends, all together in the Barrens or at the quarry or even at the arcade. But she did know that the boy, although kind of annoying at times, was a pretty charming person to hang with once in a while.

"If you don't mind, Richie," she replied timidly, giggling a little bit. "I'm really lost. Do you know where room 237 is?"

Richie took Poppy's schedule into his hands and examined it with more concentration than she would've ever thought that he had. Sure, he had his moments where he acted like a complete dumbass but, whenever he was really needed for help, he was always there to assist anyone. And the girl was really grateful for that.

"I have this class with you," Richie said, smiling at the girl in front of him. "And I know just where it is! Come on, follow me, m'lady!"

Poppy chuckled a little, humored by Richie's antics as she followed him up the staircase to a new hallway of the school. It seemed to be the most crowded in the upstairs area, and the poor girl felt a little claustrophobic, but she tried her best to handle it; she always tried to control herself in terrible situations and to not let her anxiety get the best of her. It worked most of the time, but it definitely didn't at the worst moments. But she was a head-strong girl that could take care of herself, even though she looked as though she couldn't.

"Did you not go to the school orientation last week?" Richie added in a question, glancing back at her with a confused expression behind his large, coke-bottle glasses that made his eyes look comically wide.

"No," Poppy responded, shaking her head a little. "Stan and I went on vacation to the mountains with our parents last week, so we didn't know about it. But I didn't think you would go to the 'lame school orientation!'"

"Well, Mom and Dad wanted me to go so I obeyed them," Richie retorted playfully, shrugging slightly. "I didn't want to get fucking scolded for not being a good kid, that's all!"

"I guess you have a point," Poppy said.

After a few more minutes, Richie finally found the classroom and jokingly bowed to his friend, which made Poppy shake her head in amusement. She slowly stepped into the room and saw that there were already quite a few students taking over desks towards the front and middle of the rows of chairs. She felt as though she were in a deep abyss of swarming humans, and she suddenly sensed that she was invisible to the inner eyes of those other kids, and she was weirdly okay with that. She'd rather go unnoticed by society than stick out like a sore thumb, but she already did since she and her brother were losers.

Poppy found a seat in the very back row of the classroom, so she rushed over to it and slumped down into the chair, taking out her violet notebook filled with a variety of colored pages of paper inside the cover. She then pulled her white pouch out of her floral-printed backpack and took out a pencil, ready to take notes if there were to be any today. Besides, even though she hated school immensely, it would do her some good to take some notes just in case she needed them someday. Just in case...

There was still time to spare before the tardy bell rang. That was something she wasn't expecting: time to spare. She wanted to go to her new locker, but she wasn't allowed to until the thirty minute break that would happen between classes. She wanted to read a book, but she felt as though that would be rude to do right before her first period class started. Her first ever class of the entire year. She examined the white walls that were coated with fresh paint that stung her nostrils pleasantly, the decorations that were filled to the brim with words and information about the class, the bulletin boards that interesting-looking math posters were pinned to.

It was a more lively classroom than Penelope was used to, but she didn't mind one bit. She preferred more vibrant, vivid details in classrooms rather than the boring and drab textures of middle school.

Luckily, she had more classes after this one that actually piqued her curiosity. She quite liked English, World History seemed as if it would be okay, and Sociology looked intriguing. Anything would be better than stupid ole algebra. Anything.

Poppy looked around again after breaking herself out of her slight trance. She noticed a few more recognizable faces in the classroom such as Velma Daniels, who she had helped with assignments that she was behind on the previous year. Penelope Uris was a personal tutor to other students of Derry, despite her being an outcast with her seven other friends, since she was one of the smartest girls in the small town. She was honored, truly honored, but she often felt overwhelmed with the pressure to impress others with her intelligence.

And she saw Bill enter the classroom, and Poppy's heart jumped into her throat. Her hands began to sweat with nervousness and she ducked her head down out of shyness, but she didn't do it quick enough. She knew he had already seen her, she had seen his bright topaz eyes glance over in her direction and he had perked up with happiness. She felt his presence grow closer as she saw him sit down at the desk in front of her, and her stomach felt light and feathery at how timid she felt around him. Her hands had begun to tremble lightly, but not so much that anyone would really notice unless they were examining closely.

But she knew that she needed to be kind, despite the distance that she had attempted to keep between herself and the boy that she liked.

"Hi, Bill," she murmured to him quietly, a gentle and sweet smile on her face.

Bill turned his head to look towards the girl sitting in the very back row of the classroom, grinning at the sound of her soft and angelic voice. "Huh-Hey, Poppy," he replied with bright happiness in his blue-green eyes, the most cheerfulness he had felt since right before she and Stan had left for the mountains the week before.

"How's your first day going so far?" the brown-haired girl asked, finally looking up at him and into his beautiful eyes, trying to feel less shyness than she had felt a mere minute ago.

"Pr-Pruh-Pretty good," Bill said with a soft chuckle, shrugging lightly. "Surprising, honestly, I-I was expecting today t-t-t-to be terrible, yuh-you know?"

"Oh, I know how you feel," Penelope said in response, grinning as her eyebrows raised a little. "But you're lucky! I got lost already, this entire place is a damn maze! Anyways, what other classes do you have?"

She saw Bill pull out his schedule, which had now been wrinkled to death from where he had frantically stuffed it in his backpack while looking for his first class. His eyes were scanning over the crumpled words printed onto the paper and he nodded to himself a little bit, smiling a bit. "A-A-After this cluh-class, I have Cr-Creative Writing, then World History, and finally E-E-E-English. What about you?"

"I only have World History with you after this class," Poppy said, feeling a tiny bit bummed -- screw it, a lot bummed -- but she tried to hide it. "But hey, at least we have more than zero classes!"

Unbeknownst to her, Bill was admiring her perfect smile despite it faltering a little, feeling butterflies in his stomach; all he wanted was to reach out and grab her hand as a form of comfort. He had the feeling that she was sad, probably from the fact that they didn't have that many classes together and he wanted to tell her that it would all be okay. But he knew that she would keep on saying "Don't worry about me, Bill. You should be worrying about yourself!"

"Wuh-Well," he said, looking at her with sympathy in his eyes. "We can stuh-still hang out whenever you want to. P-Pr-Promise."

Poppy simply nodded, her heart skipping several beats at his gentle nature with the way he spoke those words. And, as the tardy bell finally rang and Bill turned to face the teacher that had entered the room, the girl had thought of something that she could do. Maybe this would finally be the year that she could admit her feelings to the boy that had left her lovesick for almost a decade. Maybe she would finally become confident and go right up to him one day and admit out loud that she had liked him for many, many years. And then she imagined it all ending with a chaste peck of the lips shared between them, the right thing to happen in that situation.

No, no, no. That wasn't supposed to happen. Penelope wasn't brave. Penelope wasn't confident.

Penelope was timid. Penelope was shy. Penelope was scared. Terrified. Worrisome. Reserved to herself.

And she definitely wasn't about to admit her feelings for Bill Denbrough right to his face.

Looking down at the violet, multi-colored paper-filled notebook, she knew that there was only one way to get the feelings off of her chest.

____________________________________

Dear Bill,

There is something I want to tell you, something that I've been wanting to get out for so long. You'll never know who is writing this to you, but it is a person who wants to be near you forever and ever. But I will never get that wish, and I know that. I just felt that you needed to realize how I feel about you.

Bill... I'm in love with you. I'm in love with you, Bill Denbrough. And those feelings will possibly never fade.

I've been in love with you for what seems to be an eternity now. I don't even know when it all started. Maybe when we were younger and we started going to school, or sometime after that, I have no idea. Or maybe I do, and I'm just too much of a chicken to really admit it.

I tried to hide it... my feelings for you. Tried to deny it for so long. But the longer I was around you, the more I fell. The more I fell in love with you. I adore the way your shiny blue eyes light up whenever you smile, the way you smile in general, your gentle voice whenever you speak, and... your stutter.

Yeah, I'm one of the few people in this school that actually adore your stutter. It's quite cute, actually.

I'll do anything just to see a smile forever on your face, to see you look at me. The stars could never compare to your beautiful eyes. I can spend an eternity drowning in your blue eyes whenever you look at me. I fell for you so long ago, but I never had it in me to tell you.

So this letter will have to be enough.

You deserve to know that you're admired, Bill.

— Your Secret Admirer <3

( A/N: i'm not entirely impressed with this chapter, but it'll have to do!

parts of the letter were done by me, but i have to thank TheQueenlyWriter for helping me out with most of it!

i hope you guys enjoyed this chapter! be looking forward to the next one! let me know your favorite part of this chapter! )

-denbroughswife