The Summer that Changed Everything

Chapter 1: Prelude

"Here in this diary,
I write you visions of my summer.
It was the best I ever had.
There were choruses and sing-alongs,
And not a spoken feeling.
I'm knowing that right now is all that matters.
All the nights we stayed up talking
And listening to 80's songs;
Quoting lines from all those movies that we love.
It still brings a smile to my face.
I guess when it comes down to it...

Being grown up isn't half as fun as growing up:
These are the best days of our lives.
The only thing that matters
Is just following your heart
And eventually you'll finally get it right." - "In This Diary", (The Ataris)

"The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish your feelings - words shrink things that seem timeless when they are in your head to no more than living size when they are brought out. I was twelve going on thirteen when I first saw a dead human being. It happened in 1960, a long time ago... although sometimes it doesn't seem that long to me. Espeically on the nights I wake up from dreams where the hail falls into his open eyes.",- Stephen King, "The Body"

In my dream I sometimes saw a little girl in pig tails and overalls... She'd appeared at the most trivial times. I ignored her sometimes when she wanted to hang out or ask if I was finished writing.
"I've been looking for you. Where have you been?" She asked. I was silent and just stared out ahead of myself like I was thinking about something but aware that there was really no time to think about it again. It seemed unnecessary. Something that I have inevitably misconstrued.

"Tell, Chris the story, Gordie." She said when she finally appeared. "The other one."
"I know it means a lot to him if I write it down." I finally said back to her. "But I haven't been able to think of anything... lately. I already went through the story about us finding Ray... I don't know if I can handle anything else."
"But this is important to me and to him." The girl replied.

She called out my name, her voice hoarse and ragged. She was like a ghost in my dreams for so many years, flickering and white and blurred at the edges. I expected to see her looking at me, peaking at me through my door or hiding under my bed. Except now all that I see was the sky, hazed with clouds, shooting rays of light down through the blinds. "The Body," was the first story I wrote about my friends. The first that was ever considered literary. It took me a million years to get it published. But I didn't care. Each word, each thought, each phrase was worth waiting a zillion years to get published. I wrote it after I found out my best friend Chris Chambers had been killed. Perhaps I wrote it for him, because the words he always wanted to say where cut short with that knife that was used to stab him and silence him forever.

It's like when we ask if we died tomorrow would our song live on forever? Perhaps, this was Chris's unopened letter to a world that never shall reply. But forever, that one story was good enough—important enough. I was content with my life. But there is always another story; the idea is always there. You think of it, sometimes you try not to. But it's there. It keeps playing like a video over and over and you rewind through the best parts. But you don't write anything down. I was withdrawn from it for a while, I can admit that now.

I was angry with the story not just because I couldn't write it down but, because I felt that because of this one particular segment of our lives changed a lot of the way we used to think, the way we used to talk, the way we used to feel.

As I lay in bed, I could feel a hand of indolence reach over my head and pull me down to sleep. It would take me in and I couldn't see or think or know anything else. Except that I was about to start dreaming. And now I would never wake up from my dream. And as I lay here thinking of possible reasons of why, things were starting to change. When your life flashes, it is not a fraction of time, but a moment where everything stops. And I could see things from a different point of view, where it made more sense. And I could see each and every memory, stretching far out into the horizon.

As time passes it goes on. It never stops. And where I stand now, I could see Mom tucking me in at night, wrapping me up so tightly; I could hardly move. But I felt really safe. And I saw Dad and Mom both teaching me how to ride my bike down the block and helping me up when I'd fall over. Dad would tell me to get right back on again. Mom would wipe away my tears. Denny would tell me how much better I was getting and in no time I would be riding all by myself. I saw us all sitting around the table playing scrabble on family game night and I remember hanging out at Vern's house while he dug holes in the ground in search of his missing Pennies.

And while I stood in the backyard watching the leaves swaying back and forth through the wind, I saw my life and realized how it was not that bad compared to how Chris's life was and how everything affected him so emotionally and differently.

But all I wanted to think about at this moment was how Chris, Teddy, Vern and I would swing from this old tire dad tied on the strongest branch and we would lean back as the sun stole looks at us through its leaves and the wind settled on our bones, and the time stayed still. Oh what I would give to be a kid again. Yet this time the tire wasn't old and neither were we. And we spun so fast and high above the world and we could see everything as it lay right from under us.

But now things were different. People change. Best friends become strangers. And that tire is worn out now and no one sits in it. I don't think I would be able to even if I tried. I don't think the rope would hold anyone up. And perhaps that branch isn't as strong as it used to be.

So maybe I am only imaging it is holding us up. And that we swing from it, slightly and I can hear it creaking as the rope entwined over and over on that branch, (and I tell myself, it is only the wind.) but then as I look, I notice how even in my dream I can feel just how the wind is touching us—moving through, like tiny little fingers.
I'd heard a voice as I lifted my weary head gazing out at the sky from my drawn window, expecting to see my mom looking back in at the far end of the yard folding the laundry after she hung it outside to dry. But I realized that my mother had passed away a long, long time ago and so did Chris. He said the same thing he said 10 years ago—after we found Ray Brower and I cried about Denny. We stood next to each other for a while.

And I looked at him. I thought back at the time we spent searching for Ray Brower's body and made the anonymous call to the police, when we discovered it lying about next to the river bend. Vern and Teddy walked off to the house and we said goodbye. I stood there thinking about how amazing a summer we spent out camping. I didn't want it to end, but it had to like every great story has an end that you must accept. It was time for me to say goodbye. I turned to Chris and said: "I'll see you." Chris replied back in his nonchalant ways of his. "Not if I see you first," and gave me a grin before he walked away with his shoulder bag thrown across his shoulder. Boy, did I miss him.

I figured it was time that I got up from bed and make some coffee for myself to wake up. Being an old man, it seemed harder to wake myself up from sleep. Nothing at all like being 12 years old with so much energy. I stood in the kitchen, when I heard a familiar voice.
"Hey, Gordie." Chris replied.

I looked and there was Chris as he sat in my easy chair; he was holding the .45 he brought along when we went on to search for Ray Brower and almost got me in trouble for it going off by the trash can. I almost dropped all the coffee mate on the counter and floor, but I caught it just in time. I think lately I feel that I have become accustomed to having ghosts in my house. I've being handling his visits a little bit better now.

"Ummm...Yeah?" I finally said after trying to clean up the mess in a few awkward failed attempts.
"You always told them better than me." He said.
"Told what better?" I asked him.
"Stories." He replied.

"Well, which one do you want to hear?" I asked.
"I just want to hear about the one that you won't write down." He told me.

You see... when it came to the disadvantage of the never ending battle with Writer's block, even in the afterlife Chris was always there as my muse.