inspired by Stand By Me '86
When you walk through the hallways in school, about a hundred faces pass you each time you pay attention and it's likely you recognise a few for being so precious in a certain period of your life but have now just drifted to a smile as they pass you, if you're lucky.
Before the wrath of high school began, there was a handful of tiny little guys that I clung to each day because it just felt right and because we were the outcasts forced together by the bad guys who were slapping us around each day just because we were a little different. It was these differences that brought us together and from that moment onwards we stuck together like superglue.
There was Teddy Duchamp, one of the most idiotic guys you would ever meet, who would do anything at all to keep the legacy of his father alive. His thick glasses were way too big for him but then again so was his heart. He tried to kill himself once, challenging a train on the tracks as we tried dragging him from there. That was a strange day.
Vern Tessio was at Teddy's side at all times despite being the inspiration for his meanest punch lines. He was an overweight kid, dressed as if he didn't belong with us, smart and nerdy. His brother was a part of Ace Merill's gang that painted our childhood years with red and I didn't even want to know what went on at home so I never asked.
Gordie Lachance was one of my closest friends out of the group, he was an intellectual but too self-deprecating for his own good following his brother's death. His brother was great, everyone loved Denny including his parents, unfortunately, more than they loved their youngest. He was ignored at home so I always made sure to involve him, his big brown eyes glistening as I warmed his hear and showed him the things he never knew. He was a talented writer, mustering the best storylines out of nowhere for those empty silences at the end of the nights.
I missed him so.
Chris Chambers was my greatest friend out of the bunch and he was the true glue to the group, keeping the peace, fighting the crime and solving the problems. In the process of monitoring, he forgot about himself until he'd go home to a drunk of a father. I don't imagine there was one piece of furniture in that dull house that wasn't thrown at his pretty head at one point and that was by his father or his older brother, another one of Ace's accomplices.
Out of all the guys, only Chris was left with us. Teddy and Vern got transferred to another school after failing all their tests, they never were the academic sort and Gordie well, let's say life got a bit too much and people cared a little less at one point so he took his own life at just 16. 16 and dead, the newspapers relished in that title while his parents only wished it was sooner.
We all had the best times, chasing each other through trees, screaming along to the radio, blissfully unaware of what was to come to our pathetic little lives. What our older selves would become was a mystery that we didn't even care to think about.
I could see Chris Chambers grinning at my goofy jokes while kicking some rocks in the dirt but now we were in algebra and he was kicking the back of my seat harder than he would those rocks.
Before you assume, it wasn't because he developed feelings for me as this was real life where people could choose to present themselves in any way they wanted so they could make someone like me feel a little shittier each day.
I didn't bother confronting him, I just relished in the boy Chris Chambers once was, who I once really liked.
People chuckle as he continues jolting me in the chair, hair "accidentally" getting tangled in his fist sometimes that were plastered in fresh cuts and bruises.
