Stand By Me, Chris

Chapter 1

I dropped my last box of clothes onto the ground of my new bedroom with a thud. I just moved to Castle Rock and I had to carry all of my stuff into my room, and there were some heavy boxes. The room was quite small, as was the rest of the house, and it was painted a terrible green color. I started pulling clothes out of the box closest to me and shoved them into my dresser.

"Hey Lauren wanna go check out the town?" My brother Will asked peeking his head into the room.

"Sure," I said, willing to do anything but unpacking. I got up and followed him into the living room.

"We're going out to look around," Will called out to our mom as we walked out the front door, not giving her a chance to object.

It was a warm afternoon and the neighborhood was almost silent, except for a couple kids playing in their front yards, enjoying the last day of summer.

"So, are you ready for junior high?" Will asked as we walked down the street. It was Labor Day and school started the next day.

"I don't know, I don't want to start school without any friends. I wish we could have moved here earlier so I could have met someone."

"You'll be fine, I promise," he said with a small grin.

We turned a corner and nearly bumped into two guys. One looked like he was about Will's age and the other looked like he was about my age.

"Never seen you around before, you new here?" The older boy asked us.

"We just moved here, I'm Will and this is Lauren."

"I'm Eyeball, hey you wanna come with me and meet a few guys? I was just going to meet up with my gang," the older boy, Eyeball, said.

"Yeah, Lauren, you just walk around and I'll meet you back here in a few hours."

"Okay," I sighed, I was used to Will not paying attention to me, I had hoped in the new town things would be different, but I guess not.

Will and Eyeball disappeared around the corner. I started to walk in the other direction when I heard someone call my name.

"Lauren," I turned around to face the younger boy, "do you want to come with me and meet my friends?"

"Sorry, but I don't really know you," I said.

"I'm Chris. Now you know me," he said with a cute grin. I finally took a chance to look at him, he had short blonde hair and beautiful blue-green eyes, he was quite good looking.

"Fine," I said smiling, maybe he would be my friend.

We started walking down the street, it seemed like we were going away from the town.

"Why didn't you go with that guy and my brother earlier?" I asked him.

"Eyeball is my brother, and I uh, well I kinda got into some trouble with his friend so I'm trying to stay away from them."

"What kind of trouble?" I asked, Chris looked like a troublemaker, but he didn't act like one.

"That's it," he said changing the subject, he was pointing at a big treehouse across the road.

"Wanna race?" He asked.

"Sure," I said standing next to him getting into a running position.

"Ready..." I took off running as fast as I could, but not fast enough. Chris sped past me and got to the tree a few seconds before me. We stood under the tree trying to catch our breaths. Chris smiled at me, then started to climb up the ladder to the treehouse. I followed, and almost climbed over him when he stopped to knock on the door. I heard some shuffling come from above, then the door flung open. He stuck out his hand to help me up and I soon found three other boys looking at me. I brushed the dirt off my skirt, trying to find something to do with my hands.

"This is Lauren," Chris said.

"Hi! I'm Vern," a chubby boy with dark hair and a cheesy smile said.

"I'm Teddy," said a boy with light brown hair and big glasses. Something was wrong with one of his ears, I wanted to ask what happened, but I didn't want to be rude, so I decided against it.

"I'm Gordie," said a cute boy with brown hair that was combed back.

I smiled at all of them. I'm not very good a making friends and I didn't want to say anything to make them not like me, so I stayed quiet. I didn't have many friends where I used to live, and I was glad to have a fresh start. I sat down on the floor between Chris and Gordie.

"I almost ran into Ace today," Chris said, he looked a little worried. I was confused, but I knew something bad had happened recently.

"Man, what are we gonna do?" Gordie asked, looking as if he was about to cry.

"Yeah, I don't like this one bit, sincerely," Vern said shaking his head.

"What happened?" I finally asked, they were acting so nervous about it, I had to know what was going on. They all looked around at each other. Chris nodded at Gordie.

Gordie started to tell the story of what had happened, "We were sitting in the treehouse playing cards when Vern came and told us he knew where a dead body was, so we went to find it..."