Disclaimer: Not mines. Anything mentioned here by name isn't mines.

A/N: Happy Thanksgiving everybody.

As far back as I could remember, I always wonder why Chris Chambers chose to be friends with us. I know we would often refer to ourselves as a gang, but we weren't so much a "gang" as a group of friends who hung out and looked out for each other. Did Chris chose to hang out with us because he pitied us? I was a pretty quiet kid back then, Teddy was a psycho, and Vern was well… Vern. Did he feel sorry for us and felt we needed someone looking out for us? That we needed him?

I remember when I first met Chris back in elementary school, he seem so tough. He seemed like a kid who had seen enough a lot, but underneath all that was actually a sensitive soul. Chris Chambers was one of the toughest kids I've seen, but later on I learn even he wasn't unbreakable.

Is it because we treated him like any other kid? We didn't have much of a set of rules we followed, other than no girls allowed in our tree house, but we did make sure to treat each other with some respect. Sure Vern was the butt of a lot of our jokes but he still stuck with us through it all.

I often wonder if it wasn't for us, would Chris have hung out with his brother more? I knew him and Eyeball didn't have the best relationship; they weren't as close to each other as me and my brother Denny were. But what if we were the ones keeping his bad impulses in check? Chris's family had a reputation for being bad and even Chris believe he would follow in their footsteps, not that Chris was a saint or anything, he smoked and swore like the rest of us, but maybe through us the darker aspects of his personality were kept hidden?

Maybe it if wasn't for us, Chris would have develop a better relationship with Eyeball, instead of trying to fight his reputation he would have chose to embrace it, Eyeball would have taken him under his wing and Chris would have started hanging out with Ace and his friend and maybe become a Cobra.

Back during the night we made camp while on our journey to find Ray Brower, Chris had confess to me he had stolen the milk money and admitted he felt bad about it afterwards and tried to return it. He also broke down in front of me wishing he could get away from all and thought he was a pussy for admitting that. I told him he wasn't. Ace wouldn't have comfort him and would have told him to stop being a pussy about it and grow a pair, and even make fun of him for good measure. It would have taught Chris a lesson not to show weakness.

Events would have changed if Chris was in Ace's gang and not ours. It would have just been me, Teddy, and Vern trying to find Ray, I wouldn't have accidently shot that trashcan behind the Blue Point, Chris might have not brought his Dad's .45 with him and if he did, he'd end up pointing it at us at the confrontation over ownership of Ray's body. But then, we wouldn't have met Chris. We wouldn't have been friends with him, or even know him as well as we did, the real him. Instead we would have fear him, our opinion of him being the same as the rest of Castle Rock: that he was a troublemaker and a criminal in the making, if he hadn't been friends with us.

I remember one time back when we were all hanging out in the tree house: Chris and Teddy playing cards, me reading a detective comic book, and Vern trying to find a good station to listen to on the radio, that I said to Chris during their game.

"Hey Chris?"

Chris turned to look at me. "Yeah Gord?"

"I'm glad we're friends."

Chris let out a small smile. "Me too man." Then he returned to his game. "Four Kings, beat that Duchamp!"

"No fair, you were cheating!" Teddy started ranting. Chris turned around again and stared at me, eyes twinkling like he expected me to say something. I just shook my head and return to reading my comic.

I'm sorry to say I'll never know why Chris chose to be friends with us, I just knew he chose us for a reason, what reason that was will remain a mystery.

The End.