Hey, guys. This is my second 'Stand By Me' story. Please let me know if you like it! My other SBM story is called 'Yesterday Has Gone' and it's complete, if you'd like to check that out too. Thanks!
My name's Hannah Elise Shaw. I'm 14-years-old and I grew up in the town of Castle Rock, Maine. There's nothing much really to do here, and in the winter, forget about it. It's pretty much dead. Anyway, I wanted to tell you about my family. It's pretty messed up. I mean, MY family's pretty well off, I suppose, but there's a nasty underside that we're not supposed to talk about, but all my family does anyway. My Mom is one of the nosiest busybodies in town. The part of my family that was rotten(so to speak, I know some of them are, but we are family after all.)was my Dad's brother's family, the Chambers'.
Of course, I knew ALL about my relatives, but that didn't mean I ever went to see them. In fact, I was pretty much banned from seeing them. What a pisser, huh? I had been close friends with Chris up to the age of five, and then I was yanked away from that house like it had been on fire. I had never even got to know Chris's younger brothers and sister. We all knew about his oldest brother who was still up in Shawshank for doing something really bad to a girl(though they never talked about them, oh no.). We knew Rich(or EYEBALL)hung around with his j.d. buddies 24/7, and one of those buddies included Ace Merrill. And if you were friends with Ace, you wanted to stear clear at least a couple miles down the road. They never really had anything bad to say about Chris, I guess he was just caught up in a bad family. His pop, well, whenever he was mentioned, my mother sniffed and said "HE's the reason they're all like that. It's all his fault." And my poor Aunt Jane. I missed seeing her alot. I remember she used to give me a flower from her front garden everytime I'd come to visit. I still had all of those flowers, pressed in a book that was hidden away in my dresser.
They couldn't stop me from seeing Chris in school, of course, so I'd regularly get updates about the family then(and no, I never told my mother anything. She found out through her own "sources"). By now, I knew so much about his younger sibs that I really wanted to meet them, but that was entirely out of the question. I would have been grounded until I graduated.
Chris and I were standing next to his locker at the end of a school day towards the beginning of June. He had just finished telling me that his mother had been looking through old photo albums and pictures of me and him kept coming up. I smiled. "How's Aunt Jane doing?", I asked. Chris sighed. "Good, I guess. She's been spending alot of time at Aunt Mary's. My dad's been..." His voice trailed off. I put my hand on his shoulder consolingly. "I'm sorry, Chris. I wish there was something I could do." He shook his head. "I don't want you to get involved in anything, Hannah. I mean it, okay? Your Dad would kill me if anything happened to you because of my Pop."
After that announcement, I felt a hand on my own shoulder. It was Gordie. Gordie LaChance was my best friend, as well as Chris's. "You guys okay?" he asked, looking at both of our faces. I nodded. I never told Gordie anything about Chris's issuses unless he told me it was alright. That's just the way it was. Gordie held up his hand and Chris clapped it loudly. "Yeah, man. We're okay." Chris gave me a knowing look, and I knew from that moment everything was far from being okay.