Setting his tray down and spilling a bit of his orange juice, Gordie continued telling Chris about his weekend in Portland with his parents at lunch that day. "I had to sleep in this room with this huge dog, right, and every night, my great uncle Pete, he's gotta be close to ninety--anyway, he'd march up and down the halls ranting about how he'd lost the kick in his Jockeys and he blamed fabric softener for his impotence--Chris? You listening?"

Chris, who had been watching the popular girls kick a freshman doing his homework alone out his seat so that they could have his table, said, "Uh, yeah, but then I heard the word impotence and I didn't want to hear it." He shook his head as the girls held the boy's math book too high for him to reach. They just laughed. "God, don't you just wish they'd get fat?"

Looking surprised, Gordie asked, "Who?"

"Those girls," he replied, taking his eyes away from them. "I can't believe guys like them. I'd like to see them have to live a day in someone else's life and see how they like getting shit on all the time."

Shrugging, Gordie took a bite of his sandwich. "They won't be perfect forever, if that's some consolation." He grinned. "I kinda think that that Rasmussen chick's kinda hot."

"Who, Ren?" Chris rolled his eyes. "She's great to look at, but she's never spoken a word to me and we've known her since grammar school. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but snobs aren't really one of my major turn on's."

"Of course not, you prefer long walks on the beach and a self-confident woman, without facial hair, preferably slightly seasoned to show you the ropes--"

Chris laughed. "Hey, screw you, I know the ropes."

That was one of the reasons why Gordie was such a good friend to him. Chris could say what he was thinking and Gordie would understand, and then say something light-hearted so that he'd know that what he was worrying about shouldn't be taken too seriously.

But Chris really was sick of the bullshit the popular group put people through on a regular basis. Usually, he didn't make judgements about people, but he'd grown up with these assholes and two-cent whores, and he had finished trying to give them a chance years after they'd decided he was trailer trash.

He could try and tell himself that he didn't care about them, but that was a lie. Every day they surprised him with how low they could stoop. And he would have to be both blind and ignorant to not see how many people they hurt. They thought they were so much better than everyone else was, and Chris couldn't help not being hurt over that. People had always believed that he was less than, never greater than, and he was sick of it.

"You know what I love about life?" Elizabeth Jacobs asked conversationally, seating herself down on the bench next to Gordie. "It can never get so bad that it can't get worse."

Gordie smiled at her. "Having a nice day, Elizabeth?"

"No," she sighed. "Do you have something that I could kill myself with by any chance?"

"So, what did you do today?" Gordie asked, still grinning.

"Well! First I failed my math test. I am in the underachiever math class and I failed my test. Do you know who Thomas Green is? Yeah, well, he's an idiot and he got eighty-eight per cent. And then I'm standing in line and I just got my food and I was waiting for my change and some retard behind me bumped my damn arm and I spilled cranberry juice on myself, so now I have a large red stain on my skirt. Do you know what that looks like?"

"No," Gordie replied.

"That's because you're a boy. You're not good for sympathy." She sighed again dramatically. "I'm looking forward to the afternoon. I'll probably get thrown down a flight of stairs with my luck."

"Hey, maybe you'd break your neck and die," Gordie said cheerfully. "There's always a silver lining."

"Nah, I'd probably just end up getting paralyzed from the neck down and being a vegetable for the rest of my life."

Chris watched the exchange. Ever since Elizabeth had moved to Castle Rock about five years ago, he'd adored her. Sometimes she talked so fast in such long run on sentences that he didn't know what the hell she was talking about, but at least she had a personality. Chris wasn't sure if he had romantic feelings for her, but he did know that he would do pretty much anything to make sure nothing hurt her. But it didn't really matter if he was interested in her or not because she and Gordie had this unspoken thing for each other. The only reason why Gordie hadn't asked her out was because her father wouldn't let her date until she turned sixteen, which was in about six months. Their borderline estranged friend Teddy occasionally felt the need to tell Gordie that when you're seventeen like they were, you weren't supposed to settle down and wait for a girl; you were supposed to roam the fields. But, so far, Gordie hadn't taken Teddy's wise advice.

Ryder Rasmussen, this guy who made up for his lack of height by having the biggest mouth, strolled past their table with his twin Ren at his side. He scooped up the quarter Chris had set down on his napkin for milk later.

"Hey!" Chris barked.

"Oh, sorry, Chambers, was that your milk money?" Ryder turned back. "Sorry for the misunderstanding." He did not return the quarter, just kept walking.

Ren looked at Chris, appearing confused as to why he didn't try and get his money back. Chris just shook his head at her and looked away in contempt.

"Why did you do that?" Ren demanded. "What makes you think you can do that?"

"Oh, it's pocket change, Ren," he said dismissively.

"Yeah, and it's pocket change he doesn't have a lot of!"

"What are you, chairman of the Good Samaritans all of a sudden?" he asked, laughing. They came to his locker, where he got a dollar bill out for her since she'd forgotten her lunch. "What's your problem?"

"It was mean, Ryder," she snapped. "It just was."

"Fine, then, take it," he said impatiently, pressing the quarter into his sister's hand. "Go give it back to him and explain how you're on a holier than thou mission this week."

"You give it back to him, I'm not the one that stole it!"

They began to walk back to the cafeteria. "What, you don't want your friends seeing you talking to Chambers?" Passing by Chris' table again, Ryder tossed the quarter to him. "Sorry, Chambers. But my sister here has made me see the error of my ways. She would have returned this coin to you herself, but she didn't want to look like she knew you." He grinned at Ren. "There! That was nice of us! Let's go."

Chris looked at the quarter in his hand and smirked. "Now there's one girl in particular I woulnd't mind finding out that she got fat ten years from now."

Elizabeth looked in awe at him. "Did my ears just hear Chris Chambers say something mean about another person? Someone should mark that on the calendar."