[Author's Note: Well. It appears as though I have contracted one of the following: the measles, GERMAN measles or chicken pox. Chicken pox at the age of 16 eh, that's just crap. Which MEANS I have to be in isolation, which MEANS I don't get to see the guy at my school who reminds me of Gordie. Oh well, I write better when I'm sick.]

Gordie shakily raised his hand, and Mrs. Reynolds called on him.

"Can I please go to the bathroom?" he asked quietly.

She nodded and returned to talking about whatever she was talking about.

Passing the bathroom, Gordie pushed open the back doors, running a hand through his hair and trying to breathe deeply. He begged himself not to start crying.

The flashbacks of Denny were terrible lately. The memories he was having weren't terrible themselves, because everything he shared with his brother was the best, but the realness of them left him without enough air to breathe. He totally escaped from the present and became engulfed in his flashback. He wasn't sure why he'd been having them so frequently; usually the only time he had such realistic memories of him was when he was asleep and dreaming. The one he had just had in class had been about the time that Denny had taken him to the county fair when he was ten. Sitting in his desk, he could feel the ribbon attached to the red balloon he had carried, and could feel the stickiness of the vanilla ice cream he had eaten around the corners of his mouth. Denny's laugh was loud in his mind. Denny had been dead for three years now, but for a moment, he was right there with him in Mrs. Reynolds' Geography class of all places. That was why he had had to leave.

Looking up miserably at the sky, he whispered, "I miss you…"

Not ready to go back to class, Gordie decided to go for a walk. Jamming his hands in his pockets, he strolled along with his head lowered.

"Gordo!"

His name being called startled him out of his thoughts and he looked up. "Hi Abby."

With a paperback in her hands and her feet propped up on the picnic table she was seated at, Abby seemed totally at ease. That was what Gordie liked about her. She was calming to be around. She was like a female version of her brother, except not quite as worldly. Chris had been through more than Abby had, and so even when he was happy, you could tell that he could never completely give into the feeling.

"What are you doing?" she asked him.

"Visiting my favorite Abby at Castle Rock High," he replied. "What are you doing? Shouldn't you be in class, learning?"

She shrugged, and put her feet down when he sat across from her. "I had Math. I hate that crap. It's so repetitive."

"That's because you're too smart for the grave curve."

"No kidding eh." She peered closely at him. "You okay? You look like you've seen a ghost."

Gordie just looked at her for a long moment, wondering how she was able to read him so easily. Keeping his eyes on her, he said, "Kind of."

"Kind of what? You're kind of okay or you kind of saw a ghost?"

"Both."

She grimaced. "You been thinking about Denny?"

"Yeah."

"Well, good," she said, surprising him. "He'll never die if you never forget him."

"I couldn't forget Denny," Gordie said adamantly. "He was my best friend."

"I know, Gordo." Abby smiled softly at him, her blue eyes brightly magical. She had that Chambers magic. It brought a smile to his face.