[Author's Note: ...I'm aware that I haven't updated this since January. But I'm updating now, because it bugged me that this was lying unfinished, so I stayed up till 3:30 AM to finish it. I hope people will still read it :)]
High school sweet hearts said goodbye, proud parents couldn't stop taking pictures, kids smiled bittersweetly through nervous tears saved for this crossroad. It was June 13, 1965, and the students at Castle Rock High School were waiting for the graduation ceremonies.
In the school parking lot, Chris and Gordie had pissed Brooke off enough by playing peekaboo with their gowns that she left them to their own devices so she could go mingle with the intelligent people.
"God, I thought she'd never leave," Chris teased and then noticed Gordie was still hiding his head in his gown, looking like the Headless Horseman. "Peekaboo, Gordie, dammit."
Gordie's head popped out, his face bearing a great smile. "I'm giddy! I'm graduating! I have a beautiful girlfriend and I look hot!"
"Yeah, you're real sexy in that dress," Chris laughed.
Gordie frowned, gazing down at the unflattering grad gowns that only Brooke looked good in. "We look like priests," he said.
Perching his cap on his head and tilting it at an angle to make himself look like a seductive detective, Chris said passionately, "This is like paying for a buck-toothed prostitute with a wooden leg and then not even having her complete her task. I really believe we should be allowed to keep these gowns. I mean, we had to spend good money on ugliness."
"And when are you planning on wearing a graduation gown again, Chris?" Gordie asked, ignoring the prostitute simile.
"I'm a sentimental fool, Gordo." He looked off, comically dreamy, and then suddenly brightened. "Hey! Tonight could be a special night for you and Brooke. Got birth control?" He leered.
"Shut up. I don't want Brooke for her body."
"Why?" he asked, managing to sound completely innocent and vulgar at the same time. "Is she planning on getting a breast reduction in the next six hours?"
"Sometimes you absolutely amaze me with your ability to both surprise and revolt me like I have never been surprised and/or revolted before."
"I am quite good at that, I'll admit."
Gordie's indignant frown turned into thoughtful consideration. "You think her boobs are the only reason I like her?"
"Definitely. They're very compelling."
"You need a girlfriend, Chris."
"You know while I'm still in Castle Rock, I'm always going to be fixated on one girl and her alone." Chris sighed. "I know that this is the night I've been working for ever since I was told that I'd never make it...but, you know, I still can't quite get rid of the regret of not working towards her too."
Gordie's eyes softened, looking his friend over with that old familiar tenderness that only Chris and Chris' sadness could evoke. He put a hand on Chris' sturdy shoulder, just like when they were twelve and he wanted to make sure that he was really being listened to. "Chris, you...When you get out of here, it's going to be really tough. You're my best friend, and I'm going to miss you, and...it kills me how proud I am of you. I lost Denny, but I always had a brother all these years because you never stopped standing by me. I know how this must sound to you, but keep in mind that I do have a girlfriend and I am not coming on to you. Anyway..." Gordie cleared his throat. "When you get out of here, the world's going to accept you for how smart and kind and great you are. And when you're out there finding yourself...I hope you'll be as blown away as I am with what you find."
Chris' eyes...filled with tears? He smiled painfully, clasping a hand around Gordie's shoulder with a gentle shake. "Gordie. I don't even think you can be put to words. Thank you. You're...you're my best friend, and I really do love...cheese."
Gordie grinned, nodding. "Yeah, I love cheese too." His smile lingered as he gazed at the ground, but when he looked back up at Chris, he was completely serious. "You know, you never had to work for her, Chris. And you still don't."
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"I look like a banshee," Lorelei announced, glaring at her flowing gown.
Smiling, Anya put her arms around her best friend from behind, squeezing her in a sudden burst of affection. The two of them were getting ready for grad in her bedroom, slightly behind schedule--as they had to be at the school in twenty minutes--but not caring. "Lorelei, you look like...you're about to graduate high school."
"No I don't," she countered. "I look stupid. Stupid people don't graduate. It's against the Board of Education laws so that you don't get a bunch of retards flying airplanes and performing open heart surgeries or vasectomies." She tilted her burgundy hat, trying to see if any other angle would make her look a little less ridiculous. She frowned. "Actually, would it be so bad if a complete idiot were to perform a vasectomy? The object is to make sure stuff doesn't work anymore. Any idiot can break a penis."
Anya laughed. "Only you, Lorelei." She looked at Lorelei's profile, taking in the crescent of her eyelashes as they created a poetic shadow against her cheek, feeling like she'd never get to appreciate how unappreciatedly pretty her friend was. Finally, she cleared her throat and changed the subject. "Well, I think the Board of Education is loosening its reigns on the imprisonment of stupid people in high schools, because your ex-boyfriend is receiving a diploma today," Anya said coldly.
"Look," Lorelei sighed. "He's not stupid, he's not crazy, he's not anything bad. You only think low of him because of what happened."
"Sorry," she murmured.
Teddy and Lorelei hadn't been together since that day, when he hit her, she forgave him, and he damned the relationship. Later, when Lorelei tried to convince him that they should be together, he had said that every time he touched her, it hurt him, because he loved her too much to think of the very real possibility that he would ever cause her harm again. She had taken it badly, hating the world for allowing pain to be so relentless and ever present. She hated Teddy for awhile too. He'd made her love him to tears and then he took it away, just like that. Because of a man so ugly on the inside that his mere existence darkened the eyes of innocents.
So, Lorelei fell against Anya, both of them deciding they didn't need guys anyway. They just never told each other about the crying they did separately when they tried to sleep sometimes.
"You know, I bet if you were to dunk me in a big bag of flour, I could really scare a lot of people," Lorelei said brightly.
"Probably," Anya laughed, squinting at her. "But what the hell are you talking about?"
"This stupid grad gown!" she exclaimed, grabbing a handful of the itchy fabric. "I look like I should be floating up and down a haunted staircase, moaning 'Ebeneezer Scroooooooooge...'"
"You look fine, moron."
"That's what all pretty people tell their zombie-lookalike friends. Minus the 'moron' bit; that was uncalled for."
Anya rested her chin on Lorelei's shoulder, studying their reflection in her full-length mirror. Not much had really changed. Neither had grown and neither of them looked wizened. They both looked like the same girls who ate ice cream together and played with dolls and had grown into the girls that could talk forever about nothing on the phone and still make each other laugh. Anya's hold on Lorelei looked like the natural embrace of two best friends who had been together for so long that they couldn't even pinpoint the moment that they befriended each other.
Lorelei really did look lovely, with the burgundy of the gown bringing out the astute regality in her expressive grey eyes and the sudden look of readiness that made her seem somehow taller. Tears welled up in Anya's eyes as sunlight streamed through her dormer window, highlighting the beauty and friendship in both of them.
"You're golden, Lorelei," she whispered, crying now.
Startled, Lorelei turned around. "What? Shh," she said softly as Anya's arms went around her neck. "Why are you crying, Anya?"
"Oh, I don't know," she said miserably. "I just feel like it's all gone too fast, and I didn't get to stop and be like 'Wow, I really have it all.' Because now all I had is going to be gone, with you going to New York in September and with, and with...Chris..."
"Ohh..." Lorelei stroked Anya's hair. "Anya, we're not leaving you. No one can leave you behind without the assumption that we'll be coming home to you. It's okay, Anya. All right? All right?"
Anya burrowed into the embrace, nodding, while Lorelei murmured to her in the same way that she had soothed her when they were much, much younger. Before the broken hearts and before they learned what it was like to love a boy who'd never been loved before. Back when wounds healed and bruises faded and tears went away.