I do not own Stand by Me or any of its characters or Nat King Cole or any of his songs!

Chapter One

At First Glance

The first day I saw Riley was the day Chris, Teddy, and I left on our expedition to find Ray Brower's body.

I was walking home from the tree house, and I was halfway there when I heard a rustle in the bushes around me. I paused for a moment, listening, and heard nothing, so I continued on. A couple of feet later, I heard a twig snap, and I whipped around, scanning the bushes for the culprit. Through a few bare branches in one of the bushes, I could see a bit of purple material.

Slowly, I walked to the bush and looked down at a girl crouched on the ground, who was looking at the dirt as if searching for something.

"Hey there," I said casually.

The girl fell backwards and landed on her rear end at the sound of my voice, her legs out in front of her, hands at her sides, and peered up at me.

She was pretty in a plain sort of way, I guess. Her hair was brown with faint golden highlights, and it waved gently to nearly the middle of her back. She had big blue eyes framed with long lashes, a small nose, full pink lips, very pale skin, and rosy cheeks. She was wearing a purple t-shirt with darker purple shorts and brown sandals.

"Are you alright?" I inquired.

"I am now," she replied, hastily returning to her earlier position of kneeling on the ground, still searching. "You nearly scared me to death."

"I'm sorry," I apologized, and glanced downward.

She became motionless for a few seconds, and then stood up and looked me square in the face.

"Who are you?" she asked curiously.

"Gordie Lachance," I answered immediately, without even thinking of the reason why I was telling this girl my name.

"Gordie?" she repeated. "What kind of a name is that?"

"Short for Gordon," I explained.

"Oh," she said bashfully, looking at her feet.

"Who are you?" I spat out.

Her head shot back up, and she smiled. "Riley Parker."

I nodded. Riley. That was a pretty name for a girl.

"How old are you?" she asked.

"Twelve."

"Really? Me too."

I paused for a moment before saying, "What were you doing in the bushes?"

"Oh," she said, seeming embarrassed. "My family just moved here, and I was walking around, exploring, and I dropped the pennies my mother gave me to buy something." She shrugged. "Can't find them anywhere."

"I could help you look for a bit," I suggested. Again, I didn't know why I was doing this. If any other random girl had even asked me to help her look, I would've teased them about it and said no. But this girl hadn't even asked me, and I was offering my help to her.

The two of us kneeled down and began to look through the dirt for the lost pennies. I felt embarrassingly like Vern.

"So," the girl began after a few moments, "where were you headed before I stopped you?"

Normally, I wouldn't be telling anyone other than my friends any of this information, but this girl was different, somehow. So I told her.

"Three of my friends and me are going to see a dead body."

"Really?" she said, her eyes flying wide open suddenly. "Whose?"

"Uh…Ray Brower's. You probably haven't heard of him."

"Oh, I've been here long enough to know about that. That's that kid who went picking blueberries and never came back, right?"

"Uh-huh," I said.

"Are you serious? You know where his body is?"

"Yeah, but you can't tell anyone."

"I won't," she said. "Do you think he got hit by a train, like everyone's saying?"

"Probably."

"Wow," she said, and lowered her eyes to the ground. Then she looked up again and meekly asked, "Could I come?"

If it were anyone else, I would have told them "no" immediately, but somehow I couldn't bring myself to say that to this particular girl. How strange...

"Um…"I began, "well…you see, it's kind of just a little private trip, me and Chris and Teddy and Vern."

"Oh, okay," she said. "I understand."

It surprised me for some reason that she was so accepting of this. "You do?"

She nodded fervently. "Of course. Why would I want to intrude on your time with your friends? It was rude of me to ask."

This girl took me by surprise. "No, it wasn't."

We sat in silence for a bit, and then I found myself saying, "As soon as I get back, I'll look for you."

She turned her head sideways to look at me and smiled. "'Kay."

I smiled too. "'Kay."

At surprising times throughout our trip to see the Brower kid's body, I found myself thinking of this new girl, Riley. What surprised me even more than the fact that I was thinking about her was how often I was thinking about her. She must have crossed my mind a hundred times on our trip.

I got to wondering the strangest little things about her. What did she like to do in her spare time? Was she scared of leeches (for obvious reasons)? What was her favorite food? Did she have any siblings?

Did she have a boyfriend?

I shook that last question away repeatedly. What did I want to do with girls, anyway? Girls were annoying and obnoxious things who giggled too much and hung on your every word like desperate creatures.

Or were they?

I didn't know what to think anymore. This girl had changed everything, had flipped everything upside down for me.

What was I going to do about her?

Well? What do you think so far now that you've had a better look at it? Please review, and I would like to tell you that I will probably be updating one chapter each week unless I have computer trouble or I am just too busy!