Excited for this chapter but not excited for the nonexistent amount of reviews oh well love you whoever is reading this 3

-Tommytomtom

Gordie held his breath. He wasn't going to cry. He wasn't going to cry…

But there it lay. A dark, hard box with a body inside. He wasn't going to cry…

Nobody was there yet. It was only him and the church. Summer air wafted from the graveyard and inside, whistling bells across his ears. Gordie ran a hand through his hair, wanting to approach the box with the body but feeling as if he couldn't. He just looked, willing himself, wanting himself, not to cry.

His feet were stuck, plastered to the ground as if they were nailed there. He took one painful step forwards, and then another, cringing at the sound of his dress shoes plunking on the ground. They carried him like a never ending carnival ride of family death towards the casket, the dark box with a body inside. A dead body. It looked so menacing, but the person inside was someone he knew so well. How could that be menacing? He didn't know. It was only the knowledge of what he did. Or what he thought he did.

He had told himself not to write those things. But she had read them and she had left the house and she had gotten hit by a fucking car. He had promised himself that those feelings weren't real, told himself he hid that book well enough, but he never learned, and she had found it and now she was dead.

Gordie peered over the lip of the coffin. She was beautiful still, her face peaceful and pale. Gordie recognized her, saw her in himself, in Denny, and even in his father sometimes. Quiet, unassuming.

What had he done? Why had she left, with such knowledge in her mind. He should never had written in the journal, written what he was feeling, what he was thinking. It wasn't like he was one. It was just a pull, a quiet thought in his mind when Chris bumped his arm or looked into his eyes or smiled. It was something in the back of his mind that did the same thing it was doing now with Caspar; pink-lemonade fuzz in the pit of his stomach. An involuntary grin. A giddy tingle over the pads of his fingers. Foot-asleep prickle that didn't feel half bad. What it was, he could only guess, but he had written it down, because that was what he did, and she had found it and left and gotten hit. Nobody knew. But Gordie got the idea when he saw the page open in the banged-up notebook that was sprawled uselessly across the floor. He knew immediately.

He had killed her. All those secrets in her mind that she knew. How could he do this to her? He was ever so wrong to think that this wasn't his fault. If he was what he thought he was, nothing would ever be the same. But he wasn't, and he knew that. He was only fourteen…only fourteen…

He cried.

"Gordie, get in here!"

Gordie sighed, placing his pencil down on top of his maths homework and raised his head to shout at the closed door.

"What?" He called back, his tone more agitated than he had intended it to be.

"Commere!" Mr. Lachance called back. "I need to talk to you!"

Gordie groaned. Whatever it was, he didn't need any sort of talking to from his dad. Nonetheless, he stood, treaded across the room, dragging his feet over the dirty carpet, exited through the door and proceeded to step into the kitchen. There his father sat, his reading glasses perched on the brim of his straight nose. He looked up, his eyes tired but flashing with the glaze over of four cups of coffee in one sitting. His dad had been working since they got to New York nonstop, so much that his daily caffeine intake had increased by nearly three cups and the bags under his eyes had darkened just as many shades. A newspaper sat facedown on the dirty tabletop. His dad was never good at cleaning...

"Who's Gavin Maccaffer?" Mr. Lachance questioned as Gordie stood at the ready in front of him. Gordie shifted from foot to foot.

"A friend." He replied honestly.

"So you know him?" He asked. Gordie nodded as Mr. Lachance flipped over the newspaper.

"Yes sir."

"Well, he did a damn good job of writing about you, son." He said, handing the news paper over. Gordie took it, his eyes skimming over the front page story. "You mean to tell me you made the school paper and you didn't tell me?"

Gordie's fingers curled around the ink-smelling paper.

"Umm…" He thought. "I don't know, it kinda wasn't a big deal…"

"Well, I think it is a big deal." Mr. Lachance replied calmly, taking the paper back. "Good work, son. This is the sort of thing I'd like to be seeing in you. I knew you'd be beefing up soon enough. Let's just see you join some teams and keep your grades up and I think this year is going to go well." He smiled for the first time in a while at his son. Gordie smiled back.

"Thanks, dad." He said with a thin grin.

"I'm proud of you, Gordie." Mr. Lachance said softly, no longer smiling, but looking at him with a thoughtful once-over. "You've gotten strong. Look at those biceps…" He mused to his son. Gordie smiled. His father was never exactly proud of him. Many things he was, but never proud. It was something new, something different. Gordie didn't know if he liked it or not, but maybe it was because he just didn't know it so well as the stone hard, distant father he had been living with all his life. And since his mother's passing, this didn't seem like the kind of thing his dad would ever do, but here he was, admiring his muscles that he had barely even know he had; it was true though, Gordie soon realized after he had left the kitchen and stood in front of the full length mirror in his all-white room again. Normally, he would look flat, 2D against the plain background of whitewash paint. He looked different than he did the summer before 6th grade. He had established muscle over his normally lanky arms and legs and his usually completely flat abdominal area. He was taller, beefier, he saw now. Stronger. Even his hands had grown. He looked less like Bambi and more like a buck. Possibly. But he was no Caspar, even if he was, he had recently realized, a few inches taller than him. Gordie tried to smile at himself in the mirror, but it came out pained and strange. He dropped the smile, passing a tongue over his white teeth in trial. He messed up his hair, looked at himself again, fixed his shirt, but eventually shook his head and went back to his homework.

If anyone is confused, 'l'enterrment' means 'the funeral' in French :)