Love Isn't Just A Word

Prologue

A/N: I normally don't post authors notes but I had to for this story. I saw 'Stand By Me' over nine years ago, I was 7-years-old at the time and haven't seen it since. I changed up the story a little bit, like how Ace ends up in Shawshank. If anything is not right in this story, remember it's been over nine years. 

I guess everybody knows what happened between The Cobra Gang and the other boys. It was all over town when things got worse when things started to escalate even more. Nobody knew about me though, I wasn't sure if that makes things better about what happened, or even easier. 

I was walking home from school when I heard Denny Lachance was dead. 

It was one of those days where everything seemed happy, sunny, warm even for Castle Rock. Too sunny for sadness, the music on the radio blasting from store to store as you walked down them.  

It was the day before summer vacation when I heard the news, poor Gordie must have been in shock.  I've only met the two boys once, a long time ago. I was young. 

I never understood death, it used to terrify me. I was looking out my window with the sun beating down on the ground, my small white painted bedroom, with a brown dress hanging over the closet, just waiting to wear. 

It played on the radio for days, weeks and hours. Like a bad smell in the air, the news was there all the time. 

"Today, a convicted felon. John Merrill, aged eighteen, has been sentenced for the breaking and entering charges and the convicted murder of missing teenager Ray Brower, Brower's body had been found in the woods next to train tracks..." 

I never really liked to talk about what happened between me and the Cobra gang, you know like Ace Merrill, Billy Tessio, Fuzzy Bracowicz, Charlie Hogan, Vince Desjardins... and Eyeball Chambers.