I don't even remember where I was when I heard that Dennis LaChance was dead. They didn't tell me straight away. I mean, why would anyone? It wasn't like he was meant to mean anything to me after all. He wasn't even anything to do with me. I was Ace Merrill, the toughest kid in town – though I was hardly a kid anymore; going on seventeen – and he was the high school prodigy. Captain of all the teams, straight As when I could hardly manage to scrape pass grades and I was too busy smoking behind the bike sheds to care about sport. Unless that sport was beating up some innocent.

God, nobody knows how much I hated realising what I did. I'd realise I was becoming the very thing I hated when some thirteen year old stumbled, bruised and snivelling, away from me. It wasn't fair, it really wasn't; I was always far bigger and stronger than them. But so was he. I hated knowing I was slowly but surely turning into my father.

That's why I started looking up to Dennis LaChance. It was only mutual respect at first, but when I dropped my so-called friends just so I could go over and talk to him, all that changed. I vaguely registered why the girls liked him; the pale complexion, the pointed face, the dark hair and the big, big eyes. You could tell that he and his kid brother were related. It was those eyes that drew you in. They held his own soul, and the soul of anyone who had ever confided in him. And that was a lot of people; Denny was the sort of guy you told things to because you knew he wouldn't judge.

Before I knew what was happening, I'd pushed him up against a wall in the long deserted corridor (the usual mad rush to get out of school had long since ended, so even the stragglers were gone, there was only me and him there) and I was kissing the guy.

When I let him go, he just blinked those doe eyes of his and made a little oh sound. I turned to leave, humiliated at my own stupidity. "John, don't." That stopped me far better than if he'd run up and stood in front of me. Nobody, nobody used my real name. I didn't even think anybody knew it. And that was it. I was his.

Not, of course, that it was common knowledge. A couple of queers in 1958 Castle Rock, one of them the tough kid and one of them the prodigy? We would have been hunted down and lynched! You'd see us hanging from the trees for weeks afterwards. So life went on, like it had before; I beat the shit out of kids, Denny picked them up again.

Except that we often ran off after school or on weekends, to some part of the woods where none of the local kids would be. We pitched a tent often, sharing my sleeping bag because he would always 'forget' his.

I think that Dennis LaChance knew more about John Merrill than anyone else before or since. He drew memories from me easily and gently. He had such skill at that, that sometimes it didn't even hurt to remember the beatings, or the time I got locked in the shed for three days. Sometimes though, even Denny couldn't make it any better. On those times he would hold me tight and promise me over and over that nobody would ever know.

"I love you John." I committed to memory exactly how they sounded falling from his lips.

Together he and I mourned the death of Little Johnny Merrill. He'd been gone a long time, killed by an endless string of bad boyfriends chosen by his mother (who he promised he'd protect) and the failure he felt every time he saw them treat her badly, leaving only this platinum blonde teenager with the wrong friends and a broken will.

We must have gone on like that for close to four months. I never asked for anything more, and nor did Denny. I could have gone on like that for my whole life. Someone said something though, it was just a silly little kid trying to act tough and stand up to me, and I'm sure now it wasn't founded on anything, but he told me my hair made me look like a fag. The fear of being caught that had always been a tiny part of my mind exploded behind my eyes and I beat the kid senseless.

Denny wasn't happy about it. We stood out in the darkness, eventually moving to sit on a log I had felt under my naked back only a week ago; dented, uneven and uncomfortable, but that didn't matter. Not then.
"John, you shouldn't have gone so far."
"You know what he called me. What he called us!"
"He didn't call us anything. He didn't mean it. He didn't know anything, nobody does!"
"How do you know that, Dennis FuckingKnowItAll LaChance?"
"Now you're just being paranoid. Calm down." He tried to put his arms around me to soothe me then, but I shoved him away. I was still angry, and even he would have been better staying away until I calmed down. But Denny being Denny, hopeless saint, he persisted until I told him to "get the fuck out of my life and never come near me again or I'll fuck you up like I did to the kid earlier."

That was the last time I saw him.

I didn't offer him a lift home that night. Some kids were out who knew him, kids who had more money than sense, and they were the ones to offer him a lift back.

They never made it.

The papers said the truck hit it dead on because it didn't have any lights, and due to the sheer size of it, the kids in the car had no chance.

I didn't see Dennis at school the next day, and I figured it was because he was moping at home. I was fully prepared to go over there myself when classes were over and beg forgiveness. He had to be pretty special for me to do that.

I actually went to his house and banged on the front door, but nobody answered me. I gave up and went home. I can't recall if I saw the paper at a stall or on my coffee table, I only remember the headline revealing to me the awful truth. "WRECKED - High School Champ And Two Friends Dead In Horrific Car Accident" And I knew. I knew then that I could never say sorry to Dennis, I could never make amends. I didn't really feel anything though. I might even have shrugged and tossed the paper aside.

I couldn't help but wonder though, what Denny had felt at the time. Did he know he was going to die? Did he cry out for anyone? His mom? His dad? Me?

Once again though, life went on. The whole school got called into an assembly to pay respects to all three of the students who had died, but nobody remembers the names of the others. I felt nothing still. I missed Denny, sure, but it was like he had moved away or something. It didn't seem real at all.

Not until almost a year later when there were reports of a kid who had gone missing. I went to find him, my reputation as tough kid still firmly in place, and got there as fate would have it, at the same time pretty much as Gordie LaChance and his friends.

I hadn't really seen much of Gordie, especially since the accident, so I'd never truly registered how alike he was to his brother. The eyes, they held the same as Dennis'. I knew this kid had learnt well. It was like Dennis was there in front of me, and I couldn't control it any more.

The final straw came when I actually saw the body of the missing kid. His eyes and mouth were both half open in an expression that was retained as pure fear, his limbs were at odd angles and he had small smears of blood on his face and arms. He and I presented the very picture of hopelessness and ruin.

Was this what my poor Denny had looked like?

I practically dragged poor Gordie off with me who I think even feared for his life. I was known to carry a knife, though I had never used it and never planned to. "Please Ace," he whimpered when I made him sit on the same log I had with his brother – I had subconsciously been drawn there – "Don't hurt me."
I stopped him. I wasn't sure if I could even speak properly; I ached for Dennis now like I had never hurt or hungered for anything or anyone ever before.

"Your brother...he cared about you. I know you know that, but I don't think you know just how much." My voice was forced, it was difficult to speak past the obstruction in my throat. It was difficult to breathe with the crushing grip on my chest. I must have still held some emotion though, because the kid's eyes were suddenly bright with saltwater.

I let him lean against me, and even ventured to put an arm across his skinny shoulders (So like Denny's!) as I went on. "You think he had it easy, he knew that. He tried to show people that he could deal with being popular and a straight A student, but you don't get how hard it was for him to get those grades. Nobody gets that. But I do." I think it was then that Gordie realised what I had been to his brother.

"He often told me about how afraid he was he'd fail his parents and that his dad would drop him. I guess his fear was founded because he saw what they did to you." My poor, turmoiled Denny.

"I think it's my fault he's dead. We argued and I told him to leave me, so he went off with those other kids." I think the tears slipped free from my eyes then because I couldn't say any more. There was nothing more to say.

It was Gordie who put his skinny arms around my waist, seeing into me as his brother had done. We sat together for a long time, both of us remembering the parts of Denny we had been given, that nobody could take away from either of us.

A part of me was torn open then, and it never fully healed. There's still a raw stab whenever I think of Dennis LaChance; dead at sixteen. Especially when I think of never-weres, could-have-beens and words I could never say to him. The worst are the ones he said to me that I can now never say back.

I never once told Denny LaChance I loved him.