It was late September in Derry, the kind of afternoon where the air felt too crisp to be summer but too lazy to be fall. The sun slanted through the half-empty bleachers of the high school football field, where you and Bill had claimed your usual spot after class. You sat side-by-side, knees almost touching, watching the field where a group of seniors tossed a football lazily.

Bill’s notebook was open on his lap—half-filled with half-sentences and sketches of bicycles—but his pencil had been still for a while now. He was staring out at the field, chewing his lip the way he always did when something was on his mind.

“They’ve… changed,” he said suddenly, voice low enough that you had to lean closer to hear over the shouts from the players.

You looked at him. “Who?”

“The others,” he said, glancing your way briefly before going back to watching the field. “Richie, Bev, Mike… it’s like—like we’re the only ones who…” He trailed off, searching for the right word.

“Remember?” you offered quietly.

Bill nodded. “Yeah. Remember what we were like before. Back then… it felt like we were a real group, y’know? Now it’s all… different. They laugh about stuff we don’t get. They… hang out without saying anything.” His voice was even, but you could hear the faint hurt underneath.

You pulled your knees up to your chest, thinking about how, at lunch that day, Richie had been surrounded by kids from the drama club, cracking jokes you didn’t recognize. Bev had been with a couple of seniors you’d never seen her talk to before. It wasn’t bad—just different. Like someone had taken the edges of the Losers Club and sanded them down until they didn’t quite fit together anymore.

“It’s like we’re the only ones who stayed the same,” you said finally. “Everyone else… I dunno. It’s like they moved on.”

Bill’s gaze flicked to you, and there was something almost relieved in his eyes. “Yeah,” he said softly. “I was worried I was just imagining it.”

You shook your head. “You’re not.”

There was a pause, and then Bill gave a small, crooked smile—the kind he only ever gave you. “Guess that makes us the last of the Losers, huh?”

You smiled back. “Guess so.”

For a while, you just sat there in the quiet comfort of knowing you weren’t alone in noticing the change. Bill’s hand inched over until his fingers brushed yours, hesitant at first, then curling into your palm like it was the most natural thing in the world.

The world around you was shifting—friends drifting, the group breaking apart in ways you couldn’t stop—but here, in the fading light with Bill’s hand warm in yours, you felt steady. If nothing else, you still had each other.

And maybe that was enough.