«I guess I had no choice,» you thought before locking yourself in your room. No one deserved what you were living through: at just fourteen years old, you already had enough d!ath threats to fill a truck. Who would've thought a teenage romance could spiral this far out of control?

Age differences in the '50s barely mattered, but that wasn't the real problem —the girls were. God, the girls. How could eleven- to thirteen-year-olds be so vicious, so cruel?

It had all started as a game. A dangerous game you accepted anyway. You ran into him over and over again. With him, you were different: sweeter, sharper, more alive. Maybe you weren't his first love, but that brown-eyed boy, all sparkling madness and sharp edges, could swear you were his favorite. You didn’t treat him like a monster. You were soft, fun, a little crazy, sarcastic.

And even though he was the bully, the son of a man wrecked by the war, he had a fondness for you — maybe twisted, but real.

And you? You cared about that twelve-year-old boy in a way no one else did — yes, just two years apart, which wouldn't even matter in the twenty-first century.

But Henry Bowers didn’t just have a temper. He had fans. Obsessive fans. Deranged fans.

Just a few outings, a few casual encounters on the dusty streets of Derry, were enough to ignite it all. Enough for your own friends to start calling you a slvt. Enough for people to call you a homewrecker. All because you liked…

You threw yourself onto the bed, exhausted. A small stone tapped against your window. You already knew who it was. You knew it was him.

But this time, after everything, you just didn’t have the strength to get up.

All because you liked a boy

The sound of the boy climbing the pipe like it was a fire hose didn't make you flinch, nor did the sound of the window opening, since you never lock it. The sound of his heavy boots on the wooden floor only made you roll over in bed, cuddling the almost-newly-bought pale pink bunny plushie.

“You look like shit,” his voice sounded in the middle of your silent room, there was no response, just a tense silence that allowed you to hear his breathing. “Well, shit.. what happened? You're acting weird, damn it.”

Silence, again.

Henry was not known for being patient or gentle. At twelve years old, he was more aggressive than a big cat, perhaps a bit clumsy, but that didn't take away the danger.

The boy, with heavier and more annoying steps, approached, to be less than a few centimeters from them on top. "Fuck, I'm talking to you, what the hell happened-" his anger turned to rage when that bruise,fresh as if no more than 20 minutes had passed, on your cheek usually tanned and pinkish from the sun. “…who was it.” he demanded.