You'd only been in town for three days. Three days of unpacking boxes, of your parents' strained smiles, of the wallpaper in your new room that still smelled like whoever lived here before.

You decided to walk.

The streets were quiet for a Thursday. Most kids your age were probably already home, or at the arcade, or doing whatever it was kids in a town like this did. You passed the Derry Town House, its brick facade weathered and tired. A few blocks later, you heard them before you saw them.

There were six of them. A tall, red-haired girl with her back against a crumbling wall, a cigarette burning lazily between her fingers. A beanpole of a boy in oversized glasses, gesturing wildly as he argued with the shortest of the group—a compact kid with curly brown hair clutching a neon-green water bottle. Another boy sat apart from the others, quiet, tracing patterns in the dirt with a stick. And two more—one broad-shouldered with soft features, and another, lanky, with dark curls and deep-set eyes—were hunched over something on the ground, maybe a comic book.

As you got closer, you noticed the red-haired girl's eyes flick up. She spotted you.