Who wants to take a break from all the psychoses in my other stories and go a little lighter?! We're making a drastic jump forward in time to Pony's daughter, Maggie. Daisy also appears and she's Darry's youngest, his fourth daughter. Those who don't follow my other stories may not get a couple of things in here but that's okay. For those readers who do understand all those references, you're exactly who I'm writing for.

INSIDE OF HIM

I'll never forget...

I'm booking it back to my house, my bike pedals spinning furious while Daisy's words still gnaw at my stomach. Betcha didn't know your dad and his best friend were charged with murder. And I don't care that she's my cousin and I called her a 'crazy liar' to her face. She's always spouting off stories. But she sure seemed hell bent on this one, narrowing those icy blues, and told me if I didn't believe her I could go ask her mother. Or Emmy.

No chance was I going up to either of those gossips with that burning question in my mouth. My God those words. My father and murder in the same sentence is too silly, too horrific to string together. I stand and pump harder to get up the hill that leads me to the gates of my subdivision, to home.

Why I always go over to hang out with Daisy in the first place is beyond me. Boredom I guess? And maybe there's a part of me that wants to see what she'll do or say next. Two years older and she thinks she's hot shit, always trying to get me to talk about guys, acting like a know-it-all cause she's gone to third and I'm stuck way back in Smoochtown. Jesus, is kissing even on a base? Am I so pathetic I haven't entered the park yet? Surely to God it's considered first.

You better believe I left out the part our mouths were only partially open, like one hundredth of a millimeter at best, zero tongue action, cause that would really send Daisy Curtis sailing off into an eye rolling orbit. She'd have me watching steamy movies on Skinemax for pointers, faster than you can say sex education. And now today she's telling me my father was involved in a murder when he was about my age. What a crock of shit.

I sit back on the seat and rest my feet on the pedals, let gravity take over as I fly down the other side of the hill, my haphazard ponytail lifting up into a cyclone wind, all the matching brick-encased mailboxes blurring by and I try and forget that another one of Daisy's tall tales was actually proven true. She had been right about our grandmother. Turns out she really was crazy. Even spent time in a looney bin. Daisy said Molly said Hunt said Grip found some bills and some records about it all, on that weekend the family finally cleaned out the little white house on St Louis.

Later at home I'd asked my dad about his dead mother, ready for him to laugh it off, to call Daisy 'a piece of work' like he always does. But he didn't. He was a little mad Daisy had told me or even knew about it, and said looney bin wasn't an appropriate name for the place his mother had been. But he didn't really deny any of it, only Daisy's wording. And that's the day I found out the woman I'm named after, Margaret Castineaux Curtis had a screw loose and lived for a moment in an insane asylum.

But surely Daisy was lying about this one.

xXx

Mom's all set for our usual Taco Tuesday. Dinner's lined up on the counter and it's just the three of us tonight working our way through this Mexican buffet of ground beef cooling rapidly in the skillet, shredded cheese still in the package, mild and hot sauce packets from countless Taco Bell excursions and of course the lettuce and tomato that Mom forces us to include in our crunchy, warmed fiesta shells.

I sit quiet through dinner and watch Mom drill Mac on his vocabulary words. I would never in a million years ask her to confirm or deny this hideous rumor, just in case it's true and she didn't realize she married a murderer. I wouldn't want to be the one to wreck their marriage and more than likely I wouldn't be able to handle the fallout of that messy divorce. All of our Christmases would be ruined. There'd be no more of our family beach vacations and of course ski trips would be out. Not to mention our time with Dad would be spent through a phone with a glass partition in between us. And orange is so not his color. Mom always tells him he's a "winter" and tries to buy his clothes more along the lines of that color family. Despite her care and concern, he continues to be more of just a blue-jeans-and-throw-whatever-shirt's-clean-on kinda guy.

And I don't care if my dad happens to have a hundred bodies buried underneath our finished basement or if his victims are tucked behind every square foot of our drywall, he's still my dad and I would never rat him out. Not to Mom, not to the cops, not even under torture. I'd carry it to my grave.

"Why are you so quiet tonight Miss Maggie?" Mom asks, turning her attention to me now that Mac's leaving the room all slumped over and groaning cause she's making him re-do half of his definitions.

"No reason," I say, hoping to hide how I've already gone and worked myself up in an inner frenzy. I clear my throat, try and be casual like I always ask this question, "So, what time is Dad coming home tonight?"

"I know he'll be real late, but let me see exactly." Mom reaches way back in her chair, straining to reach the note Dad left her this afternoon while we were all at school. It's not unusual for my parents to go several days communicating only through scribbled messages back and forth. Mom dates them and keeps every single one in a box in her closet. Says they're the snapshots of our lives. Our everyday lives and she thinks that's the best part. She skims Dad's note again, chuckles over something in it even though she's already read it and tells me, "Oh here it is, three a.m."

The late hour is perfect. So we can be alone.

xXx

I down two cokes in my bedroom and force myself to lie awake, engrossed in a battle with heavy eyelids and just when I'm about to lose, I hear his loud muffler. Dad won't get rid of his favorite car, despite Mom's pleading and her refusal to ride in it. But tonight it serves its purpose. I know now he's home and I shoot out of my white eyelet canopy bed and run on quick but silent feet to meet him at the front door.

He jumps when he finds me on the other side, drops his key and hisses out, "Holy shit," then comes to his senses and breathes out a small laugh. "Sorry Maggie, you scared me," and he hooks me into his sturdy hug and I breathe in that familiar smell of his work. An industrial kind of clean and sterile soaps. Basically he smells like Dial and bandaids and I love the smell of bandaids.

He lets me go and looks at me confused as he throws his beeper, wallet, pack of gum and a snaked up stethoscope on the hall table. "What the hell are you doing up anyway Magsy?" Mom's always trying to get Dad to quit with his swear words, and he really tries and feels sorry for it, but it's a habit he just can't break. "Is something wrong?"

When I lie and answer no he heads for the kitchen where I follow and watch him in his ritual, throwing back two aspirin with a shot glass of orange juice. I know he's not going to bed anytime soon. "Welp," I say spreading my arms out over the center island and leaning across, "how's life been treating you in the ER? Did anybody die tonight?" His eyes immediately raise up from the note that Mom has left for him, and he shoots me a quick look like I've grown another head.

He grabs the remote and walks over, popping a few M&Ms in his mouth along the way, and gives me a kiss on the top of my head. "You need sleep Maggie," and I can tell he's trying not to seem like he's pushing me away when he really is. I know he wants his time to chill and watch ESPN, catch up on all the scores. And I'm losing my chance and all my nerve when he starts off for the living room.

So I blurt it out fast, all of it running together on one breath. "DaisySaidYouandYourFriendWereWantedforMurderWhenYouWereYoung."

I close my eyes and tense up as soon as it tumbles out and silently will him to Please laugh. Please laugh. Please laugh.

I take a peek to find him right in front of me, and he puts his hands on both my shoulders. I stare up into eyes as green as mine. He's not laughing. Not at all.

"Daisy's wrong," he says in his soft but serious voice and of course I believe him. And what kind of daughter am I to have even questioned for a second? But before I can get yanked down by guilt's undertow, he goes on. "Daisy probably heard a story about my buddy Johnny and me, but she misunderstood." Wait, what's that supposed to mean?

His hands leave my shoulders and find their perch on both sides of his waist and he stares up at the ceiling; his signature move when he's really thinking hard about something. He sighs really big when he finds the answer somewhere in the recessed lighting and turns to me, looking like he's about to tell me something he'd really rather not. My stomach flips like a pancake, not wanting to hear, but of course my curiosity begs for every sick detail, its knife all sharpened, luring in a thousand cats.

"Why don't ya sit down at the table babe," he instructs, and he starts to pull out a chair for me.

"No thanks," I tell him politely, "I'd really rather stand." At that, his dimple deepens with his slow grin over my comment and I immediately feel a thousand times better.

We share the microwave popcorn left over from six hours ago and I listen to him tell me how his best friend Johnny saved his life. By taking another's. And if he hadn't, my dad would've drowned in the fountain they filled in at Crutchfield Park. There had indeed been a kind of trial or hearing, but both boys were innocent because the act was self defense. And I'm stunned that once again, Daisy is somewhat correct.

A relief runs through my veins. Relief that Dad escaped both jail and a boys home. I look at him when he finishes his story about that unimaginable night and I'm so thankful that he wasn't the one that actually did the killing, but I'm beyond grateful to Johnny Cade, for having the guts to slice through someone else's. When you think about it, that boy saved Mac and me that night too. A shiver runs through me. "I bet Johnny sure was happy to be off the hook," I say and wonder where he is today.

Dad grows quiet and looks down, picking at his thumb nail and I wish I'd ended up with his thick eye lashes. Finally he nods and half whispers, "Yeah, he was."

xXx

I wouldn't know the whole story until a year later, when Mac stumbled across some school papers sitting under our baby books and ancient photo albums. One was some eighth grade poem of Dad's and the composition book was his English theme from 1965. I snatched it from my brother, expecting I'd read it out loud and we'd laugh at hearing our dad as a kid, make fun of the outdated slang and knowing him, some super corny jokes. My eyes brushed the first sentence alone and I knew this was something more. I took it back to my room to read it privately, my fingers trailing over the indents and loops of his penned cursive he'd left, as if our hands were touching across years. I read throughout the night, all of it at once. And I cried and cried in my bed, my hand over my mouth to stifle my sobs so nobody would hear.

How it must have hurt my father to tell me Johnny was happy when I asked about him. I bet he could feel the heat of those church flames licking at his memory when he chose not to give me the truth. Maybe he didn't want to upset me or maybe the story was, in that space and time, far too much to tell in our kitchen at three in the morning.

Amazing how one little essay, written at fourteen, could change my entire view of my dad. And even Uncle Darry and Uncle Soda too. The fact that they were orphaned took on a whole new meaning, seemed much more real when I heard Dad's own words, written in the time it was happening. And suddenly I knew what a dreamer my father had been, the kind of boy I'd probably be friends with today. And I felt actual deep remorse I couldn't know him then. In some weird way I missed him with a terrible ache. After finding out all that he was in a time he didn't even know me. When my name belonged to someone else.

But I finally knew it all. Everything he lived through is now a part of me. Or maybe a part of me was always inside of him. I was there while he struggled and fought under the water on a cold fall night. I was there when he hopped a freight train to Windrixville. I was there every time class lines of society tried to keep him down. And I was there in every poem he loved and in every sunset that's tied me to him since before he was even born.

A/N: Outsiders by SE Hinton

Thank you for reading and a special thank you to the great writer and my friend lulusgardenfli who encouraged me to explore the next generation and who showed me the path to finding voices.