AUTHOR'S NOTE: So welcome to Little Red Monster. This is my first Outsiders fiction in a very long time. I've been writing it in my head for a few years, so I just thought that I'd try it out here. I hope you all enjoy it and review tons. I love Steve and Evie. They are the best Outsiders couple in the world, and I really dislike Soda and Sandy, just in case you wanted to know. Speaking of Soda, I couldn't bear to kill him. He's the glue to the gang, he holds everything down. So he lives in this story, and in any other post-Oustiders events story that I write. So now that I'm done rambling, you may enjoy the chapter. After the disclamier of course.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own the Outsiders.

"What if he-"

"Evie, get out of there, and let's go."

Evie had been hiding out in the bathroom of her home. Her back was pressed to the door and her knees were pulled to her chest. She'd been staring at the blue shower curtains for hours. Her chin was on her knees as she looked at the stitching of the curtains. She couldn't go through with this. She couldn't go. Her bottom lip trembled because she'd been bit and chewing it for hours. She was sure that she tasted blood.

"EVIE!" her friend shouted at her from the other side of the door.

"What if-?"

"Okay, I'm going to go through this one more time. He remembers you. He can't forget you. He still wants to be with you. He'll always want to be with you. He thinks you're beautiful. He always will."

Evie sighed from her side of the door and stood. Kendra, her friend, was right. It had only been a year, he couldn't have had a change of heart that drastic. Could he? Well he was at war. War changes people. War kills people. However, she was sure that he hadn't stopped feeling the same way about her. His letters to her, when she got them, where the same as when he left. She was sure that he felt the same. But would he be the same? She sighed, opened the door, and leaned on the door frame. This seemed to be the perfect time to find out.

"You look nice," Kendra said.

Evie looked down at her outfit. She wasn't wearing anything special. She was just wearing a blue mini-dress that had a scoop neck line and flared sleeves. On her feet were a pair of open toed sandals that had suddenly become all the rage. Her long brown hair, which now fell about six inches below her bra line, was pulled back with a blue ribbon that matched the color of her dress. She only wore mascara and eyeliner for make-up, both of which were waterproof. To be honest, she didn't feel that she looked all that great. She thought that Kendra looked better than her in her khaki hip huggers with wide black belt, red tee shirt, and red tennis shoes. Kendra could pull off the whole relaxed look.

"Thanks," Evie answered. "Should we go now?" Kendra nodded. Evie picked the keys up off the table beside the bathroom door and held them in her hand. Her fingers were trembling so badly that the keys were making a jingling noise.

"Maybe, I should drive," Kendra said, as she took the keys from her best friend.

Evie nodded and allowed her to take the keys. She started to say something about Kendra driving her boyfriend's car, but her mind was elsewhere. Evie followed Kendra out of the house and to the car that she'd kept in her driveway for almost a year. Evie slipped into the passenger seat and sighed loudly.

"So are you excited, now that we've decided that he's going to still love you?" Kendra asked as she backed out of the driveway.

Her heart was racing, "I am." She was unable to lie at this point. "I just hope that he remembers me."

"You know, you'll be looking at him in less than an hour, you probably want to start using his name, just to make sure you still know it," Kendra joked.

Evie scoffed and crossed her arms across her chest. "Of course, I remember his name."

"And how you feel about him?" Kendra continued.

Evie sighed and looked up at the roof of the car. She knew how she felt about him. She'd never forgotten how she felt about him. How could she? She'd loved him since their first date, of course she'd never give him the pleasure of knowing that. "His name is Steven Randle."

"Stop thinking so hard, man, or your brain's going to melt."

Steven turned his eyes to his best friend, Sodapop Curtis, and smiled. Soda was the one that got him through his time in Vietnam. Soda kept him going. Soda kept him smiling. So when it came time for Steven to return the favor, he did. He'd saved Soda's life twice while in Vietnam. On one of the occasions, Steven almost lost his life saving his friend's, and has he lost his life. It would have been worth it. Soda was the better person out of the both of them, and the better person should always live.

"What are you thinking about?" Soda asked seeing that Steve was going back into his own little world of thought.

Steve looked out of the window at the scenery that was rushing by them. He wasn't actually thinking about one thing. All of the thoughts in his brain, had been tossed together making it impossible to get a solid line of thought going. However, when Soda asked there was one thought in his mind that stood out more than the others. It wasn't the number of people that he killed while at war. It wasn't the number of families that he destroyed. It wasn't the amount of fellow American he watched die. Although those thoughts were swimming around in his head, they always were.

"Do you think she's there?" Steven voiced. That was the main thought that was on his mind.

Soda looked confused. "Who is she?"

"The girl that I've been writing letters to for a year," Steve said looking at his friends as if he were crazy. Soda continued to looked at him. "Evie." Her name felt foreign to him.

"Ah, that broad," Soda joked. "I knew you meant her. I just wanted to make sure that you still knew her name. I haven't heard you say it in a long time."

Steven shrugged. He used to talk about Evie all of the time when he got to the tropical war zone. However, one of the older gentlemen told him that people that talk about their girls back home, usually never made it back home. At first Steve didn't believe him, but one of the guys he was with, who talked about his fiancée all the time, was shot right in front of him. Steve never attributed the fact that the man died because he was in a war zone, he decided that he died because he was talking about his girl. After that moment, Steve vowed to never speak her name again while he was at war. When her letters came, he wouldn't write her name in the greeting. It was always Babe or some other pet name. He never wrote Evie. She never asked him why he didn't write her name, so he figured that he must have explained it to her unconsciously.

"Don't call her that," Steve said as he watched the DX their old place of employment roll by.

"Sorry, buddy," Soda said lightly. "Didn't mean to offend you."

"So do you think that she's there?" Steve asked again. He felt stupid about his self consciousness.

Soda nodded, "I know she'll be there."

Kendra pulled her best friend out of the car and sighed. Evie's green eyes were narrowed in the sun and her fingers were stroking the class ring that hung around her neck. It was Steve's. He'd given it to her when he asked her to go steady. Evie never took that damn thing off. Even when she and Steve were fighting, that thing never left her neck.

"Okay," Evie exhaled as she began to walk towards the crowd at the Greyhound station. "I'm ready."

Kendra bounced behind her as they made their way thought the crowd. Evie's fingers had travel back up to the ring on her neck. Her thoughts were on Steve, not on playing attention to where she was walking, and that of course resulted in her running into someone. She stumbled backward and blinked rapidly as if she hadn't expected that to happen.

"Sorry," she said.

"It's okay, Evie," the voice answered back.

Evie's green eyes were met by another pair of green eyes. "Ponyboy," she grinned. "It's just you, I thought it was someone, ya' know, important," she joked.

Ponyboy pushed her lightly and then tossed his arm around her shoulders. He knew that she was just kidding. Believe it or not, Ponyboy Curtis had become one of her closest friends since the day that Soda and Steve were deployed. She stood in a stop very similar to this one when the boys left for war. Her fingers were playing with the necklace on her neck as she watched the bus drive away from her. That's when Ponyboy had placed his hand on her shoulder. A simple gesture was all that she needed to know that he was there for her. She'd called in when her first letter from Steve came. She wasn't surprised to see that he'd gotten on from Soda also. They'd gone to the park and sat on the swings and read their letters in silence. They never found out what one another's letters said, but the fact that they were there for one another was enough. Then it had become a thing that they just did. He'd call when he got a letter knowing that she'd also received one and they'd got to the park and read. She'd call when she couldn't sleep, and found him sitting awake as well. Ponyboy wasn't half as bad as Steven made him out to be. In fact, he was like the little brother that she never got.

Evie lay her head on his arm. Over the past year, he'd grown five inches, making him taller than her. "Are you alright?" he asked her quietly.

"No," she muttered. "You?"

"No."

The youngest Curtis and the brunette girl held their ground as watched as a grey bus pulled up. Darry, Two-Bit, and Kendra had found them by then, and stood beside them. Slowly but surely, men in uniform began to get off the bus. Ponyboy gave her hand a comforting squeeze and didn't let go. He watched as the men exited the bus and started off to search for their families. Evie was devastated when Steven and Sodapop weren't the first or second off the bus. In fact, they weren't even getting off the bus yet. Evie started at the bus, as if she could see through the bus' metal and to her boyfriend. She could see that the bus was almost empty, and they still weren't off the bus.

"They're coming," Ponyboy soothed as he rubbed his thumb across her knuckles. A perfect way to soothe her.

Evie pulled her hand from Ponyboy's and crossed her arms across her chest. How dare he keep her waiting! That jerk. Evie glared at the bus and narrowed her eyes. Then she saw him. Not Steven, Sodapop. He walked off the bus in an entirely too happy manner. He was laughing and shouting something over his shoulder. Evie's eyes left Soda and fell on a man behind him. Evie looked at him for a long moment and then it hit her.

"Steve."