I do not own The Outsiders. S.E. Hinton does :)
Just a quick note: Pony hasn't moved up a grade yet, and it's only been two months since the Curtis parents died so Pony's still thirteen and everyone else is still a year younger :)

"Ow!" Curly hissed as Tim rubbed his shoulder with rubbing alcohol. Tim didn't even seem bothered by Curly's reaction - in fact I think he put even more alcohol onto Curly's bloody wound.

We were walking back to Curly's house, but on the way there a few socs came and tried to jump us. Curly wanted to show off how much of a hero he was, but ended up getting seriously beaten on. For my size, I only managed to hold off one before they all pounced on me.

Luckily, Angela spotted us and since we were only a few minutes away from Curly's house, she went and got Tim. The socs left after that, but I still didn't feel safe.

I haven't really felt safe around anybody anymore. Last week, some greaser kid tripped me up, and to my horror, he put his foot on my back and started sliding me around. Everybody laughed, and some of the socs even applauded the greaser. I felt utterly humiliated.

Dallas, who's the most honest person I know (except for when he's speaking to the fuzz), told me that because I'm so small, I'm bound to get picked on. I scowled at him when he said that, since he had said it in front of the whole gang, but realized that he was right.

I hate being small; for one thing, it gets me picked on, but it also makes people think that they need to treat me like I'm some sort of toddler. I love my brothers, but sometimes they take things too far.

Like one time, a few days after mom and dad died, Darry decided that we needed to go to the grocery store to get some food; since most of the food in our refrigerator was gone. He didn't want to leave me by myself, and Soda wanted to get out of the house anyway, so we all got in the truck and Darry drove us to the grocery store where we all used to go with mom.

The store brought back so many memories: the time Soda had knocked all of the tins of peas over after crashing into the shelves with a shopping cart, or the many times when Darry, Soda and I had stuffed candy bars into our pockets and left without getting caught. Darry stopped stealing the candy bars when he was ten, and I stopped my habit at eight (which was only a few months after I started stealing candy) when dad saw me take some Flipsticks and stuff them in my pocket. I only wanted to give them to some girl who I had a slight crush on, but I didn't even get them because dad yanked them out of my pocket and dragged me out of the store. Mom was mad, but I informed her that Soda still did it, which made her even madder. Soda and I were grounded for two weeks, but that didn't stop Soda from stealing candy again. He just made sure he was never caught.

Anyway, so as we pulled up outside the store, Darry warned me to not get lost. I groaned but promised that I wouldn't. We all got out of the truck, and Darry did something really embarrassing: he held my hand!

I blushed and yanked my hand out of his while he just gave me a confused look.

"I'm thirteen, not three!" I shouted, frustrated at his actions.

Darry just shrugged and gave me a stern glare, but he didn't try and hold my hand again, to which I was grateful for. Soda giggled and patted my shoulder, telling me to lighten up. I didn't, and spent the rest of the shopping trip sulking.

I quite like hanging out at Curly's house, for one thing: nobody treats me like I'm a little kid. Sometimes I even drink some beer, but only when it's just me and Curly in the house; if Tim saw, he'd probably throw me out and never let me back in. It's not because Tim doesn't approve of me drinking beer – it's because he's scared of what Darry would do to him if he found out that he had let me drink; most people were scared of my oldest brother.

That annoyed me a lot: the fact that nobody will let me grow up because they're scared of Darry. I don't know what my big brother's problem is; before mom and dad died, he told me that the quicker I acted grown up the quicker I would be treated like an adult. But now he won't let me grow up, and it gets on my nerves a lot of the time.

Whenever he drinks, he makes sure to do it discreetly when I'm around. He'll push me away if I get too close to him; he doesn't want me to smell the beer on him. He's also told the gang to not smoke near me; he says that even though I already smoke, if people don't do it around me as much then I might stop. Weird how he was supposed to be almost as smart as me, yet he didn't know that I couldn't live without my cigarettes!

But I guess he doesn't know how grown up I actually am. I have a secret, and secrets are really grown up aren't they? Well, it's not exactly a secret since most people in school know about it, but Darry doesn't know it, so it's a secret from him right?

It's a pretty lame secret really, and it's not even one that I enjoy having to hide from the gang. But they all have to know that I'm not a baby, and I can handle things by myself.

I love Soda and Darry, and dare I say I love the gang, but they're too…overprotective. Whenever a soc picks on me in the street, one of the gang will tell them to lay off. Then the next day when I'm walking home from school by myself, the same soc who picked on me the previous day will come up to me and ask me if I can't fight my own battles. His buddies laugh, and then they hurt me.

The gang makes it worse a lot of the time, but of course I'd never tell them that. I just try to avoid them as much as possible when I'm wandering around town; if they don't see me then they can't fight my battles for me.

I must have zoned out, because I feel somebody kick me lightly on my ankle. When I look up, Tim is looking at me with his usual intimidating expression.

"You gonna head on home, kid? It's almost six," he tells me, crossing his arms and raising his eyebrows.

When I gazed at the bashed up grandfather clock, I saw that Tim was right. Then I remembered the conversation I'd had with Darry a few hours before:

"Pony, I want you coming straight home from school today. It's Aunt Lydia's birthday - ya know, mom's big sister? Anyway, we're driving over to Houston tonight, and I need you home by four at the latest. If we leave at five and have everything ready, we should reach Houston at about 12:30 in the morning,"

"Aww man, Darry's gonna kill me!" I muttered, grabbing my backpack and rushing out of the house after shouting goodbye.

My running was rather weak at the moment though, considering what had happened in school that day. Nobody needed to know what had happened at school; it was my secret.

XXX

We'd just had gym and most of the boys were already out of the locker rooms. I didn't want to shower with the other boys; they all stared at me and laughed at me due to my small height and under-developed body. I couldn't help the fact that some of them had six packs and other grown up features while I was stuck small and skinny. Soda kept on telling me that my time would come soon and that I just had to be patient, even though he and Darry had both hit puberty by the time they were twelve!

I walked out of the shower room with a towel wrapped around my waist. The locker room seemed like a total ghost town; steam rolled between the red lockers and made the mirrors steam up. Not a single teenage boy except for myself was in the room, and it was creepy – but I was alone…or so I thought.

"Hey grease!" I heard a high-pitched voice shout. I gasped; I had only just gotten my shirt and underwear on; it would be embarrassing for anyone to see me like this.

I quickly scrambled for my jeans, but since the voice had shout 'Hey grease" I assumed that the person had already saw me. Still, I wasn't about to carry on humiliating myself.

To my horror, four boys who were my age but looked much older appeared through the mist. Most socs were in the grade above me, but I guessed that they would have been the older socs little brothers or something like that. And they looked much older because they were taller, bigger, more…developed. Seriously, one of them even had a growing beard!

"You know," one started. He had red curly hair with a cluster of acne on his chin. "I heard some of the teachers talking about how this little runt is more ahead 'academically' than everybody in our grade," he laughed, pointing at me as if I was some sort of animal trapped in a cage.

"What, so he could be skipping a grade?" the one next to him with much darker hair asked, his tone angry.

"Yep, but I mean look at the greaser. He hasn't even hit puberty yet, and they're talking about putting him in a grade higher than us! I say we put a stop to this; they probably just feel sorry for him," the red haired soc replied, and all of his buddies nodded in response.

I searched around my locker for my black belt that I still hadn't looped in my jeans yet. Sweat was starting to form above my eyebrows, and no matter how much I reassured myself, I knew that I probably wasn't going to be okay.

"It's been nice talking to you, but I really need to go," I smiled nervously, picking up my bag and rushing out. Unfortunately, the dark haired guy who obviously felt disgusted about my intelligence grabbed me back.

I was pushed to the ground, and then they all started kicking me, punching me and slapping me across the face. My ribs hurt something horrible, and kicks that they had given to my stomach made me vomit on the orange tiled floor. They glared at me in disgust and then left me there, lying in a heap on the ground.

XXX

A similar incident had happened last week, two times last week actually. And it happened the week before, and the week before that. But I'm not getting bullied…it's just for fun right? And I can't tell the gang; I'm not a baby.

It took me ten minutes to go home; I ran all the way. By the time I barged through the front door, I was dripping sweat on the floor. Okay maybe I wasn't, but it felt like I was.

Soda and Darry were sitting at the dinner table. Darry was frowning into his cup of coffee, and Soda was anxiously peering at the clock. When Darry saw me he stood up and slammed his mug down so hard coffee splattered everywhere.

"Nice to see you showed up, Ponyboy," he growled, his eyebrows furrowed together in frustration.

"Sorry, I lost track of time. I didn't mean it," I answered calmly, giving him a cool stare.

Sodapop shook his head and bit his lip while Darry breathed out heavily. He closed his eyes, and I could tell he was counting to ten in his head. I hated it when he did that; he acted like I was a problem child or something. Mom used to do it with Soda if he did something wrong and wouldn't take his punishment, but he was the type of kid who never listened. I wasn't like that.

"So where were you then?" he questioned calmly, breathing out again.

I wasn't about to tell him I was with Curly; he didn't have a problem with any of the Shepard's – as long as I wasn't with them.

"I was with a friend," I responded; it wasn't exactly a lie.

"Which one?" he asked. Uh…..

"Johnny," I said triumphantly, knowing he'd back me up if I needed to. I wasn't sure if I had made the right decision however when Darry smirked and Soda slapped his hand against his forehead.

"Strange; Johnny was here just a few minutes ago and asked if we knew where you were. We told him that we didn't know, so now he's out looking for you. Why would he be looking for you if you had just been with him?" he said, eyebrows raised with the smirk still on his mouth. I knew that look; it meant I was busted.

"Sorry,"

"I don't want you to say sorry; I just want to know who you were with,"

"I wasn't with anybody!" I yelled in frustration. This was getting annoying now; sure I had messed up, but I felt really small with him interrogating me, as if he didn't trust me. Soda sometimes came home late and he never got a lecture! Though I suppose Darry did have more of a reason to be mad since we hadn't left for Houston yet.

"I really doubt that, Pony. I give you one simple instruction, and you don't listen as per usual," Darry lectured, glaring me up and down.

"Why can't we just leave now?" I asked, frustration and anger creeping up in my voice.

"There's supposed to be a big storm headed for Texas at around 12:45 am, and Darry didn't want to drive around in it," Soda piped up, looking between me and Darry.

I felt guilty then; I knew that Darry (and the rest of us) had grown paranoid over driving cars in dangerous situations, such as storms. I knew it was because of our parents' death, and even though storms were irrelevant to how they had died, we were all still wary of driving.

"Sorry Darry," I said miserably, and I truly meant it. He still didn't look pleased.

"Whatever, just go to your room," he ordered, and I sadly made my way to mine and Soda's room.

I knew that Darry never meant for me to feel lonely, but sometimes it feels like that, especially since those kids have been picking on me. I sighed, and then remembered that I had some English homework that had to be done for tomorrow. Our teacher gave me some extra homework; she whispered to me that since I had a little more potential than the other kids in my grade, she wanted to see if I could extend myself and do schoolwork intended for eighth graders.

As I looked for my book, a white slip of paper slipped out of my backpack. I picked it up and unfolded it, and then dropped it after I had scanned over it.

On it was a diagram of a small kid with green eyes, and he had a tag on his leg that read: 'GREASER'.

Then under the diagram was a small message which read:

"Why don't you just kill yourself, Ponyboy? You're not doing the world any good, and everybody would be so much happier if you just picked up a gun and shot yourself. Love from your buddies – Nelson, Cody, Danny and Cal.

And that's when it all started.

AN: Hey guys, so this is the start of my new story Fading Away. I'm still continuing North and South, but I thought of the idea yesterday and decided to write about it. I hope you all enjoyed the first chapter, even though not much has happened yet :D