Disclaimer: Don't own anything.
Just so you know, I researched every little thing in this. The 'Nam reference is in the right time, the song "Yesterday" WAS popular by the time The Outsiders took place and the "moptop" is the official name for the Beatles hairstyle.
I'm not very pleased with this one-shot, but I decided to put it up anyway.
Ponyboy glared up at his ceiling, listening to some Elvis tunes over the radio. He kind of wished his life would be like Elvis's. Not exactly the rock and roll stuff, or even the good looks and charm and all that. More of just that everything always seemed to be going so great. No one ever said, "Oh, look at poor Elvis, alone on a weekend…" or "Look at that Presley guy. I mean, does he have any friends?" Nope. It was always, "Check out his album! It rocks, man" and "Don't you dig those new shoes?"
The radio station quickly changed to some Beatles song. Pony made a face at the Fake Four (as Soda called them), as though they could see him. Moptop hair? Hardly compared to Elvis's tuff 'do.
"Yesterday…"
Ponyboy let his mind wander and his eyes slip closed as he listened to the slow dip of the music. "This song's awful," Ponyboy decided. He wondered vaguely if he should switch stations, but Tulsa didn't exactly have a million options. He could wait out the song.
"I believe in yesterday…"
"Don't we all?" Ponyboy snorted before he could stop himself. Really, sometimes it seemed like yesterday was all we have left to him. If he lost yesterday, what would he have left? A still-to-be-done essay? A brother humming obnoxiously on the couch? An urge to slap the smile off that brother's face?
But when he lost himself in yesterday… When he lost himself in yesterday, he had back the boy with the small frame and the faint scar. He had back the hood that was immunized to pain and the blazing blue eyes. He had back the Ponyboy that was invincible, with nothing more on his mind than keeping Darry off his back and where Two-Bit might take them that weekend. Pony was a little scared that kid might never come back; maybe he would always be this wide-eyed kid that people he didn't know muttered apologies to and that forced a little smile and pretended like it didn't faze him. Sometimes Pony wondered if that was how it all started for Dally. Pretending that nothing got through to him, until one day he looked in the mirror and realized it was true. Ponyboy didn't want to be like that, but he also wanted to get rid of this crippling pain that kept him hunched over, hands in his pockets. Was there an in between?
"I'm not half the man I used to be…"
Why the heck would be the same person he was before? With Johnny and Dally six feet under, he felt like a little bit of him was down there too. We weren't friends; we were brothers. And when your brother was dead and gone, part of you just kinda disintegrates. Pony wondered if that was why hearts had some many different tubes connected to them; if one disappears, there's a couple more to take its place. And boy, Pony needed as many as he could get.
"I need a place to hide away…"
Ponyboy did not need a place to hide. The last time he'd hidden was Windrixville, and look how great that turned out. Lord Almighty, Pony just wanted everything else to go on leave for a while. Maybe everything would be better if it was just his in his room, staring up at the white ceiling like it was his last lifeline. Ponyboy kinda wondered if this kinda feeling was what shock therapy was supposed to get rid of.
"Why she had to go, I don't know, she wouldn't say…"
Why did they have to go? There was no reason good enough in the whole universe. Ponyboy didn't care if it would stop this whole stupid war going on in Vietnam, whatever the hell that was about. He didn't care if their dying did save a bunch of kids from burning to death in an old church. Their parents could make more, he thought savagely. There's only one Johnny Cade. And Dally… a whole lot has to go wrong before there's another one of him. He vaguely realized that these kind of thoughts were wrong, but at the moment he could care less.
"Can this song be any worse?" Ponyboy groaned. He could practically see Paul McCartney's pretty-boy face as he crooned out the lyrics.
"Now I long for yesterday…"
Boy, did Pony long for yesterday. Sometimes at night he would let down his mental block and let the stream of memories leak in. He would sink down deep into his pillow as he remembered laughing at the people who found Johnny- Johnny- frightening. He would remember the way Dally would, annoyed, push his blonde locks behind an ear and how he and Johnny would count how many cusses would be involved. There was the time he, Johnny and Two-Bit would parade around a store for hours, finally picking up a pack or two of cigarettes. "We walk around for three hours to swipe a pack of Kools?" Johnny would laugh. "Johnnycake, we walked around for three hours to swipe the tuffest, sweetest, greatest pack of Kools ever made," Two-Bit would reply solemnly. And Pony would never forget the little kids' faces as Dally chased them around, grinning ear to ear. Then there was Johnny's face, elated, flying, as the colors of the sunset pooled around him. His face, that, weeks later, laid, bone white, on an even whiter cotton pillow as he gasped out his last words. The face that was made as the china hood finally cracked would flash before Ponyboy's eyes and he would stuff his face in the pillow to try and block it out.
"Oh, I believe in yesterday."
Pony listened to the last few melancholy chords putter to a stop and closed his eyes. This McCartney guy had it down pretty good, after all. And their guitar playing wasn't too shabby. The rest of the band might be a bunch of fakes, but at least Paul seemed alright.
Maybe the Beatles dug okay after all.
I decided to write this because of a newfound obsession with the Beatles. It was guilt tripping me a little to love the greasers AND the Beatles, since the greasers hated the Beatles. I'm not particularly pleased with this piece, but oh well. Drop me a review anyway.