Disclaimer: I do not own anything from The Outsiders.

Intoduction to the life of Molly Cade:

My name is Molly Cade. I'm two years younger than my brother, Johnny, who is sixteen right now.

I've got a small build, black eyes, and black hair just like him. I think I have potential to be pretty if I took the time to try, but honestly, looks are one of my smallest concerns.

Johnny and I get beaten up pretty bad at home, by our parents who happen to be sloppy drunks. Well, actually, our dad is the one who physically hits us. Our mom just screams and yells at us until we are so confused that we don't even know why she's mad.

I hate our house, which is a total wreck. Sometimes I try to clean it up, but my parents just end up ruining it when they have their drunken fits, in which they throw furniture at each other, or at Johnny and me.

Both Johnny and I struggle in school. We both try really hard, and do our best to help each other, but it doesn't seem to help. I guess we just understand things differently, and book-smarts don't come too easily to us. I'm just one grade below him, since he got held back in the third grade.

Johnny and I are really close, mostly because we're all we've got in our family. Most nights I just end up sleeping in Johnny's room because I'm afraid. I can't say what I'm afraid of though.

I guess I'm just scared of everything. I think Johnny is that way too.

I'm friends with all the members of Johnny's gang, and I hang out with them regularly, but my best friend is Kimy Matthews.Her older brother, Two-Bit, was part of Johnny's gang of friends. Kimy and I are both the same age and we hang out all the time.

She's different from me in a lot of ways though. She is taller than me, and has a bigger body frame all together. She has shoulder length red curly hair, and grey eyes. And she was gorgeous. So many of the guys at our school liked her, and Two-Bit was almost having to beat them away from her with a baseball bat.

He really did have his work cut out for him. She was really a looker, and very friendly to top it off. I'm so glad she's my best friend. She really gets me, ya know?

I don't wear a lot of makeup like Kimy does though. Once, I came over to her house, and she suggested that we put on makeup, do our hair real nice, and go to the dingo for a movie. I had gotten so embarrassed that night, because I didn't know how to use any of the makeup that Kimy had. She basically had to do mine for me, and by then I was so flustered and self-conscious, that we just decided to say in for the night.

I just always kept a tube of Chap Stick in my back pocket for when my lips got chapped, which happened a lot, because most of the time my lips were busted open or cracked from my dad's blows.

I wear my wavy hair longer than hers, and I'm nowhere near as talkative as she is. Kimy cusses a lot, just like the rest of the greasers in our town, but I hardly ever cuss. But that's probably because I hardly ever talk.

Sodapop and Darry Curtis swear that I'm Johnny's shadow, because apparently we're identical in every way except that I'm a girl.

I hardly ever get in fights either. That's another thing that's different about Kimy and me. She's a real good fighter because her brother taught her how, and sometimes, she actually walks around looking for fights. I tell her that that's not a good way to be, but I don't think she minds.

Whenever the gang has a rumble, Kimy and I go over to the Curtis house and wait for them to come home. Our designated job on rumble nights is to help tend to the wounds of the gang. I'd be helping Steve Randall stitch up his cut arm, while Kimy would be slapping Band-Aids all over Ponyboy Curtis's face.

I enjoyed helping them like that, which is what got me started in thinking that I could be a nurse. But I figured that you've got to be smart to be a nurse, and smarts is not something I've got going for me.

Kimy likes a different boy at school every week, but she's always had something special for Dallas Winston. I like Dally alright, and my brother idolizes him, but I just can't see how she likes him. Dally is so hard and cold. I don't see how he could ever love her back.

I can't say that I have a crush on anyone right now. My problems are quite different than the problems of other fourteen year-old girls. They, like Kimy, tend to worry about the way their hair looks, what clothes they're wearing, which boy flirted with them at lunch, and who's going to the Winter Formal dance at school.

I worried about being beaten by my dad, being screamed at and cussed out by my mom, understanding my geometry class at school, and finding a clean t-shirt to wear.

I was different, but I guess that's okay. As long as I have Johnny and Kimy, I'll be alright.