I should be used to this by now, my parents fighting and all. But when I hear them yelling and screaming at each other it makes me tense up, and it's worse now. Instead of getting used to it it bothers me more, that's why I ain't hardly here anymore. I don't know what I decided to come here now for, anyway. I heard my old man's drunken yell and my mother's high pitched shriek and I decided I was getting the hell out of here.

I didn't know where I was gonna go and it didn't matter, just as long as I wasn't at my house. I was just walking along and saw some socs in one of their fancy cars. I ain't never been jumped or nothing but it was probably only a matter of time. Things were getting pretty bad between us and the socs. But they only slowed down a little and then drove on, and I let out my breath. That's all I needed. I knew what the socs did, they would jump someone and there would be like four or five of them so you wouldn't have a chance.

I went to Pony's house but no one was there. It was one o'clock and I forgot it was a school day. I didn't even mean to skip. I hardly went much anyway. I should go more, I knew that. It was hard enough as it was but not being there and missing all the work made it that much harder. I knew I could get Pony to help me kind of catch up with it and maybe I wouldn't stay back again.

I went to one of the pool halls just for something to do, I played pinball a little and some pool and the guy who was behind the counter started talking to me. He was this old guy, maybe 40 years old or something and kind of fat. He knew me, though, he knew all of us since we came in here all the time.

"Johnny," he said, and I looked over at him, "isn't it a school day?"

I was leaning over the pool table and took a shot but missed, and I swore under my breath. It wasn't time for school to be out yet.

"Yeah," I said, lining up another shot.

"So aren't you supposed to be in school?" He didn't care and wouldn't report me or nothing, but I didn't feel like talking about it anyway.

"Yeah,"

"So why aren't you?" he asked, smiling, wiping the counter down with a rag.

"I don't know. I missed it," I said.

I left there, figuring I'd just walk over to the school and wait for Pony to get out. It was something to do. I lit up a cigarette, cupping my hand against the wind, and I saw the same car full of socs again. I looked around for somewhere to run to, I could maybe make it back to the pool hall. But inside the car I heard an argument, yelling, and some of the yelling was a girl's voice.

"No!" the girl said, and I shrunk back against the building.

"Listen, Nancy, you want to be a bitch then you can get out right here on the east side of town, see how you do there!"

"Rick, c'mon, please…"

"Get out!"

The car screeched to a halt and the door flew open and the soc girl got out and the car screeched away, the tires peeling out, leaving all this smoke. I blinked and started coughing and when the smoke cleared I saw this girl. She was a real soc, alright. Her clothes were fancy and expensive, her hair was blond and real nice, it was pulled up into a ponytail. But she stood there looking like she was about to cry and I'm sure I wasn't making things any better. I knew how I looked with my jet black hair slick with grease and my black T-shirt and worn out old jeans, the collar of my jean jacket flipped up. I took a drag on my cigarette and wondered what to do. I didn't usually talk to girls because they made me nervous and I didn't know what to say to them, and I never talked to soc girls because most of them looked right through me or gave me these looks like I was trash or something. But this girl was almost crying now and that guy in the car, the soc guy, he was right about this not being a good part of town and all. She'd get eaten alive here. So I had to talk to her, I had to help her, or at least try to. If it was Dally here by this building he'd have a great time talking dirty and scaring this girl. But I wasn't nothing like Dally.

"Hey," I said to her, flicking away my cigarette. She looked at me and kind of flinched away from me. She took a couple of steps away and wrapped her arms around herself.

"Are you okay?" I said, not moving any closer to her, looking down. She had to know I wasn't any threat. I was 16 but I only looked about 14, which was awful but it was the truth.

"No," she said, blinking away tears and shuddering, "you saw all that?" I nodded, still looking down.

"Well, I guess you can see my boyfriend is a real jerk," I didn't say nothing to that. I thought all socs were real jerks alright, that and then some.

"Since I've been dumped here on the east side of town, do you want to go and get a soda with me or something?" she said, and I was kind of surprised. I figured that she was doing that only to make her boyfriend mad, since it was clear I wasn't gonna rape her or nothing. I thought of not getting involved, because it really could end up with a beating for me if those socs find out I was with this girl at all. But maybe they wouldn't know.

"Uh, okay, sure," I said.