I never visit the Soc side of town. Never. But that day I did. Don't ask why, I wouldn't be able to tell you.
I had occasional hunches as to why I had decided to go beyond the East side premises and enter the unchartered territory of the West side, but in the end my mind was blank.
I managed to go a mile past the division of West and East when a blue Corvette, a very familiar looking one at that, zoomed up to the curb. I new instantly two things. One, I was 100% about to be jumped - you just know that when you've lived your whole life as a greaser - and two, I was about to be jumped by the elite Soc gang once led by Randy Anderson and Bob Sheldon. But now, Bob was dead and Randy seemed to have quit the fighting scene.
I was left to face three other boys now, all smoking cigarettes and wearing preppy clothes of Madras jackets and sweaters.
They snarled at me one by one as they put out their cigarettes and stepped closer to me, muttering obscenities at me and threatening things besides a haircut (which I no longer needed).
"Hey, what d'you think you're doing, kid? This is our territory."
"He's the kid who killed Bob," one of the boys spit at the other. I wanted to correctly inform him, but that wouldn't be fair to Johnny.
"Anyone who kills Bob AND steps this far into our territory..." The gang member named David made a throaty cutting sound and slid his finger across his throat
I sighed, feeling a lot like Anderson in my exhaustion and disgust in fighting. I expressed this to them and of course they didn't bat a lash. They couldn't care any less as they continued to surround me. But in that quick moment it took them to jump me I made a decision. I made a decision to let them and not fight back (something I could easily have done).
Yes the pain was overwhelming, but I was used to that. More used to it than any fourteen year old boy should be. I was pummeled to the ground in seconds and swung at multiple times. My head and left eye instantly swelled and I was soon left to die.
Distantly I heard the rumbling of the engine as it catapulted off, leaving a cloud of dust behind it. I felt my arms and legs, hoping nothing was broken. I could handle bruised and sore, but broken was something I didn't want to think about. Miraculously, everything was intact, but the pain in my back and head was growing. My face was bloody and I could tell that it looked quite bad. My hair was also disheveled and caked with blood. I sighed, wondering if I could walk back home without anyone fainting at the sight of me.
It took me a few moments to get up though, given my immensely sore back. Moving didn't seem like a good idea, so I sat there trying to avoid the prospect of Darry's horrified face when I walked into the house. I didn't look forward to explaining my unknown reason for going all the way into the West side of town, an invitation for being jumped.
Eventually, I was able to get myself up of the concrete and limp along the street, wincing just slightly. I started on my way home, deciding that I didn't know why I had even come here and it was best to get seeing Darry over with. As I passed through this nicer looking part of town, beholding the nicer parks and homes and roads, I thought back to something Cherry Valance had once told me.
"Things are rough all over."
It rang in my head. I knew what she meant by it. I had seen an example of some of it, but I never had the chance to fully witness it. Now though, limping through a nicer part of town, I couldn't understand it. The homes, the parks, the roads, the trees, even the street lights were better. And at that moment I felt a boiling anger towards Cherry Valance for having the nerve to say the Socs had problems too. I couldn't see any, at least not appearance-wise. They dressed nicely, they were rich, they had blue Corvettes.
But I was hardly convincing myself either. I heard Cherry's voice in my head:
"Everyone has problems. We may have money, but we don't have much love. Have you ever noticed that difference between us Socs and you greasers? Huh, Ponyboy? You've got each other's backs. You have a family in those other guys. The Socs fight to fight. Those boys don't care about each other like you guys do. The only true friendship I ever saw was between Randy and Bob, and now Bob's gone. That's another problem we've faced."
Her voice rang clear through my mind and I almost frowned at her last comment. I didn't like to think back to that incident.
"Pony," she said again, "we've got our bunch of issues and you have yours. They may be really different issues, but we all have 'em. And that's not ever gonna change."
I walked the rest of the way home in silence, soaking in the truth of the words I had heard from Cherry. Like Randy and Johnny, I was tired of the pointless fighting between our gangs. What would it ever solve? Continuing them would just be a never-ending loop, and I wanted out. So in those moments, as I crossed over from East to West, I decided from that point forward to ignore our differences. Everyone had those. In those moments, I decided only to focus on our similarities.
"We all have our own issues," I thought to myself one more time for good measure and allowed a wide smile to form on my face.
"Now to face Darry." But my smile never faltered.