Disclaimer: First of all, do I actually need one of these? Oh well if I don't, here it goes: I do not own The Oustiders or any of its totally awesome characters. As a matter of fact, I don't wish that I owned it, either. I just worship the ground S.E. Hinton walks on for letting people write fan fiction about her stories. Oh yeah, I do own Andrew, Sarah, Catherine, Teresa, Charles, Cassandra, Francis, Melody, Mrs. Peirce, and any other characters I make up to be used in my story. However, because there is a lot of Pride and Prejudice reference in this story, I do not own the name Catherine Bennet or any references in here to any work by Jane Austen. I do own the Catherine in my story, her personna at least. Now have fun reading my story; it is my very first one, after all. Please review! I need all the constructive criticism I can get!
Chapter 1:
New Books bring Unexpected Company
Catherine's Point of View
"Hmmmm…." I mumbled, smiling as I finished the end of the novel. Love and happiness. Those were not things you say or see often in Tulsa. But it's in books, and that's why I read them. This particular book was Pride and Prejudice. My favorite book, and one that I had just finished reading for, I think, the seventeenth time.
I had read everything by Jane Austen- or at least all of her books that the very, very small Tulsa Public Library had. But I loved how small it was, and how no one else hung out there. The soft pillows on the cushy blue couch near the dusty windowsill were mine to sit, read, and daydream in on weekends. The hard wooden chairs and tables were mine to use after school while doing my homework. No one seemed to come to the library other than Joyce, the elderly librarian, and me. And at that moment, Joyce was walking over with- a new shipment of books!
I shrieked and hopped out of my seat. Joyce smiled.
"You know, Catherine dear, you are in a library." She chided. Oh, I forgot! My name is Catherine, Catherine Bennet. If you've read Pride and Prejudice, you may see the coincidence in this. However, Catherine Bennet in the book is supposed to be flighty, overly silly, and coughs a lot. I, personally, don't think I am any of those things.
I just laughed and helped Joyce with the cart that contained all of the new books she had just finished putting clean white coded stickers onto.
" Where'd these come from?" I asked Joyce, who was now wheeling another cart of books into the room.
" Oh, a very nice family donated all of these yesterday. I have three more cartloads too! I told the young man that came that we didn't have many people who came here often and that they wouldn't be getting much use but he didn't seem to mind. As a matter of fact, he seemed eager to get rid of them, like they caused him pain or confusion. I wonder why. But, a donation is a donation and I need you to put all of them on the shelves please."
"Sure thing," I replied and pulled a stack of books into my hands and went off to sort them. Oh, here's another thing that I have forgotten to mention so far: Joyce is my boss and I work part time at the library. I love my job. I would love it even if the library was packed with people, but the fact that it isn't makes me love it even more. It pays well, even for part time, and all I am doing is hanging out all day. I feel like I am being paid to do my homework and to read! I mean, I would read and do my homework anyway, but this is like a bonus. Occasionally, however, on days like this one, I do have some work to do.
As I walked past the tables and to the books, I glanced at the books I had in my hand. A biography of Robert Frost- ooh nice, A Tale of Two Cites- I read that in English last year, Mansfield Park by Jane Austen- Darn it! I bought that yesterday thinking that we would never get it here, Shakespeare's Sonnets- we had three copies already, and a small black journal.
Hmmm… I wondered. Possibly this was Joyce's and she accidentally put it in here. I checked the spine; she had put a sticker on it. It read: Curtis, Ponyboy, Outsiders, The, fiction. I opened the book and on the first page, handwritten, it said: The Outsiders by Ponyboy Curtis.
This book puzzled me. I had never heard of it before. As I finished putting away that stack of books, I set this one by my book bag so I could take a closer look at it later. As I continued to put the other books away, I thought about the book still. The first thing that struck me was the name of the author: Ponyboy Curtis. Sure the name was… interesting but that wasn't why I was thinking of it. It sounded familiar. Wasn't he a guy at my school? I couldn't recall his face but I could have sworn I had heard or seen the name before. Or was it in the paper?
I spent the two hours it took me to put away all the books pondering the name Ponyboy Curtis. There was a fire last year that a couple of teens saved some children from. Was he one of the teens? Or one of the kids? And either way, how was he able to write a book? Or was it even a book? It's handwritten; it may have been a journal that was accidentally put into the pile. I've got to read that thing…
As I finished with the books, I looked at my watch. It ten past five. Wow, the day had gone by fast. I put The Outsiders behind the front desk, grabbed my bag and waved goodbye to Joyce.
It was a clear, sunny Saturday afternoon so I decided to walk home from the library. I usually took the bus because I was tired but today, I felt refreshed. I guess having work to do is a lot less tiring than sitting around all day. My house was about a mile away and this was the safest part of Tulsa, so I didn't have much to worry about. If I was on the east or west side of town, I would have been jumped the minute I started walking alone.
But this wasn't the east or the west side; where I lived was dead center. The neutral area of town. Surprisingly enough, there is a neutral area here. It's the very small area between the east side slums and the west side villas. It was where the 'middle class' people- like me lived. The east side is for the greasers, the poor kids who were known for greasing their hair, stealing, getting into fights, and getting jumped or jumping others. The west side is for the Socials, or Socs, who are the damn richest kids I've ever seen. They have giant houses, giant parties, giant closets, and giant egos. They beer blast and waste their parents money right and left when not spending their time terrorizing and jumping the poor greasers.
I am not a fan of either of the groups. Quite frankly, I don't think that they should exist. But as one person alone, I would never be able to change this.
On the way home, I thought of the title of that book I had found; The Outsiders. Was that referring to the greasers? Or the soc's? Or both? Or was it referring to us, the middle class? Or were the people in it really outsiders? What's the book about? I hadn't even bothered to glance at any of the pages, other than the title page. That was stupid.
As I reached my the house, I saw an all to familiar sleek black mustang. That was Mrs. Peirce's car and Mrs. Peirce was the social worker. Crap. She wasn't supposed to be here until next month. This meant something was wrong. I became tense and hastened my speed to the door.
Well, here's the third thing that has slipped from my memory that I probably should have told you in the first place: I am an orphan. It sounds so sad when I put it like that but there's no other way of saying it. I have no parents or, in fact, any known relatives at all. My parents died when I was a few days old, I'm not sure how.
So my whole life I have been an orphan, living with other orphans. There are eight of us in the house. We are a part of Mrs. Peirce's study to see if we can support each other as a family unit on our own. The orphanage pays for our house and we get food stamps for a certain amount of food each month. We get personal visits from Mrs. Peirce every month, and we had just been paid a visit last week. So she shouldn't have been here now.
I continued to worry as I all but ran to the front steps of the house. We couldn't have done anything wrong. Andy, Sarah and I kept way to close a control over anything and everything that went on for them to need to break us up. This meant that there was probably a slip in the funds, and that meant they would have to shut us down. I sure as hell did not want that! I was panicking.