It's not funny, we're not laughing like we did before
it's not funny, it's just hurting more and more

April, 1964

It was the ninth of April, 1965, at six-thirty in the morning, when Victoria Winston was shaken awake and told she wouldn't be going to school today. She sat on the living room couch beside her father as a police officer explained that Dallas had robbed a store and run out, and when the police caught up to him he'd pulled a gun. They had no choice but to shoot. It wasn't until after that they'd discovered the gun hadn't been loaded. Then he said he was sorry, and let himself out.

Mr Winston sat on the couch for a moment more before patting his daughter on the shoulder blade and leaving for work. "Call the funeral home," he instructed while lacing up his work boots. "If it ain't too expensive, get him a casket and a service." Then he left her to an empty house.

Nobody came by with casseroles and hugs, like they did in the movies. Nobody called and said they were sorry. The school office didn't even phone to ask why she wasn't in class the whole day. She got in touch with the funeral home around dinner time, and found the cheapest route would just be to cremate him, and take his ashes home in a simple urn. Her father would push for a small cardboard box. She told them to do it, and she'd come get the ashes.

She got dressed slowly, in a pair of tight jeans and one of Dallas' old sweatshirts. Sylvia always bought them for him and he never wore any of them, so she took them, even though they were big on her and the collar slid down her shoulder. There was no point in doing her hair, so the long, wavy, white-blonde locks went in a loose, messy ponytail high on her head. Then she went to the Curtis'.

The cold didn't touch her. The chilly spring wind blew on her exposed skin, but she couldn't feel a thing. People watched her as she walked by; her friends from school, women with small children, young men with greased-back hair. She passed The Dingo, loud and riotous at seven thirty in the evening. A whole day had gone by and she hadn't even noticed. She'd missed the sun entirely. Dallas had missed the sun too. He'd died before it could rise again, before it could be the last thing he'd seen.

Johnny Cade had been the only thing he loved, and Johnny Cade was dead now. But that didn't mean that no one loved him. He'd taken care of her when no one else had – in New York, and when their father was drunk he'd stepped in to take the beatings. He'd always been there for her, stand up for her and make sure no one laid a hand on her. He'd been her big brother. He was nothing now. Just a corpse in a morgue with nowhere to go and nothing to think.

Darrell, Sodapop, and Ponyboy weren't home, but Steve and Two-Bit were there. That was the whole gang now. All that was left of the boys she'd grown up with. She wouldn't consider any of them her close friends, but they'd watched her grow and she'd watched them through wide, youthful eyes, seeing everything they did and felt and said while keeping her own mouth shut. You learned a lot about people that way.

"Where's Ponyboy?" she asked. He was the closest to her age, and she spent enough time with him. Once he helped her look after Two-Bit's little sister for a bit of coin so they could go see a movie at the Nightly Double a few months back. He was in high school already and she was still in elementary, but sometimes he'd walk home with her if she waited around the playground long enough.

"Hospital," Two-Bit said. "He passed out yesterday. He's been real sick."

"How sick?"

"Sick enough," Steve said with finality.

She sat down in between them on the couch, and leaned her head on Two-Bit's arm and said, "They're cremating him. I'm gonna go get the ashes then I was thinkin' we could throw 'em somewhere. Somewhere he liked to be."

"Glory," Two-Bit said weakly, "Dally didn't like to be anywhere."

"Well then we'll throw 'em under the streetlight," she decided. "'Cause that's where all his dreams came true." It was a horrible thing to say, but she knew it was true, deep down inside. Dallas was never meant to live. He was meant to be wild and reckless and angry until he couldn't hold it all in anymore. Dallas was made to explode.

On the twenty-sixth, after Johnny's funeral and the hearing – Ponyboy and Sodapop got to stay with Darrell, which was a relief to everyone because they wouldn't have made it apart – they took the little silver urn full of Dallas Winston to the streetlight shining onto the empty lot. So much had happened there, it just felt right. Even though it was a windy day and they knew he'd just get blown all around on the concrete and out into the street, where kids would walk on him and cars would drive overtop him. He'd be wild and free like he was meant to be, not stuck in some jar in a graveyard full of people who'd never really lived their lives. That wasn't Dallas at all.

They all took a handful. It seemed morbid and wrong, to be holding a burnt-up body in their hands like this, but they all had a reason to say goodbye to him. They all had a piece of Dallas to say goodbye to.

Victoria went first. Her statement was simple and sweet. She said, "I love you, Dallas Winston," and threw the ashes into the wind. They caught on the breeze and spun in the air, dancing wildly. Ponyboy was last and all he said was, "stay gallant." No one really understood it but he must have meant something by it. Ponyboy never said things just for the sake of saying something.

Tim Shepard came by the Curtis house a little while later. They invited him to stay for dinner, but all he wanted was a quick word with Victoria.

"Your brother was a good friend of mine," Tim explained, standing with her out on the front porch. "You ever need anythin', anyone ever givin' you trouble, you come to me, savvy? You ain't got him anymore but I'll still be around for a while."

"Thanks Tim," Victoria said, but she didn't plan on going to Tim Shepard for anything.

The next day, Victoria Winston was gone. She left a note on the Curtis' kitchen table.

I'll be back sometime. But not right now.
- Tori Winston