Title: Broken Boy Soldier (Throwing The Childhood Scene Away)
Author: Me (Pablo)
Description: A girl thinks about Ponyboy Curtis and just how much he's changed. (Death-fic)
Notes: I don't own The Outsiders but I do own Anonymous!Girl. I don't own the title either. It's a song by the Raconteurs. Snow-y betaed because we have this special relationship where we check each other's spelling and grammar mistakes. Yeah, be jealous.
Broken Boy Soldier
You would sit with those hard, rough Greasers up in the very back of the bleachers, smoking cigarettes and watching the pep rallies with amusement and a little bit of disgust. I'd sit with my cheerleader girlfriends, dressed from head to toe in our school's colors. You and your crowd didn't even bother.
Curly Shepard and you became the nonofficial leaders of the crowd once those Matthews and Randle boys finally graduated. You two sat right there next to each other, legs and sides and arms pressed together. The rest of them sat around you, on the sides, in the front and in the back, like a shield.
The football team would run out and you all would boo. We'd give you cross looks and you wouldn't care at all. I'd always admired you hoods for that. I wished that I could just laugh in the face of my peers, toss my hair over my shoulder and do whatever I wanted.
I found a leather jacket one day, that oversized, stained, worn horrid thing that Curly Shepard wore nearly every single day. I tried to bring it to you all one day, out in the back of the school where you Greasers ate your lunches and Curly threatened to kill me, saying that I took the damn jacket in the first place. I thought that you'd stick up for me, seeing as we were in near every class together, but you just smirked, a Marlboro hanging from your lips.
You were a changed boy and everybody with half a brain knew it. Ever since that Cade boy and your hoodlum pal from New York died, you'd been different. It was even worse when the handsome brother that worked at the DX went off to Vietnam. You fell into the Shepard gang, turning rough and hard with no more guidance around you.
My brother knew you, said that you were no good, unworthy trash and that I shouldn't waste my time thinking about you. I didn't listen to him, figuring that he had no idea what he was talking about. Well, I was damn wrong, wasn't I?
You showed up in our territory one night, at the diner, with at least twenty other Greasers. I don't recall seeing any of your gang there, only the Shepard gang and a few Brumly boys. You followed Curly and Tim Shepard over to my table, of all places, where my brother, his friends and I sat.
My brother stood and I swear to God I saw hell that night. Everybody in the place started fighting, even some of us girls. I watched as you and Curly double-teamed some of my brother's football friends and won. I watched as a knife was suddenly sliced across your face and jammed into your chest, your eyes widening in surprise as you stumbled backwards.
I even watched as Curly Shepard, the boy who boasted to have absolutely no feelings, launched himself at your attacker, cursing a blue streak.
And, twenty minutes later after you all disappeared, I slipped in the puddle of your blood and threw up, hugging my knees as I remembered your panicked face as Curly screamed at Tony Washington to pick you up, and your cry of pain when he did and the Greasers fled.
I think I stopped loving you that night. I watched Curly floor one of the crueler questioners about your wound with one punch and I didn't even care so much. I feel particularly happy for you when I went round the DX and saw that Steve Randle and your middle brother had returned from 'Nam. Even when you died, two years later at seventeen, five months before we were to graduate, I didn't go to your funeral.
You stopped being Ponyboy Curtis even before your oldest brother turned alcoholic. Before your brother and his best friend went off to a war with good chance of dying. Before you fell into Curly Shepard's crowd of good-for-nothings. Before that fatal car crash that took both your life and Curly's.
And for that, I am so incredibly sorry for the world because, Ponyboy Michael Curtis, you could've been great for us all.
I'm pulling down questions from my shelf
I'm asking forgiveness
I ain't asking nobody but myself
And I want you to know this
And I want you to know this
You're rifling through a box of toys
That were handed down to me
Just take out the ones you want and then
Give the rest to my family
I'm going to go back to school today
But I'm dropping myself off
I'm throwing the childhood scene away
I'm through ripping myself off
I'm done ripping myself off
I'm child and man and child again
The toy broken boy soldier
I'm child and man then child again
The boy never gets older
The boy never gets older
The boy never gets older
The boy never gets older
The boy never gets older
Never gets older
The boy broken toy soldier
The boy
The boy!
Thanks for reading. Please review! Plus, merci m'dear Snow, for being the bestest in the entire world. smiles