Disclaimer: I don't own; I borrow with the exception of OCs. I also don't own the quote from the movie "The Wild One."
Author's Note: Flames are welcome. This is not to be taken seriously at all; it's just for shits and giggles. Basically, Dallas has an older sister. Point out mistakes... please? Reviews would be just lovely. Potential chapter fic, ahoy!

Feb. 1964

The fog was rolling up from the river. I flicked the rest of my cigarette off to the side and looked at Janice. She seemed mighty pleased with herself, and it made me roll my eyes, 'cause I hated it when she went on gettin' smug like that. Maybe she had every right to be smug, but it pissed me off, and I guessed it always would.

"Your friend is real dumb, Dallas," she said, and she had her knees pulled up to her chest and the widest, most shit-eating grin of life on her face. "Good-lookin', I'll give him that, but dumb as a goddamned stick."

Her grin widened when I shrugged my good shoulder and grunted, as if that was possible. She knew she was right, and that pissed me off, too, 'cause Janice was right about everything. Must've run in the goddamn family.

"Shut up, Janice," I said. "I thought you was supposed to be older, you know? More mature and all that shit."

"And I thought you was supposed to be smart."

She shifted on the hood of the car, and I cringed. Buck would skin me alive if I brought his car back with the paint chipped. Of course he wouldn't believe that Janice had done it, because Buck had been makin' eyes at her ever since she grew a pair of tits. It was a real riot to watch him try and swindle our phone number out of her, since she could hardly look at the toothless fuck with a straight face. He used to be pretty decent looking, before he got his teeth knocked out, but even I had problems taking him seriously, and I was around him all the goddamn time.

"Don't be a cow," I told her, but I didn't think she heard me, because she went on twirling her hair around her finger and looking at the top of her shoes. "You givin' me a ride home, or what?"

Grabbing my chin in her hand, she forced me to look at her. I was a bit messed up after this fight I'd had with Bobby Huff. Ignorant little shit had the nerve to call me pansy, so I'd made him eat his fucking words, but not before he'd gotten a couple of real good swings in. My jaw hurt like I'd never thought was possible.

"Reckon I have to, don't I?" Janice licked her thumb and tried to scrub off the blood that was dried to the corner of my mouth. "Mom's going to be right ticked off if I bring you home lookin' like this, though."

I knew that wasn't the real reason she wasn't too hot on the idea of going home right then. Mack and Annie had been at it all night. It bugged Janice a lot more than it bugged me, which didn't make a lot of sense to me, 'cause I'd never known anything to bug her. She'd been trying to kill time all night by dragging my ass all over God's half-acre, hoping like maybe if we got home late enough, our mom and dad would've tired themselves out. It was stupid, and I didn't think she knew that, but who in the hell was I to tell her?

She gave my cheek a pat and smirked. "I have a better idea." She paused and looked out at the river. "Let's go to Cosmo's, since I get a discount. You can get some of those nasty fruit-covered waffles, or them oysters you like so much."

Cosmo's Diner was pretty far out. Janice had been working there since she was something like fifteen. I thought the place was fucking disgusting, but if it put money in her pocket, then all the power to her.

"Alright," I sighed, and she held her hand out toward me, palm up, like she was expecting something. "What?"

"Keys, please." She batted her eyelashes at me and smiled.

Cosmo's was dead. Janice hung her jacket up on the coat hook by the door and slipped into a booth like she owned the fucking place. Some blonde little bimbo of a waitress flounced up to us. She had a great set of tits, and Janice kicked me under the table for staring.

"Can I get you something to drink to start?"

"Coke, please," Janice said, and she gave me a pointed look.

I put my elbows on the table and looked at the waitress. Tiny waist, big lips, long eyelashes—maybe Cosmo's wasn't all that bad. "I'll have a Pepsi." I leaned forward, squinting at her nametag. "Betty."

She swallowed and nodded before scurrying away, and I sat back in my seat. Janice had her chin in her palm, staring at me with one of her little filled in eyebrows raised right up.

"You are a real pig," she mumbled. "Poor Betty is probably back there having a heart attack 'cause of you."

"Well ain't that a real shame." I rolled my eyes. "She got a type?"

She widened her eyes at me and snickered, and I knew right then I didn't have a chance in hell of getting under Betty's tight little apron. "Yeah, and it's not you."

"Oh, come on, Jan," I groaned and crossed my legs on the seat. "Quit cock-blocking. It ain't gonna work."

Janice grabbed the menus that were tucked in behind the napkin dispenser and smirked to herself. "And why the hell not?"

"'Cause I'm everybody's type."

She slapped me upside the head with one of the menus and glared at me, and if looks could kill, then I would've been dead about twenty times over. She got all pro-feminism at the worst fucking times.

"You're an idiot," she said, and she tossed a menu at me. "You know why you don't have freckles, Dal?"

It was a weird question. I narrowed my eyes at her and shifted a little bit, trying to decide if I really wanted to know why I didn't have freckles. She bit around at the inside of her mouth, trying not to smile, keeping her eyes right on her goddamn menu while I sat there, trying to figure it out. I knew she was going to have a smartass remark for me; she got off on being an overgrown brat.

"Why, Jan?" I was humouring her. "Why don't I have freckles?"

"Because you're so greasy, they'd slide right off."

Again, she went on gettin' smug and looking mighty pleased with herself. She probably knew how much I hated that look and did it on purpose. She thought she was so goddamn funny, too, but she wasn't. Two-Bit Mathews was funny. But people laughed at her jokes and thought she was a real riot to listen to.

"Yeah, well, guess I can thank Mom and Dad for that one, can't I?"

Her mouth fell open a little bit. Betty came back and placed our drinks down, and I think she could feel the tension, too, 'cause she looked like she wasn't sure if she ought to be taking our order or not.

"Can I get you anything?" She kept her eyes glued to her little notepad.

"No, thanks," Janice said, and she set the menu down at the end of the table for Betty to take.

"I'll have those waffles, with strawberries," I said tightly, glaring at Janice for being so dumb and sensitive. "And I'll have my hashbrowns shredded, thanks."

Betty scribbled something down quickly on that stupid pad of hers, probably a note for the cook to spit in my food or whatever. She grabbed both menus and hurried off with them. Janice didn't look at me at all. She just sat there, picking at her nails like she didn't know what to do with herself. She needed to get over all the bullshit between our mom and dad and realize there wasn't a goddamn thing that we could do about it. But she always had to be the fucking optimist.

"Jan..." I kicked her under the table when she didn't look at me. "Knock it off, Janice."

"Knock what off?" She straightened up and fixed me with one of her looks as she flicked her hair over her shoulder. "Showin' a little goddamn humanity?"

"Oh, what, and I ain't human?"

She set her jaw and folded her arms over her chest, looking off to the side. "Sometimes I wonder."

I tilted my head back and looked up at the ceiling, smirking in something of disbelief. I was plenty human. Janice thought she was the only one that was up most nights, thinking about how in the hell we were going to get out of this fucking mess. Truth was that I thought about it, too, and the more I thought, the more I wanted to get out. The screaming and the fighting and watching our mom get smacked around pissed me off same as it did her. But the thing about Mom was that she was too stubborn to leave, and Janice was just too much of a pushover to try and do anything about it. She'd tried telling our mom to leave, and so had I, but she hadn't listened to a word of it. Her excuse was that she had kids that still needed raising. If she could see us now...

Janice said I was like Mom in a lot of ways. Sure, I had our dad's temper, but I wasn't nothing like him. I couldn't even stand thinking about him most of the time. He was a sick bastard. But I was like Mom. I sure as hell looked like her, had her hair and her eyes, and I was every bit as short as her, too. Janice teased me about it all the time, but I knew she was only sore, 'cause she looked like our dad. And that in itself was about as much punishment as she needed without me yapping back at her.

"Look here, Jan," I said. "You ain't the only one hurtin' over this."

She rolled her eyes. "The hell are you talking about?" She paused, running her tongue along her bottom. "You're just some dumb kid. What the hell do you even know?"

It irked me when people called me dumb. I wasn't dumb and I wasn't a kid. She was two years older than me, and I knew more than she could ever have hoped to. This was why me and her didn't hang around each other much; even though we lived in the same house, had the same parents, and ate at the same kitchen table most mornings, we were estranged.

"You know that one movie, Janice?" I touched her on the hand, and she finally looked at me. "Only movie I reckon we ever sat through together."

"Yeah, I remember..." she trailed off and took a breath. "What of it, huh?"

"You know what that guy said, right? That Johnny guy?" I shrugged my one shoulder, but I knew I had her. Jan loved movies. "You don't go any one place, that's cornball style. You just go."

She wrinkled her brow at me, like I was blowing it out my ass or something. "And?"

"Maybe we oughta just go."

I didn't really know what I was getting at. All I knew was that we both wanted out, and if anybody knew about leaving, it was me. But she looked at me and shook her head as she placed a crumpled up dollar bill on the table.

"You talk a lot of jive, Dallas," she told me. "Enjoy your waffles."