Kind of a Prologue for the sequel to Come and Gone. Really, it's just to see if there's interest. It kind of introduces Stacey (who is a character in Come and Gone, but she's only mentioned, like, once) who will be the main girl in this story. I hope you guys enjoy it because it'll be written a little differently than Come and Gone. I don't know if I'll continue to write it so choppily, but I don't want it to feel like the same story. This is the sequel, but it focuses on a totally different girl.
Warning: to those of you who are die-hard book followers, I do mess with The Outsiders timeline a bit, but it's nothing major. Johnny and Dally are still dead, in case anyone was wondering for some reason.
Smoking helped relieve stress. I don't know if that's why everyone else did it, but that why I did. Whenever teachers yelled at me because my grades sucked, or when my mom started hitting me, I would light up. And I would feel better. I probably looked cool and dangerous too, but that was just icing on the cake as far as I was concerned. Honestly, I didn't need cigarettes to look cool or dangerous, but I think that even if I didn't need them, or even like them, I still would have smoked. Because that's what girls like me did. Greaser girls, I mean. But I wasn't a greaser, I was more than that. I was trash.
I didn't date greasers; I dated hoods, JD's, the lowest of the low. I didn't just wear make-up. I wore too much, and that was when I didn't feel like doing much. My skirts were too far above my knees, and sometimes, I wore pants. To school. Just because I hadn't gotten in enough trouble that week, enough attention. I was probably going to wind up pregnant, like Lana, or diseased like Sylvia, but that was okay as long as I had my fun while I could, and I definitely had my fun.
. . .
Jazz loved what I did. He didn't think of it as me sleeping with guys, he thought of it as me "gaining experience," and he liked that. He liked that I always had a new trick to try. He loved it when I would show him something I had learned. He loved me, and he told me so, even when he was so high he couldn't even think, he still told me he loved me, and I liked that. I liked him loving me, so I loved him back.
You could say I did it for the attention, that's probably wheat everyone thought. Attention and money, but that wasn't it. Sure, they helped, but I really did it for the high. The euphoria. Even after, I still felt it, that feeling of floating. I had heard the term "outer body experience" once, but that didn't quite describe it. It was something more. I could only get that feeling one way, and that's why I kept doing what I did.
. . .
Being at the Mathews home was great. Dirty, but great. I was over there a lot to hang out and also to help Lana with Curtis. Curtis was a great baby. Didn't cry for no reason, wasn't fussy, he was just content to be.
But he looked exactly like Dally did. Except for his hair, he had Lana's hair, but his eyes. They were the exact same shade of icy blue, only much, much happier. It was weird to see him laugh, which he did often, because it was kind of like seeing Dally laugh, which he never did. Curtis was probably the happiest baby I had ever seen in my entire life, but that probably came from living with Two-Bit.
I hate to say it, but Two-Bit made a pretty good dad. He loved Curtis like he was his own, almost too much, I would say. Probably because he was well aware that Curtis wasn't his, a fact that was only emphasized because Curtis looked so much like Dally, but he was still a pretty good dad.
Lana was a great mom, though. She managed to balance everything, Curtis, work, Two-Bit. Especially Two-Bit. He was more work than Curtis. Lana and Two-Bit fought often and they could range from knock-down drag-outs about serious issues, to knock-down drag-outs about how to boil water and they always ended with Two-Bit getting kicked out and having to sleep over at the Curtis's house, but then the next day when he came back, they would make up. Loudly. And I would take Curtis over to the Curtis's and Soda would have a ball playing with him, even though you knew he was dying inside. You knew that he missed Sandy and her kid. He would have raised it, whether it was his or not. But he was Soda, so he put on a brave face and he gave Curtis the time of his life. Curtis loved him, almost as much as he loved Two-Bit. Darry really liked it when Curtis came over because it "taught Ponyboy about consequences." Pony just blushed. I laughed.