I don't own the Outsiders, as usual. This is one of the several things that has been lying around my Doc Manager for just too long. I'm just tying up loose ends with all of this, so here it is. This is just small, but any opinions are, as always, welcome.

Umm, just in case anybody was wondering, the title was taken from the Coronas (an Irish band, in case you were wondering about that too) and then of course, the summary is a quote taken directly from Matthew 15:13-14 in the Bible . . . Which I also don't own. Just in case anybody was interested! And this is inspired (sort of) by The Hunchback of Notre Dame. That's what a Disney marathon does to ya. Okay, onward!

Where I grew up, sitting on the fence was not an option. That operated quite literally, since which side of the fence you sat on depended on what side of town you lived on. Where you lived, and how much money you had, defined who you liked and who you didn't, who was just in a bad mood and who was a lousy hood.

I'd never questioned it, not a million years, probably because I got the better end of the deal. Socs had all the breaks, and we loved it. I had never thought for one second that there was anything else, that we could have been wrong, that there could have been a different side of that story.

I guess I had no reason to doubt it. I had the perfect life – great friends who liked all the same things I did, a boyfriend who gave me everything under the sun, a nice home and family.

Usually greasers didn't bother with any Soc girl that much. Sure, they'd shout out the first sleazy thing that came to mind, but they never really harassed or anything. They were more interested in fights with the guys, or their own greasy, trashy girls.

Never once in my sweet, comfortable life had I any reason to doubt that greasers were violent and lousy. They always started fights with our friends and boyfriends, and weren't worth even looking at. And our friends and boyfriends had to contend with them, all the time. That was just how it was.

Of course, nothing was that black and white. It took me a while to see it, but eventually I did.

I had been with David about four months, and I was loving every minute of it. He was sweet, he was kind, he was funny and handsome. He made me feel like something special. Things were going really great, and it wasn't like I wanted anything to change. I listened to him when he told me about greasers, about how I wasn't to go near them or talk to them. I let him tell me about their reputation, about how volatile and dangerous they were.

There was only one small bump in the road in our entire relationship.

"I mean it," Shirley said earnestly, watching me shove my books into my locker. "David's been worried sick about you."

I rolled my eyes. "It was only a stomach bug," I replied.

Shirley shrugged her shoulders, grinning at me, still chomping on her gum. "Well, the moment I said you were too sick for him to visit you, I thought he was gonna cry."

"Right," I laughed, shaking my head as I emptied my books into my locker and slammed it shut. I had been out of school for about two weeks, and I didn't have any classes with David. My first day back in school - still feeling a little under the weather - and I had been hoping all day long that I'd see him in the corridor between classes, but no such luck.

I was lucky I didn't have to go to cheerleading practice today. I didn't really like cheerleading all that much, but all my friends were into it, and they had let me on the team. Besides, it looked good - apart from that, all I did was Art Club, and it wasn't like I was the next Picasso or anything. I figured it was no harm to tag along and make the most out of it. Besides, it had its advantages. All my friends were on the cheerleading team, so it wasn't like I'd have anyone else to hang around with at lunch if I didn't go. And it was great to be a part of the action whenever the games were on; the atmosphere was so electric, it was impossible not to love it.

And then - it was impossible to not look good in that uniform. Sure, it may have been because the entire squad obsessed over what they ate, and we all shared our weight loss "strategies", most of which were new ideas that I didn't feel too hot about, but went along with it because - well, that's what everybody did.

In fact, there's the reason I stuck with cheerleading. Everybody else did, and I wouldn't for the life of me be the black sheep.

But it wasn't on today - which meant I could spend the whole of my lunchtime with David, something neither of us had been able to swing in a long time. I mean, sure his friends were going to be there. They were a popular crowd, and sort of intimidating unless you were as popular as they were - which I wasn't - but I couldn't even bring myself to care about that right now. I was too excited to see David.

"I mean it!" Shirley insisted, falling into step beside me. "He's been like a little lost puppy. A little lost puppy in love."

I laughed at her, shoving past a couple of freshman, who leaped out of our way with an indignant yelp. "It is called puppy love," I reminded her.

"Now I know why," she snorted. "He's been so worried about you."

"He's in school, right?" I asked, unable to stop the uncertainty seeping into my voice. If he wasn't in school today - it felt like it wouldn't have been worth even coming to school for. He was all I was looking forward to.

"Of course," Shirley said brusquely, patting my shoulder in what I'm sure she meant to be a sympathetic way. It only came out a little patronizing instead. "He was in Math, and History. Don't you turn into a little puppy too, I don't need to throw up today. Not if I have the salad, at least."

I raised my eyebrows at that, but she didn't notice. We had entered the cafeteria and she was scanning it for our friends, while I scoped the place out for David. After what seemed like a century, I spotted him, sitting with his friends and laughing raucously. My heart skipped a beat, and my stomach started performing backflips, that familiar swooping sensation.

The moment I sat down beside him, he turned his back to his friends and gazed at me, fixing his arm steadily around my waist.

"Hey," he said quietly. I could tell his friends were all straining to hear what he was going to say, probably waiting for him to tell me something sappy so they could make fun of him about it later, but he was sensible enough to lower his voice. "How're you feelin', babe?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "Tired," I admitted truthfully. "Just tired. Glad to be back though."

"Well, I missed you," he told me, grinning at me confidently. Then he turned back to the whole table, and rejoined their conversation.

"Well, that little greaser, he got what was coming to him!" one of his friends was yelling. I frowned, and listened more closely.

"Man, I can't believe I missed that," one of the other guys - I had never bothered much with their names, strangely enough - said forlornly, shoving his food away from him like he was too disgusted to eat anymore.

"Yeah," Bob Sheldon laughed. At least I knew his name. "I know you love any chance to pulverize some dumb greaser."

"It was your own fault for going out of town for the weekend," one of his friends pointed out matter-of-factly.

"What did you guys do?" I asked David quietly, tugging on his arm.

He shrugged, grinning at me. "We just took care of some greaser."

My eyebrows knit together with worry. "Why, what did he do?" I breathed, feeling my heart start to thud a little harder.

David was looking at me like I was speaking Japanese. "He didn't do anything."

It was my turn to look at him like he was speaking Japanese. "What do you mean, he didn't do anything?" I demanded, shaking my head in bewilderment. "I thought he 'got what was coming to him'."

David blinked at me. "Hey, those greasers have asked for it enough times." At the look on my face, he fastened his arm a little more securely around my waist, looking at my consolingly. "C'mon darlin'. We'd had a couple of drinks and decided to teach a greaser a lesson, what's wrong with that?"

"Absolutely nothin'!" interjected one of his friends.

"So you just jumped him for no reason?" I asked, feeling my stomach knot together. I had had this feeling once or twice before, when I could feel in my gut that I wasn't okay with something, when I knew I shouldn't be okay with it, even if everybody else was.

"Weren't you listening?" he asked me, chuckling, and I, perennially sensitive to condescension, frowned even more prominently. "We always have a reason."

"So what did he do?" I asked in a small voice.

"He's a greaser, that's what he did," David cooed soothingly. When I blinked at him, still utterly perplexed, he shook his head. "Like I said, we'd had a couple o' beers, and he was all by his lonesome."

"And that makes it okay?" I asked, not angry or frustrated, just more disappointed than anything else.

"Well, as far as I'm concerned, that enough for him to be askin' for it," he told me with conviction.

I cleared my throat, which had closed up painstakingly. "David," I murmured. "I thought greasers were the ones who jumped you for no reason."

"They are, baby," David agreed, grinning at me. "Don't worry your pretty little head about it."

I smiled weakly at him, and he turned back to the conversation, but I did worry about it. It was gnawing at my heart, my stomach convulsing uncomfortably. David had always told me that greasers were wild and violent, almost savage, and they'd go for any Soc that was in twenty feet of them without a second thought. But he never said that him and his friends did the same thing.

It didn't feel right - just because he'd been all alone. The four or five of them hadn't been in any trouble - not when they were outnumbering the greaser. I tried to let it rest, put it out of my head - after all, what was done was done, and it wasn't like I could order David around, not that I would try. It wasn't really my business, so what was the point in my worrying about it?

But I couldn't look at David without thinking of how he laughed when he described beating a greaser up just because he was by himself, like that was provocation enough. It didn't feel right. In fact, it made me feel a little sick.

I thought David and his friends, my friends, some of them - I'd thought they were meant to be the sweet ones, the ones who only fought back when the greasers started war like they usually did, only when the greasers asked for it.

But this - this didn't fit that bill at all. And no matter how much I put it out of my head - into a little box, locked away in the corner of my head - it was always in the back of my mind. I couldn't shake the unease it gave me. It made me a little sick to my stomach when I thought about it.

I shelved it as best I could. One little thing didn't change a person, and I was still crazy about it. I couldn't let one little flaw - one thing that made me the slightest bit nervous - I wouldn't let it ruin my entire relationship by eating away at my soul.

David was the same person he always was. Unfortunately, I couldn't help but thinking miserably to myself, that might have been the problem.

xxx

It was a few weeks after, and I'd long put the issue to bed. It was the weekend, and my mountain of homework was so high, tottering precariously, it was threatening to drown me if I didn't do something about it quickly. So I tackled it and battled my through it on a sunny, breezy Saturday, until I felt my brain was too fried to do one more algebraic fraction or learn a single more quote from Shakespeare.

So I took my twin brothers, Matthew and Luke, out for ice cream, which wasn't an uncommon endeavor for the three of us. Unlike most of my friends, I actually adored my brothers, and I was more than happy to take them out for ice cream any time the whether permitted.

We went to the park - which was mostly devoid of both Socs and greasers, which was precisely why I chose to bring them there. While they were pushing nine years, I didn't know how long I could preserve my brothers' innocence, but I wasn't about to subject them to any of that for as long as I could do something about it. I'd rather see them making a mess with crayons over war any day.

We sat down on a bench, the three of us - me in the middle, Matthew on my right and Luke on my other side, letting the sun bear down on us mercilessly. We were there about ten minutes when I was spotted by a pair of girls on the cheerleading squad, two girls who I happened to like, and who liked me.

They trotted over, one of them tugging their dog with them to say hello to me. I knew they would. That's what you did when you saw people like you, acknowledged they were on your side. Make sure everybody was on your side.

"Nice dog," remarked Matthew, staring wide-eyed at the dog. He went to pet the dog, eyeing me for approval. I nodded. "What's his name?" he asked Karen, the one who had a tight grip on the dog's leash.

"Her name is Candy," Karen replied bemusedly, grinning widely at Matthew. She turned to me. "Your brothers are just adorable!"

"I wouldn't go there," I pretended to warn her, while Luke glowered, edging further and further away from the dog all the time. "They prefer tough and intimidating," I informed Karen, who smiled good-naturedly.

"That's exactly what I meant," she laughed, sitting down in the seat Matthew had just vacated, so he could scratch behind Candy's ear. "How's David?" she asked me, her eyes lighting up the same way any girl's did when she was fishing for gossip that she was hoping would be juicy, and very spreadable.

I smiled modestly. "Great. He's great. Things are . . . great," I finished lamely, feeling myself blush. It had been months, and he could still make me blush and giggle, without even being around.

"How long has it been now?" Karen asked me, shaking her head.

I counted back. "About five months now, maybe more," I sighed, raking my fingers through my hair.

Karen shook her head, clasping her hands in her lap, releasing Candy as she did. "God, has it been that long?"

It took Candy a second to realize she wasn't being held tight anymore, but once she did notice, she was off like a shot, and Matthew followed her without hesitation. I swore under my breath - I couldn't afford Matthew to take off by himself. There had been an incident a year before when he had fallen straight into the fountain, and I wouldn't put it past history to repeat itself.

Sighing, I jumped to my feet and instructed Luke not to move, and went to get Matthew, praying the silly, endearing kid wouldn't do anything stupid. It took me five minutes to locate him - Candy had vanished, but I didn't really care about that. I didn't like dogs much.

But my real problem started when I got back to the bench I'd left Luke sitting on. Or rather, the bench I had told Luke not to budge from.

Groaning, I grabbed Matthew by the hand and tugged him around, keeping my eyes peeled for Luke. It took me a few minutes, but quickly I came to realize that he wasn't in the park anymore, and feeling my heart start to slam against my chest uncomfortably, I dragged Matthew out, beginning to feel a bit more panicky.

"Where could he possibly have gone?" I wondered aloud.

Matthew sniggered. "Maybe another dog came too close to him," he said unexpectedly. He was squirming, trying to wench his hand out of my clasp, but I had lost one twin, I wasn't going to lose another.

"That's not funny," I snapped at Matthew, who glared up at me. "We need to find him before it gets dark."

"I want to go home," Matthew complained.

"Well, we're not going home without him," I said shortly, frantically glancing around me as I pulled Matthew down a street, the way we had come. I could feel my heart pounding now, and I started thinking the most ridiculous things, the most horrendous calamities springing to mind when I imagined where the hell that kid had disappeared to. My hand in Matthew's was getting sweaty.

And then - at last - I could feel blood start pulsing normally to my brain again, and such relief flooded through me, I thought I was going to pass out.

"Luke!" I shrieked, from half way down the street. He glanced up. He was sitting against a wall with somebody else, someone older. As I approached, I felt my knees go a little wobbly again, and my mouth went dry.

"Luke," I sighed in my relief, as soon as I was near enough. He clambered to his feet. "What the hell are you doing here?"

The boy who'd been sitting with him jumped to his feet, his hand flying to the back of his neck. "He said he'd wandered off," he explained, while I eyed him shrewdly, feeling how chalk white I was. "And he started cryin', and I didn't want to just leave him. He said you'd come this way."

I blinked at the boy - there was a ton of grease in his blond hair, he wore ripped blue jeans and a DX cap. Almost subconsciously, I reached out to take Luke's hand; he took it, wiping away tear tracks.

"He said you'd come back this way," the greaser said. "And he was sort of panicking, so I just waited with him."

I was stunned speechless. He must have thought I looked scared or something - in reality, I probably was a little scared. David had told me so much about greasers, I couldn't help but tremble a tiny bit - because he mumbled sorry and looked at Luke. "See you around, Luke," he grinned, seemingly cheerful enough.

"Thanks," I blurted out. He raised his eyebrows. "You didn't have to -" I stammered. "But I'm damn glad you did, you really saved my neck, I don't know what I'd have done if anything had -" I cut myself off, taking a sharp breath before I worked myself into a panic again. "Well thanks anyway," I said quietly.

He shook his head. "No problem."

Still a little flabbergasted, I took both my brothers by the hand and pulled them past, smiling awkwardly at the greaser. It didn't make sense. The first thing I did was ask Luke, and as far as I could tell, this greaser had been nothing but . . . well, kind.

It didn't fit. David had said that greasers were volatile, heartless. I could vividly remember the one time he had expressively insisted that they were barely human.

In hindsight, it wouldn't have been such a big deal, staying with a poor lost kid until somebody came to retrieve him. But it had me confused and astonished. Making me sick to my stomach, I couldn't help but wonder whether David would have done the same thing.

If it was a greaser's little brother, I wouldn't have put my money on it, I realized dejectedly. Hell, even if it was a Soc's little brother he had stumbled across, I wasn't too sure that David would have displayed such a genuine, unsolicited act of kindness.

And from what David himself had told me, it was hard to wrap my head around the fact that a greaser, a menacing, brutally cold-blooded greaser - in David's own words - could do something so . . . nice.

I never appreciated my brothers more than I did that day.

David and I lasted about three weeks after that day. I couldn't really explain it - and it wasn't like I wanted to spend a lot of time dwelling on how I would have explained it. I guess I just didn't feel the same way.

My heart didn't start pounding when I looked at him, I didn't find myself laughing at all the silly things he'd whisper in my hear. I didn't look at him the same why. Something had diminished - any feeling I had seemed to have evaporated pretty quickly after that.

I shivered when he was around, and I felt miserable. He didn't change - I tried talking to him about how I felt, but he couldn't fathom what I was saying in the slightest way. Almost overnight, it had extinguished, whatever it was I'd felt for him.

The thing that really got me was that - this was the same David he had always been. Whatever I'd seen - something cruel, some reflection of himself whenever he described the greasers to me - that had always been there. And I overlooked it before because - because, well, that was what you did when you really loved somebody. You didn't see their flaws because you didn't want to accept them.

I didn't dump him because I came to my senses, 'saw the light', whatever way you want to describe it. No, he ditched me because he got exasperated and frustrated, and he was tired of me acting so reclusive and gloomy whenever we were together.

What can I say? I didn't feel much like talking.

So he called it off, and the only thing I felt was relief. I had been even more clueless than him when I'd let him fill my head with a perception of people I didn't know. I didn't even question it at first. It never struck me to see for myself what a greaser was like, to see who was really the heartless one here.

But I wasn't so blind anymore. I never did anything about it, since I was too comfortable in my normal life, and I didn't have the guts to rock the boat, I knew that.

But I felt sorry for David, and his friends. I may not have been blinded anymore, but he was still just as blind as ever.

That's it, thanks for reading. Hope this didn't bore you to death. I have a habit of making something out of nothing.