notes: chapter title courtesy of John Denver. if you've read my other works i promise this is WAY lighter, though again i have no idea how long this will be or when it will be updated. consider it a slice-of-life. technically this is in the same universe as the rest of my 2019 outsiders fic. as always, i own nothing!
I: Take Me Home
The day Two-Bit ships out, Isabel Mathews gets home from the bus station, throws herself on the couch, and cries herself sick. Her mother left to work immediately after dropping her off, which means she has no one to feel embarrassed in front of, and she spends at least an hour with her face in a pillow, barely able to breathe but entirely unwilling to listen to herself bawl. It's bad enough she's crying in the first place.
By the time she's finished her head feels full of cotton, her face hot to the touch. Around her eyes it's worse, swollen, and when she tries to inhale a whistling noise seems unfairly loud in the empty house. She breathes in deeply through her mouth, and more hot tears slip from her eyes despite herself. She can feel another bout building up in her chest, and feels a bit hysterical. Surely she has nothing left in her. Her head is pounding, anyway, and she's suddenly exhausted, despite it being perhaps seven or eight in the evening. It's late summer, a Thursday, and she has her first quiz of the school year the next day.
She goes to the kitchen and bends over the sink, trying to fit her face underneath the faucet like she used to when she made a mess during dinner and it was her brother who was babysitting. He used to pick her up, the kind of painful manhandling that was fun when someone's a child, hoisted by the waist and hooked over the sink as best as she could be. In the summers it was best, leaning underneath the spout and having a flash of cold water splash against her spaghetti sauce-stained face. Their father had left the year Two-Bit turned eleven, just after Izzy's fifth birthday. That last stretch of winter bled into a painful spring, like an open wound that wouldn't scab over, but summer came like a savior.
Two-Bit, for the first time in their shared lives, didn't complain a lick about her tagging along with him whenever he would cross the street and head for the Curtis'. She didn't even ask to go, she doesn't think, and instead followed his lead when he told her to come with him. Perhaps he understood the sudden need for her to have him in her sights at all hours, or maybe he feared the same thing she did. She would wake up some mornings wondering why her father hadn't come for her, and she wondered, as she still does now, if it's a memory that Two-Bit can't help but hang onto.
That was back in '59, though, before Tulsa and the world had sunk its claws into all of them. Part of it makes Izzy sick with grief; part of it makes her feel like she's lying, just a little bit. After all, she's just some girl. Johnny Cade wasn't one of her friends, and she was half-afraid of Dallas Winston when he died. She accidentally read part of one newspaper report on it in the days following his death and her mother had smacked it out of her hand, saying something about disrespecting the dead.
At twelve she hadn't known Dally to be anything but disrespectful. At seventeen she feels a little hollow at the thought of dying.
She's barely patting her face dry with a paper towel when someone starts knocking on the door. It's a familiar knock. She wonders if ignoring it will make the person go away.
"I know you're here, Mathews," says Vicky Bernal. "Let me in."
If pressured to admit it, Izzy would admit that the youngest Bernal girl is, in fact, her best friend. It's hard not to be, when they've known each other since the age of twelve, both had (or have, if Vicky's feeling honest) a soft spot for the Curtis boys, and live only two blocks from one another, making sneaking out a part-time hobby. Vicky was quite literally in the next room when Izzy lost her virginity to Roland Adams back in May. She couldn't trick her if she tried.
When Izzy opens the door Vicky makes a face. One between pitying and vaguely disgusted.
"You look like shit," Vicky tells her, and Izzy attempts to sigh. She's not very successful, considering her nose feels stuffed and her head is killing her, but she's been told it's the thought that counts when it comes to these sorts of things.
"Thank you," says Izzy, "I just stopped crying."
"Of course you did," Vicky says, pushing passed her and into the kitchen. Izzy listens as the tell-tale signs of someone digging through the pantry starts up. "I swear, half the time I come see you you've just finished bawling."
"Don't exaggerate," Izzy says, voice still stuffed up. "And don't go burning down my house, we both know you can't cook."
"No one ever taught me how," she says airily, "and I know you haven't eaten dinner yet. I'm not gonna let you starve yourself just 'cause your brother went and got drafted."
Izzy could say something mean about Curly Shepard, but she won't. Besides, Angela left town earlier in the month and Vicky's touchy about it, even if she's pretending she isn't and also doesn't realize that Izzy knows why. Like the two of them are any good at hiding secrets from each other, even when they want to be.
"You should know how to cook by now," Izzy tells her instead, "you and your daddy have been on your own since Lisa left town."
"I am very good at casseroles," she says, carefully, "and you can't go wrong with spaghetti."
"You can if you're eating it every two days," says Izzy, "but you sure don't look it."
Vicky, for all her hair looks half-wild since she never brushes it, or if she does it doesn't help much, looks a lot like that one actress Izzy's seen in the movies old man Bernal watches. Real pretty. She's caught a glimpse here and there whenever she and Vicky hang out at the Bernal place instead of the Mathews', Lilia P-something or other. Vicky's hair is a lot lighter and her chin is sharper, but other than that she's a dead ringer for the woman. She's all long legs and, well, tight. Looks scrawny in the summers when she runs around doing nothing all day, chain-smoking, sure, but still real pretty, regardless.
Izzy don't think she's bad-looking. She's just as tall as Vicky, who's a little taller than most girls, and even if her hair's real orange it's easy to manage. Smooth to the touch and down her back, even if she just pulls it up into a ponytail more often than not. She credits that condition crème she splurged on at the beginning of the summer, when the heat started giving her a frizz she never had to deal with before. Izzy considers it the only good thing to come out of the summer, save for maybe her finally dumping Roland.
Then again, Two-Bit getting sent across the world to kill people probably makes it one of the worst summers of her life, probably the worst, and just like that Izzy's sniffling best as she can and covering her face with her hands.
"Oh, honey," Vicky says, like she has any idea what it feels like to send someone off to war, and stops rummaging through the fridge to put her arms around her. Izzy cries into her shirt while she makes cooing sounds, like a mourning dove. She's probably running her shirt.
Vicky rubs her back and then makes her lie down on the couch again, face-up this time, putting a blanket over her like it's not nearly ninety degrees out. She feels exhausted.
"I'm going to make you some spaghetti," Vicky says, "because I don't know how to cook meat and your ma'll kill me if I burn down the house with you in it. Is that okay? I can go pick us up some burgers instead."
"I'm not hungry," says Izzy, and Vicky touches her forehead.
"I'll leave it on the stove for you," she says, and goes back to the kitchen.
At some point she must fall asleep, and when she wakes up she's alone again. She sits up, groggy. It's dark outside and in the house, and for a second Izzy's not exactly sure where she is. Her head is so heavy.
But the entire house smells like tomato. When she gets to the kitchen she flips all the lights on, finds three portions of spaghetti measured out and a note. For today and tomorrow, don't forget about your quiz, in Vicky's familiar scrawl. She has awful handwriting. Everything about Vicky's a little messy, but in a way that lets a person know she'll show them a good time and won't regret it. Izzy's always admired that about her, and never more than when she's sitting at the table after a tear-induced nap, eating cold spaghetti like it's fit for a king.