Keeper

"You never called."

Her voice broke the near-silence of the empty football field, startling me out of my brooding. I'd been shut down by another blonde broad; one of our own kind, too, a Greaser— and she shot me down like I was trash. Normally this wouldn't have bothered me in the slightest, but lately, I've been needing me something to hold on to. I needed something to ground me since we lost Johnny and Dally two months ago. I still can't look in the mirror and not see them out of the corner of my eye, laughing or just talking. Dally was always around before; the world seemed empty without him in it to spruce it up real nice, or Johnny to hug when you just really needed a hug. Hugging Steve or Soda or Pony wasn't the same as hugging Johnny; with Johnny, it really meant something, and it was really comforting. I just needed that again. So yeah, I'd been brooding.

I turned to look at the girl; she had short brown hair and bright brown eyes. She was a real looker. Not the kind of girl I usually lusted after, but who needed to be choosy about hair colour when she had a face like that? For half a second, I thought she might be a Greaser too; why else would she be talking to me? But then I realised that she was wearing a light yellow floral dress that ended below her knees, and a white sweater tied around her neck; she was a Soc.

My eyes narrowed as my brain tried to catch up with what the Soc girl had said. 'You never called'? What in God's name would I be doing calling one of her kind? She did seem kind of familiar, but I couldn't place her. And believe me; you don't just forget a face like that.

"'Scuse me?" I said in my best respectable sounding voice. She was a lady, after all, even if she was a Soc. And a respectable looking lady at that, I decided. She wasn't just some slut on the street. That meant I could cross girls I'd slept with while I was drunk off the list of where I could've met her before.

"You never called," she repeated, fiddling with strap of her backpack, which she had slung over one shoulder. "We met that night at the drive-in and you asked for my number... don't you remember?"

That night at the drive-in? I racked my brains, trying to remember a night at the drive-in. There was last week when Steve and I snuck in, but that couldn't be it; we spent the whole night flirting with a blonde broad and her blonde friends, not a brunette in the bunch. Was there any other night that I was at the drive-in recently?

"...It was the night Bob died."

It hit me like a ton of bricks. Bob, the Soc who had beat up Johnny, died the night that Dally had taken Johnny and Pony to the drive-in. I had met up with them in the front seats, joining the two kids who were sitting with a couple of pretty girls. The brunette and I had started chatting, and I had asked for her number. Her name... her name was... I thought really hard, brining up painful memories in order to get there. Her name was... Marcia?

"Marcia?" I asked, hoping to hell I was remembering right. I'd blocked out everything about that night; everything the police told me, everything Dally told me; I blocked out everything that I saw and heard and smelled that I didn't ever want to see and hear and smell.

Marcia smiled, and I noticed how straight her teeth were. She must've had a real good dentist.

"You do remember! ...Did you lose my number?"

No, I wanted to tell her, I threw it away because I knew it was a fake. A Soc girl wouldn't really give a Greaser her phone number. No way in hell it was real.

Instead, I gave her an easy, flirty grin. "Yeah. I left it in my jeans' pocket and when I washed 'em, the ink washed off the paper." I frowned. It's funny how easy I can lie when it suits me. And I feel nothing at all. Ponyboy lied to me once, then came and told me the next day how guilty he was feeling. I never felt that way when lying to people. And maybe that wasn't a good thing, as I had always thought. Maybe it wasn't that this girl thought she was too good for me; maybe it was that I really wasn't good enough for her. Not because of my hair or where I live, but because I was a liar and a creep and she was a respectable girl.

Marcia smiled some more. She believed that lie without any hesitation at all. I felt sick to my stomach over that.

"You still want it? Because I really liked our conversation that night. I even thought about..." She paused, frowning. Thought about what? I wondered. Leaving that trash she had been dating for me? Us getting together behind his back? Actually giving me a shot? Punching me in the face for even thinking I had a shot with her? She could have finished that sentence in a thousand different ways.

"I... yeah, I still want it."

And I did. She was pretty, no, beautiful, and she was looking at me like I was more than a piece of Greaser scum like other Socs did. She was real nice, too, giving me a second shot and all. I flicked a curl of greasy hair off my forehead as she took off her backpack and began to riffle around in it for a pen and paper. Plus, when she bent over like that, her skirt got considerably shorter. Almost like the girls I usually go out with, but not quite.

"Here you go, Two-Bit," she said with a smile, writing out the number in her notebook and tearing the page out. "Don't lose it this time, okay? You kind of disappointed me last time."

I disappointed her by not calling? She had given me a real phone number? All this new, incredible information made my head spin. Her, a Soc, and me, a Greaser; it was unheard of for us to even like each other, let alone... like-like each other, if she did in fact have the same mindset as I did then.

"I won't this time, I promise," I promised, and I meant it. Even if I had to guard that number with my life, I would call her later. Two-bit Matthews does not go back on his promises. Not the ones he intends to keep, anyway.

"Great. Good-bye... Two-Bit." She seemed unsure about using my nickname. "What's your real name? Just so I know. It's kind of strange not really knowing, you know?" I didn't, but who was I to care if some girl knew what my real name was? It's not like she'd go spreading it around. I could tell she wasn't the type.

"Keith," I told her, "Keith Mathews. But no one calls me Keith. Not even my mom."

"Well, then, I'll be the first. Good-night, Keith Mathews. Don't let the bed-bugs bite. And don't lose that number!" she called the last bit over her shoulder as she jogged away, probably to a Corvair or a Buick or a Mustang or a shiny new Ford, leaving me standing in the football field with a torn piece of notebook paper and a bemused expression on my face.

I crumpled the paper and shoved it into my pocket, a grin spreading across my face. I would definitely call this girl. She was a keeper, that one.