It was late, and dark. The moon was behind a cloud or not out at all. The roads were slippery. It had been raining to beat the band but now it drizzled, spat rain. Sometimes heavy enough that he'd put the wipers on high and still be looking through a sheet of water.
Evie slid over on the leather bench seat, cuddled next to him. He glanced at her, the bright blond hair, the baby blue eye shadow. She giggled, and reached for the bottle between her feet. She swigged it.
It was Jack Daniel's, the whiskey a dark gold, sloshing around beneath the black label. Dally had procured it for him.
"Hey, can I have some of that?" he said, smiling, and she smiled back and handed it to him. He swigged it, wincing as the whiskey burned its way down his throat to explode in warmth in his stomach.
They didn't all drink, by no means. He did a lot and so did Two bit and Dally, and Darry drank a lot more than he let on to his brothers. But Soda hardly drank, and Ponyboy really was too young, and Johnny, well, it was anyone's guess.
He slid an arm around Evie, liking how she felt next to him, under his arm. He liked the flowery smell of her perfume.
Was he drunk? Later he'd ask himself that a million times. Was he? All he knew was that he felt good flying along the dark slick roads, feeling Evie's warm little body pressed up against him. They passed the bottle back and forth and he liked the feel of the glass against his lips, the way the whiskey made everything slightly numb.
"Are the cigarettes in the glove box?" he said, and saw the moon peek from behind a cloud.
"Yeah," she said, and flipped it open, handed him one. He lit it but dropped it.
"Oh shit," he said, and bent to get it, before it burned a hole in the rug.
He never saw the turn.
He never saw the turn.
x…………..x……………….x
It was like slow motion suddenly. The turn. The slick road. The tree right there at the corner of the curve. Evie's voice at such a high pitched scream, the octaves high enough to shatter glass.
"Steeeeve!" His name in one long syllable. On and on.
And he thought he could pull out of the skid despite the car suddenly having a will of its own, despite his white knuckled grasp on the steering wheel. He'd have as much luck with his hands over his eyes.
The slow spin of the car but it had to have happened in seconds, just seconds.
One second he had dropped a cigarette and the next second the car was wrapped around a tree, and Evie was dead.
x……………..x……………………x
And then it was snippets. His voice sounding funny in his ears.
"Oh God. Oh no,"
One side of Evie's head looked fine but the other side had collided with the tree and was bloody, blood poured out in a sheet.
She was breathing but not normally. Funny gasps. Stopping. Gasps again.
"Oh god,"
And other people, he didn't know who they were, how they got there.
"Are you alright, son?" Helping him from the car, and he didn't care if he was alright.
The moon looking cold in the sky. Someone put a rough blanket around his shoulders.
"We use it for picnics," Someone said, and Steve couldn't understand what that meant, why they would say that.
The scream of sirens, police sirens and ambulances, screeching to a halt near the wreckage.
"C'mon, son, lay down here," Ambulance workers wanting him to lay on a stretcher. He did, and barely felt it as they checked his vital signs. He watched the other ambulance workers put Evie on a stretcher, and he saw them cover her face with a sheet.