Disclaimer: I do not own the "Outsiders" characters, S.E. Hinton does. Nor do I own the lyrics in the summary.
We were walking around the Ribbon on a Thursday night. It was nearly Labor Day weekend. School hadn't started yet. It was almost dark out, but there was none of the chill that typically accompanies it. Actually, it was kinda nice out.
Normally, I would've only felt really safe under the street lights, but Darrel Curtis was about a foot and a half away from me, so I felt okay. Well, that's a bit of an understatement: I felt absolute and unadulterated joy, bliss.
I loved walking with Darry, talking to him, listening. We could walk without saying a word for yearsand I wouldn't grow bored or tired. It was simple and easy to talk to Darry. You would sure think that after talking to him for as long as I've been able to talk at all, I wouldn't like talking to him or it wouldn't make me excited.
But it did. It hadn't always made me feel that way, - like before I liked boys - but now it sent butterflies straight to my stomach. And they weren't your average, ordinary, every day butterflies. They were big, energetic, really fluttery butterflies that wouldn't rest, or let me rest, until the middle of the night.
Darry was the biggest seventeen-year-old boy I knew. He could take anyone and anything, and he wouldn't lose; I was a hundred percent sure of that. Darry never, ever lost. When he played football he won. When he fought he won. When we wanted a girl but another boy wanted her too, he won. He always won. No matter what - he won.
He was just one of those people, I guess - one of those few people that never, ever lose. He was one of the lucky people and the good people and the motivated people and the handsome people.
He was one of the few people that fell into all four of those categories and remained sufferable. Darry was a real great guy. No girl deserved him. There was no girl on the planet that was good enough for him. I never let him in on that, though. He'd find a girl some day that floated his boat just fine, even if she didn't deserve him.
When we got to one of those street lights, he looked over at me for a second. I saw him out of the corners of my greenish eyes.
"I think you have the shiniest eyes, Leila," he said soberly, seriously.
I wasn't exactly sure that he had really said it, because, what with me being Leila Asher and all, sweet things like that weren't usually said to me. Part of me wondered if there was another girl near him with the name Leila. I was sure I had misunderstood what he had said.
There was no way and no reason Darry would have said something like that to me. He never had before. He had talked to me about girls who he thought had nice eyes. That was about as close as it got to what he just told me.
For what seemed like a while, I didn't say anything. It was quiet. In spite of myself, I was grinning toothily, - which wasn't the best thing to do since I sort of needed braces and my upper front teeth were a little big - and my head was ducked. My cheeks were turning a shade of ruby, I was sure - I could feel the warmth creeping up my neck and entering my cheeks.
It was quiet. I've never really been a fan of quiet. It always seemed really, really eerie. Maybe it came from working in a busy burger joint for a few years. There was a jukebox that almost never got to rest and chatter that seemed to fill the entire building. I associated a loud, near-constant hum with good smells and security. Though the odd feeling of security probably came from getting a paycheck twice a month.
I felt I had to say something to break the tangible quiet. So, I said the first thing that came to mind. "Uh, um, . . . th - thank you, th- th - thanks, Darry," I finally managed to mutter. And believe me, it took a lot to just say those couple of words.
Usually, I can't talk real good anyways, but with Darry springing that interesting bit of information on me all of a sudden, it seemed to make it doubly hard to talk and think straight.
Just as my flush had begun to fade, it creeped right back up at my stuttering. If I could somehow make my stuttering materialize, I think I'd want to kick it and hurt it. It's caused me an awful lot of blushing and embarrassment.
Sometimes, when I was either surprised, or nervous, or both, I tended to have some trouble getting my words out, so I ended up stuttering. I didn't try to do it, it's just what would happen.
He sighed, startling me out of my thoughts. I shuddered.
A small rock of dread landed in the pit of my stomach. I didn't want him to be mad at me. I hated it with a burning passion when he was mad at me. I'd do almost anything to make him not be mad at me anymore. Though, the reason he would be mad at me, frankly, escaped me entirely, but I was still hoping he wasn't angry with me.
I always hated it when he was mad at me. He was stubborn, so I had to apologize first, usually. It had always been like that, even when we were little, little kids.
"Leila, I'm just tryin' to tell you I like you," Darry said, frustrated. I froze. Darry took two more steps onward before he realized that my feet had planted themselves to that area of concrete, and he stepped back to be by my side.
I've loved Darry since I could walk, and here he was, telling me he had feelings for me. We've known each other for just about forever, because, one, our mothers were friends, and, two, we were nearly the same age. I never thought it would turn out quite like that. It wasn't supposed to. Not that I didn't like that it did, or anything. It's just, it wasn't supposed to happen like that.
Darry was supposed to meet a girl named Ginny, in their Science class. They would say a few words to each other, and then work up to conversations. Then, they date and fall in deep love with each other. Ginny and Darry would be married, and I would be sitting on Darry's side at the wedding, sobbing just a bit. They would have kids. They would love each other until they died.
And me? I was going to me a boy named Gary. He would have started to go grey at seventeen. We would meet at George's Best. He would come there often to see me, and he would eventually work up the nerve to ask me out on a date. We would grow to love each other. He would marry me. We would die together, in an auto-wreck when I was thirty and he was thirty-two.
I had known that for an awful long time. It had become accepted. I may not have liked it much, but it was accepted as what was going to happen.
It was strange, because with him telling me he liked me seemed to change, in an instant, how I looked at him, at the world. Everything he'd done to me flashed through my mind and I thought of all the little things he'd done sweetly. The years of our platonic companionship seemed to fade and blur, and it became just me and Darry: grown-ups and lovers.
At that moment, all the years of friendship meant very little. It was not that I didn't love the memories, but it seemed that all of it just sort of lead up to this, and this was all that really mattered.
But I didn't exactly want to tell him that I felt the same way. Maybe he was just trying to tell me he still wanted to be friends, even though we'd been growing older and busier. I didn't want to embarrass myself; I do that enough on my own.
"Darry, . . . ," I began nervously. Why couldn't I say it? I was supposed to tell him that I liked him, too. Then he was supposed to grasp my long-fingered, sort of thick-knuckled hand and walk away with me by his side. That's how it played out in my mind, anyways.
But I just stood there, looking as dumb as a damned rock. I felt that my mouth hung open a little, so I snapped it shut. My mouth was dry. It must've been open for a while without me noticing.
I tried to start again. "D - Darry, . . . I like you a lot." My voice sounded so weak and pathetic. It wasn't supposed to, though. I cursed my occasional stuttering to the fiery pits of Hell and gritted my teeth.
I was looking at the ground so I couldn't tell what his face looked like.
It was silent. I bet if you compared the silence here to the silence in a graveyard, the quiet here would win. Silence never meant good things. It was cold, and uncomfortable, and seemingly impregnable. Quiet was the worst.
I pulled my navy cardigan closer to me out of comfort and habit.
"Well, . . . that's real good, Leila," he said. "Real good." I took that to mean that we were an item.
I loved him so simply and completely. It'd been that way for a long time, but with him telling me he liked me back, my love thumped harder and harder in my chest. It burned, and I loved the love, too.
It felt good. He was my first boy friend. I was never very popular at school, especially with the male population.
I wouldn't exactly say I was chubby, but I wasn't real skinny, either. I wasn't cute and petite. I stood at five feet, seven inches. My hair was frizzy and really thick. I lived in the same neighborhood as him, so that meant a lot, too. I got pimples sometimes. He never did. He had some of the prettiest skin. My nose was a little big, too. I was never the ideal woman. In fact, I was quite the opposite of ideal.
But Darry liked me. Darrel Shaynne Curtis Jr. liked me. That was all I could really ask for. That was all I wanted.
"I really do think that about your eyes, though, Leila. They're pretty. You're pretty," Darry said sweetly, softly, disagreeing completely with my thoughts.
I wasn't used to dating him and him complimenting me, so my kind of tan cheeks blushed an even deeper scarlet.
We were together often after that. It wasn't awkward. It was surprisingly easy. I loved it. I loved him. It was as simple as that.
"Leila, it's Winter. Why aren't your cheeks pale yet? You haven't been out runnin' around in this cold weather, have you, just to get some sun," Darry asked me, his eyes suspicious and accusing. He put his eyes on me. It was a little startling, actually.
I was a little tongue-tied for a second or two.
He could look nice, or sincere, or serious and severe. This time his eyes looked serious and severe. I figured I'd better not make a joke. Darry didn't look like he'd laugh if I joked and told him I'd been running around naked in the afternoon for the past few weeks to keep up my usual Summer-given tan.
"No, Darry, I haven't been, so quit lookin' at me like that. . . I stay sorta tan all year, Darry. Haven't you noticed before? My cheeks've never gotten real, real pale." I knew he hadn't realized. The only reason he was noticing now was because I was his, finally.
He had my hand in his and he had his class ring on a chain around my neck. He got me the chain for Christmas, and it already had the ring on it. It was his way of showing he had possession, but I didn't care. I didn't mind that he wanted something on me to mark that I was his. It made me smile that he wanted people to know it.
"Well, no, I haven't really." That made me half-smile. He doesn't usually admit defeat. Being wrong didn't suit him very well.
It didn't really bother me; he was noticing now, and that was what I wanted and all I could really ask for. I looked up at him and grinned for a moment. "What," he asked me, smiling.
"Oh, nothin', Darry. . . Well, you see, my grandmother - my mom's mom - was from Mexico and came here when she was a baby, and my mom's father was part Irish and part German. And my dad is English and German. So, I think I get the sorta tan from my grandma. Don't you think? That sounds about right, right," I asked, a bit self-consciously.
I didn't think he really wanted to hear my whole life-story, even though he'd been there for almost all of it.
My cheeks, still a little tan, blushed red quickly. Darry wasn't interested in where my Grandma Forner (her maiden name was Vela) came from.
I could've gone into much more detail about my dad. My dad was one of my best friends. He worked as a lawyer, so he wasn't the liveliest of people when he came home, but on the weekends he was really fun. He taught me how to put together puzzles. I loved him so much.
Sometimes he would read to me, when I was a lot younger. I would sit by his feet, and I always ended up playing with his shoelaces. Once I tied them together and forgot - I was always doing that; forgetting, I mean - and he tripped. If it had been Mom, I would've been in big, big trouble. But since it was my dad, he just laughed and tickled me until my eyes were watering.
My relationship with my mother was all right. We rarely fought, but we didn't have very deep conversations, either. I would tell her, vaguely, what happened at school and the funny hair of some woman I waited on at George's Best. That was about as deep as it went.
"Oh. I didn't know that, Leila. That's neat. . . Um, do ya' wanna go back to my house and watch some TV or something," Darry asked. I sighed softly. I was relieved. So he wasn't bored listening to me prattle about my family.
I nodded a bit too eagerly. It made some of my dark frizz obscure my face and my eye-sight.
It was a little chilly out and I pulled my cardigan around me a bit more. I was really starting to wish I hadn't rolled my skirt up any because the breeze was really cold. Darry stepped a little closer to me and put his arm lightly around my shoulders. I could've died right at that second, and been completely okay with it.
I liked being at the Curtis'. I didn't go there very often because of a few of the boys that passed through there, but I liked being there when it was nearly empty.
For instance, a boy named Dan, or Danny, or something that started with a "D" - I never can remember names too good - would sometimes pass through there for a few minutes. There was one nick-named Two-Bit that thought he was the funniest thing to ever set foot on Earth. He really grated on my nerves. Darry's younger brothers were a bit of a pain in the rear, too, if you ask me.
I didn't like hanging around when all those boys were there. Well, or when any of the boys were there, actually.
I had never hung around those boys. I had never been one of the gang or just another one of the guys. I'm pretty sure Darry always knew the difference. And he was sure to always keep me separate from them.
Darry watched his mouth around me and watched what he talked about.
I was awful lucky that Darry wasn't a real hood like they were. He wouldn't get thrown in jail. He wouldn't get jumped because he was so big. Even if he was jumped, he could take the guys that were stupid enough to jump him. I wouldn't have to worry about him getting hurt.
The only times I worried was when he was in a rumble. I always hated when he was in one of those damn things. He could take anyone, but what if someone broke the rules and brought a piece of pipe or a bike chain? Darry never talked to me about people bringing things like that, but I always heard somehow.
It was kind of funny dating Darry. Not really "haha" funny, but it was just kind of weird. I liked it, but it felt real strange to kiss him and stuff.