Ponyboy Curtis seemed different to me.

Everyone told me about him. He's a hood, he's a no-good greaser, he's just like his brother, he hangs out with a gang. I don't know, I never listened to that. He just didn't seem the type to me. He had big, round eyes, and he was short, kind of skinny. He never talked, like alot of the greasers in the school always did, never whooped or spoke up. Just kind of sat there. He was smart, too, skipped a grade even. He was my lab partner.

So, I come into class one day, in my favorite yellow dress and my hair just how I could never get it, and I'd gotten a new purse the day before, and I was in a good mood.

Then, just as I sat down and the bell rang and everyone scrambled to their seats, the teacher comes in. He looks particularly vicious, an amused glint in his flat green eyes. I stiffened.

"Good morning, class. Does anyone know why it's a good morning?" he says.

No one says anything, so he continues.

"That's right. Dissection day!"

A momentous groan rumbles throughout the class, and we all go to our lab stations.

The frog is out, it's dead, and I feel like I'm gonna throw up. I stare at the notes, looking at the graph of body parts we're supposed to look for. Ponyboy plays around with the knife, looking at his own notes. I see him struggling with it, and I see how dull it is. I don't make any move to help. I try not to think about it, the frog.

I see a glint of light, turn my head. The dull cutter is suddenly replaced with a switch blade, the same kind I've seen thousands of times, but it still came as a shock.

I don't know, maybe it was that shock, the dissapointment, that made me say it.

"They are right, you are a hood."

Oh my God, what's wrong with me?

The knife had been used thousands of times over the years, it was dull, he was just trying to cut the thing open without having to saw it like a steak. So he has a blade? Your road kill in this town if you don't.

The look on his face, though. He stiffened, froze, looked down, did not look back up. Hurt. Like a kicked puppy.

He went back to cutting, though, and things were as they should be. Me, with my money and nice clothes. Him, with his greasy hair and ripped jeans. He seemed to expect that, though. He seemed used to it. He was hurt, but he kept stoic. He knew things like that happened to people like him. It was sad, because he really was cute.

He was a greaser with a blade in his pocket, and that's all he was. Things stay the same, and I won't be the one to change them.


Author's Note: Jeez, Danielle, what're you doing just writing these up in five seconds then posting them without thinking? What happened to your friends? What happened to your boyfriend? Where's your cellphone?

Answers: I don't know what I'm thinking. I don't re-read shit. It's annoying. I know how it ends. My friends are interconnected by my cellphone (See question four). My boyfriend? Dumped in three months ago, of course! My cellphone is confiscated, hence halting my social life. Here we are, being bored.