Disclaimer: I do not own the "Outsiders" characters. Nor do I own the song for which this one-shot is named after.
(Requested by 13sara5078 on my Quizilla account.)
I walked around the area of Tulsa that was close to my home. It was primarily empty. I should've been in school. I'm smart enough, anyways. I'm just sort of lazy. I lacked some form of a job, and the ambition to get one.
My feet were beginning to ache. I'd been walking a while, a real, real long while. I turned my coffee-colored eyes towards my brother's - my dead-for-seven-months brother's - Converse sneakers. He had just gotten them. They still looked brand spanking new. I borrowed a pair of his jeans for the day, as well. I sort of inherited a few pairs of his jeans, a few T-shirts, and, of course, his black hi-top Converse sneakers.
I was doing my absolute best to not attract any sort of attention. It had worked well, so far.
Usually, I would have been in some form of an old skirt with a matching shirt. To top it all off, I would've usually had on my loafers. Or, at the very least, my Keds. But today was different.
This morning I had told my mother that I thought I was coming down with something. She believed me. I'm kind of a good liar. So, Mom went to the dental office of Kenneth M. McGrun, D.D.S. She was the secretary there.
After she went to work I cleaned myself up, and left.
I had no idea of the time. I could've sworn I'd had my watch on before I had left the house, but I was wrong, and now I was suffering the light consequences.
The wind blew. It wasn't letting up, either. My very dark, straight auburn hair was covering my eyes. I had chopped it all off from the middle of my back to my shoulders a little less than a month ago. It began to get on my nerves - it never took anything too long to do that.
A building caught my eye. DX. I hadn't been there in a little more than a year. Brian had taken me there to get a Coca-Cola. He had gotten two packs of Kools. I hawked one, and he joked that I'd get hided by Mom if she caught me with them. She never caught me with them; I smoked the whole goddam pack in a day. I coughed and hacked for a week. Not anymore, though. I know how to smoke, now.
I walked to the street opposite of the gas station. I sat on the curb, and waited. I had no idea what in God's name I was waiting for, but I sure knew I was waiting for something. And it was an important something, I was sure of that.
The ingenious thought to go over there to see if they had a clock came to me after a few minutes. If I knew the time, then I could know how long I had until my mother would be home from Mr. Kenneth M. McGrun, D.D.S.'s office. Or I could know how long she had been home, then I would know to get moving . . . Maybe . . . Or I could just stay out all night. I could go say hi to Brian and Dad.
A car drove up to the DX. It wasn't in too great of shape. The car didn't stop in front where the pumps were. It pulled around the back of the gas station. I was half-curious about who owned the piece of junk.
Before, I left the house that was on Irvin Place that morning I reminded myself to slip a pack of Kools into my back-pocket. Apparently, the reminder didn't help at all. The completely full pack was still sitting on my dresser with a full book of matches on top of it. I've always preferred matches to lighters for some reason. Brian did, too.
I pulled myself up, and walked across the deserted street to the DX Gas Station. I didn't bother to see if there were any cars coming.
When I got inside, I saw a kid standing behind the counter. He looked young. He had a handsome face, but I didn't like that type of handsome. It always looked fake and artificial, no matter how pleasing it was to look at. Sunsets and sunrises were the same way, too - they didn't look quite real. I didn't know whether that was exactly good or bad. I figured out, though. Eventually.
"Want can I get for ya?" asked the nice-looking boy behind the counter. My eyes became in-focus once again.
"Uh . . . I'll take a pack of Kools. Um . . . best make that two," I replied. He smiled, and placed the two packs on the counter. I paid.
Since, according to the time on the clock, I had no where special to be, I meandered around the small gas station.
"Hey, buddy, there's a few girls piled in a car out front. Lookers 'sfar as I can tell! Go look!" I heard an encouraging voice say. Though the boy clearly wasn't talking to me, I looked out the big window I was near. I attempted to be as inconspicuous as possible.
There were four, maybe five, girls standing by a little red Sting Rey. It was a cool car. When I got around to learing how to drive, and getting my liscence, that was the kind of car I wanted. But at almost-eighteen, and after a few attempts made by my mother to teach me, it didn't look like I'd be learning to drive any time too soon.
The boy from behind the counter and presumably the boy who had alerted the other of the girls' presence were now walking toward the group.
I kept looking around the store, looking quickly out the window.
Part of me was wishing I was out there with them. I was wishing I had curled my hair all nice this morning, and that I'd worn a nice skirt with a matching twinset, and that I'd worn nice loafers. Even if I could get home real quick, and back, it wouldn't make my skirts, and sweaters, and shirts, and loafers be in any better shape. They were good enough, I guess. They kept me from being as naked as a jay bird, though.
"What're you still doin' here?" asked a voice from behind me. I must've jumped out of my skin. I whirled around.
"Huh? . . . Oh, . . . I dunno. I just don't wanna go home yet." I looked over his face, hopefully quick enough. "Is that all right?" I asked, not attempting to hold back any ice that might've been in my voice.
After all, I was just looking around, and he didn't have to sound the way he did.
The handsome boy - boy, was he good-looking - just huffed at me a little.
"I'll hit the road in a minute, all right, sir," I said, letting mock and sarcasm flow from my lips. He turned, and went out to the front to see the girls.
The boy sure was nice looking.
I went home, and Mom was still out - home-free. A shower seemed like a peachy idea, so I took a real quick one. She was home when I got out, so I figured I had barely been safe from getting found-out.
The next seven days that I had free time, I went to the DX. Either I was smoking a hell of a lot more than usual, or else there was some other unconscious motive that made me convinced that I needed a little something from there. Twice I even went to get wax for my mom's car - all of it came out of my pretty barren pocket.
"Why the hell've you been hanging out here so much?" I heard a voice say to me. The voice had been softer than it had been the first time I had heard it. It seemed a little less frigid and a little bit more friendly.
"I don't have nothin' to do after school except homework," I replied smartly. There was a cheeky grin in place on my lips.
I glanced downward, hoping to make my unnatural curls swish lightly, and make him notice. While my eyes were in that direction, I made sure I had gotten most of the scuffs off of my loafers. I compulsively checked a seventeenth time that my skirt and sweater matched just right, and that the color made my brown eyes really shine, glow, even.
After a little over a week of spending twenty to thirty minutes in that place almost every day, I had a small bit of courage bubbling up in my chest. I couldn't hold the hot question in my mouth any longer . . .
"Do ya' wanna go get a soda?" I asked quickly, completely unsure of what he would say to me, a complete stranger. He didn't even know my name, and I didn't care. I'd found out - by listening to bits of conversations - that his name was Steve. His name fit him, for some reason. He looked like a Steve, to me.
He sighed a little. "What's your name?" he said, a little exasperated-sounding.
I smiled. "Sara. Sara Dylan."
"Steve. Steve Randle," was what he dully said in response. I kept to myself that I already knew half of that information. "My shift's about over. You can wait if you wanna, or you can go on ahead."
I wasn't about to take the chance of him lying to me. "I can wait, Steve." I smiled. He returned the expression with a rather pinched one of his own.
A little over five minutes later, Steve said, "Come on, Sara."
I was happy. I was nervous. You know those people that you think you'd get along with, but once you meet them, you sort of hate them? I was thoroughly hoping Steve wouldn't be like that for me.
As it turned out, he wasn't. He was far from it. I'd be willing to bet anything that he was surprised by how easily we talked, and how easy everything turned out to be. By the third month of our friendship, I was in love, surely.
"Why'd the girl dump yer ass," I asked one day, rather roughly. He gave me a look, and I figured he was reminding himself to not hit a girl.
"She got int'rested in this guy named Paul Storet. He's from a gang from another part of town - the Brumley Boys. Her name's Evie, by the way." Steve stuck his head up, to not look defeated, and put me under his arm and made me walk with him, at his pace and in his direction. I followed without question. Hell, I'd follow him anywhere.
We stopped walking, and just stood by a storefront. He was saying something, but it was falling on entirely deaf ears.
I got burning courage like I had another time. I kissed him, right in the middle of everything, right on the lips.
He kissed me, too. Steve tasted like Winston cigarettes, and I was sure that I tasted like Kools. I had not returned from my utter deafness quite yet.
When I stepped away from him I blurted out, "I'm sorta in love with you, Steve." He blinked, hard. I gulped. It was so silent. Silence was never good, especially after you tell someone how you feel about them.
"Uh, Sara, I . . . I don't think so. I'm your friend. I don't wanna be yours," he said. He offered up a smile, but I didn't accept it.
He had kissed back. He was supposed to feel the same way as I did. He wasn't supposed to make me feel like a complete fool. I was humiliated.
I did a quick about-face, and walked away from Steve Randle. I never wanted to see him again.
So, out of complete stubbornness and spite, when he came to my door the next Friday, I didn't answer. I asked Mom not to, and she didn't.
In a place like Tulsa, Oklahoma, you can go the rest of your life without seeing someone again.