A/N: Thanks for the reviews! I decided to post this entry a little early due to the amount of positive feedback, by means of reviews. I already had this one written so I thought, why not? I'm really glad that people are liking how the story is going already. In this chapter we get a glimpse, a very short glimpse, of how Darry and Jacquelyn used to be. When I says short, I do mean short, but it's something. I'm going to try to start weaving in their past into the story soon. Thanks for reading, and please review. All spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors are my own, and I apologize for them.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own The Outsiders.
Ring, Ring.
Jacquelyn Ross tumbled off of the torn brown sofa and on to the cold floor. Apparently, she'd dozed off laying on the sofa and the phone had startled her out of her sleep. Jacquelyn groaned as she sat up and looked down that linoleum floor under her. As the phone rang again, she swept her thick brown hair from her eyes and reached up for the phone.
"Hey, this is Jacquelyn," she said after she'd brought the receiver to her ear. The brunette pushed herself off of the floor and lowered herself on to the unsteady arm of the sofa.
"Hey, it's Darry," the voice on the other end of the line replied. Jacquelyn's heart beat speed up a little, and a small smile played on her lips. He called. "Did I wake you up?"
Did she sound like she was asleep? Jacquelyn rubbed her eyes and gave a soft laugh. "Not really. I think I dozed off on the sofa." She wrapped the phone cord around her index finger, "What can I do you for?"
"It's about your car," Darry replied. Jacquelyn sighed deeply. "No, it's not bad. It's fine. The battery was dead, but we jumped it and it's at the DX now. New battery and all."
"Really?" Jacquelyn asked.
"Yeah, really. I can come and take you to it if you like."
"Now?"
The girl turned her eyes down to her current outfit. Her flannel blue and green pajama bottoms had so many holes in them that she would need all her fingers and some of her toes to count them. The drawstring was missing so they hung loosely on her waist and covered her small feet. Her white tee shirt she had on was too big as well. It was so worn that it had a constant look of being dirty, no matter how many times she washed or bleached it.
"Not if you aren't ready," Darry answered. There was a sudden commotion from on Darry's side of the line, and Jacquelyn's eyebrow arched as he covered the receiver and questioned the perpetrator. Jacquelyn attempted to retrieve her finger from the phone cord while she waited, but the task proved to be more difficult that she'd originally thought it to be. She'd wrapped the cord so tightly that it was cutting off the circulation causing her finger to turn red. "Sorry, Jacquelyn." On the other end of the line, she heard someone echo her name, and Darry shushed them. "What time would be good for you?"
Jacquelyn cast her eyes up towards the round clock on the wall. 10:26. "Um, I can be ready at 11, 11:15," she said. "More like 11," she corrected, as she continued her attempts to retrieve her finger from the cord.
"I'll be over at 11," Darry replied. Jacquelyn agreed. "Hey, Jacquelyn?" he questioned to her.
"Yeah," she answered in her usual bubbly voice as she retrieved her finger from the cors.
"11," he stated firmly. "Not 11:10, 11."
There was a pause. "Whatever do you mean?" she questioned, pretending to be confused.
"You know what I mean."
Jacquelyn wasn't the most punctual person. Honestly, it usually came down to time getting away from her, or her falling into a daydream. It wasn't an intentional act. However, it was one of Darry's pet peeves. She vividly remembered him coming to get her and her taking an extra ten minutes or so, and when she would get to the car he would have his hands on the steering wheel with an angry look in his blue-green eyes.
The brunette laughed. "Alright, alright. I'll see you then." With those words, she hung up the phone.
Jacquelyn padded out of the living room and into her bathroom. She pulled her toothbrush from the white toothbrush holder, and placed a little bit of toothpaste on it. The girl then walked back onto the living room and sat on the arm of the sofa, it rocked under her weight and leaned to the side. With toothbrush in her mouth, she started brushing as she watched the clock, to ensure she got her full two minutes.
While she brushed, she thought about Darrel Curtis. She thought about how kind he had been to her when she ran into him the night before. How he'd offered her a ride home, even though he didn't have to do that. She thought about how since she'd been back in Tulsa everything seemed to been so backwards and upside down, but when she was with him it was like she'd never left. For the twenty minutes she was with him the night before, she felt like she had a nine months ago, before everything went haywire.
She tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear as she stood of the arm of the sofa, pushing it back up to its original position with the outside of her thigh as she did, and headed towards the bathroom. After spitting the toothpaste out of her mouth and rising the brush, she washed her face. The brunette flicked off the bathroom light and headed to her bedroom while drying her face. Moving at a steady pace, she grabbed a pair of jean capris from her drawer. She tugged her torn pajama pants off as well as she underwear. After pulling on a clean pair of underwear, she pulled on the capris. Then the search for a shirt started. After a few moments of searching, she settled on a rose colored sleeveless shirt with a slightly tapered fit and with ruching at the shoulders. Her fingers quickly buttoned the four buttons and then flatted the round tipped collar.
As she headed out of her room, she pulled brown brush through her dark hair. She slipped into the kitchen and grabbed the bottle of soda and took a long sip out of it. She then capped it and slipped in back into the fridge. Then she pulled an orange out of the fridge and started to peel it over the trashcan. The brunette then started down the hall, peeling slices of the orange off as she did. Caught up in her orange eating, she didn't realize that her father was up and about and she ran right into him and dropped the remaining bits of the orange.
Shit.
Before she could so much a blink, her father and pushed her against the wall chest first with a dull thud. The breath was knocked out of her, and she gasped as she tried to get it back. Her father's hand was wrapped around her forearm and twisted her arm.
"Wasting food?" her father slurred. She tried to speak, but she was still catching her breath. "Answer me."
"No, I'm sorry," she gasped.
He released her from his grasp and she turned around quickly, cradling her wrist in her other hand with her back against the wall. He knelt down and picked the remainder of the orange off the floor. Without a word, he shoved the orange into her hands and walked away.
"Where are you going?" he questioned.
Jacquelyn took a moment to steady her breathing. "To get the car." She ran her fingers over the part of her forearm he'd grabbed. It was tender already, the bruising would come soon. She reached into her bedroom and grabbed a pair of shoes of the floor and tossed the orange into the trash can. "I'll be back."
She stepped out of the door with her shoes in her hand and exhaled shakily. The girl took a seat on the stoop and started to pull her shoes on. However, she found herself with her knees pulled to her chest, her arms crossed over her knees, and her head on her arms. She inhaled and exhaled slowly, trying to bring her heart rate back down and cool her body. It wasn't until she felt the tears on her arm that she realized that she was crying.
"Jacquelyn," a voice called out to her.
Shit.
The girl quickly brushed away her tears and pulled on her other shoe, taking that time to look down at her forearm. The skin on her arm was still red, however since her complexion was paler, the red was an angry color. She swept her hair from her face and looked up at Darry Curtis. He'd gotten out of his truck and started walking towards her.
"Are you alright?" he asked.
"I'm fine," she replied as she smiled up at him.
Darrel didn't believe her for a second, but he knew better than to tell him that, or to question what she'd said. He looked at her for a long moment, taking her in. Her dark hair was a little out of place. Her hazel eyes were red. The ivory skin of her cheeks were red.
"Ready?" she questioned as she shrunk under the intensity of his stare.
"Yep," he replied. He'd started to offer his hand to her to assist her in standing up, but before he could she had sprung to her feet and was standing beside him. He led her to the car where he opened her door and let her climb in. As she did, something on her wrist caught his eye. Four small red marks on the top of her forearm and one larger one on the bottom. Her hazel eyes caught his blue-green ones as she quickly pulled her hand away. "Jacquelyn," he started slowly.
"It's nothing," she told him.
Darrel wasn't the type of person to just let things like that go. However, this, whatever it was, was not his place. He could have always pretended that he didn't' see the marks on her arm, but that wouldn't have been right. So he went with the middle ground. If she wanted to tell him, she would, she always had. Whatever she wanted him to know, she would tell him sooner or later. Hopefully, it would be sooner than later.
"Who did you get to fix my car?" the brunette asked him and she turned a little in her seat to face him.
"Steve."
"Randle?"
"Yeah. He and Soda work down at the DX," Darry explained to her as he flicked on his blinker. "You know, your car wasn't 'broken'?" he questioned using air quotes around the word broken.
"Did it stop working?" Jacquelyn asked as she arched her eyebrow.
"Yeah, but-"
"Did the engine turn over?" she inquired again.
"No, but it was-"
"Then the car was broken," she stated matter-of-factly.
"There's no arguing that logic is there?" Darry asked. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her shake her head. "Alright then." Darry was quiet for a moment. "They remember you."
"Well of course, I'm kind of unforgettable," she replied with a flip of her hair and a teasing smile on her lips. "But who are we talking about?"
"The gang. They remember you."
"It's only been ten months, give or take."
However, it had felt like much long than that for her. The days seemed to drag on and on. Her parents were constantly yelling at one another. Things were constantly shattering and being dropped. She was always having to talk her sister out of fits. She'd never felt so miserable in her life. However, it was at that time that she realized that it had been like that for as long as she could remember. Her parents had always been at one another's throats. She just wasn't always in the middle of it. She had places to go and friends to comfort her. In Wisconsin, there was none of that.
"Jacquelyn?" he called to her, pulled her from her thoughts. "You all right?"
"Golden," she replied. "What were you saying?"
Darry rolled his shoulders. "Just that they remember you, and Steve was more than happy to look at your car." She chuckled lightly beside him. "What?"
"Nothing," she answered as she twisted a strand of her dark hair around her finger. "And Sodapop and Ponyboy?"
It was Darry's turn to laugh. "Soda remembers you quite vividly. Ponyboy knows who you are, he recognizes you. Soda gave a pretty good description of youm when Ponyboy asked," a small smile crossed his lips. "If you ever go missing you'll want Soda to describe you." Jacquelyn laughed lightly. "When that didn't quite jog Pony's memory, Soda showed him a picture of you and me," Darry said as he shifted in his seat.
"Which picture?" the brunette asked curiously. There had to be a least a dozen good pictures of the two of them.
"The one from Homecoming senior year," he told her. He looked straight out of the windshield so that he didn't' have to meet her eye.
She remembered that picture. She remembered his parents taking that picture. It was right after Paul Holden scored the winning touchdown. Game was so close and when Paul ran across the goal line with thirty-five seconds left in the fourth quarter, the crowd went wild. The fans ran out on to the field after the clock ran out. She'd pushed her way down on to the field, not an easy task since she stood two inches above five feet. However, she'd managed to get off of the metal bleachers and on to the green grass of the football field. Her light eyes searched the crowd, and she stumbled right into the arms of the person she'd been searching for. The crowed was so loud and there was so much movement and cheering, but none of that seemed to matter to him. He'd kissed her soundly, right there on the forty yard line in front of everyone. Everything went silent when he kissed her, it was just the two of them standing on a football field. His parents, most likely his mother, snapped a picture of the two as he broke the kiss. The way that he looked in her in that picture was priceless. Jacquelyn always wondered how Mrs. Curtis had managed to get that picture. However, she'd never had the nerve, and then the chance, to ask.
"Yeah, I remember that picture," Jacquelyn mused. She bit the corner of her lips and exhale through her nose. "What about Dallas?"
Darry noticeably stiffened in his seat. Before Jacquelyn could ask what she'd said wrong, Darry started speaking. "Dallas died two months ago." Jacquelyn's breath hitched. Dallas Winston was dead. That sentence didn't even make sense to her. Dallas had always been so invincible. Or at least he seemed that way. Whenever, she was around him, he was so tuff like nothing could hurt him. "Johnny died too," Darry supplied. Her breath hitched again. Johnny Cade. She'd always liked him. She'd always wanted to protect him from everything, because he didn't' deserve the hard life that he had. He was dead. Sweet Johnny. Darry looked over at her in the rearview mirror. "Jacquelyn?"
"Hmm?" she hummed in response.
"Are you alright?" he questioned. She nodded. He saw the question forming on her plump lips and he sighed. "It's a long story, Jacquelyn. It a really long story." He didn't have the heart to tell her, but he honestly didn't know if he could tell her.
"Anyone else?"
"No."
He reply came as he pulled into the lot of the DX. Darry pulled along the side of the curb before parking the car. He ran his fingers though his dark hair. As Jacquelyn reached over to open her door, he reached across her and stopped her. Her light eyes turned to him as she pulled her hand on to her lap.
"You're not going to tell me?" he asked. Her eyebrow arched. "About your arm." Jacquelyn shook her head. "Alright." He released his hold on the car door and she hopped out of the cab.
He knew it wasn't any of his business. It really wasn't. He had so many things on his plate. The state was breathing down his neck, making sure the Ponyboy was being cared for properly. He had been attempting to get along with Ponyboy better. This meant not yelling at him so much, and letting him make him own decisions. Then there were the bills. They all needed to be paid, and he needed to find the money to do so. So taking on another thing wasn't feasible. Taking on her, whatever it was, would only weight him down. It just wasn't practical. Yet, he still felt so protective of her. He wanted to protect her. He wanted to do what he could. She was Jacquelyn Ross after all.
"Coming?" she questioned pulling him from his thoughts.
He nodded and pushed his hands into the pockets of his jeans. "Yeah."
