A/N: Firstly, thanks so much for the feedback, you guys! I didn't really know what to expect reception-wise because this is my first story for this fandom, and you guys are really amazing, so thank you for that! Also, general warning: brief description of an injury in this chapter (it's pretty mild, but I figured I'd put that out there).
Anyway, I hope you enjoy!
Don't Think Twice, It's Alright
Chapter Two
She's Not There
The next time her past caught up with her, it was in the dairy aisle of a Krogers.
She had a red basket in her hand, half an hour before her shift at Rosie's started and a whining four-year-old clinging to her leg, and she just wanted to buy a carton of milk. She'd looked up from her survey for the cheapest brand she could buy in a half-gallon as James released his hold on her leg, and she hesitated just long enough to watch him hurtle down the aisle.
She stared after her son with exasperation, but not surprise.
"James! Use your indoor feet-" He'd already disappeared around the corner, and she didn't know what she'd been expecting. She sighed and abandoned the still-empty red basket to pursue her stray four-year-old.
She had to admit it was nice to know that her mother got the pleasure of watching him for the next five hours while she covered her shift at the diner. In Florida she hadn't really gotten out much unless her grandmother sent her to run errands, and she loved the kid, she really did, but she could only take so many "why?"s in an hour.
She found James in the cereal aisle, clutching a box of Sugar Pops and engaged in an animated conversation with a woman who'd apparently been kind enough to help him reach the shelf it was on.
Sandy didn't know if she should thank her or apologize to her first.
She hurried over. "I'm real sorry about him, he just-" The girl turned around.
Evie Ross scowled at her from behind her plastic cart.
"I- uh." She cleared her throat and avoided what she knew without looking was a venomous gaze. "James, why don't you take that back to the basket?"
The boy in question gazed wide-eyed between his mother and the good Samaritan who'd helped him reach his cereal and hugged the cereal box in his hands. "Can I-"
Sandy sighed. "You can keep the Sugar Pops," she said, which was apparently all the boy needed to hear before scampering away.
Sandy forced her eyes to focus on the girl in front of her, standing with her hands on her hips and dominating the aisle in all her bottle-blonde, scowling, and painfully familiar glory.
Evie's eyes weren't cold, but there was a pang in Sandy's chest where she used to hold fondness for that searing green gaze. Evie's eyes weren't cold, because that wasn't her style; they were filled with resentment, overflowing with unchecked anger and unresolved questions and poorly-hidden betrayal.
Sandy just wanted to buy a goddamn carton of milk.
"Heard ya were back in town." Evie spoke quietly, crossing her arms and leaning forward over the front of her cart.
Sandy swallowed. "I won't be here for long."
She'd be gone to somewhere she could go to the store without running into the girl that four years ago she'd have called her best friend.
Evie was watching her with narrowed eyes, and Sandy bit her lip as she scoffed. "And who're you runnin' from? The guy who knocked you up or the guy who didn't?"
She only allowed herself a second to be surprised at how willing Evie was to go there, but it was enough; Evie raised an eyebrow as she faltered, and Sandy crossed her arms. "I'm runnin' from the people who used to be my friends," she said more bitterly than she really had a right to. Something flickered in Evie's eyes, but it looked more like anger than anything else.
The hum of commercial refrigerators buzzed in her ears, and a light flickered above them as they stood in the cereal aisle of a Krogers that could have been anywhere, that hadn't changed in four years, and that suddenly felt more like a battleground than a store.
Sandy inhaled slowly and then sighed. "I have to go, Evie." She was already edging down the aisle toward James, running away because that was what she did best.
Evie followed her gaze to rest on James, and Sandy was already calculating how much of a mess he'd managed to make in the forty seconds she'd had her back turned, but Evie's gaze was more critical. Sandy turned her back and started to walk away, and she tried not to think about how familiar that felt.
"Cute kid," Evie commented at her retreating back, and Sandy felt a familiar dread pool in her stomach because what followed that statement couldn't be good, not coming from Evie Ross. A bitter laugh skittered down the linoleum. "He almost coulda passed for Sodapop's."
Sandy ignored the way that made her blood run cold.
Almost.
And she could practically feel Evie's eyes on her back, gauging her reaction, because there had been a time when Evie had known Sandy better than she'd known herself. There had been a time when she'd thought about telling Evie, and not just the lies she'd told Tulsa. But neither of them knew each other any more, not really, and Sandy hadn't been doing this the last four years just to give in to a familiar face who knew the right spots to prod at her.
So she turned to look back and offered her old friend a plastic smile, because four years had changed a lot, and Evie Ross couldn't be the person she used to be to her. "I'll see ya around, Evie."
Evie didn't blink at the dismissal, and Sandy wondered if she'd expected her to.
She bit her lip as she strode over to James, who appeared to have torn open his box of cereal in what had to be record time for a four-year-old.
Sandy took a minute to stare at the mess of Sugar Pops on the linoleum floor. James watched her carefully, chewing as quietly as he possibly could on a cereal that crunched with every bite, and she sighed. "You want more cereal now, don't you?"
A few crumbs escaped his full mouth when he nodded, and she tried not to wince.
"Right." She picked up her wildly protesting child and put the half-empty box of cereal into the equally empty basket before grabbing a carton of milk to shove in beside it. "Well-" she picked up the basket and headed to the checkout. "You have spectacular timing, kiddo. Really."
. . .
The house was too quiet when Ponyboy got home, and he wondered if that boded well for how late he was or not.
It was almost nine o'clock at night, and when he approached his house the only cars he saw in the driveway belonged to the people who actually lived there, which couldn't be right. A few stray leaves skittered across the pavement in the late September wind as he trudged towards the back door, and the old hinges squealed in protest as he threw it open.
"Darry?" he called a little apprehensively into the depths of the house as he dumped his backpack inside the doorway.
The accompanying footsteps creaked across the floorboards, and Ponyboy sighed.
"Wanna tell me why you didn't come home after practice ended?"
Ponyboy shrugged off his sweatshirt and focused intently on unlacing his shoes. "It ran late." He managed to meet Darry's eye. "Coach had us working on distance running."
Darry raised an eyebrow. "For three and a half hours."
Ponyboy cleared his throat and scuffed his foot against the worn wood on the floor. "Yeah."
Darry sighed and uncrossed his arms, which Ponyboy had learned to identify as his gesture of defeat. He shook his head. "I don't want you at Buck's place, Pony. Ya know I've spent years trying to keep Soda away, too, and you ain't helpin'."
Ponyboy huffed but didn't press the argument for the night. "I wasn't even at Buck's," he muttered as he stood up and dropped his shoes among the rest of the pile at the door.
He and Darry had been going back and forth about this since Curly Shepard had gotten out of the cooler a few months back, because Ponyboy thought Curly was good company, and Darry thought Curly was a bad influence. Ponyboy definitely didn't make a habit of going to Buck's either; he disliked most of the people there too much and enjoyed the crappy booze too little. But Two-Bit had found him on one of very few occasions that he'd followed Curly's lead and ended up there, and that hadn't been fun to explain to Darry. Or Soda, for that matter.
Darry, if anything, looked more wary as Ponyboy prepared to flee the kitchen. "Where were ya, then?"
Ponyboy studied the floor. "Drive-in-" He glanced up. "Where's Soda?"
Darry noticed the quick change in topic but didn't comment, and Ponyboy was thankful for that. "With Steve, doing God knows what," he said dryly.
Ponyboy nodded and privately relished in the feeling of being on the inside of the conversation for once, because it had taken nearly three years, but he and Darry had finally worked out something of a compromise. He was about to ask why Two-Bit hadn't come by yet to raid the fridge when the phone rang, and he dove to get it before Darry.
"Hello?" He didn't bother with proper greetings, because anybody calling the Curtis house knew what they'd signed up for.
There was a crackle from the other end, and he heard a heavy sigh. "Hey, kid, could ya put your brother on?"
Ponyboy blinked. "Two-Bit? Why're you callin' at-"
He heard a string of profanity and furrowed his brows. "I'll put Darry on, hang on-" he held the phone up to Darry and called him over. Still, he handed it over with reluctance, because he got the feeling that whatever was going on was something that he wanted to be filled in on.
He watched Darry mutter a few choice words at something Two-Bit said and then slam the phone down onto the receiver.
"What-"
"Two-Bit tore up his side runnin' from the fuzz," Darry said with a heavy sigh. "He's gonna hitch a ride here from his sister."
Ponyboy nodded and almost laughed, because of course Two-Bit had been running from the cops while he was wondering why it was so quiet. "Where's his sister at?"
Darry ran a hand down his face. "Some diner in town."
Ponyboy nodded but privately wondered if he should pity the people in that diner, because an injured Two-Bit Mathews was never good for business.
. . .
"The guy at table seven is wondering if he can buy you dinner. From here. Where you work." Annie made a face as she arranged dishes on her platter. "Where he sent me to hit on you for him."
It was quiet for a Friday night, but there were still a few people lingering in their booths, waiting until either they were ready to go or Annie got really irritable and started stacking chairs around them so she could close up at 9 o'clock. She and Annie had gotten into the habit of carpooling because Annie didn't have a car and lived pretty close to the diner anyway, and Annie didn't like to be at the diner any longer than her shift deemed necessary. Sandy had been working there a week, and she knew the drill.
She glanced at the man sitting solitarily in the booth with only a milkshake and what looked like a flask, and she laughed. "Tell him I've got a four year old kid and five years of baggage tellin' him to reconsider."
Annie nodded resolutely and balanced the tray over her arm.
"Gotcha," she said with a grin that Sandy had fast learned seldom really left her face. She paused to consider Sandy's words more carefully. "That's fair," she decided as she hurried back to dump the platter at the last full table of the night.
By some small mercy, there were no orders left to take, so Sandy grabbed the rag that was always sitting on the counter in a tub that reeked of bleach and smacked it onto the nearest table. She cleaned the table the way Annie had taught her, which was to sweep the crumbs on the floor and burn that bridge when it came time to do the mopping.
The restaurant was empty except for a handsy couple in the corner booth, and the tables were all clean and sufficiently soaked in bleach when the door flew open once more.
Sandy whirled around as the bell hanging from the corner of the door frame hit the wall and fell with a sad clang.
The man who had flung open the door was running like he definitely had something chasing him and sporting what looked to be a pretty gruesome wound in his side as he hurled himself toward the kitchen, and Sandy could only stare.
Rosie's was a dead-end diner on the east side of Tulsa, and to be perfectly honest she'd seen worse, but the man glanced behind him before launching himself over the kitchen counter, and Sandy's heart sank into her stomach as Annie's cries of protest filled the air.
Because it was Annie's brother that was bleeding on the diner floor, and that didn't bode well for any of them.
"Hey, dumbass!" Annie was already marching toward the kitchen. "I just mopped that floor."
Annie leaned over the front of the counter to glare down at her brother, and Sandy hurried to collect the check from the couple, who suddenly looked real anxious to get out of there. They waved nervously as they hurried out, and Sandy tried not to think about the tip money this was going to cost her as she hurried to join Annie in spite of her best instincts.
Outside, she could hear the whine of a cop car, and she didn't even have to listen to know that it was fast approaching the diner.
Two-Bit grumbled something at Annie, who flicked her gaze to the windows at the front of the diner before turning back to her brother with a stormy glare. "So help me, Keith, if the cops start knockin' on our door…"
Two-Bit had pressed himself against the counter so that anyone entering the diner couldn't see a bleeding man in the kitchen. He exhaled harshly and held his side but pointed a stern finger at his sister. "I'll tell ya later- don't tell 'em I'm here if they come in."
Sandy thought that 'if they come in' was a little bit of a stretch, because there were only two other buildings on the block that Two-Bit could have run to, and the cops would know that the diner was the path of least resistance. Annie was glaring daggers at her brother, but Sandy didn't miss the way her gaze stuck on the blood on his shirt. She ran a hand through her hair and glanced at Sandy like she'd just remembered she was there.
She tried not to think about the consequences of literally harboring a fugitive as she stared over the counter. "What the hell is going on?" She asked, because that felt like about all there was to do in that situation.
A police car had pulled into the lot near the diner, and Annie strode over to the window and yanked the blinds closed before they could look in. She pointed a finger accusingly at Two-Bit as she walked back. "He'd know," she said plainly. "I sure as hell don't."
Two-Bit was watching Sandy from underneath the counter with recognition clouding his gaze, and she inhaled sharply and decided that it was better for none of them to get caught than to end up being charged with aiding and abetting. She turned on her heel and clicked the lock closed on the door, because five extra seconds might be the difference between… well, neither outcome was good, but she'd rather take her chances with the cops than the greasers.
She glanced out the window before turning back to Two-Bit. "We got about thirty seconds before the cops start bangin' on the door, so if ya got something to say to me, say it after they're gone."
Two-Bit nodded appreciatively, which Sandy knew couldn't be a good thing. "More time to prepare my speech," he said with a smile that was more bared teeth than anything.
Something pounded against the door, and both of them glanced at it with wide eyes.
Annie was already rushing for the door, but she turned back to them before opening it. "I don't even want to know what this is about, but y'all are gonna have to be real friggin careful for the next five minutes," she declared before clicking the lock open.
Sandy squeaked and motioned wildly for Two-Bit to tuck himself further under the counter, and he complied, but with a lot of grumbling. Sandy whirled to face the door as it opened and smiled brightly at the two men who trudged in.
Annie was trying the wave the men away like she didn't know what they were there for, and Sandy had to give her credit for how casual she managed to sound. "Sorry, officers, we just closed up for the night." She glanced between the two brightly. "I could grab ya a cup of coffee or somethin' if-"
"We're just searching the building, ma'am, but thank you." Cops numbers one and two were already pushing past her into the diner, and Annie motioned frantically at Sandy behind their backs.
After checking that there was no one in the booths, they approached Sandy, who stood in front of the counter.
She cleared her throat. "Uh, can I help y'all with anything?" She moved to stand in the entrance to the kitchen, and the men exchanged a glance as they decided how to handle the waitress in their path. "The bathrooms are back there, if you wanted to check…"
The tall one, who Sandy had inwardly dubbed Cop #1, stepped forward. He looked tired, and Sandy almost felt bad for making this so hard on him. Almost. "Would you mind showing us into the kitchen?" He asked in an exaggeratedly casual tone.
Sandy smiled and hoped that it didn't look like a grimace. "Not at all," she said. "Follow me."
Annie hurried over to follow the officers, and she stared at Sandy with wide eyes as she lead them around the counter into the kitchen.
She cleared her throat again and prayed to God that Two-Bit wouldn't move as she pushed herself up to sit on the counter, hoping that maybe she'd be able to keep their gazes on the waitress sitting on top of the counter rather than the criminal crammed underneath it. Her legs were dangling in front of Two-Bit's face, and again she prayed that he wouldn't see fit to move, because that'd be a hell of a way to flash someone.
The cops surveyed the crowded kitchen, and Annie fought to keep their attention away from the counter as she strode to the opposite end of the room.
"So can I ask what y'all are lookin' for?" She grabbed a few stray trays and stacked them loudly enough to draw the cops' attention. "'Cause sorry for the mess, but we haven't really got anything worth finding, anyway."
Cop #2 cleared his throat, and it struck Sandy that they may have hated this as much as she and Annie did, just for entirely different reasons. "Either of you seen a bleedin' man come through her recently?"
Sandy tried not to wince, and she felt something move against her leg. It took more willpower than she'd care to admit not to kick backward.
Annie laughed. "That sounds like the kind of thing we'd call you about."
She flicked her gaze to Sandy, which was a bad idea, because Cop #1 seemed pretty intent on doing his job, and he noticed the glance.
Annie blanched as he furrowed his brows, and Sandy pushed herself a little higher on the counter. "Find what you're lookin' for, then? 'Cause it's a pretty small kitchen."
She met the officer's eye and smiled, and he shook his head after a beat. "Nah, but you two call us if something seems off, y'hear?"
Sandy nodded. "Course!" she said brightly, and Annie splayed a hand over her heart dramatically behind the officers' backs. Sandy smiled again at the two men. "Annie can show y'all out, I just got some cleaning up to do."
Annie hurried to the front of the group and herded the officers out, chattering about rumors she'd heard involving the insurance firm across the street.
As soon as the door swung closed, Sandy hopped off of the counter and sighed deeply. Her hands were shaking, and she thought that experience might top the list of the most illegal things she'd done. Through the window above the counter, she could see Annie bidding goodbye to the officers. Sandy crossed her arms and looked down at Two-Bit, who stared back.
"They gone?" He asked, maneuvering himself so he was just peeking out from the counter.
A door slammed across the diner, and Sandy could hear Annie rushing over. She nodded and ran a hand through her hair. "They're gone."
The door flew open as Annie marched in to join them. "Keith Mathews," she snarled with a sense of authority that surprised Sandy, "what the hell was that?"
Two-Bit winced as he met his sister's glare. "I ran into some trouble at a gas station, it's nothin' really."
Annie scoffed, and Sandy had to agree with the sentiment. "You bleedin' on the floor ain't nothing, asshole."
Two-Bit groaned as he hauled himself out from under the counter. He inspected the blood on his hands and grimaced. "Actually, it'd be great if something could be done about that."
Annie bit her lip and shook her head at her brother, and it occurred to Sandy that she had the only ride out of here, because she and Annie had carpooled.
Annie seemed to have realized the same thing, because she was watching Sandy apologetically.
Sandy squinted at Two-Bit and tried to determine how close he actually was to bleeding out. There was blood smeared on the floor but not soaking it, and he seemed to be steady enough, but she wasn't sure they had time to stand around talking about it. After sizing him up, she crossed her arms. "Get in the car and then tell us what happened."
Two-Bit quirked an eyebrow and leaned against the counter. "Where we goin'?"
Sandy looked to Annie for an answer, and she watched her brother coolly as she responded. "That depends on your answer."
Two-Bit rubbed the back of his neck and fumbled in his pocket for a cigarette as they filed out the back door of the diner.
It was cooler outside, and the breeze was nice compared to the stuffy heat of the kitchen, but it was hard to enjoy it while dragging a wildly protesting Two-Bit to her car. The gravel crunched underneath her feet and she prayed that no one was going to lose their footing, because if one of them went down they all did.
She yanked open the back door of her car and helped Annie shove him onto the cracked vinyl seat before going around to the front and sinking into the driver's seat with a sigh.
Two-Bit, evidently successful in his hunt for a cigarette, was swearing at his lighter. He clicked it once more and looked up in defeat. "Anyone got-"
"Does it look like the time?" Annie snapped as she reached back and yanked the cigarette away.
Two-Bit scowled. "I paid good money for that."
Sandy started the car and watched Annie roll down the passenger seat window and flick the cigarette onto the gravel. "What the hell happened, Two-Bit?" She asked, watching him in her rearview mirror.
Two-Bit quirked an eyebrow as he fished for another cigarette. "See, my mom's been on my tail about gettin' a job again, so I ended up takin' a job as a gladiator-"
"Keith," Annie growled, rolling the window up without looking at him.
Sandy pulled onto the street leading away from the diner and tried not to think about where she might end up going. The roads were all quiet, but she could see lots filled up with people, because afterall, it was a Friday night in Tulsa.
Two-Bit held his hands up and sighed. "I got caught bagging a pack of cigarettes from the gas station and had to get past some barbed wire to lose the pigs."
"Well, you did a hell of a job of getting 'em off your tail." Annie crossed her arms as she slouched in the seat next to Sandy.
Sandy sighed and glanced at him again in the mirror. "Paid good money for that stolen cigarette?"
He offered a grin as he shrugged, and she realized that he and Annie really did have the same careless smile.
"So where am I meant to be takin' you? The hospital, or…" She wasn't quite ready to finish that thought, because she knew where Two-Bit went when he got hurt, and she got the feeling she wasn't welcome there. "I could take ya to your house, if ya don't think you need a doctor," she said instead.
The collective scoff from Annie and Two-Bit was almost sinister in its power.
Annie turned slightly to face Sandy and shook her head. "Our house ain't a such good place to stitch someone up," she said, and Sandy nodded. She lived on the same side of town as the Mathews, and she knew that there were some things you didn't talk about.
She blew out a puff of air and tried to focus on the road. "You could come to my place, then, if-"
"Sandy," Two-Bit was shaking his head, looking like he was dreading this almost as much as she was. "You already know where I want to go."
She bit her lip and glanced at the mirror; Two-Bit was paler than he'd been when he'd run into the diner, and she got the feeling that he was hurting a lot more than he let on. And maybe she and Two-Bit had their differences, but she sure as hell wasn't going to let him bleed out in her car because she had baggage she wasn't willing to own up to.
She swallowed and stared down the dusty road. "Yeah," she sighed. "I know."
. . .
It was so dark she almost missed the driveway.
As she slammed on the breaks and thought that it was almost funny, that she'd spent so much of her sophomore and junior years at that house but she'd never once driven there herself. It was almost funny, because otherwise she'd have to think harder about whose driveway she was veering into as she cranked the steering wheel at the last minute and pulled into the driveway.
"So." She tapped the wheel and stared at the house illuminated by her headlights. "Can ya get in on your own, or…"
She hated that everything still felt so raw after four years.
She didn't think that she could pretend that being back there was nothing important after four years running from the tatters she'd left behind. She didn't know how to be back there and not go back to the way she'd left things, because she was living in a town different from the one she'd left behind, and it was her own fault. She hated that seeing that house made her think of the girl she used to be, because that girl wasn't there anymore.
That girl had gone to Florida and returned unopened letters when she decided there was no going back.
When she tore her gaze away from the house, Annie was watching her like she wanted to know what was going on but had more pressing matters, and Sandy had to give her credit for her resolve. "I might need help gettin' him inside," Annie finally said before pushing open her door and climbing out of the car.
Sandy still had the headlights on when she opened the car door, because it was dark and the last thing she needed was to stumble her way to the Curtis house in the dark. She could hear cicadas chirping from somewhere in the yard as she pulled open the back door. The air felt cleaner than it had earlier in the day and the moon casted a watery light on the house, and Sandy wished she could be anywhere else right then.
As they passed in front of the headlights, she could see Two-Bit watching her with raised eyebrows. She huffed and yanked on the arm slung around her shoulder. "What?" Her voice seemed too loud on the quiet street.
"Nothin'," Two-Bit said with a too-innocent head shake. "Just don't expect any welcome parties when you get inside."
Sandy swallowed. "I'm dragging your ass to the door and then leaving," she said decided swiftly.
Two-Bit laughed softly. "Sounds about right."
Sandy bristled but didn't respond. A quick glance at Two-Bit told her that he wasn't doing as well as he made out to be; she could hear him breathing shortly, and he was depending on her and Annie a lot more than he had been in the parking lot, and she didn't think an argument was going to help that.
They stumbled forward in silence.
The canvas of her shoes was soaked from the rain earlier in the day, and she was sincerely regretting not taking off her uniform from the diner, because the night was cool and goosebumps had risen on her bare legs. She and Annie hauled Two-Bit a few feet farther and then found themselves standing in front of a screen door as rushed footsteps sounded from inside the house.
She heard a few snatches of rushed conversation before the door was yanked open. Sandy blinked in the sudden flood of light as Darrel Curtis surveyed his friend from the doorway. "Two-Bit, what the hell ha- What are you doing here?"
Sandy scuffed her foot in the dirt and looked down as Darry's gaze turned to rest on her. She inhaled once and then looked up. "I'm tryin' to keep your friend from bleeding out, and I think we got bigger concerns right now."
She tried not to look past Darry into the house, but she could see Ponyboy just behind him in the doorway, and please don't let him be home right now-
"We don't have time to argue about this," Annie snapped after a beat of charged quiet, and Sandy jolted out of her thoughts.
Darry watched her for another second and then sighed. "We'll get him inside."
Sandy released the breath she'd been holding and nodded.
Two-Bit hissed as she and Annie maneuvered to be able to pass him off to Darry. She ducked out from underneath the arm he'd slung over her shoulder, and Two-Bit went limp in her hold altogether. She yelped as she was dragged towards the ground.
"Two-Bit, what the hell-" She heard Annie's voice, irritated and confused, as she flailed to hold his full weight.
Darry was already reaching out, trying to stop Two-Bit from hitting the ground too hard, and it was all Sandy and Annie could do to keep his head from crashing against the dusty steps.
"Two-Bit?" Sandy tried to get a better grip on his arm and craned her neck to see the man crumpled between the two of them. She groaned and shook her head at Annie. "He's out."
Annie stumbled forward and released her hold on Two-Bit's arm, and Sandy sunk to her knees under the weight before doing the same. Annie looked down at her brother and pinched the bridge of her nose. Darry stared at the group assembled on his doorstep and sighed.
Sandy let the damp ground soak her knees as she surveyed Two-Bit, who was sprawled on his stomach and dead to the world. She turned to survey the worn house in front of her and decided it was high time to stop pretending she wasn't there, because she didn't think there was an easy way out of this.
It was going to be a long night.
But it's too late to say you're sorry
How would I know, why should I care?
Please don't bother trying to find her
She's not there
- The Zombies, She's Not There
A/N: Thanks so much for reading, you guys! A lot of the next chapters are going to have some pretty awkward meetings between Sandy and the other characters, and ngl I'm pretty psyched to write them.
Also, if y'all think the song lyrics are weird I totally get it, and I've mostly put them in there for me; way back when I was first outlining this story, I used songs from the era as inspiration for scenes, and I was too sentimental to edit them out. ;)
Anyway, this chapter sort of got things rolling, and thank you so much for bearing with me! Like I said, all of your reviews literally made my week. See you soon!
