Lucy stared daggers at Dally, waiting for him to say something—anything. She knew this was how he would react, but it didn't make it any easier to stand there and wait for him to just move already. It was in that moment that her heart grew sick with anxiety. This was it. This was the moment she had been waiting for (or dreading … or both). Dally was going to get pissed at her in front of everyone they knew, and she was going to have to live with that. She was going to have to live with her new reputation the girl dumb enough to open up to Dallas Winston.
Open up to Dallas Winston? She was already mitigating the horror. No, Lucy Bennet would go down in history as the girl dumb enough to propose to Dallas Winston, as though he would do anything but turn on his heel and forget she ever existed.
But that wasn't what happened. After what felt like years of waiting for him to say anything, Dally reached out, pulled her closer to him so that no one else could hear them (at least, no one else could hear them exceptionally well), and he asked her what he needed to ask her.
"Are you knocked up?"
Lucy snorted. "Please."
"I'm serious. If you're knocked up, then I know it ain't mine."
"I'm not knocked up. Really, I'm not."
She spoke with a surprising sum of confidence for a woman who had only lost her virginity two weeks earlier and wasn't sure her ... she struggled for the word and eventually happened on person … always put the condom on correctly. Either way, she felt sure she was telling him the truth. She didn't feel knocked up, anyway. She always thought she'd be able to feel that.
"Better fuckin' not be," Dally said, and Lucy nodded in agreement. She really couldn't think of anything much worse.
"But if you ain't knocked up," he continued, "why are you askin' me to marry you? Huh?"
Lucy exhaled, annoyed. She knew she'd have to tell the story, but she also knew that telling the story would make her look crazy. She waved Sadie over to the conversation, who made eye contact with Soda, and the twins joined them.
"Sadie, Dally wants to know why I just came out here and demanded that he marry me," Lucy said.
"Not my story to tell," Sadie said. "You're the one who did it. I just stood by and watched."
"Yes, but without you …"
"Without me, the world would be an awful place. Everyone knows this. It's still not my story. Go on. Maybe I'll chime in from time to time. I'm awful proud."
She and Soda shot each other that knowing twin smile that Lucy, as an only child who always wished Sadie could have been her twin, always envied. She took another deep breath and closed her eyes to relay the story back to Dally, fearing she would sound crazier than she felt.
"They kept pestering me about whether or not I …" she swallowed hard before she continued, "liked you, and then Sadie dared me to answer. So I said …"
She stopped, and Dally nodded. She did not need to finish her statement. Both of them already knew the answer—they were just too obstinate to give it.
"Well, then, she dared me to tell you to your face," Lucy continued, "and I said that wasn't much of a dare."
"Sealed her own fate, just like I knew she would," Sadie said in a tone so gleefully self-congratulatory that Lucy had to admire it. Sneaky Sadie was one of her favorite versions of Sadie, after all, even if she was getting the short end of the stick.
"So, then, she said she'd raise me," Lucy said. "I had to tell you I …"
Again, she said nothing, and again, Dally nodded. She didn't need to say it. It wasn't hard for him to see. Dallas Winston didn't read like Lucy Bennet did (That wasn't to say he'd never read anything.), but he was far from a stupid man.
"I had to tell you that, and then I had to ask you to marry me," Lucy finished; shutting her eyes tightly once more. "Because Sadie dared me, and I've never turned down a dare."
She opened her eyes for this last part and was shocked to see that Dally didn't look like he wanted to kill her. He didn't look too thrilled with what she was saying (and he wasn't, but he was even less thrilled with what he was thinking); yet, he didn't look like he was going to run away. He just stood there, a blank expression on his face. Maybe it was that proverbial calm before the storm. Lucy still looked him in the eye—his gaze on her was always so intense—and said what she needed to say.
"I've never turned down a dare," she said, "and it's my understanding that you never have, either."
Dally laughed a little, impressed with Bennet's guts. He knew very well that she had never turned down a dare. He thought back to the summer they were fifteen years old, and Sadie had dared Lucy to stand up during a showing of Hud and loudly declare that she intended to marry Paul Newman … something Lucy, without hesitation, got up and did. It wasn't much of a risky dare (though she did get banned from the Dingo for about two months for disturbing the peace), but Dally thought back to it a few times after it happened. There was something kind of tough about a broad who would just stand up and take anything that got thrown at her. If she was willing to stand up and propose to a movie star who couldn't hear her, who knew what else she could make herself do?
Whether or not he had ever turned down a dare … well, that was more implicit. It wasn't that he had ever turned down a dare. It was that no one ever had to dare him in the first place. He was always acting of his own accord. He made himself do things because he thought they might feel like … something … when he did them. That was always worth the risk—trying to see how it would feel or if it even would. When he thought about it (and he did think about it, the whole time Lucy was telling him this otherwise boring story about Sadie and the others), Dally could really only remember being dared to do something three times in his whole life: His buddy in the Bronx dared him to jump an older kid in the park when he was ten, leading to his first arrest, Sodapop had dared him to talk about Lucy, and now, Lucy had dared him to marry her. He hadn't turned down either of the dares before hers. What made him think he could stop now? It was a ridiculous dare, but wasn't that what made it a good one? And after all, he couldn't end Bennet's streak of dares end like this.
She was staring at him. How long had she been staring at him? It didn't matter. He nodded his head once and said, "OK."
Lucy, Sadie, and Soda all appeared different shades of shocked. It was Lucy the Impatient who spoke first, to the surprise of none around her.
"OK?" she asked. "What?"
"OK," he said. "You dared me, so I guess I don't really got much of a choice."
Lucy opened her mouth to respond, but Sadie cut in, equal parts horrified and intrigued.
"Wait," she said. "Wait just a hot minute."
"Sadie?" Soda asked. "Was that part of the plan?"
"Of course it wasn't part of the plan. Does it look like this was part of the plan?"
Dally fixed his eyes on Sadie, still not quite angry but clearly getting there. Her breath hitched, and she immediately wished it hadn't. Dally had mostly left her alone all her life, but he had such a look about him. It was hard not to react even if Sadie knew, as Soda's twin sister, he wouldn't come near her.
"What fuckin' plan, kid?" he asked.
Thankfully, Soda felt the vibes Sadie was trying to transfer to him. He stepped forward and spoke for his twin the best way he knew how (which, much to Sadie's pleasure, was always accurate).
"I was gonna get you to say you liked Lucy," he explained. "And Sadie was gonna get Lucy to say the same thing, 'cept somehow, she's more stubborn than you, so she knew it was gonna take her a little more than that. So she dared her to do something big and stupid."
"We just wanted you to say you gave a damn about each other," Sadie said. "We thought if Lucy asked you to marry her, you'd yell at her, she'd yell at you, and you'd come to your senses after a little while of that. Figured you'd come to some sort of compromise or somethin'."
Soda nodded. "We never thought you'd get really married on a dare."
Lucy and Dally looked back and forth at one another, trying their best to hear what the other was thinking. Of course, Lucy's heart was beating too loudly with nerves, and Dally was thinking up ways he could get the hell out of this one and ways he could stay in it all at the same time. He couldn't just marry this broad … but she'd dared him, and he didn't want to be the reason she got labeled chicken. If other broads knew he was married, they'd never give him the time of day (or night) … but he didn't have to tell anybody he married Bennet if it was all for a dare. Besides, he didn't need to stay married to her in order for her dare to count … but would it really be so awful to know he'd have a woman in his bed every night, even if it was always the same one? Lucy's smooth voice cut into his thoughts, and he couldn't help but want to listen to her instead.
"You know," she said, "you don't have to do this. Married men aren't exempt from the war anymore, not since August, so you might still have to go… unless I got knocked up, in which case …"
"Jungles of 'Nam look pretty fuckin' good," Dally said.
"Yeah."
Sadie stood by, amazed by what she was seeing and hearing before her. It wasn't only that Dally was agreeing to marry Lucy on a dare. It was also that Lucy was willing to give up a dare so that Dally didn't have to put himself in that very un-Dally position of being somebody's (legal) husband. If she were really willing to push all that aside for Dallas Winston, then she must have loved him. Did she see that for herself? Or would Sadie and Jane and the others have to tell her again?
On the other side of the huddle, Soda watched Lucy and Dally with a similar amazement. He knew that Sadie would be impressed that Lucy would even consider giving up a dare for somebody else, but he was more confused by Dally. He didn't know as much about Dally as he probably should have, being in the same gang and all … then again, Dally didn't really share much that wasn't some bull about violence, the rodeo, or both. Still, there he was, looking at Lucy Bennet like he'd put his reputation on the line just so that she could keep her streak of dares running strong. It was so unlike Dally that Soda briefly considered the realistic possibility of pod people, like in that movie, Invasion of the Body Snatchers. But when Dally winked at Lucy like he knew something she didn't, Soda knew it had to be him. But how? How was this Dallas Winston? Why would he want to get hitched to some girl he'd been fooling around with for just two weeks?
"You don't have to agree to this," Lucy said, though there was something in her voice that hoped he still would. "I can't believe I even accepted the dare."
"Yeah, you can," Dally said.
"You're right. I can."
Soda and Sadie looked at each other, their furrowed brows mirroring one another. They thought maybe (and only maybe) the proposal would have forced Dally to admit that he wanted to keep seeing Lucy, but for the love of God, please don't make him get married. What was this? What reason did Dally have to agree to Lucy's question? It wasn't until a very long time after that Sadie and Soda realized that there was no reason—Dally just felt like saying yes that day in the hopes that it would make for a good story.
Of course, if Dally was going to do this—this—for Lucy Bennet's reputation, she was going to do something for his.
"If I marry you," he said, "you ain't allowed to tell anybody I did it."
"Soda and Sadie are standing right here," Lucy said.
"Forget about them. They ain't sayin' nothin'. They know one of us could kill 'em. Easy."
Soda and Sadie both shrugged their shoulders and nodded, affirmative. It wasn't a pretty truth, but it would be pretty hard to win in a real fight with either Lucy Bennet or Dallas Winston, especially if they were in a fighting mood (which they almost always were).
"We'll need witnesses," Lucy said. "Soda and Sadie aren't eighteen, so it can't be them."
"Two-Bit owes me a couple of fuckin' favors. So does Shepard."
"Do you get to screw around with other girls?"
"I get to do whatever I want."
Somewhere inside of him, a quiet yet deep voice was roaring, But you wouldn't do that to her. He made that voice shut the hell up. What was it, anyway, and why did it keep talking at him? He wished it would shut up. It was ruining everything. It was ruining everything, and now, he was going to marry an entire person just so she could say she'd accepted a dare.
"They make you get your blood tested here, you know," Lucy said. "It's to make sure neither of us is going to die the way Lord Byron did."
Dally gave her that look where she could tell he wanted to know what she meant, but he wouldn't be so weak as to ask it.
"Syphilis," she said. "He died of syphilis. Well, technically, it was a fever, and they think he relapsed from malaria, but the history of syphilis can't have helped …"
"Yeah, yeah, I really don't care," Dally interrupted her, so she bit her tongue.
"About Lord Byron or the blood tests? The syphilis?"
"I don't care about none of it."
Before Lucy could reply, Soda jumped in the middle of her and Dally, looking more confused than Lucy had ever seen him look, and she'd watched him try to read the first page of Finnegans Wake when Ponyboy left it on the couch.
"Sorry," he said, "but what's going on?"
"Come on, kid," Dally said. "You're dumb, but you ain't stupid. I'm gonna marry Bennet, thanks to you and your sister over there."
Soda turned to look at Sadie, who was burying her face in her hands. She couldn't believe what she had done. After all these years, she was so sure she knew Lucy well enough so that she'd take the first dare and negotiate down. This was an overcorrection. There was no way this could work out. One of them would be carried out in a bag within two months, and it was going to be Dally. As much as Sadie wanted Lucy to have him if she wanted him, she always assumed that they would mess around until Lucy graduated and moved on. It would be good for her, but it would be temporary. Was that still the case? Would they sign a piece of paper just to sign a different one some odd days later? Of course they would. Neither of them wanted to be tied to anything, especially not anything that made them look soft.
But when Sadie saw the looks in their eyes that night, she wasn't so sure anymore. She grumbled, "Oh, holy shit …" and walked away, pulling Soda along with her.
Lucy's eyes flickered from the twins back to Dally, who was trying very hard not to smile at her. She noticed, but she'd never say a damn thing to him about it. She knew how much his cool mattered to him because it mattered to her. Jane had been right. They were too similar.
"You know it doesn't matter if we don't tell them," she said. "Sadie's not capable of keeping secrets from Darry, and Darry's gonna get really annoyed."
"I don't care. Do you not … I'm sorry, do you not understand? I don't care."
"You really wanna do this?"
"Of course I fuckin' don't. But ya got dared, and I don't wanna be the one who makes ya look yellow."
"If I say thank you, will you just take it? Or will you say something rude?"
"Better keep your mouth shut 'fore I change my mind and let you look like a coward."
They shared a look that said enough, though neither of them could form their thoughts into words, even silently. Lucy turned in on herself, wondering what the hell she had just asked Dallas Winston to do—what she had just agreed to. She knew how she felt about him, but she assumed he would break her heart sooner rather than later. If she were really going to do this—marry him as part of a dare—she would have to be the one to initiate the divorce. She'd have to. If she waited and let him do it, she'd hurt forever, which at the time hardly felt hyperbolic. It wasn't something she liked, but it was something she knew. She felt far deeper than she let on.
"All right," Lucy said. "Then it's settled. You're gonna marry me, but I'm gonna divorce you."
Dally really was almost smiling now. It had to be the adrenaline. There was something about doing things he shouldn't do (like marrying Lucy Bennet on his eighteenth birthday for no reason other than, "She's good lookin', she dared me, and I'm no chicken") that got him to feel almost happy. Then again, maybe he just liked her. But she didn't need to know that for sure, not even if he was going to marry her.
"We'll see about that," he said.
"What? You think you're gonna divorce me?"
Dally didn't say anything, and it wasn't until a long time afterward that either he or Lucy understood why.
They were married by Thursday afternoon, signing the papers just minutes after the blood tests confirmed that they weren't related, nor would they (probably) die like Lord Byron. The clerks at city hall were—to say the least—confused to see Dallas Winston walk in wanting to marry a pretty girl who seemed nice enough, and if they could have turned him away, they would have. Alas, both parties were of age, appeared to be sober, and in agreement. They were here to get married.
By request, the wedding (if one could call it that, which Lucy never would) went as quickly as possible. But even in that time, the judge kept looking at Lucy Bennet, wondering what in the world she must be mixed up in to be marrying this hood. It was the oddest thing he'd seen all week. For a girl who looked nice enough, she kept staring up at Dallas Winston like he could have been a good guy—like this was something she really wanted to do, not a reckless decision she made because she was old enough to make it now. The judge wondered if Lucy Bennet knew she was looking at Dallas Winston that way. When he pronounced them "man and wife," and she looked at her new husband and said, "Don't you ever use this against me," the judge figured she had no idea.
Two-Bit, who had signed as a witness (His obliviousness to Lucy's recent, albeit brief, crush on him was very helpful in the completion of Sadie and Soda's dare.), started to sing, "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me," but Dally swore at him until he shut up. Dally did make a point of trying to stick his tongue down Bennet's throat as far as it would go, just to see what the judge would do. Unfortunately, the judge kept quiet; fortunately, he discovered Bennet's mouth was far from shallow.
Lucy noticed that Dally was looking at her with something she'd never seen before behind his eyes. She almost called his bluff, but she figured she'd save it for another day. She kissed him again, and then held his face close to hers. He was almost going to ask her what the hell she was doing, but she beat him to the punch:
"So, when do you want to get that divorce?"
"What?"
"The divorce. You didn't actually want to stay married to me. Did you?"
"You wanted to stay married to me?"
They were outside of City Hall, Two-Bit and Shepard had gone home, and Lucy was yelling. This was unusual, as Lucy almost never yelled. She talked a lot, she talked fast, and she talked sternly, but she almost never yelled. Dally was surprised by how much her yelling upset him. Of course, he thought, he wasn't upset. It just bothered him. Her voice was awfully shrill when it got up that high, and he liked it better when she was quiet and making out with him. Didn't he? Yes, of course he did. That was how he liked all girls.
"Calm down, will ya?" he asked. "I didn't say I wanted to be married to ya forever. You know I don't."
Lucy felt her heart start to break, though she quickly pulled herself together. She thought she folded her arms against her chest in defiance so that he knew how annoyed he was making her. Yet, the only thing he noticed was how she'd folded her arms under her breasts and pushed them up. That had to have been one of those on-purpose accidents, he laughed to himself.
"Then what are you trying to…?"
"Look, this dare is stupid. You know it's stupid, so don't play like you don't. But ain't it more fun if we drag it out?"
Her expression began to soften a bit, but she was sure to harden it again. Dally, of course, noticed it, and if she wasn't bugging him so much (That was it. She was bugging him.), he might have thought she looked cute. She wrinkled up her nose, and Dally almost wondered if her nose had always been that small and drawn up like that. Of course, he didn't, as that would have been too specific.
"What do you mean?" Lucy asked.
"Ah, come on. I know you dig. You're doin' it now. Draggin' it out. Delayin'.
A real smile crept across Lucy's face. She was sure pretty when she was being Lucy.
"Am I so obvious?" she joked.
"You ain't subtle. Think about it, Bennet."
"If we stay married…"
"The twins gotta live with the shit they started. Make 'em see how bad they fucked up."
Lucy nodded, feeling devious for a moment and then remembering her truth. She was in love with Dallas Winston—or, at least, she believed she was. If she weren't in love with him, she would have told Sadie to fuck off and give her a different dare. More parts of her than not wanted to stay married to him on the off chance he might realize that she was good for more than just sex. But he'd never abide that. Ostensibly, she'd stay married to him to egg on Sadie and Soda and the others, and she'd try to fight off this terrible love for him that gnawed at her from the inside out. Once she figured he'd had enough, she'd still have to be the one to ask for the divorce, but it wouldn't be because she wanted one. It would be because she didn't.
"Your plan sounds like it should be on television or something," Lucy said. "It doesn't sound real."
"Well, maybe I should be on television, then."
"No, it'd drive you crazy. There's laws about what you can't say on television, and I hear you use all those words over and over every night."
He smirked, almost like he was proud to have as dirty a mouth as he did. From Lucy's perspective (her nighttime perspective, anyway), he should be proud of it. It was good for a lot more than he got credit. She nearly passed out just thinking about it.
"Speakin' of," Dally said, ogling Lucy like she was a real bride, "I hear there's a word for what a guy's supposed to do for his wife after he marries her."
Lucy's skin turned pink and tingly, but she ignored it. It didn't matter that every time she went to bed with Dally, she learned something new. It didn't matter that the best part of any evening between them was when he stripped off his shirt to reveal an irksomely toned physique. If he was going to commit to this prank of a marriage, then he was going to commit with all of his body and what, she only partially joked, was left of his soul.
"Consummation," Lucy said. "The word you're looking for is consummation."
"Naw, I'm pretty sure I know the word I'm looking for, and it's got way less letters than whatever you just said."
"They're synonyms."
"Huh? Cinnamon?"
"No, they're words that mean … never mind."
"What are they?"
That silly three-word question almost rattled Lucy to the core. Two months earlier, she would have figured Dallas Winston for a guy who'd do plenty of stupid things, but never get married on a dare. And yet, there they were, squabbling on their (legal) wedding day as they squabbled the first day they met on the high school's front lawn more than three years before. Two months earlier, she especially wouldn't have figured Dallas Winston for the kind of guy who would ask his wife (his wife born out of an obstinate dare, that was all that it was, she had to keep reminding herself of that, he did not love her) questions about the English language. Lucy coughed a little and replied, still stunned that he would even want to hear (or pretend to want to hear).
"Synonyms are two words that mean a similar thing," she said. "So, like …"
"Like twins and idiots."
No.
"Yeah."
Dally came around to her side and wrapped his arm around her waist, trying to pull her in the direction of the nearest bedroom. She shook her head and smirked at him like she knew something he didn't (Lucy knew plenty he didn't, as she would specify.), which confused him. Normally, she was just as eager to go upstairs as he was. He cocked his eyebrows at her and asked what she was making that face for.
"If we're gonna drag this out," she said, "I have to tell my parents."
Part of the reason she said that was because for her, it was true. While she felt relatively comfortable sneaking around and making it with Dallas Winston behind her parents' backs, she knew she'd never be comfortable being secretly married. But another part of that reason—a slightly larger and more devious part—said it because she wanted to see how white he would turn. She had to stifle a laugh when she saw he was about the color of snow on Christmas in Vermont.
"You ain't serious," he said in the lowest voice she'd ever heard him use.
"I am."
"You said if I did this, then you wouldn't tell nobody."
"I suppose I did. But think about it. Are Sadie and Soda going to keep this a secret? Is Two-Bit? Did you or did you not ask Tim Shepard to be your second witness? If I didn't know you better, I'd say you were screwing this up for yourself on purpose."
A little bit of color returned to his face. He wasn't proud of it, but it was true.
"I have to tell my parents," Lucy repeated. "I live in their house, we get along, and I have to tell them. I didn't say you needed to come with me."
For a moment, Dally was relieved. She wasn't going to parade him around like he was something to be won … like he was the kind of guy a girl like Bennet could be proud of. That sounded like a terrible time, and he didn't want a single part of it.
And yet, it would be awful fun to torture Bennet's parents like that. Maybe that would get him feeling more like himself again, not like that guy who was willing to marry somebody for the hell of it (He liked her enough, but that wouldn't last. It never did). She took off without him, but he caught up to her. After all, it was sure to be a disaster, and that was the one thing he was good at.
So, there you go. These idiots got married on a dare. Thanks "I'll Be Your Mirror," we know somehow it manages to work out … but how? Good thing I have (most of) the answers. Hinton owns The Outsiders. By the way, if you're not familiar with James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, which I reference in this chapter, Google, "First page of Finnegans Wake." It's … interesting (and even more interesting to try to picture Sodapop Curtis trying to read it).