A/N: Well, the hiatus I took lasted a bit longer than expected. I'm trying to get back into the swing of things. I'm not feeling this story, but I hope you enjoy. Also, it's supposed to be pretty vague. Please leave some feedback.


He sneaks a glance at me under his shaggy brown hair, and for a second I think that this is how it's going to go: that he's going to just look back at the Cade kid's crude headstone and pretend that he didn't notice me at all. I can't exactly blame him. A few years ago, I would have done the same.

It's easy to pretend he ain't a kid, even though now it's all I see. Sure, he's quite a bit taller now, and he's got some stubble, but his eyes still got that innocent green hue to them. Suddenly I flash back to the first time I met him, when he was traumatized and bleached blond and I felt for him then and I feel for him now. Some part of my frozen heart warms up and cracks a little.

I walk up to him, and he stares at me like he's a deer caught in headlights. "Randy?" His voice cracks.

"Well, yeah," I tentatively say, though it sounds real stupid and this kid just don't deserve to have to face me after everything he's been through. But there's something about him. "In the flesh."

Surprisingly, a wolfish grin is what I get in return. It's like what I said was actually funny. "Like a ghost..." he mumbles dreamily, caught in his own world.

"What was that?" I say, though I heard him loud and clear.

"Ah, nothin'," he replies, and he shakes his head, almost like he can't believe what's happening. I can't really either.

I watch his mannerisms for a few seconds before I notice there's something off about him, in the way he's breaking out in a sweat despite the fact it's November and it's real fuckin' freezing, and that his eyes are real wide. Crazy wide, like someone who's surviving solely off caffeine and the pep pills my ma used to smuggle when she thought I wasn't looking. His pupils are big, blown up, and his bright green irises are a tiny sliver wrapped around the blackness.

"Oh, Jesus." It comes out before I can stop myself. "What are you on?"

He has the decency to look ashamed. But what he says next catches me off guard. "It's that obvious, huh?"

"Well, kid," and we both flinch when I say "kid", because it's such a blatant reminder of the past, and I don't think either of us like reminders of the past. "I hate to break it to you, but anyone who is blind, deaf, and dumb would be able to tell you're doped up on somethin'." I pause and think. My frozen, tiny heart cracked a little earlier, but now I think it's completely broke.

He won't look at me. His eyes roam everywhere: his best friend's tombstone, the broken twig that snapped under my foot, the truck driving down the road. But they don't roam to me. His eyes refuse to meet mine.

"My brothers don't know."

Exasperated, I shout, "Oh, well that's real fuckin' good for you! Jesus, Ponyboy, you're supposed to be the good one!" I'm drunk but what I'm saying has never made me feel so lucid.

I think he's wondering why I'm getting so worked up. I'm wondering that, too. I don't even feel anything when I'm getting into it with my parents, or when I'm getting it on with some trashy broad I found at a dive bar right outside town, so why is this any different?

"Why do you care so much?" If it was anyone else, I might have punched them in the face after saying this, but I can tell he doesn't mean it like that. He doesn't say it indignantly. It's more like he's genuinely curious.

"It's just that...you're not just some greaser scum, man. You were better. You were better than all of the rest of 'em." I'm shaking with a new rage, at an intensity I never could have imagined. But it feels real nice to feel something besides numbness and sadness again. I've been cut off and things have been bleak for so long I'm not used to this.

The calmness in his voice sharply contrasts the anger in mine. "They ain't so bad," he says. "And I ain't too sure what you're talkin' about. I'm just as much a greaser as any of 'em."

"That's not what I meant." The words are floating out of me, gently, but almost against my will, like a plastic bag that floats through the littered streets. "I can't stand seeing so much wasted potential. It kills me. It just fucking kills me."

"Wasted potential?" And for the first time, he almost looks hurt. And his unnaturally bright eyes finally seem to study my face.

"One of us, one of us, was supposed to get out of here. And do something. Go to college somewhere fancy, I don't know. And I'm not currently doin' that. I just thought that...maybe—maybe you could have..." I look away and feel myself getting strangely worked up. I break off before my voice cracks.

"...been different?" He pauses and then: "From you?" It hurts to him hear say that. But it's true. I always found small bits of hope in the fact that Pony would be able to get away from the tragedy that seems to follow him around everywhere he goes. I always thought that if I couldn't have the life I wanted, the life I needed, then he would. Lord knows he deserves it quite more than I do.

I can't say anything as I start to sway a little. I take out my flask again and take a swig before my brain can let me know it's a bad idea.

Despite the fact that he's obviously got his own little nasty habit, he scrutinizes me. "I guess we both got our vices," he says, and I wonder how he can be so goddamn knowing without even trying to be. "And while I appreciate the concern, Randy, I'm all set. I'm okay."

"No. You're not. You're not okay."

"I ain't?"

"You got that haunted look in your eye. It's like the first time we ever talked. I used to see you in the hallways, Ponyboy. You don't always look like that."

"Tranquilizer," he mutters.

Even though I hear him, in my drunken stupor I have to ask him to clarify.

"It's an anti-depressant. It's like a tranquilizer. Xanax, I think it's called. I don't take it real often. I was given some at a party a while back. I think I mighta taken a bit too many today. It helps me deal with...all this." With that, he points at Johnny's tombstone. "It makes schoolwork a bit hard to do, but it calms me down some."

"Schoolwork?" I focus on that because I can't stand to think of the other stuff.

"Yeah. University of Oklahoma. Full ride. I'm home for Thanksgiving break right now."

"Oh, thank god," I say, and I really mean it. I just assumed (and you know what we say about assuming)...I mean, he has that distant gleam in his eye that all the greasers get eventually and I worried, which is something I probably wouldn't do as much if I wasn't so buzzed. I'm jealous and envious of him and his achievements, but mostly that's over-shrouded with the bursting relief that burns in tandem with the whisky in my stomach.

I get a bitter taste in my mouth when I think about how much harder his life has been than mine and yet he's still so motivated, still keeping on, and still going to school when he's supposed to. It makes me angry with myself but it also inspires me. Maybe, eventually, I can cut the pity party I've been throwing for myself and stop drinking. I can start setting my sights on living the life I want to live.

Pony starts walking away from me, but not before eyeing me with pity. Which makes me feel so fucking sick. The poster child of tragic happenings looking at me like I'm in his place. I feel lower than the dirt under my fingernails.

I follow him regardless of this, because I think he wants me to. I realize at this split moment he's walking over to a slightly nicer stone, a dark grey silver. DALLAS WINSTON is carved on the front and I stare at it and think real long and hard even though I never cared for that one much.

"You know," I say, though I don't know too sure why, "I'm sorry."

"For?"

"Callin' your lot greaser scum."

He barely acknowledges this. "I've heard worse," he says, almost like he's speaking to himself. Ponyboy looks at Dallas's plot in disbelief again. He's like a wandering, lost child in a big grocery store and I just can't stand it. "You know, it's been such a long time and not a day goes by where I don't think of them. Weird, ain't it?"

"No, that's not weird." And I can't afford to push my voice past a whisper. "Bob is the first thing I think about in the morning and the last thing I think about before I go to sleep."

He looks at me again. "I'm sorry about that."

"Don't be," I almost spit, not meaning to direct my anger at him. I really don't want him of all people to feel bad about this. "It was his own stupid fault, that idiot." My eyes burn again.

We sit in silence for a while. "My, uh. My brother, you know, Sodapop?"

"Yeah, I know him." Even though he was an underclassmen to me, he was notorious with the ladies, whether they be Soc or greaser. And everyone remembers a crazy name like Sodapop with a crazy personality to match. "What about him?"

"He's in, uh. He's in 'Nam."

Christ. That's just what the kid needed. "I'm sorry."

"Oh, nope, it ain't your fault or nothin'." He seems to contemplate what he's about to say, then continues. "I guess..." and then he does a strange, ominous half-smile. "I guess that's why my eyes are so...what did you say earlier, haunted?"

"I'm sorry. You don't deserve that."

"Thanks." We go real quiet again. There just isn't much to say in this situation. Then later: "How have you been, Randy? Really?"

"Been better."

"Real specific."

"Go to a community college. Not what my folks wanted but it suits me, I think."

"That's good, Randy." He tries to smile. "I'm happy for you."

I can't stop myself before the dam breaks, my words coming out and going and going and going and I can't cut it out. "I bet everyone 'round here thinks it's real funny that Mr. Super Soc is now just a sad drunk. Ha-ha."

"Well, I ain't laughin'." His eyes seem to lose some of their unnatural shine. "You ain't just a Soc. You're a guy. Bein' rich don't keep you from goin' through rough times." Deep breath. He stares down at Dallas. "I wish I woulda realized that earlier."

I don't know if Pony is trying to console me or if he's just waxing philosophic to absolutely no one, but I take a strange comfort in his words anyway.

"Thanks. I mean it."

"Try to get back on your feet. You'll be okay." It's really not hard to tell he puts his heart and soul into his words; they're carefully crafted and personal.

I attempt a joke here, though it doesn't necessarily feel right. "Hey, you cut the pills and I'll cut the booze. Deal?"

"Deal," he says, and he shakes my hand with a sincerity I'm unfamiliar with. His overly thin body turns away from me briefly and he looks back at me right before saying, "Hey, uh, I gotta go. My brother wants me home for dinner soon. It, uh...it was good talkin' to you." He reaches out to shake my hand again, awkwardly this time. "Good luck, Randy."

"You too, Ponyboy." With that, his frame gets smaller and smaller and farther from my view.

Forgetting the deal, I take out my flask and chug as much as I can before the taste catches up to me. My blurry vision alternates between Johnny Cade and Dallas Winston and I feel sick but comfortably numb. Wondering how soon I'm gonna end up here right next to them, I realize something. I should have bought them flowers.