Chapter Two: Never Met a Girl like you Before

"Claire Belmont?" Claire looked over to a girl with long crimson hair who was calling her name. She was standing by the doorway to the cafeteria holding her brown paper bagged lunch, looking around, uncertain on where to sit. The red-headed girl came up to her.

"Yes?" Claire asked, timidly.

"Do you need somewhere to sit?" the girl asked cordially.

"That would be wonderful. Thank you." Claire said politely and the girl smiled.

"I'm Sherry Valence but everybody calls me Cherry because of my hair."

"I'm Claire but somehow you already know that."

"We have geometry together. You're new right?" Cherry asked leading the way to a long table that was already packed with people.

"Yes, from Massachusetts." Claire answered sitting down beside Cherry. The boy beside Cherry whistled.

"That's a long way from here," he said nodding to her. Claire briefly smiled and then cast her eyes back to her tomato sandwich.

"Claire, this is my boyfriend Bob. Bob this is Claire." Cherry said smiling as Bob put his arm around her shoulder. Claire nodded to him and then continued to eat her lunch in dainty bites. As nice as it was to have somewhere to sit, Claire couldn't help but feel awkward. She never had been good at talking to people, much less strangers.

"Hey Claire Belmont!" a familiar voice said loudly over her shoulder. Claire spun around in her chair to see Two-Bit by the cafeteria doors with Ponyboy and two boys she didn't recognize. One of them had his hair heavily oiled into swirls that made Claire vaguely dizzy to look at. The other had deeply tanned skin and sloppy black hair that fell into his eyes. He looked very jumpy.

Cherry cocked her head, looking at the boys too. Ponyboy waved to her and Two-Bit winked before the four of them exited. "How do you know those greasers?" Cherry asked. Bob and every other boy at the table looked up and glared. Bob crushed the cookie that he was eating in his fist.

"Greasers?" Claire asked, unfamiliar with the term. Cherry's friend Marcia snorted into her chicken salad.

"Who doesn't know what a greaser is?" Marcia asked giggling. Claire raised her eyebrows at the girl's rudeness. Cherry gave her a little smile; as if she were sympathetic to the fact that Claire didn't know the slang terms in Tulsa.

"Greasers are the term used for the people who live on the east-side. They call us Socs because we live on the west-side." Cherry explained. Claire furrowed her eyebrows as she looked down at her lunch. Socs? Greasers? What did it all mean? As far as she could tell Two-Bit and Ponyboy were no different from the boys sitting at the table with her, except for the fact that they had the most unusual names.

"Ms. Belmont you'll want to study a bit more next time." Mr. Smith, the chemistry teacher, said handing Claire her quiz back two weeks later. Claire bit her lip as she saw a big red D+ scrawled across the top. Claire had always done fairly well in school but she just couldn't grasp chemistry.

"I'm never going to understand this Ponyboy!" Claire said in a frustrated tone.

"I'm sure you will Claire. It's not that hard." Ponyboy said taking the quiz paper and glancing at it. "Do you want me to help you?" he asked giving the paper back before looking at his own quiz which had an A at the top. Claire nodded; she could use all the help she could get. "Why don't you come home with me after school and we can study together?"

Claire bit her bottom lip. On the one hand she really needed help and it would do her grade good to be tutored by Ponyboy. But on the other she really wasn't comfortable going to a boy's house, especially when she hardly knew him. "That would be lovely, thank you." Claire said finally biting the bullet. "How much do you want to be paid an hour? If you tell me now I can call my mother at lunch and get her to drop some money off." Ponyboy raised his eyebrows.

"You want to pay me to tutor you?"

"Yes. You're spending your valuable time tutoring me. You should get paid. My parents won't mind at all. Is five dollars an hour alright with you?"

"You don't need to pay me Claire. I want to help you." Ponyboy said pushing his long reddish brown hair out of his eyes.

"Are you sure? It's no trouble at all."

"I'm sure. I'll meet you at your locker after school, alright?" he asked. Claire nodded.

"Well now what have we here?" Two-Bit whistled. "Looks like Pony's picked himself up real-live Soc." Claire clutched her binder to her chest and glanced over at Ponyboy who punched Two-Bit playfully.

When Claire had accepted Ponyboy's offer to go to his house and study she didn't know that Two-Bit Matthews was going to be giving them a ride home. Claire wondered what her mother and father would have said if they saw her climbing in the backseat of that rusty old car, driven by a boy who had failed the same grade three times in a row.

"Who's your friend Pony?" the boy she had seen around school with the heavily greased hair in swirls asked.

"Oh. Claire, this is Steve Randal and Johnny Cade." Ponyboy said first pointing to the guy with the swirls in his hair and then to the tanned boy. "Steve, Johnny, this is Claire Belmont. I'm helping her study in chemistry."

"Sure you are Pony." Steve winked at him and then looked her up and down. Claire bit her lip and clutched her books to her chest tighter. She hated it when guys did that. It made her feel like she was a piece of art or an animal in the zoo, something that people gawked at for long periods of time.

"Don't get any ideas Steve." Two-Bit warned. "This doll's different from any I've ever met. She turned me down when I asked her out."

"So that means that she's just like all the other girls in the school with taste." Steve said. Two-Bit punched him in a playful way and the guys laughed even Johnny who had been silent up to that moment.

After everyone was in the car, Two-Bit turned the radio up really loud to an Elvis song and started singing along loudly and off-key as he pulled into traffic and sped towards Ponyboy's house.