The doorbell awakened me. It was so foreign… No one we knew ever rung the doorbell, they just barged in. Or, if it was late at night, they tiptoed in and crashed on the couch. At our house, the doorbell meant either the cops or a stranger, neither of which was generally a good thing in our neighborhood. I couldn't even remember the last time I had heard it. My mind reached…

Maybe the time Soda's friend Steve gave our address as his own when he got arrested? He knew our parents wouldn't beat him up like his dad would for getting picked up for drunken and disorderly conduct at the grocery store, of all places… My parents were annoyed at the time but forgiving, and he slept it off in Soda's bed. The bell had awakened me that time, too. I didn't remember feeling scared then, though - I felt scared now.

I sat up straight in my bed. I grabbed my alarm clock and pulled it close to my face so I could read it. 2:38 a.m. Something was wrong. I could feel it. I felt like there was no air left in my lungs.

Earlier, half asleep, I had heard Steve come over and he and Soda go out… were they in trouble? Steve again? He was my least favorite of all my brothers' friends, for some reason I couldn't quite isolate. Silently I slipped out of bed. The doorbell rang again.

I could hear Darry cursing in his room, and then I heard Soda's voice... I felt confused reassurance. It wasn't Soda. Then I heard Pony's voice answering Soda. My brothers were all here…safe.

I heard Darry pad down the hallway toward the door. His footsteps were heavy, unmistakable. "Coming!" He sounded annoyed and sleepy. Now whoever it was that had rung the bell was knocking. Suddenly it occurred to me that my parents weren't getting up. Something was very wrong.

"Mr. Curtis?" I heard a strange voice.

______________________

I peeked out my door. Darry was talking to a state trooper at the front door. His body looked rigid and his voice was strange, agitated. Soda stood in the middle of the hallway behind him. I spied Pony in his doorway, transfixed on Darry and the cop. Everything about this scene was surreal and movie-like. I couldn't even tell if I was awake. Every muscle in my body seemed frozen.

A breeze came through the open door and I shivered, wearing only one of Dad's old t-shirts and a pair of cut off sweatpants. Darry had flipped on the outside light and the officers were bathed in an eerie light, while inside the hallway it was still dark. I felt fear as I never have before. I stared and listened. I could feel my heart beating and it amazed me that my brothers couldn't hear it too. It was deafening.

"I'm sorry"…I heard the trooper say. I only caught pieces of the conversation over the pounding of my own heart. "…dead on scene" "…drunk driver." "Knew them personally… highly respected." Then, finally, "Very sorry for your loss." A year ago I might have been unfamiliar with that phrase, but the past August a friend of mine's brother had been shot and killed and that was the phrase my mom had told me to say to the family at the wake. "It's what you say when someone dies," she had told me.

Darry was silent. Then: "Are you sure?"

"Yes, sir. I'm very sorry."

I was thankful for the doorframe I was leaning against, because I couldn't even feel my feet on the floor. I closed my eyes.

This can't be happening. This can't really be happening.

I couldn't imagine anything that could be said that would confuse and frighten me more, until the cop added,

"Social services have been called. They'll be coming for the minors."

I thought I might fall down. I opened my eyes and saw Pony cover his face with his hands. Soda just stared. Social Services was a well-known entity on the South Side. Our own parents had even called them once, when Pony's friend Johnny had been beaten up so badly by his own parents that we had to take him to the hospital. Somehow they couldn't find cause to remove him from his house, though, which was what we had hoped for. I really had nothing against them, but Social Services was for kids with bad parents, bad situations. Not families like us… our parents loved us! Nobody was beating us up. We were happy. We had food on the table every night, a roof over our heads... We did get in fights sometimes, but not like the hateful, hurtful ones that went on at Johnny Cade's house. Money was tight, and Soda had caught hell from Dad for coming home drunk once last summer, but… I struggled to understand what was going on. My brothers stood like wax figures in the hall. It felt like ten minutes passed with no sound or movement except the horribly loud beating of my heart.

"What? NO." Darry broke the silence. His eyes were wide with disbelief and his voice was not his own. "Nobody is taking them. I'm nineteen. I'm the legal guardian! My parents had a will!" To this day I am amazed that Darry knew this – I can't imagine there ever having been a conversation between my parents and Darry about their will, but apparently there must have been. Dad had been the kind of guy who liked to cover all his bases.

The cop did not answer. I could see his nameplate, clear as day. BRIGGS, it read. There was another younger cop behind him who looked like he would rather have been anywhere but on our front porch at that particular moment. I sometimes wonder if we were his official police training in how to notify a bunch of unsuspecting kids that their lives had been forever altered, and that they had lost both of their parents in a split second. He was observing my epiphany, I guess. Was he out notifying some other poor kids somewhere the next night, having completed his 'training'? At least the cops get to walk away and forget about it afterward. Or does BRIGGS (and that baby cop) still see our faces that night every time he comes across a deadly car wreck? I'd like to know. Why do I even wonder about things like this? Seriously, sometimes I feel like I should have been Pony's twin. He's the one who's always thinking about this kind of stuff… We never talk about it, though.

At the time, the silence was too heavy for me to handle. I looked around and nobody else looked likely to break it this time, so I had to. It felt like if I didn't say something we would all be stuck in that terrible moment of silence and confusion forever.

"Darry?" My voice was barely a whisper. I heard a noise but was not completely sure whether or not I had actually made it. I didn't know what was going on. I felt sick, dizzy. Wake me up, I begged silently. Let this be like one of Pony's nightmares. Pony was a terrible sleeper, and was always having nightmares that caused him to wake up screaming. Please. I glanced at my brothers, the cops… nobody had moved. Still frozen in time.

Louder now, I called out. "DARRY??!"

All three brothers, as well as the two cops, seemed shocked to hear me. Clearly nobody had noticed I was there, though by this point I was almost completely in the hall, still hanging on to the doorframe for dear life.

Darry turned and looked at me like he had never seen me before.

"Scout…" his voice was cracking. "Soda…can you…" he looked back over his other shoulder and gestured as he and Soda had some sort of silent conversation I didn't understand, or didn't want to.

"Scout…" Soda's voice was full of a weird mix of desperation and horror. "Come with me, baby." I looked at him questioningly. I had never seen this expression in his eyes. Sadness? Why was there a cop in our doorway? Why couldn't Darry just talk to me? I looked confusedly at Darry. I was a tangled ball of emotions. Disbelief, fear, pain, and denial.

"Scout, go with Soda! " Darry said sharply. Now I was frozen. Why was he yelling at me? I would go, but seriously, I was scared now that something was gonna happen to Darry. Was he in trouble with these cops? It seemed to me like he had talked back to them. I didn't have any personal experience with the cops but from what I gathered from the guys in the gang, saying no to a cop was just asking for trouble. Darry had said no. I heard it. And besides that, my parents were DEAD? They were just a second ago sitting on my bed! I thought for a minute that I might actually throw up from how dizzy I felt. I think I realized at this point that I was not so much unable to understand what was going on as I was unwilling to believe it. My mind was racing. I knew my parents were dead but was trying every tactic I could think of to try and change that truth. I started a silent mantra. This is not possible. This is not possible. THIS. IS. NOT. POSSIBLE. I could not begin to process what was happening in my own hallway in any way that made sense at all.

I looked at Soda. Darry wanted me to go with him? He looked as petrified as I was. He came over and stood next to me, attempting to take my hand. Not even knowing why, because I love Soda so much, I pulled it away. I hid behind him, and slowly worked my arms around his waist. I grabbed his shirt with both hands and deliberately transferred my grip from the doorframe to my brother.

Darry turned to the cops. "Are they coming for them now?" he asked.

"No sir, not yet. They're waiting on the paperwork"

"Tell them not to bother. Everybody is staying here." Darry suddenly sounded like my Dad. "I know for a fact that I am the legal guardian. It's in the will."

I actually felt, in the air, the change as Darry went from being our big brother to being our guardian. It was as though our entire house had shifted on its foundation. Yet nobody seemed to notice but me. And maybe Darry; he must have felt it. But he wasn't reacting. I shivered, either from the thought or the wind. They were equally chilling. Soda pulled me closer.

Darry didn't even turn to look at us - he was still staring into the face of the cop. BRIGGS.

"Soda, Pony, and Scout, go into my bedroom and wait." He did not turn around. I had never heard Darry speak in that tone, ever. To anyone; especially us. I slid out from behind Soda, and looked at Ponyboy, then back at Soda. The three of us stared blankly at each other. Pony budged but I didn't feel capable of moving. It was like one of those dreams where all of a sudden your legs weigh a hundred pounds each and you can't even lift them off the floor. I must have looked pretty pathetic because after a second Soda picked me up and Pony walked ahead of us through the kitchen to Darry's room at the very back of the house. Until last year it had been Dad's workroom. As we entered, I think we were all probably processing the same things…

We were never allowed in Darry's bedroom. Even Mom and Dad gave him his privacy and enforced the "off-limits" rule once Darry started college and wanted his space. The door wasn't ever locked but we knew that Darry would take us to the cleaners if we ever went in. We sat on the bed and stared at the wall with the knowledge that for Darry to order us in here, he must have meant business. The sad thing is, I know we had all been dying to get in there to see what all the fuss about his "private room" was about but now that we were in there we were too scared to care.

Never, ever, that I could remember, had Darry bossed us all to do something and had all three of us immediately comply without argument. I wasn't usually the one to give him any sass, but normally either Pony or Soda (or both) had something to say about it when he told us what to do. Pony and Soda just don't like to be told what to do, especially by Darry. Though in the end they usually did do what he said.

And, most worrisome (to me at least)… What was going to happen to Darry out there - alone with two cops, trying to deal with being told our parents were dead and that his brothers and sister were being taken away? I know I was silently praying that, even though I wasn't, he would hold it together. Darry didn't lose his temper very often back then, but when he did, you'd better get out of his way.

__________

I, personally, definitely wasn't holding it together. The minute Soda had picked me up, I had started bawling shamelessly and hadn't stopped. It was a weird cry, all-encompassing, as though every cell in my body was bursting at the membrane with sorrow. It was like no cry I had never experienced before. Maybe, just being twelve, I had never actually experienced pure sadness. My emotions seemed to know that this was more than just a skinned knee or hurt feelings.

I looked at Pony and he was crying, too. No noise was coming out of him but tears were streaming down his cheeks and he seemed unable to focus. He looked away from me the minute our eyes met. I couldn't see Soda's face but my head was against his chest and I could feel him breathing irregularly. I couldn't tell if it was his tears falling on my side or my own. All I know is that he was holding me tighter than I have ever been held by anyone, even Darry, and rather than being hurt or scared, I wanted him to never let go. I could already feel so many things flying away from me, I wanted to hold on tight to everything I could. Suddenly I had a vision of Darry, at his part-time roofing job, watching a tornado approaching and tearing away at all the shingles that he had just laid. He was trying to hold them down against the impending storm. That was exactly how I felt. A storm was ripping off my shingles. Yet as terrified as I was, and as sad as I was about all that was lost, I was fighting with all I had to keep what was left intact.

"Soda, maybe you should go out there." Pony, between silent crying gasps, was suddenly the voice of reason. "He might do something."

We could hear tense voices from the front of the house. Darry was normally even-tempered around cops and parents, but none of us had any idea what he would do in this situation. He used to be just our brother. Suddenly he was… something else.

"Scout, stay with Pony." Soda slid me off his lap and toward Pony on the bed. He moved towards me and I clung to him, not wanting to let go. This was strange; Pony and I were rarely affectionate compared to me and my other brothers. I guess it was because we were the closest in age. We usually quarreled rather than hugged. But he took me in his arms, pulled me close and pulled me in to his chest. Just like Soda had. I felt like everyone was suddenly assuming a new role in the family, except for me. Darry became Dad, Soda became Darry, and Pony became Soda… Who would I be now? I felt tiny and lost. It felt like if Pony had not been holding me, I would have spun off into that very tornado I had just been imagining.

"Pony…" I said, and trailed off. I don't even know what I wanted to say. I never finished my sentence and he never asked. Maybe that was in itself a complete thought. Maybe he knew what I wanted to say even if I didn't. I don't know.

As Soda went to the bedroom door we heard the front door close loudly and Darry's footsteps coming toward us. Soda backpedaled and sat back down, trying to look like he had never stood up to leave in the first place. Like we never doubted Darry dealing with the cops. He grabbed for my hand. The door swung open and Darry walked in, stone-faced.

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If I hadn't known that it would be Darry walking in, I swear I would not have recognized him. To this day I can't find the vocabulary to describe how he appeared. Stricken. Devastated. Petrified. Broken. All of these words describe a piece of what I saw in his face but they are all missing something. There may not even be a word for it. I had never before seen and hope to God that I will never again see the emotion that I saw on my brother Darry's face that night as he went, in a split second, from carefree college kid to what equated to single parent of three kids. I am sure that until that moment he had, regardless of his age, still considered himself to be one of us kids. I could not even imagine how this conversation would go. I didn't want to. I didn't want to have this conversation. Yet I knew it had to happen.

Darry walked in silently and sat on the end of the bed, facing the wall. The three of us turned to him but his back was to us. I don't know why he couldn't look at us – maybe he had seen my shock at his appearance when he came in? Maybe he was protecting me, or us? Maybe he just didn't want to cry in front of us. Pride was a big thing on our side of town, and you just didn't cry in front of anyone. Soda and Pony I could remember seeing cry at least a few times, but Darry… Darry I couldn't remember ever seeing cry. Maybe by the time I was old enough to notice, he was old enough to know how to hide it, but truly, I don't think Darry cried much, if at all. And I didn't know if he was crying now. His voice was different, but even. Meanwhile, Soda, Pony, and I were sobbing shamelessly.

"Mom and Dad were killed in a car crash tonight."

Nobody answered. What could we even say? We already knew. Darry saying it out loud didn't necessarily make it more or less real. In a weird way, while I thought this new reality might fill the room and suffocate us for lack of air, it didn't. It just hovered there, over us.

"They want to split us up. They don't think I can take care of you."

"No, Darry. You told them no, right?" I would have expected it to be Soda saying this, but surprisingly it was Pony. Usually Ponyboy doesn't react to stuff right away, he likes to have time to think about things.

Darry finally turned around to face us. His eyes were red but there were no tears coming out. "Legally, you can stay with me. I know it. Dad talked to me about it in case… in case something like this ever happened."

Again, never in a million years would I have imagined Darry and Dad having that conversation- I thought their deepest talks were about football or girls - but I thank God they did. As much as my life has changed, I can't even imagine what would have happened to my brothers and I if we had actually been split up that night.

"So its OK… they won't split us up?" This time it was Soda.

"It's up to you." Darry said. "You guys decide. Whatever you three want will happen. I'll make it happen." He was totally believable. I knew he meant what he said.

Still, I couldn't even believe he was asking us. Did he really think we would want to leave him? Each other? Our home?

Everything was crystal clear in my mind.

"I want to stay, Darry," I said, sobbing. "With you. Here."

"How could you even ask us, Darry? We stay together. No matter what." Soda was just as shamelessly talking through his bawling.

There was a moment of awkward silence.

"Pony?" Darry asked

.

"What?" Pony looked at us blankly. I am not sure he had heard anything we said. That's Pony, always lost in his own thoughts.

"With Mom and Dad gone, do you want me to take care of you or someone else?" he pointed this question directly at Pony.

Pony looked at Darry like he had been struck. His eyes were red-rimmed but pure green, greener than I have ever seen them. The rest of us all have blue or brown eyes, like Mom and Dad did. He hates that.

"You." He was still crying too. "I want us to stay together."

Darry faced us all. "Look, nothing has to happen tonight. You can think about it and change your mind." He stood up.

Darry suddenly seemed stronger to me, stronger than he had been when talking to the cops. Had he been afraid that we wouldn't choose him? This was Darry, our brother, whom we loved and admired – and trusted. Had he really thought we would want to be with someone else – a stranger - instead of him? My already broken heart was breaking again, for him. Didn't he know how we felt about him? I suddenly ached for him, as the oldest… he didn't get the overt affection I did, as the baby. Everybody was always making me feel loved. I tried to remember the last time I had told Darry I loved him. I couldn't.

I scrambled across the bed to him. "I know Darry. I know now. I want to stay with you. I'm not going to change my mind."

I stood on the bed so that I was face to face with him and we stared at each other. I knew I couldn't talk anymore without crying, so I tried to tell him with my eyes that I had faith in him, that I truly trusted him to keep us safe and together. Anything else we could work out. I don't know if he got my message. He looked as though he was crying, but still, there were no tears.

"Me too." Pony and Soda said almost at the same time.

I felt Darry take a deep breath. His mouth opened to say something but then closed again for a minute. Finally he said. "Everything is gonna change. You guys know that, right?" He sounded pained. "Nothing's gonna be the same."

"But we'll still be together," Soda said.

"We'll be together," Darry said, sat down, and lay back on the bed, pulling me down too. All of us pretty much just lay back where we were on the bed and reached out and found each other. At some point someone had the sense to turn out the light. I cried myself to sleep, on Soda's chest, holding Pony's hand. I slept terribly, as I assume the others did. As for Darry – I am not sure he slept at all. Every time I awoke and wondered where I was and suddenly remembered what had happened, he was there to comfort me. In various stages of sleep I heard him doing the same for both Pony and Soda. "It'll be alright." I heard him saying to us, over and over. I wondered if he believed it. I wondered if I did. He knew what we wanted, and he swore he would make it work.

Not until months later did it occur to me that we had never thought to ask him what he wanted. And there had been nobody there that night to reassure him that everything would be alright.