Smoking, doing nothing. I wasn't going home. Me and Pony hung out, walked around, did nothing. Got kicked out of the drug store just because we looked liked hoods, although neither of us ever stole stuff. But it didn't matter what we would or wouldn't do, it just mattered that we looked like we would.
Pony was kinda mad we got kicked out, but I didn't care. At least he didn't call the cops on us, because some of them did. I kicked a rock and watched it roll down the street. It was getting late, the sky was getting dark. Pony would have to go home and eat supper and do homework. Maybe he'd let me stay for supper, there wasn't any supper at my house ever.
"Johnny, you want to eat over at my house?" he said, reading my mind. I nodded and followed him home. Soda and Darry were there, Darry was cooking supper. Darry was a better parent to Pony and Soda than my parents ever were to me. I wanted so much for it not to matter but it did.
Darry made chicken and potatoes and it was the only thing I'd eaten all day. They didn't mind if I ate with them or stayed over. They knew, man, they knew how awful it was at my house. I didn't have to tell them. They'd all seen all the black eyes and the bruises I was always getting. And it was so nice at their house, usually. There was never the anger, the drinking, the thrown furniture, the holes in the walls, the yelling. My old man, he'd get drunk and yell in this hoarse voice, he'd yell and scream at my mother and me and he'd hit both of us, but mostly me.
I wanted to be done with my stupid house and my stupid parents. I wanted to run away, but I wouldn't. I guess I wouldn't run away because it was kind of scary, but also because of the gang. They were enough for me most times.
After supper I went with Pony into his room and watched him do homework. He could really focus on it, it was kind of amazing. He wasn't paying any attention to me as he read chapters of some text books and did papers and all kinds of shit.
I didn't want to feel so jealous of him but I couldn't help it. He was smart, like really smart. He got put up a grade and everything. I really wasn't smart like that. A lot of stuff in school I just couldn't get. I hated that. And reading wasn't so easy, either. I saw Pony read all kinds of stuff, text books and other books for school and any book he got from the library or something, or the novels Darry sometimes read. He didn't know, he didn't understand, how it wasn't that easy for everybody. And even though his parents died, he still had Darry and Soda and he still had a better life at home than I would ever have. I wanted what he had, but I knew I could never have it.
I was falling asleep on his bed. I could hear the T.V. blaring from the other room, and it was quiet in here. He was just doing one homework assignment after another. I didn't do homework. My classes hardly ever assigned it and when they did I just didn't do it. I'd given up on it awhile ago. What was the point of it, anyway? I was probably gonna end up dropping out.
My mother screaming at me today hadn't helped anything. It was always the same. I'd go there and get screamed at or beaten or just ignored. I thought of just killing myself. That seemed a nice easy way out of this mess. Just kill myself, just cut into my wrists with my switchblade and bleed everywhere, until everything went dark.