disclaimer: i don't own this, susie hinton does, i just borrow blah blah blah.

1968.

After Johnnycake and Dallas died, nothing had really ever been the same for Ponyboy Curtis. It was like the last two or three years had been a huge whirlwind of awfulness, and he was stuck in the middle of it. There was never really any sense of normalcy. Everyone he loved died. That seemed to be how it always ended.

Only in threes, they say. Bad things happen in threes. First their parents, then Johnny and Dally, then what? Who was next? It had been years, but he still felt like he was waiting for someone else to pass on. It was a morbid existence, is the long and short of it.

And Sodapop was in Vietnam now. Ponyboy remembered the day his brother got his draft notice so clearly, it made him sick. Steve had cussed more creatively than he'd ever heard and swore up and down that it should have been him. He would get his draft notice soon enough, Two-Bit had snapped, so stop sayin' shit like that, we don't wanna lose anybody else.

That awful scene played over in Ponyboy's mind every night when he marked another day off on the calendar in the kitchen. He worried over Sodapop constantly; they all did. And there was always that lingering threat that someone else would get their draft notice, too. All of that gang warfare stuff had gone out of style some time ago, but the gang was still family, and they were dwindling in numbers rapidly.

Ponyboy sighed, capping the red felt-tip in his hands. "Four more months..."

"What was that?" Darry asked, glancing up from the newspaper he had been reading.

He shrugged and put the marker back in a drawer. "Nothin'. Soda comes home in four months."

"You don't gotta tell me, kid. I know." He set the newspaper down. "Have you finished your homework yet?"

"Almost. I was gonna go to the library tomorrow and finish the rest of it."

"Good deal. I wanna check it when you come home. Your grades have been slippin' lately, Pony, what's that about?"

Ponyboy slumped down in the chair across from his brother. Why did he think his grades were slipping? He had always been a little bit scatterbrained, sure, but it was getting worse these days. His head was always elsewhere; in the jungles of Vietnam worrying about Sodapop, or else off in la la land, trying to forget about all of those worries. "I don't know, Darry. Honest. But I'll do better."

"Yeah, you better. I don't want you flunking out of anything."

"I'm sorry... I've just been having a really hard time focusing lately. I really will do better. Promise."

Darry paused, standing up. "Hey... I'm right there with you."

"Are you going to bed?" Ponyboy asked, looking up.

"Yeah. You get to bed too."

"I will." He got up too, and started to trudge towards the bedroom he used to share with Soda. Nighttime was the worst since his brother was gone, and Ponyboy still hated sleeping alone. It was strange, now, to have to sleep without a warm body on the other side of the bed, and his nightmares were starting to come back. It was miserable.

"You need anything, you come get me, okay?"

"Alright. I will. Thanks, Darry."

Darry ruffled his hair good-naturedly. "No problem. 'Night."

"Goodnight."

He was supposed to be grown up, now. He was supposed to graduate next year, and was getting to be almost as tall as Darry. He was a big kid now. But he still hated sleeping alone.

Ponyboy's trip to the library the next day was half-hearted. He was exhausted, and the only homework he had left was his math, which required far more brain power than he had these days. He was half asleep when he heard the soft pitter-patter of footsteps on the worn carpet coming up behind him.

"Do you mind if I sit beside you? There aren't any other free tables," the owner of the footsteps explained in a soft voice. She had bright eyes and short, wavy red hair that curled in wisps around her face.

"Oh, yeah, of course," Ponyboy managed, trying to look awake. He studied the stranger beside him as she pulled a textbook and a spiral notebook out of her bag. She seemed so familiar, but he couldn't place her.

"Are you okay?" she cocked her head slightly. "I hate to intrude on your life, but you don't look well."

"Thanks for askin', but I'm okay..." he trailed off. Her eyes were green. "Um... this is gonna sound absolutely crazy, but I think I know you from somewhere."

She chewed on the end of her ink pen thoughtfully, examining him. "Oh, really? That's funny, 'cause I was thinking the same thing about you. Did you go to Will Rogers High School?"

"I uh, still go there, but yeah."

Suddenly, her eyes lit up. It had clicked who he was. "Gosh, Ponyboy Curtis, is that you? Do you remember me? I'm Cherry Valance."

She seemed so much nicer than she'd been when she was in high school.

"Glory, you cut all your hair off."

She shrugged. "I got tired of it. Dang, I hardly even recognized you. You look so grown up! How have you been?"

Ponyboy fidgeted with his pencil. Sure, it had been a few years since what he had mentally dubbed, "the disaster," but it was still a shock to see Cherry. It worried him, how she didn't even seem bothered. It had been a few years, but his now-deceased best friend had technically murdered her high school boyfriend. It's not like you just got over that kind of stuff. "Oh, I'm doin' okay, I reckon. Just tryin' to get through the days, you know. How about you?"

"Oh, I'm doing just fine. I'm going to college now. How's Sodapop and, oh, shoot, what's-his-name... Darry? How are your brothers doing?"

He didn't really want to talk about it, but she didn't know that.

"Darry's good. He's working his butt off harder than ever, but he's good. And Soda... uh... Soda's off fightin' the good fight in Nam."

Cherry's face fell. "Oh, I'm sorry to hear that, Ponyboy. That's awful."

"We got a letter from him a couple weeks ago. He seems to be doin' alright." It was better to keep it cool in front of this girl he hadn't seen in what seemed like aeons than to let her in on what he was really feeling. Truthfully, it was killing him. Truthfully, just talking about it was enough to make him start crying.

"I hope so. I'll be thinking about him."

"Thanks, I guess. He probably really needs it, over there in the jungle."

She sighed. "No wonder you don't look well. I bet you're worrying yourself sick over him being gone."

That was Cherry Valance. She was perceptive as ever. But there was something about her that was different, too. She was older, obviously, and more mature, but that wasn't it. It could have just been that now there wasn't the tremendous wall that was social class built up between them.

Yeah, the gang stuff was out these days, but better yet, the people who had been Socs, those vicious, violent rich kids, were just big hippies now. They welcomed their lower-class and even colored brethren into their lives because it made them feel cultured and interesting. But that wasn't Cherry, necessarily. She seemed to be the opposite of that, really; she was speaking to him out of genuine interest and concern.

Still, there was something about her that was drastically different. Ponyboy just couldn't put his finger on it. "If you want the truth, man, I really am."

"When does he come home? Or do you know."

"Four months," Ponyboy murmured. "He comes home in four months." They needed to stop talking about it, or he was going to start bawling right there in the library. He couldn't deal with thinking about it more than he had to, and yet, here Cherry Valance was, practically rubbing it in his face that Sodapop was on the other side of the world, fighting in a war he didn't even believe in. He changed the subject. "Hey, Cherry, you're pretty smart, right?"

She tilted her head again. A few stray pieces of hair hung in her eyes. "What do you mean?"

"Are you any good at math? 'Cause I've been pretty distracted from school, with Soda being gone and stuff. And, um, I'm not doin' so hot in my math class right now. Darry's liable to skin me alive if I end up flunking math."

"Do you want me to help you?"

"I mean, I don't wanna pull you away from your college stuff over there."

Cherry rolled her eyes. "Oh, that stuff's boring anyway. Math's always been my best subject. Can I look at what you're working on?"

She pulled the heavy textbook out from under his arms, and for the next hour and a half, they worked together on finishing his homework.

"Gosh, you're a lifesaver," Ponyboy told her when they had finished the assignment. "I didn't get any of that junk. I'm real good at my English, and reading deeper meanings into stuff... but I'm hopeless at math. It just goes over my head."

"You're an abstract thinker," she said, smiling slightly. "Hey, I'm usually free on Sunday afternoons... if you think it would help you, we could meet over here and I could start tutoring you or something. No offense, but you seem like you need all the help you can get in that math class of yours."

"Nah," he muttered. "I don't wanna trouble you or nothin'."

"Oh, no, it's not trouble at all. Really. I wanna help you." She looked at him earnestly. "Besides, you seem like you could use a friend right now."

Ponyboy didn't like that. Cherry Valance understood things that others didn't; he'd known that since the day he'd met her. They'd had a strange kind of connection, and she was very good at reading people. But for once, he didn't want somebody who understood him. Already fragile and sensitive, he didn't want anyone to know how much more vulnerable he had been since Soda left. "I dunno..."

"Truthfully... I need a friend, too," she murmured, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear. "I've needed a friend for a long time now."

And what the hell did that mean?

"Hmm..." he mulled over her offer. He certainly didn't like the idea that she knew just how close to falling apart he was, but her help could make a huge difference in his final grade in the class. Cherry was right, he needed all the help he could get his hands on where numbers and algebraic equations were concerned. Math was just too concrete, and there were too many rules. He couldn't keep up, and Darry would kick his ass if he failed. "...you can help me out, I guess. That's awful nice of you to do, Cherry."

"I promise you, it's no big thing. Do you want to just meet me here next Sunday afternoon, then?"

"Sure. That'd be great." He nodded quickly, standing up. "But I probably need to hit the road. It's getting late..."

"Oh, I'd offer to drive you, but I've still got stuff to work on here... I'm sorry, Ponyboy."

"Thanks... but that's okay. Maybe some other time. I'll see you next week."

When he got home, Two-Bit was sitting in the kitchen, drinking a beer and reading the paper that Darry had left there the night before.

"Two-Bit?"

"This shit makes me sick," he muttered in a rare moment of seriousness before crumpling up the newspaper and tossing it into the wastebasket. "You can't turn on the television or read the paper without hearing about this war."

"Where's Darry?" Ponyboy asked, choosing not to respond to Two-Bit's obvious frustration. It scared him to see that even the prankster among them was changing. Most of the time he was just good old Two-Bit Matthews, never graduated high school, always joking and having a laugh about something or other, but lately, they would find him getting serious sometimes. Too much death and destruction could do that to a person. Good old Two-Bit Matthews, the borderline alcoholic, it had sobered him up real good.

"Oh, hell if I know, kid. At work, probably. Where've you been?"

"I was doing my homework at the library... and the weirdest thing happened to me."

"The weirdest thing, huh? I bet you fifty bucks I could tell you something weirder."

"Hold on, lemme finish the story, okay? I was trying to do my homework at the library and this real cute college-lookin' girl sat down beside me."

"That's supposed to be weird?"

Ponyboy huffed. "It's weird because the girl was Cherry Valance! Remember her?"

"Oh, shoot... that real fierce little redheaded thing?"

"Yeah, her! And what's even weirder is, she was real nice to me. She helped me do my homework and she wants to start tutoring me in math. Crazy, right?"

"It's a small world, man. Speakin' of which, you know what I heard from Charlie down at the bar? I heard that the other one... aw, hell, Rudolph or Ryan or Randy or somethin' is like, livin' out of a van now. He wants to drive out to California and try to change the world. Damn hippies." He laughed, and took a sip of beer. The screen door slammed open and closed, and Darry suddenly appeared in the kitchen holding the mail.

"What are you doin' here, Two-Bit? Is everything okay?"

"Aw, yeah, everything's fine, Dar. It's just, my ma's been workin' double shifts and my sister's been with some little friend of hers all weekend. A man gets lonely!" he said melodramatically. "I was just chattin' it up with Pony over here. Hey, Pony, tell your brother who you saw at the library."

Darry looked at Ponyboy expectantly.

"I saw Cherry Valance. She wants to tutor me in math."

"Cherry Valance? Oh... oh." He recalled exactly who she was, and wanted to say, Didn't Dallas have a thing for her? But it didn't feel appropriate. "How crazy. Did you get your homework finished?"

"Yeah, she helped. Here." Ponyboy bent down and pulled a notebook out of his bookbag and handed it to Darry. "You can check it now."

He sat down and started thumbing through the pages, examining the equations intently. "Are you going to let her tutor you? It looks like she knows her stuff."

"Dang, y'all are booo-ring," Two-Bit interjected. "Playin' happy families over here. You're a regular ol' dad, Darry, you know that?"

They both disregarded him. He could just be drunk.

"Yeah, I guess I will. She said I looked like I needed all the help I could get."

"You got that right, Pony." he set the notebook down. "Looks good. What's that little girl up to, anyway?" Ponyboy didn't know why he was asking. He didn't think Darry had ever even met Cherry, outside of when she'd testified in court what seemed like so long ago.

"College, I guess. She says she wants to be a teacher."

"She doesn't seem the type," Two-Bit snorted.

But she did, Ponyboy thought. He could see it. She might have seemed cold, and even cruel in high school, but that wasn't her. She was smart. She understood the way peoples' brains worked. The only thing was, that worried Ponyboy a little bit. He didn't want to be picked.

And he was still mulling over their meeting, trying to pick her apart. Something was off about her. It hadn't been long enough for her to get old and wise, but it seemed like there was some timeless wisdom in her. Like she'd seen some things, and experienced some things that made her different now.

Well, hell. Hadn't they all?