March 5th, 1965

The house was dark and silent and freezing cold when I got back. Soda left a mess in the kitchen for me to clean up, which was typical of him. He knew I hated a messy kitchen. He also probably thought, I griped to myself as I washed up, that I didn't have the heart to put the plate and cup in his bed like mom used to do when we ate by ourselves and left the dishes. I felt bad for thinking that as soon as I thought it, though. Soda's not like that. He wouldn't think that.

I was peeling potatoes for dinner when the front door slammed open- I don't know if you can slam a door open, but Darrel has a knack for the impossible- and then closed again.

"You better be in this house!" He shouted into the dark hallway, which made me laugh out loud.

I put the knife down, turned toward the doorway, and started whistling the Twilight Zone theme. Not two seconds later Darrel thundered in, still in full roofing regalia, and the shock of actually finding me where I was supposed to be struck him momentarily dumb. He gestured furiously for a few seconds, until speech returned.

"What in Sam Hill were you-"

I shaded my eyes with one hand and peered past him. "Well, looky here! Here comes the highest horse in all the land, and who's that astride, why, it's Darrel S. Curtis, rodeo-"

Darry raised his voice to cover mine. "John Reilly comes into work this morning and says hey, saw your kid sister hustlin' cowboys-"

"Ok, that is not an accurate portrayal of-"

"I don't want to hear it!" Darry shouted. Lord, he could be loud when he wanted to. "You-"

The screen door banged and we both looked over to see Ponyboy standing there with a paper sack in his hand, wide-eyed and pale.

He looked back and forth between the two of us. "What's going on?"

"Nothing!" Darry and I snapped at the same time. Pony jumped, and I saw Darry wince slightly at the look of fear that flashed across the kid's face. Pony spooked so easy sometimes it was like dealing with an actual horse.

Darry calibrated. "It's nothing, Pone. You want to run over to Mrs. Mathews for me? She called and said she has some stuff for us."

"Canned peaches and a dress pattern," Pony said quietly, holding up the paper sack. "Two-Bit had it."

I grinned broadly at Darrel as his best excuse to get Pony out of the house so he could rip me a new one went soaring out the window. God bless Keith Mathews.

He ignored me. "You got homework?"

"Some," Pony said. I reached out for the paper bag and he gave it to me.

"Do it in your room while I talk to your sister."

Pony went without protest. He was intimidated by Darry's new role as Head of Household, and he had never been my biggest fan, so I doubted there was much chance that he would try to eavesdrop, but I knew Darry wouldn't want to take that risk. He and Soda- and hell, me too- had warned Pony away from Merrill's operation enough times that he wouldn't want the kid to know what I'd been up to.

Darry knew I knew it, and glared intensely at me in hopes that it would have the same effect as a nice long screaming lecture. And it worked, because I did the same thing I would have done if he was screaming at me: opened the bag to see what dress pattern Mrs. Keith had sent over.

It was a cute little sleeveless with a chelsea collar. I didn't have any yellow fabric, which would have been perfect, but I was sure I could find something cheap and baggy in a bargain basement and cut it up. I set the pattern on the table and took the peaches into the pantry.

"We're not done," Darry said quietly, but no less furiously for that.

I ignored him and started stacking cans on the shelves next to the jars of green beans and tomatoes that my mother and I had canned last summer. There were only two jars of tomatoes left.

I had a sudden image of her in the garden, eating a tomato right off the vine. Nothing's better than a fresh tomato. She would laugh when I made a face.

I pushed that thought away. Darrel posted himself in the pantry doorway like a prison guard, and it took all I had not to roll my eyes. I pulled the roll of bills out of my pocket as I set the last jar down and turned toward him, eyebrows up like I had no idea what his problem was.

"Buck's?" he hissed, gripping the doorframe so hard his knuckles turned white.

"Dough," I said, unable to resist the pun. I fanned the bills in his face.

Darry swatted my hand away. "Do you have any idea-"

"Ok, first of all, I took precautions," I began, but then thought the better of it.

"What precautions? You got a Quaalude-sniffing dog hidden in your purse? Jesus, Carrie!"

He paused as if expecting me to actually answer his question. I felt that telling him that my precautions were guilt-tripping Two-Bit into orchestrating who was at the table and paying Dally to play pharmacist would not further the conversation in a helpful way.

"I'll grant you that it was a risk if you'll acknowledge there was a fuckin' reward," I folded my arms and glared at him. "Unless you paid off the funeral between now and this morning."

The mention of the funeral, as always, made him go dead white and shut up. Which made me close my eyes to keep from tearing up.

I hadn't meant to use it like that.

We both took a minute to look at the floor and collect ourselves. Silent agreement, I guess. It was like taking the needle off a record, and I knew in a few seconds we'd start again on the same song.

I leaned back against the shelves and tried not to sigh out loud. "Look, I know, it's awful to talk about it, but-"

"That's not what this is about," Darry said with new fury. "You can't hang around back-alley moonshiners like some two dollar whore. You can't. Mom would of shot you before she let you set foot in Buck's in a full suit of armor, much less a-" he looked me up and down for ammo, but as I was wearing wide-legged 50's slacks and Soda's ratty sweater, he was forced to let that sentence hang unfinished in the air.

"Hobo uniform?" I spread my arms wide and did a little softshoe. Darry snorted, almost smiled, caught himself, and got angrier.

"This isn't a game, and hell's frozen solid if that's what you were wearin' last night," he said furiously, jabbing a finger at me like mom used to do when she was mad. "The creeps in that place do shit to girls that you wouldn't believe! And you probably wouldn't believe, since you think you can just waltz-"

"Save it," I snapped back. Shit I wouldn't believe, my ass. I wasn't about to listen to my brother tell me how to fucking be a girl. "It happened. You can't change it. Take the money and send a check to the funeral home."

I threw the bills at his chest, shouldered past him, and went out through the back door. He didn't yell after me, but it wouldn't have mattered if he did.

I was hardly out of the yard before I regretted it, but only because I was damn hungry. I should have walked out after dinner, not before.

I headed for the Randle's, mainly because I didn't have anywhere else to go.

The Randle place and the three houses on either side of it were in the best condition of all the houses in the neighborhood, because Mr. Randle kept all seven of his sons as busy as he feasibly could in what was turning out to be an unsuccessful bid to keep them out of trouble. There is a tight coil of boundless energy that seems to be the Randle birthright. I had once observed four of them spend a blazing July morning rebuilding a porch and the afternoon playing the most violent version of football ever invented. And I have no doubt that they spent that evening raising hell on the ribbon.

Two of the younger ones were wrestling in the front yard as I came up. I could never remember their names, so when they stopped to stare at me I just sort of waved.

"Why are you dressed like that?" said the smaller one, making a face. The bigger one laughed.

I rolled my eyes. "Jesus, already? Ain't you a little young for this shit?" Do boys start judging how girls dress at ten, now?

His face clouded up with confusion and I went past them into the house. Steve's car was out front, so presumably he and Soda were inside, but I didn't care about that. I wanted to see Ronda.

Ronda Randle, the only girl out of all eight kids and the only reason I was still a sane person after the past few months, was burning a complicated pattern into the top of a box when I walked into her bedroom without knocking. She didn't so much as glance up when I walked in.

Ronda had the coolest room of anybody I knew. She'd put contact paper up in her window to make it look like stained glass, and she'd managed to get deep blue shag carpeting from somewhere. All across the ceiling she'd tacked up old black and white movie posters, and her bedspread was a red and purple patchwork that wouldn't have looked good in any other place in the world. She made it all work with little red accents on the dresser and hanging purple scarves on her closet door.

"All on your lonesome, cowboy?" she said by way of greeting.

"How'd you know it was me?"

"Everyone else knocks." Her tight curls were pulled back high on her head, which she almost never did because she thought it was unflattering, but I guess that didn't matter when it came to wood-burning.

Bullshit. "Your brothers knock?"

She held up a long-nailed hand and made a claw. "Yep."

I flopped face-first down on her bed. "What are you making?"

"Birds on a branch. Not what I would have chosen, personally, but Mrs. Burkeholder is convinced that is what her daughter wants."

Ronda was a fantastic artist. Her thing just then was wood burning designs into little wooden jewelry or cufflink boxes and then staining them. Ladies at church often paid her to make one for their kids. I could never figure out how she got her lines so sure and steady with something that didn't allow for erasing, but they always turned out looking great.

She was sitting by the window to let the smoke out, and when she paused briefly to look over at me the wind blew her hair forward. "So, how's life in the criminal underworld?"

Gossip columnist indeed. Two-Bit had evidently been wagging his tongue. "I don't know why you would ask that of me, an innocent forest maiden who has never so much as taken an apple from a stranger."

Ronda laughed. "Hey, if anyone should be making Snow White jokes, it's me. I'm the one who's gotta live with Dopey, Jerky, Surly, Horny, Grouchy, Grumpy, and Loud. How much did you make last night? I didn't even know you could play cards."

"I can't, really. Dallas helped."

"Well there's a first. How'd you swing that?"

"I didn't. Two-Bit did."

"Well, look at you, demurely denying all credit. You're turning into quite the charming young lady."

She laughed, and I laughed too. Ronda had a smart mouth but there was never any malice in it. At least not toward me. We'd known each other our whole lives. We were the same age, we went to the same school, our birthdays were the same month, and we lived on the same street. We couldn't have been enemies if we'd tried. Fate- if not my mother- wouldn't have allowed it.

"How'd things pan out at home?" she asked.

I shrugged. I didn't want to talk about it. I didn't mind fighting with Darry, but what we were fighting about was one of those things that I'd rather not think about, if I could help it.

I couldn't help it. The funeral home kept sending bills.

Just then there was a knocking at the door, and before Ronda could answer Steve pushed it open. "Hey, I need those three bucks you owe me."

"Alright," she said amiably. "I got two, but I'll have to go down and get the third from mom. Hang on. Try not to make out with Carrie while I'm gone."

Steve and I rolled our eyes in unison and she laughed as she sauntered out of the room.

Tragedy is a strange catalyst. My parent's death had changed my relationships with almost every single person I knew. Mostly it was because I just lost the energy to care, but I guess, overall, it did make things more honest in some ways. And more awkward in others.

Before New Years, Steve and I had gotten along fine. He was best friends with my younger brother and I was best friends with his older sister, and everything was just...uneventful. I never minded his bluntness. He never seemed to mind mine.

After the funeral, boy, the two of us couldn't seem to get within yards of each other without striking up a kind of awkwardness that overwhelmed everything in a ten foot radius. It was like we both lost the ability to talk normally. And even if we managed to, it was weird.

To try to offset it, I pushed myself up off the bed and moved over to the window to check out Ronda's work. She'd left the wood burner plugged in. I resisted the urge to touch the tip.

Steve cleared his throat, and like magic, I knew what was going to happen next. I turned my back towards him, but I knew that wouldn't help.

"Your mom wouldn't want-" he started softly. I pivoted.

"Steve," I said, just as softly, "do you know how much a double funeral costs?"

I watched a couple versions of is that what this is about followed by some but Soda never said's flit across his face until he settled on: "No."

In that no there was an invitation to tell him, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. We never talked about actual money in my family. It was like it was this nebulous, embarrassing thing, too secret and shameful to nail down with real numbers. My parents whispered about it in the kitchen at night. Darry hid bills in his dresser drawer and clammed up if you asked him what we owed. Soda and I had to go in there at the end of January and find out for ourselves.

I didn't want to be like that. It certainly hadn't done us any good so far. I wanted to believe there was nothing wrong about saying nine hundred and seventy dollars out loud, but I just couldn't do it. Maybe partly because I didn't want to think about my dad's work buddy in the doorway saying i'm sorry, honey, it's the best price we could get. Maybe partly because it was a literal number representation of how much two human lives cost. Maybe partly because my mouth was filling up with bile.

I spit out the window. Steve winced. I had a sudden image of myself as a cowboy swaggering out of Buck's into the darkness, drunk and bloated and mad as hell. High as a fucking kite.

After a moment of painful silence, he cleared his throat again.

"It's bad, huh?"

I shrugged. "Insurance didn't cover shit, and I want it paid off."

The church took up a collection, but my daddy had burned too many bridges for much good to come of that. Overall we were able to pay about three hundred up front and Darry and I talked the director into giving us a few months to make good on the rest of it, and at the time he was sympathetic- I guess it would be hard not to be in the face of two freshly minted orphans- but one letter came in February and another on the first of March.

Burke's Funeral Home and Crematory. If I had to see that letterhead one more time-

"What are you gonna do?"

I genuinely appreciated that. Two-Bit, Darry, Soda- all of them would have given me the you know you can't do this again, right, spiel and taken five minutes to carefully lay out why hustling the same place twice wouldn't work so that my slow tiny girl brain could understand it. Steve skipped that step. I didn't know or care if it was respect or restraint, but it made me more inclined to answer honestly.

"No fucking idea. Get a job, I reckon."

He started fumbling with his cigarette lighter, flipping it over and and over again in one hand.

"Yeah," he said after a moment.

Silence filled the space between us like water. I could have scooped a handful up and flung it out the window.

Pain- I'll say pain, because I don't want to say longing, because there's something about that word that's so dramatic and raw and awful that I could never bear to apply it to what I was feeling- started filling up my chest, and I knew in a minute or two I was going to have one of those spells where I couldn't breathe slow and my throat felt like it was closing up and my vision started getting narrow. I closed my eyes against it and prayed. Not here. Not now.

Ronda appeared on the scene just in time. "Hey, wildcats, slow down in here. The party's gettin' too loud," she laughed at her own joke and elbowed Steve out of the way to get her purse off her bureau. "Here's your money, Steven. Now beat it, will you?"

Steve saluted sardonically and shut the door behind him. As soon as he did I stuck my head all the way out the window and tried to breathe as deep as I could. The bare branches of the oak tree next to the house seemed too dark against the sunset. Too skinny and naked and icy cold. How could they stand it? All the whole winter? How could they bear it for so long?

I wanted to reach out and snap off a twig and bring it inside, but that was stupid and pointless and if I could just breathe right-

Suddenly Ronda was beside me with her hand on my back. "You ok? You sick?"

I shook my head. She stayed there, though, and didn't say anything else. She knew about the episodes and all, but I was still embarrassed that it was happening. But it helped that she stayed there and didn't say anything and left her hand on my back.

After another minute I could feel it starting to recede and pulled back inside. "I'm alright now."

"Was it something Steve said? I'll kill him."

"No," I said, and left it at that. I sat down on the edge of her bed and looked down at my beat up tennis shoes.

"Hey," she said after a minute. "You hungry? I could eat a tiger whole."

I'd forgotten how hungry I was. My stomach seemed like it was folding in on itself, and I was feeling so tired just then that all I could do was nod.

"Let's go to the Dingo," said Ronda. "You can borrow my green dress. You wear it better than me anyway. Come on, I could use some fries, and my mom is making her famous egg and cheese casserole for dinner. Let's get out while we can still stand the sight of food, huh?"

"Alright," I said, after another minute. I needed to start applying for jobs, and the Dingo was as good a place as any to start.