Aaah! thank you so much to my reviewers! I love you all so much :) This chapter went in an entirely different direction than I intended when I started writing it, so I hope it isn't a total trainwreck.
Know my place, on my own, no poison in my bones
on my own, this is where I build my home
The picture wasn't finished by the time Darrel and Robin came home. Sodapop wasn't around yet either, nor was he home when she got up at ten o'clock in the afternoon to another shouting match between Pony and Darry.
Robin walked softly out of the bedroom, sneaking down the hall to the bathroom and locking the door behind her. She'd take a long shower, brush her teeth, maybe French braid her hair. By then the yelling would probably have stopped because Ponyboy ran out or Darry left for work maybe, and she could get breakfast.
"Hey, kiddo."
It was Sodapop who was sitting in the kitchen with a slice of chocolate cake when Robin came in barefoot, her braid dripping water down the back of her white tank top.
"Where'd Darry and Ponyboy go?" she asked, pouring a bowl of cereal with milk and taking it to the table.
"Work, out, I dunno," he said with a smile. Sodapop said just about everything with a smile, but this time it didn't last long. "I had a talk with Steve last night, hey."
Oh. That. She'd been meaning to forget that, push it to the back of her mind where she'd never have to look at it again, just pretend it never happened. Things like that didn't happen to flat-chested little junior high kids and it hadn't hadn't had not happened to her.
Robin pushed the bowl of cereal away. Sodapop put down his fork.
"I don't wanna talk about it, Soda." I just wanna forget it.
Sodapop looked almost … frustrated. His brow creased. "You can't just not talk about it, Robby. I mean, what if he'd … what if he'd hurt ya? What if he'd gotten … further."
She could cut the discomfort in his voice with a knife. No one wanted to talk about things like that, say those words, to their little sister. Even at the best of times. It was Darry who had to give her "the talk" when her period started, and he'd almost started sweating he felt so awkward and unsure. Finally she'd just told him she understood, and gone to Kristie's mother instead, because Kristie had gotten hers a few months before.
Robin cleared her throat. Maybe she should tell. Then everyone could just get over it and drop it.
"He did." She leaned back in the chair and crossed her arms. "Get further."
Sodapop leaned back too, blown away. Apparently Steve hadn't entirely understood her.
"That's rape, Rob."
Rape. What an ugly word. She didn't want to think about that word, connect it to what had happened to her. What happened to her – well she'd probably deserved it. Like Greg said, she had come to his car with him, hadn't she? She'd kissed him willingly. She was just a tease and she got what she deserved.
"No, it's not like that, okay Soda? Just forget it."
"Yeah. Forget it." Sodapop knew how to pick his battles, but something told Robin that he didn't really mean it at all.
x x x
Dance ended at three-thirty. Robin pulled her leotard off in front of the mirror in the change room with the other girls, forehead damp with sweat, face flushed. She replaced it with the tank top and cut-off denim shorts from earlier, but not before Colette Drapeau – who came from France when she was six, and brought it up at least six times a lesson – giggled and asked, "Has your stomach always been that big, Robin?"
Robin pulled her shirt up and faced the mirror sideways. Maybe there was a little bump by her bellybutton, but it wasn't really that big, was it? She pinched it with her thumb and forefinger – maybe a quarter of an inch? But she could still hear Colette and her friends cackling from the lobby, so she pulled down her shirt, grabbed her backpack, and left through the fire doors instead.
When she rounded the building, Robin met Kristie and Angela waiting for her in the parking lot. They were with Angela's brother Curly in an ugly sedan he'd probably stolen, because Curly Shepard wasn't even old enough to have a license yet.
"Hey!" Angela waved her over. "We're going to Jay's."
Jay's was on The Ribbon, which was somewhere Robin was explicitly told never to go to. It was a rough place – the toughest hoods and the boldest Socs. The Ribbon was a stretch of restaurants and small shops, known for drag races and pushers and there was a fight there at least every day. Last week someone was shot – that was when Darry put his foot down and said that under no circumstance was Robin to go.
"I gotta go home," Robin hedged. Angela never took "Darry said no" as an answer. Her parents and Tim told her about six things not to do every day by breakfast, but she still did them all, and she rarely got caught at it either. "I'm all … sweaty."
"We'll drive you," Kristie offered helpfully.
Robin shrugged. "Sure. Fine." She slid into the backseat beside Angela. Kristie was up front, riding shotgun with Curly, who looked exactly like his big brother except four inches shorter and a straighter nose. Curly was rough, but he wasn't battle-scarred like his brother – not yet.
"Hey," Robin leaned over to whisper, "is there … something going on between those two?" She nudged her head towards the front seat.
Angela rolled her eyes. "I hope not."
The house was empty when Robin went in to take her second shower of the day. She brushed her teeth, put on her paisley summer dress, left her hair to dry long and loosely wavey. On a scrap of paper she scribbled a note that she was out with Kristie and Angela, and left it on the kitchen table for whoever came home first. Then she was out the door, back into the sedan, and they were on their way.
Jay's wasn't crazy when they got there. A few couples sat here and there – Kristie waved at a girl with a round waist who was cuddled up with a beefy greaser Robin recognized from gym class last year. Other than that it was mostly all twenty-somethings on late lunch breaks from work, or giggling girls from the senior high.
They got a booth – Angela and Robin on one side, Kristie and Curly on the other – and Robin ordered a lemon water.
"No 7Up?" Kristie asked.
"You're skinny as a fuckin' stick, girl," Angela said, poking her in the ribs. "You should be gettin' a milkshake and fries."
Robin wrapped an arm protectively around her waist. "I'm not really hungry or anything."
Curly nodded. "No one wants a big girl. Loose the gut, kid."
The gut. "I don't have a gut."
The middle Shepard shrugged, stuffed his burger in his mouth.
"You ain't fat, Robby," Kristie said, shooting Curly a dirty look. "There's hardly anything to you."
Robin wasn't really sure which one was better.
There was a loud smash – everyone in the diner screamed, yelled, ducked, looked around wildly. One of the windows had shattered in, and a bullet was lodged in the wall on the other side. Three more gunshots sounded outside.
"Fuck!" Curly yelled, grabbing hold of Kristie's wrist and pulling her towards the door. He motioned for Angela and Robin to follow behind, which they did. In her mind Robin didn't think that going outside, where the shooting was happening, was a good idea, but Curly had a lot more street smarts than she did.
The scene outside looked wrong in the bright, blue-tinted summer evening. There were cars parked all along the street, people running towards them, or into buildings; away from the small crowd forming a circle in the middle of the road up in front of the derelict, going-out-of-business arcade.
They all pushed through the scattering bodies. It was with uncomfortable ease that Robin recognized the backs of some of the men in the circle; Dallas Winston's white-blonde hair, Tim Shepard's tall, catlike stance, even Steve and Sodapop were there, although they were hanging back pretty far. Watching – not getting involved.
"Soda!" Robin screamed when two more shots came from the center of the circle. She pushed past her friends to stumble forward, grabbing her big brother by the arm. He jumped, surprised, not expecting her to be there. She wasn't supposed to be. Darrel was going to kill her if Sodapop snitched – but she read something in his face that told her he wasn't going to say a word if she didn't.
Instead he hugged her to his chest. She managed to squirm around so her back was facing him, but he still never let her go. From here Robin could see inside the circle, could see faces and hands and clothes with blood splatters on them. And on the pavement, not moving, lying in puddles of blood soaking into the cracks of the asphalt, were Greg and his buddy George.
Robin felt her stomach drop down to her toes.
Someone burst through the other side of the circle. He was a big guy, in his mid-twenties, with fists clenched. "You're fuckin' dead, Shepard, you hear me?" He pointed to Tim, then to everyone standing around him. "You, an' your gang, an' anyone you've even fuckin' talked to in your life. You're all fuckin' dead."
No one called the cops on the east side. You settled your own scores.
Sodapop said, "River Kings. Those two were someone's kid brothers over there."
"Why'd they get shot?"
The crowd was dispersing now. Guns were being hidden in cars and people were peeling out of there. Others hoofed it, calling out to each other, going this way and that before the police came. Just because no one around here was going to do it didn't mean someone peeking out a storefront window wasn't going to try and protect their business.
Sodapop pushed Robin forward. "Get goin'. Go home, go straight home."
"Soda, why'd they get shot?" she repeated, but Sodapop gave her one more hard shove, then turned around to catch up with Steve who was hot-wiring a rust bucket a quarter mile down the line.
She couldn't see Angela or Kristie anywhere. Curly was waving her over to his car but she ignored him, choosing instead to take it on foot. She started towards the highway, but skipped over down an alleyway when the red and blue flashing lights peaked over the horizon.
Robin weaved in and out of alleys and empty streets until the sun went down. She was still on the east side, she knew that much, but where? It was nowhere near her street, or even Angela's. The houses were more ramshackle than she'd ever seen before; dogs chained up barked loudly when she walked by, and men on front porches called out to her, whistling, inviting her inside for a drink. She ignored them, kept her head down and arms crossed over her chest.
Darry was going to kill her.
Kill. She couldn't get the image of the boys on the ground out of her head. Had they killed the boys because of her? Had Sodapop told, and everyone ganged up on them over a little physical misunderstanding?
Robin jerked her head up when headlights flared in her face. A shiny red 1961 Impala SS 409 was rolling up slowly on the wrong side of the road – her side of the road. At first she froze, unable to move a muscle, barely even breathing – that was a new, expensive car. That was the kind of car that Socs drove, and although they didn't make a habit of jumping greaser girls, Robin wouldn't be surprised if they made a habit out of equally sinister things.
It pulled to a stop beside her, and threw open the passenger side door. Nervously she peered inside. The man in the front seat offering her a ride hardly made her relax, but she got in, because it was either that or wander around all night until somebody killed her.
Kill.
"You saw," Tim Shepard said lazily, not looking at her, just pulling the car back onto the right side of the road.
"Was that my fault?" Robin asked, not bothering to beat around the bush. She was too tired – mentally too – to play around. She just wanted a hot bath, a long sleep, and something to fry her brain of the memories from the past few days.
Tim snorted. "Nah. Maybe you were the trigger, but there's been shit goin' on since you were in diapers, kid."
"So everyone knows."
"No one knows shit," Tim said firmly. "Nothin' happened."
She liked that. Greg was dead – so nothing happened.
Tim played the radio and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel the whole way to her house. They didn't talk. She tried to study him but had to look away quick every time his eyes wandered over to her. He was better looking than Dallas – better looking than most guys, really – but he was cold. He was empty inside, she was sure of it. Maybe she hadn't seen it, and guns changed hands a lot in a circle of men all trying to run, but it was him who had shot them. Both of them. She just felt it.
"Thanks for the ride."
"See ya around."
Sodapop was waiting for her inside, along with Steve and Darry. The light was on in Ponyboy's room.
"Was that Tim Shepard?" Soda asked, peering out the window.
"Yeah. He gave me a lift home. I got lost."
"Got lost doing what, Robin Grace Curtis?" Darrel stood up off the couch. His face was stone, a carving of anger. "How many damn times have I told you to stay off the Ribbon, Robin?"
"I … I was with Kristie!"
"I don't care who you were with!" he roared. "You could have gotten killed out there! And getting a ride home from Tim Shepard?"
"He helped us," Sodapop cut in. "He's always been on our side."
"He's a thug," Darrel retorted. "Just like all y'all are going to be if you keep this shit up. Keep going on the path you're going, Robin, and you'll end up just like everyone else. You wanna be like Kristie's mother, Robin? Two kids, no husband, barely making ends meet because you started fucking around young and –"
"Darrel," Soda said, soft but loud. "This ain't about Mrs Mathews …"
"You're right, it ain't. It's about Robin, and this shit road she's going down. Hanging out with Angela Shepard, going to the Ribbon, getting in cars with Tim Shepard. He shot two goddamn kids tonight, two boys who did what?" Darrel was shouting, his voice loud and deep and thrumming in Robin's bones. "Kids of some River Kings, who ain't been to our side of town for years. And now Shepard's brought all this shit back down over two kids who ain't shit."
She'd never heard Darry swear so much. Never heard him let go like that, so angry that he was shaking, cussing, messing up the English he perfected in anticipation for leaving this life and going on to college, a place where greaser and social didn't mean a thing. He looked so mad Robin was scared he was going to hit her.
"They done a lot, Darry," Steve interjected, the first time he'd spoken since Robin got home. "They were hangin' 'round the nightly double past couple of nights, gettin' into fights…"
"Blowing off steam, like kids do." Suddenly he rounded back on Robin, grabbing her by the arms. "You stay the hell away from there, do you understand? From the Ribbon, from Angela Shepard – from any Shepard. You go to dance and Kristie's or you stay home!"
Fingers on her arms, squeezing, tight, bruises; fingers on her thighs and her stomach and hips and pulling and pushing and – her fist connected. Darry let go of her arms, his eyes wide. Her knuckles were red, already beginning to swell. Darry's jaw was rose.
Before he could do or say a thing – before anyone could – Robin turned around and bolted out the front door, down the steps, across the front yard; by the time Sodapop got to the door to dash after her, she was already through the vacant lot with no signs of stopping.
x x x
It was one o'clock in the morning when Robin saw the Impala again. It was parked in the driveway of Angela's house. Out front on the road was the car Curly had taken. Their parents' vehicle was gone, which meant that someone was working the night shift and someone else was at the bar – the usual.
Robin knocked once, twice, three times before someone came to the door. Curly, in a tee shirt and pyjama bottoms, looking like he'd just rolled out of bed to answer the door even though almost all the lights in the house were on.
"Angela ain't home," he said. He was about to shut the door in her face, but a sob hitched in her throat and he just couldn't.
"Shit," he sighed. He moved aside, letting her through. "She's at Mathews'. Can't you go there?"
Robin shook her head vehemently. "I c-can't. Darrel will find me e-easy." It was hard to talk, holding in tears, but greasers didn't cry. Especially not in front of other, tougher ones who happened to be your best friend's big brother.
"Shit. Shit," Curly repeated.
But she couldn't help it. Darrel, the screaming, grabbing her, Greg, on the ground dead, in the car with her, touching her - two kids who did what? Did nothing. Did nothing because it was most likely her fault anyway, and oh god she was going to throw up.
She heaved, holding her mouth.
"Don't do it on the fuckin' floor," Curly shouted, half pushing, half helping her to the bathroom. He let her in alone so she could kneel down in front of the toilet and bring up the water she'd had for dinner. There was no breakfast, no lunch, and soon it was just dry heaving and stomach acid and gut-wrenching pain. Her throat burned, and the tears wouldn't stop. She didn't even know what she was crying about anymore.
From somewhere in the house she heard Tim yell, "Who's here?"
Curly's voice came from right beyond the bathroom door – he was waiting for her. The idea helped her grab a strip of toilet paper and wipe her eyes up with it.
"Robin Curtis," he said. "Angela's little friend."
Footsteps. Curly backed away from the door.
"What's she doin' here?" Tim asked.
"Lookin' for a place to hide out from the sounds of things."
Silence. Then – "Give her Angel's room for the night. She ain't gonna be back 'til tomorrow night at least."
He walked away. Robin flushed the toilet, rinsed her mouth in the sink, pretended like she hadn't been crying and puking and eavesdropping when she came out of the bathroom and faced Curly again.
"Angela's room. You know where it is."
And he left her there, in the hallway by herself.
