I laid back on Ponyboy's bed and thought about it, just killing myself. Everything was shit. School was shit, my parents were awful, everything was just…I don't know. I didn't think I could take much more. I rolled over and covered my face in the bed.
"You going to sleep, Johnny?" Ponyboy said, and I rolled back over and looked at him. He was sitting at his desk with all his books opened and papers in front of him and everything.
"No,"
I sat up and lit up a cigarette, smoked and watched him go back to his schoolwork. I wouldn't even bother with school work, and I guess it was because I didn't get any of it. I was out a lot, I skipped, so it made it hard to follow along.
"Did you hear my mother yelling at me earlier?" I asked him, and he glanced over at me and just by looking at his face I knew he heard. I hated that.
"Yeah," he said, and went right back to all his books and stuff. It was a nice distraction for him. I didn't have that, I didn't have any kind of distraction. It was definitely not school. I hated school. All the teachers treated me like I was just dumb, and a lot of the time I agreed with them. And I never drank or nothing because of my old man, both my parents. They both drank a lot, and just the smell of alcohol bothered me.
I watched Pony flip through pages and write stuff down and I thought about my old man when he was younger, like my age. Maybe he just drank with his friends, got drunk on the weekends, acted like Two-Bit and Dally when they drank, and maybe it had all seemed like so much fun then. It was weird to think of him being my age, even existing before I was born, but of course he did. So maybe Two-Bit and Dal might end up similar to him, drinking because they had to, so they wouldn't get that awful hangover, sending their kid out to the liquor store in the mornings for a pint of whatever whiskey they wanted. And that kid would go or he'd get a beating, maybe it would be the same.
I just needed a break once in a while, a way to get away from it all, but there was no way to do it. There was nowhere to go. I'd go back to my house thinking things would be different like an idiot, because I knew they wouldn't be different.
"I wish I could just kill myself," I said, but I hadn't meant to say it out loud. Pony stopped what he was doing and looked at me in alarm, then he came over to me and I pulled away.
"No, Johnny, you can't do that. You…you can't kill yourself," But Pony didn't understand that I could. I could. I'd always imagined I'd just slice through my wrists, and I knew enough about it that you go the length of them, not across. It works faster that way. And I could do it because my life was miserable. I got beatings at home all the time. For years. Years. It does something to you. It takes something away. Pony had something, some kind of confidence and trust in other people and the world that I didn't have anymore.
"Yeah, I know," I said, wanting to lie to him and tell him I wouldn't do that, wanting to reassure him. But all those words of reassurance weren't quite coming. I looked at him staring at me, that worry in his eyes, and that was nice. At least he was worried, and I knew all the others would be worried, especially Dally. But they couldn't make things up to me, they couldn't take the place of my parents, they couldn't stop the beatings and me getting screamed at and getting ignored. There was just nothing any of them could do about any of it.
"Just, stay here tonight," Pony said, and I wondered if he thought I was gonna go and kill myself tonight. I wasn't, at least I didn't think so. Did he want to keep an eye on me? I squinted at him.
"Pony, I ain't gonna go and kill myself,"
"Yeah, but just stay here anyway, okay?"
And I shrugged, and felt sorry I'd said that and ended up worrying him. I didn't want to be another death for him, like his parents were. So I'd stay here to make him feel better.
"Okay," I said.
