In which I include a piece of terrible meta-writing that sticks out like a proverbial sore thumb.

By Monday, Lucy's marriage to Dallas Winston was common knowledge. People were whispering about her in the hallway, and more of her loved it than hated it. She had always secretly wanted to be at the heart of a scandal. That way, when she was vindicated, she could have the last laugh. Of course, there wasn't much room for vindication here. She had married Dallas Winston, but what was the public payoff? When she graduated without a newborn? It hardly seemed worth it to brag about that.

At lunch, Lilly had the most questions. Lucy was in such a bizarrely good mood that she didn't even mind the interrogation.

"What do your parents think of Dally?" Lilly asked.

"Can't imagine they like him too much," Katie said. "I mean, he's Dally."

"They give him a pretty wide berth," Lucy said. "My mom's just plain terrified of him, which I think is funny, considering he never goes anywhere near her. My dad doesn't seem to mind too much that he's there, but I think he's hoping we'll fall in love or something."

"But I thought you did love him," Jane interrupted. "I thought that's what we'd been spending months tryin' to get you to see."

Lucy shrugged, taking a big bite of her sandwich so she could avoid talking to Jane.

"I guess I do," she finally said, her mouth full of bread. "But he doesn't feel the same way about me. He can't. So, it's better to … I don't know. It's better to condition myself into not loving him again."

She leaned over to talk to Sadie, who was clearly sitting on something she had to say.

"Doesn't sound like a real healthy relationship, does it?" Lucy asked Sadie directly. "I mean, if you're gonna be married, you might as well love each other, right? Can't have it so that the wife loves the husband, and the husband doesn't give a hang about the wife."

"I'd say that describes a lot of marriages around here," Katie (rightly) pointed out.

"Shut up, Katie," Lilly said. "You're not helping."

Meanwhile, Sadie shrugged, trying to think of the best way to tell Lucy what she thought.

"I know what you're trying to do," she said. "Trust me. It won't work."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yes."

"And what am I trying to do?"

"You're trying to make yourself miserable so that you can divorce Dally before you think he can divorce you."

Lucy bit her tongue to keep from swearing—not at Sadie, at herself. Sadie looked at her with a gleam in her eye, one that said, "You know I'm right."

"I don't think you're doomed to fail, you know," Sadie said, turning back to her lunch like her words hadn't been a bomb dropped on the lunch table.

"What do you mean?" Lucy asked. "Of course we're doomed to fail. My mother's terrified of him, we hardly communicate, and when we do, it's simple questions. I ask him if he's seen my other shoe, he says no. He asks me if he's allowed to smoke in the house, I say no, but he does it, anyway. I ask him if he wants me to …"

She looked at Lilly, who still wasn't in the place to talk about anything that reminded her of her own rumor mill just yet.

"Well, you get the picture. We might be married, but we're no couple."

"I guess that's not wrong," Sadie said. "But I don't think that's the way it's always going to be. And don't think I'm not wise to all your little games, either. There's almost nobody I understand better than I understand you, and I know what the two of you think you're doing."

Lucy sighed a little bit, knowing there was nothing she could ever successfully hide from Sadie. She'd tried, of course. She tried to hide her initial feelings for Dally. She tried to hide her rage. It didn't seem to matter what she tried. Sadie could always open her up and take out exactly what she was thinking … exactly what she was feeling. It was a gift Lucy had only seen in one other person, and he looked just like Sadie.

"You think you're dragging this out so that Soda and I see what a big mistake we made in pushing you together," Sadie continued. "But that's not going to work. We ain't the ones who told you that you needed to get married. You're the ones who decided that part for yourselves."

Lucy sunk into her chair. And to think, she thought she'd forgotten that little detail.

"I don't think you really made the wrong call, gettin' together," Sadie said. "I think it's a little strange you got married in two weeks like this is some kinda bogus fairy tale, but I don't think the two of you together is the wrong call. Now, you just gotta ask yourself. Do you think it was the wrong call?"

Lucy didn't answer. It wasn't that she was lost for one. She wasn't. It was that she was lost for anything that made her look strong, and she wasn't going to get weak now.

"'Bout the only thing that's good about livin' with Bennet's folks is that they always got food or somethin'," Dally said. He was hanging around Soda and Two-Bit (who, because it was Monday, decided to skip school) at the DX, trying to forget that he was almost looking forward to when Lucy would be finished with school. "Ain't never gotta worry about gettin' somethin' yourself 'cause they just get it for ya."

He'd said the same thing to Lucy before she left for school that morning. She'd kissed him and said, "'That boy will be hung! I know that boy will be hung!'" He didn't quite get what she was saying, so he told her she must have known that he was already hung. Lucy pretended like she didn't get a kick out of that one. Dally knew she did.

"You sure that's the only good thing about livin' with her?" Two-Bit asked. "Don't you get to be with her?"

"Ah, yeah, it's real easy," Dally said. "Gotta squeeze myself in on a Friday while her old lady's gettin' somethin' from the store, and her old man's at some meetin' or another. Real easy. Real fun."

He looked over at Soda, who was flipping through the pictures in a magazine on the counter. Soda was trying to look like he was staying out of Dally's business, but everyone knew he was listening.

"You must feel awful fuckin' stupid," Dally said. "Pushin' me together with Bennet like that."

"Ya think I feel stupid for givin' you a place to live where people are lookin' after you? Ya think I should feel stupid about that? 'Cause I'm thinkin' even you know how big a load that is."

Dally grumbled something unintelligible and leaned harder on the counter. Why wasn't he angrier? He pushed the question out of his head. It wasn't important.

"Her old lady thinks I'm some kinda devil or somethin'," he said. "I don't know."

"Well, is she wrong?" Two-Bit asked.

"You say one more word, and I'll deck you so hard you won't even remember it when you wake up tomorrow."

Two-Bit backed off, and Dally wondered if he remembered anything about that night behind Jay's when Two-Bit tried to come onto Violet. It didn't seem like it. Maybe it wasn't worth it to remind him. Dally turned back to Soda, trying to get him to admit that he and Sadie had fucked everything up.

"Her old man's always askin' me if I know what he's readin'," Dally continued. "I tell him I can read the title on the cover, but I don't fuckin' know what happens in fuckin' Little Dorrit. I don't even know what a Dorrit is."

"I don't know why you're askin' me," Soda said.

"I ain't askin' you shit. I'm tellin' you. I can't live in a house where the old lady thinks I'm the devil, the old man gives me fuckin' English tests, and I can't screw my wife."

He felt suddenly strange. He'd used the word wife a few times since Thursday afternoon, but this was the first time he'd referred to Lucy as my wife. Hopefully, neither Two-Bit nor Sodapop noticed his words.

But, of course, they did. Two-Bit burst out laughing, seeming to forget that Dally had threatened to deck him not three minutes earlier. Soda let out a couple of low chuckles himself, but Dally (somehow) knew he wasn't laughing at him. It wasn't clear what he was laughing at, exactly, but it wasn't Dally.

"I'm sorry, man!" Two-Bit managed between embarrassing guffaws. "It's just … you got a wife! You! I was pretty sure you'd be dead by now!"

Dally swore at him, but in reality, he had been thinking the same thing since his eighteenth birthday had come and gone. He'd been nothing but trouble—worse than trouble—since the day he was born to a fourteen-year-old girl and her fifteen-year-old sometimes-steady with a premature drinking problem. How could someone with all that against him make it to eighteen? How could someone with all that against him make it to eighteen only to marry a professor's daughter?

"I'm serious, man," Two-Bit kept on, not getting the damned hint. "I had a dream this summer you'd get yourself killed 'round the end of August. Johnny was in it. Pony, too."

"Shut up, Two-Bit."

He turned back to Soda, trying to make him admit that what he and his crazy-as-shit twin sister had asked Lucy to do was a mistake, and they should get divorced and out of each other's lives right away. Couldn't Soda just tell him now so he could get out? He knew Lucy wanted to beat him to the punch, but he wasn't going to let her off that easy. He had to be the one to dump her ass—had to be the one to leave her crying. That was what he knew how to do, and he was good at it.

"It don't sound like fun, do it?" Dally asked, but Soda wouldn't make eye contact. "Livin' with a couple of folks who can't stand me and a broad who …"

He stopped. He couldn't think of much bad to say about Lucy. It wasn't much fun to feel her up when he knew her folks could walk in at any second, and sometimes it drove him crazy when she said shit he didn't understand. But none of that was bad about Lucy. Lucy just happened to be there when bad shit was going down. She was … well, he'd said it before, so there wasn't any problem with saying it again. She was funny.

"Dally, if you can't bring yourself to say a bad word about Lucy," Soda said, still not looking him in the eye, as though that would be too much for one day, "then maybe …"

"Then maybe I ain't lookin' hard enough?"

"Then maybe you ain't as low as you think you oughta be."

He paused, thinking again. What was with all this thinking? With Sylvia and the other broads before her, he'd never had to think this much or even at all. He would move—wordlessly, thoughtlessly, impulsively, never worrying what she would say to him the next time she saw him, whoever she was. But there was no part of him that could ever possibly enjoy living with the Bennet folks. They weren't his people, and they didn't want to be. It was just as well. He didn't want to be with them, either. He had to remind himself of that, otherwise he'd just keep thinking.

"You said it yourself the other night," Soda kept on. "I'm dumb, but I ain't stupid. Me and Sadie know what you and Lucy are tryin' to do, and we ain't gonna let you. Nobody's gonna break you up 'cept you guys."

"I don't think Lucy's plannin' on breakin' up with you any time soon, Dally," Two-Bit added. "She spent all her time thinkin' about you and talkin' about you before. In case that's what you're worried about."

"I ain't worried about anything."

Lucy would leave him if he didn't act soon, but he wasn't worried about that. It was just a fact of life, like how he was nothing more than a hood whose father hated him. He didn't know why he had to be the one to leave her first. All he knew was that it was true. How … there was no correct word for what it would be, but it would really be something if the only person who'd ever seen him as a whole person just up and left him. He would understand, but he wouldn't …

He stopped himself and lit a cigarette. That would do it. That was movement.

"Y'know, me and Sadie were talkin' about it the other night," Soda said. "And we thought of somethin'."

"That you're a couple of idiots?"

"Naw, that Sadie dared Lucy to ask you to marry her, but you're the one who said yes. Nobody said nothin' about that."

Dally took a long drag. Keep moving. Keep moving. Don't think on it. Keep moving.

"I think you made the right call, sayin' yes," Soda kept talking. When did he become such a royal pain in the ass, anyway? Finally, he looked up from the magazine he was idly thumbing through and made eye contact with Dally. It was almost what he would, one day, learn was called the uncanny. Those were the same eyes that had scared him into showing up at Bennet's birthday party a month before. He'd listened to them then. Why did he keep listening to these kids? They didn't know jack shit.

"Point is," he said, "whadda you think about it?"

Dally didn't answer. It wasn't that he didn't have a thought all prepared and ready to go—apparently, that was all he ever did anymore, think—but he didn't want to speak. To speak to Soda would make him look weak, and saying yes to Lucy Bennet's marriage proposal was already weak enough. He couldn't afford another blow … unless Lucy Bennet was the one dealing it.

One night, about two weeks into their seeming sham of a marriage, while Mrs. Bennet was (thankfully) at a friend's house for some kind of something (neither Dally nor Lucy paid much attention when she said she would be gone for a few hours), and Lucy was upstairs finishing an essay on some massive novel due the next day, Dally was left alone in the living room with Dr. Bennet. Though Dally threw on his leather to leave the place he'd convinced himself was worse than jail to go meet up with Shepard, Dr. Bennet stopped him at the door. Against his better judgment (better?), he listened, turned around, and let Dr. Bennet talk at him. He held up one of his massive books.

"Do you know what this is?" Dr. Bennet asked.

Dally scanned the cover with his eyes. He'd seen the same copy of the same book in Lucy's bedroom—his bedroom now, too—but he didn't know what it was, really.

"Says Tess of the … of the … don't make me fuckin' say words I don't know."

"Tess of the d'Urbervilles," Dr. Bennet finished for him. "You ever heard of it?"

"If I can't even say it, do you think I've heard of it?"

"It's one of your wife's favorite books. I thought it was entirely possible."

Dally snorted contemptuously. He hated it when Lucy's folks referred to her as your wife in front of him. It felt so smug, like they were trying to prove some sort of point. Lucy was too good to be your wife. And yet, even though that felt very clear to him, there was always a plate for him on the kitchen table. Always a spot for him in the living room (which, to his abject horror, they insisted on calling the family room). What was that about?

"The book's about a woman named Tess who loses her virginity to a man called Alec," Dr. Bennet said. "Although, it's not exactly Tess's choice, if you know what I mean."

Dally nodded, after seeing the look on his face, so did Dr. Bennet. He wasn't sure if Dallas Winston had any boundaries, and there was no way he could have known that was one of the only ones. He'd never hit a woman, and though he tried to force a kiss on Cherry Valance the night he got out of jail and found out that Sylvia had been two-timing him again, he'd never have … not when he thought about what he thought might have happened to Violet when they were just kids.

"Well, Tess gives birth to a baby named Sorrow, who dies just after he's born," Dr. Bennet continued. "Eventually, she finds that guy, Alec, and she stabs him to death in his bed."

Dally was still nodding. "Good for her. Sounds like a tough broad."

"She is. And so is my daughter. And I'd like to make sure that my daughter is …"

Dr. Bennet searched for the right word, and unfortunately, safe was entirely wrong. He knew that Lucy could never be completely safe with Dallas Winston. He had old scores to settle and new ones to create, which was part of why he'd stopped the kid at the door that night. But it wasn't just that Lucy had chosen to marry Dallas Winston, of all the people she could have chosen. It was that love was never safe. If he knew his daughter (and he did—better than he knew anyone else in the world, even his wife), he knew that she really did love this hood. There was a light behind her eyes that Dr. Bennet didn't see in her very often, but he always knew what it meant when he was there.

"I wanna make sure my daughter knows what she's in for with you," Dr. Bennet finally said. "And I wanna make sure that you're not planning to hurt her on purpose."

Maybe it was wishful thinking. He knew it was a stupid thing to ask. But he knew he needed to. If Lucy weren't going to ask the questions she needed to be asking, then Dr. Bennet would ask them for her. It was how they helped each other.

Dally didn't know what to say, which was a good thing, really. It meant that he was finally learning how to shut out all that damned thinking. But as soon as he thought he had nothing to say, the thinking started back up again. It was so loud, and he just wanted it to shut the hell up. His pleas didn't matter. The thoughts just kept coming, one right after another, talking over each other. Worst of all was that none of the voices sounded like his own. There was his old man, Tim Shepard, Darry, Soda … so much of Soda, which didn't make sense. Then, in the back of his mind, there was Lucy. He couldn't figure out what Lucy was trying to tell him, but he knew she was there. It almost made him feel a certain kind of way, but he didn't have time for that. Not at all.

Dr. Bennet tried again. He was going to skip the prodding and go straight for the jugular. Maybe that would catch him so off guard that it would work. He narrowed his eyes at the boy standing in front of him and went for it.

"Do you think you could love her?"

Dally didn't say anything. He couldn't. That wasn't a question he knew how to answer, and that wasn't a thing he thought he could do or feel. He knew it was what Bennet wanted. It was what every part of her cried out for. Not like she was desperate, but that she was such a fucking person that it was what she needed. He couldn't give it to her. He couldn't answer that question. He wouldn't.

But he could talk about her in other ways.

"Hey," he said. "What's it mean when that daughter of yours looks at me and says, 'That boy will be hung! I know that boy will be hung!'?"

Dr. Bennet laughed out loud, and Dally wasn't sure if that was a good or a bad sign. What did it matter? He was going to leave this house in two weeks, anyway. If Lucy weren't tired of trying to piss off the twins with their marriage, then he'd just pack up and leave without even telling her. That would show her to get married on a fucking dare.

It would show him, too, but he wouldn't think of it that way.

"It means she's quoting Oliver Twist at you," Dr. Bennet said. "It's Dickens."

"Two of 'em? In where?"

"Charles Dickens."

Dally smirked, and judging by the look of it, Dr. Bennet assumed he'd known that all along.

"Tell you what," Dr. Bennet said. "If she's quoting Dickens at you, especially the obscure stuff … well, I think you're gonna have to look a little harder for a place to live."

As Dally pulled on his jacket, he thought—dammit to hell with all this thinking—of where he'd really go when he walked out that door. The twins weren't budging, but that wasn't a surprise. They could be as stubborn as he and Lucy were sometimes. The surprise was that he wasn't budging. He kept coming back to the same house every night. They hadn't made him a key or anything (That would have been a bit much.), but they always let him back in when they knocked. Even Mrs. Bennet, who still bugged the life out of him, didn't seem to shudder so much when he made eyes at Lucy from across the kitchen. Why wasn't he moving? Wasn't this exactly what he wanted to avoid for himself?

He unlocked the door from the inside and took off, hoping the movement would stop him from asking all these questions.

Dally got back to the house around midnight, and Dr. Bennet (who seemed never to sleep, at least not on the nights Dally went out) let him in. He mentioned that Lucy had fallen asleep after draining herself on that Dickens essay, so if he could manage it, he should be respectful of her. He muttered something that not even he quite understood and made his way up the skinny stairway and into the only room on the second floor—his.

He laughed at the sight of her. He laughed at the sight of his wife. It wasn't a bad laugh. It was … well, like Lucy herself, it was something he couldn't quite put a word to.

Lucy was sprawled out across her bed (their bed now), sleeping on her stomach, wearing nothing but a T-shirt that was too big for her. He looked closer—his. He'd rag on her for it in the morning, careful not to seem too playful or friendly. He wasn't either of those things. He'd spent eighteen years building up immunity to cordiality.

Still, he looked closer. She was drooling on the blanket. It wasn't charming, and he'd woken up plenty of mornings with his cheek or his chest covered in Bennet's spit. He'd never said anything since he figured it wasn't worth it. After all, he sure did like her spit in other places. She made these awful little motor-sounding noises, like she was trying to fight off some cars that came to life in her dreams or something. She did not look beautiful at all.

He reached out his hand and shook her shoulders a little bit. She jolted awake and panted heavily, like someone had come to stab her. It was a good thing he'd left his blade in one of her (their) drawers. She told him it would be cheeky to keep it beside To Kill a Mockingbird because some guy didn't really fall on his own knife in that book or … something. He was really trying not to pay attention.

"What's the matter with you?" she asked.

"Plenty," he said. "Ya knew that when ya signed up for this."

"You don't wake up a woman when she's sleeping in the middle of the night. Not unless you got a damn good reason."

He sighed curtly. He was sure to regret this in the morning, but he figured he would do it now and get it over with. Maybe she'd kick him out before the morning. Maybe this was what he needed to do to finally get out of this … whatever this was.

He put his hands together and slid his ring off, thrusting it toward her as if to tell her to take it. Confused, she delicately reached out and took it, examining it as though it were something precious to her.

"What's this?" she asked.

"It's that fuckin' Ark of the Covenant you and your old man were goin' on about the other day 'fore he left for work," he said. "What's it look like? 'S my ring."

"I know what it is. What I meant to ask is why you're giving it to me."

Dally almost grinned, though he thought he didn't know why.

"I don't know," he said. "Thought maybe if we were really gonna bug the twins, you might wanna wear it."

The first thing she did was put on the ring; careful not to look like she'd been waiting for this since the afternoon they signed those papers. Lucy looked up at Dally, exhausted out of her mind but still wanting to ask him that question—the one that was burning on the tip of her tongue. She must have been too tired to protect herself, so she spoke without her typical filter.

"You sure you don't just want me to wear it because you like that you married me?"

He thought of a million responses at once. Most were mean. Some were a little less mean. After a second or two, he settled on the one he thought was best: snorting disapprovingly at her and growling, "Move over."

She did, muttering a few curses at him under her breath. If he hadn't been so angry with himself for thinking too much, he might have actually liked the sound of her voice there. He stripped off his clothes, knowing full well that Lucy was begrudgingly admiring what she saw. He got into his side of the bed and turned his back to her. It wasn't that he was pissed at her. He was, but he knew that much was bullshit. He was more pissed at himself for … whatever it was that made him think about her so much.

Dally didn't want Lucy to see his face because he was fighting a smile—a smile at her. He hadn't planned on slipping off his ring and giving it to her that night. He hadn't planned on slipping it off and giving it to her (or any other girl) at all. But when he saw her all sprawled out on the mattress like that, she was a far cry away from beautiful. And that made him … it made him feel like she needed his ring. That was it. That was all.

"So, do I call you Mom, or is that not how this relationship works?"

Mrs. Bennet opened her front door, and before she could even say hello, the rough-looking girl on her porch just started speaking to her like they were old friends. Based on the devil-may-care look in her eyes, Mrs. Bennet figured there was someone in her house who knew who in the hell this girl was.

"Dallas!" she shouted toward Lucy's (and her husband's) room on the second floor. "I think this person belongs to you!"

A moment later, Dally and Lucy came in from upstairs, perplexed to see Violet Winston standing in the doorway. She had her arms folded across her chest, looking like she might want to try to beat her brother (or her sister-in-law) to a pulp if either of them got too close. Before she could tear into the new Mr. and Mrs., she figured she'd set the record straight with this old lady in the doorway.

"First of all, I don't belong to nobody, so let's get that straight," she said. "Second of all, I'm Violet."

"That doesn't tell me who you are," Mrs. Bennet pointed out.

Lucy felt her ire ripen in her gut. Her mother was once a middle-class girl from Connecticut, where Lucy had been born and spent the first few years of her life. Even after traveling the country for years upon years, Mrs. Bennet hadn't quite learned how to shake that uppity middle-class sheen that people like Dally and Violet hated.

"She's my sister," Dally said. "And she really shouldn't be here."

"But if it's OK with you, Mom," Lucy jumped in, thinking it was important for Dally to have a talk with the only halfway decent member of his family, "I'd like Violet come inside."

Mrs. Bennet threw up her arms in surrender and stepped aside, allowing for Violet to walk through the door and straight at Dally. She pushed him backward a few times, and if he hadn't been so angry at her for showing up at the Bennets' place like this, he might have actually been impressed. Violet packed a stronger punch than he remembered.

"You got married?" she asked.

"Yeah, weeks ago," Dally said. "How'd you find out? I didn't tell you on purpose."

"You hadn't sent me a thing in weeks. I figured I'd go lookin'. I'm sorta sorry I did."

"Who told you I got married?"

"See, that's the worst fuckin' part of it. I had to talk to Jane Randle, and you know how much I hate Jane Randle."

Lucy raised her hand a little bit to jump into the conversation, informing Violet that, in case she didn't know, Jane was one of her best friends. Violet just snapped that she was very sorry to hear than and then moved on with her berating of Dally for getting married behind her back … or getting married at all.

"What's the matter with you, man?" she asked. "You know you can't dodge the war if you're married without kids anymore. LBJ changed the law months ago, just to be a dick. Which makes sense, given his fuckin' name."

She looked Lucy up and down, almost scoffing at the sight of her. Lucy felt her palms turn into fists, and she was aware of it this time. She almost didn't care if the person going after her was really her sister-in-law. If she deserved to get decked for what she was about to say, then it couldn't make a lick of difference.

"And what do you think you're doing? Marryin' him?" Violet asked. "Me and you both know you can do better than this hood."

Lucy breathed a quiet sigh of relief. She couldn't imagine being on the receiving end of one of Violet Winston's violent outbursts. She'd heard stories about glass flying, eyes nearly falling out of their sockets, and fires getting started in the kitchens when no one knew the stove was turned on. She didn't want to be next on an incredibly long list of Winston casualties.

"Maybe she likes bein' married to me," Dally said. "You ever think of that? She's wearin' my ring. Ain't you, Lucy?"

Reluctantly, Lucy held up her left hand to model the silver band Dally had given her in bed about a week earlier. When Sadie asked her if she thought that meant he was really committing to the marriage, Lucy shrugged and told her that she doubted it. It was really there to bother her and Soda and beg them to get divorced. As soon as Sadie heard that part of the plan, she clapped her hands together and cracked up, like she knew significantly more about the future than any human could know.

"Shoot!" Sadie had said. "I was never gonna tell you to leave him before, but I'm really never gonna tell ya now."

Meanwhile, Violet stared at Lucy's hand with little interest. She looked back up at Dally with that tough boredom in her eyes—the kind of jaded he'd felt himself losing little by little the more time he spent in the Bennet house. He needed to grab onto Violet and bolt to somewhere where he blended in. At the Bennet household, he stood out like the sorest thumb anyone had ever seen. He needed to get back whatever that was before he'd realized how cute Lucy Bennet really was. That guy was real. That guy couldn't feel as many terrible things all at once. What had happened to make him feel—make him think—in this way that was so different from the version of himself that he'd grown to despise?

"Fascinating," Violet said, her voice dripping with every possible sarcastic intonation. She relaxed a little bit when she saw how easily Lucy's arm fit through the crook of her brother's. It was enough to make even Violet Winston see the romance in it, though she'd never say a thing like that for as long as the either of the siblings lived. Violet looked at Dally again, the rage drained from her face and replaced by morbid interest.

"I don't really give a hang if you're married," Violet said. "I give a hang that ya wouldn't tell me, but not if it's real. I'm really here to give you a message."

She paused for a moment, and Dally thought maybe it was a better idea to run away from her and Lucy at the same time. But before he could make up his mind (before he could stop thinking), Violet spoke again.

"It's from the old man," she said.

"What's he say? That I'm a mistake?"

"He always says that in so many words, don't he? This time, he says he never wants to see you again, he can't believe any broad is stupid enough to marry you, but don't knock the bitch up 'less you never want a dime of your money to be yours."

Lucy felt like she might vomit and tightened her grip on Dally. He didn't even flinch. Why didn't he flinch?

"But they're his words," Violet added. "Not mine."

If Dally hadn't known better, he would have thought Violet was trying to protect him. Of course, he did know better, and so did she.

"As though he ever gave me a dime of what he made," Dally muttered. "When he was makin' anything, anyway. Fuck him."

It was the understatement of the year, but he didn't know how else to put it without losing his cool. He'd learned not to lose his cool when Mrs. Bennet was around. A week earlier, he'd gotten into it with an open cupboard door that he'd fallen into, and she looked like she might pass out. That horrified look on her face bugged him, so he tried not to say anything in front of her anymore.

"Fuck him," Violet said.

She looked at Lucy, a knowing look in her eyes.

"But I kinda figured he had a point," she said. "I mean, why else would Dally marry a girl, 'specially a girl he'd only been screwing for a couple weeks?"

"I'm not pregnant," Lucy said for the umpteenth time. Last week, she'd found out for certain. "Believe me, at this point, it would be easier to just say that I am, but it's not true."

"Well, glory hallelujah. Can't imagine somethin' that's half Dally just walkin' around out here like it was nothin'."

"I don't think there'd be anything much worse."

"There ain't. But lemme ask ya somethin'."

"Ya can't live here, V," Dally said. "Think it'd kill Bennet's folks to have another one of us runnin' around in here. I ain't wanting to be the guy who kills 'em. Plus, we gotta be outta here sooner than later."

"Are you kiddin' me? That ain't my question. I'd die here. Already havin' trouble breathin', and it ain't the Kools this time. It's that picture."

Lucy didn't even need to look backward to know that Violet was mocking that oversized picture of her when she was eight years old and made her First Communion at church. Her parents kept it up because they thought she looked real cute in it, but she always begged them to take it down. The Bennets were nominally Catholic, but they never talked about it since they stopped going to church when Lucy was about thirteen. She squirmed uncomfortably when she thought of Violet Winston's eyes on that picture. She was wearing that tiny little white dress and veil. The marriage metaphor wasn't lost on Lucy—not even then. The other moms at the church gushed about how one day, all the girls would wear white dresses again when they married their perfect little grooms. How they would have fainted to learn that Lucy Bennet went to city hall in her nicest pedal pushers to marry a chain-smoking delinquent. How Lucy couldn't have pictured her wedding any other way.

"Ask your fuckin' question 'fore I throw you through the wall," Dally said. Lucy wondered if perhaps he was defending her honor, but that was absurd. He did not love her.

Violet looked back and forth between her brother and Lucy, a sly glint in her eye that had to be exclusive to sisters.

"When I talked to … Jane Randle … she said you was only stayin' married to piss off the Curtis twins," Violet said. "But the Curtis twins ain't pissed. So, why're ya still married?"

Lucy and Dally looked at each other now. And to think, they'd readily convinced themselves that they wouldn't have to be honest about it—that they wouldn't have to think about it. That they could just keep moving until things fell apart. Why weren't things falling apart? Why did they look forward to seeing each other when Lucy came home from school? Why did Dally think of that room upstairs as home? He'd never caught himself thinking a thing like that before. Impulsively, he wanted to get up and leave, taking Violet with him, but Lucy's impatience got the better of both of them. She touched his hand, and somehow, he knew what she was trying to tell him.

After Violet had gone, Lucy pulled Dally back up to her (their) bedroom. They sat directly across from one another on the bed, like a couple of diplomats. At this point, they had been married nearly a month, and Lucy was sure they would have been heading for a divorce by now. And yet, they weren't. Though they tried to complain about each other in front of Sadie and Soda, they never had very bad things to say. Most recently, Lucy told Sadie that Dally smelled too much like smoke, but Sadie called her bluff by reminding Lucy that she'd known that going in. She was probably even numb to the smell by now. Lucy gritted her teeth inside her mouth because it was true. Around the same time, Dally told Sodapop that Lucy was always calling him things he didn't understand, like a rake that apparently wasn't used for yard work, but Soda called his bluff by reminding Dally that he'd known that going in. He was probably getting pretty decent at looking up Lucy's references by now. Dally narrowed his eyes at the kid because it was true.

But what was their problem? Did they even have one? The longer they stayed together, the less they bickered, though they still bickered their fair share. It had even gotten to the point where instead of going right to sleep after making it, they stayed awake for a little while to talk to each other—not fight, but talk. Naturally, Lucy was more loquacious, and Dally's responses were fairly cut-and-dried. But they were talking. A few nights earlier, she'd even gotten him to be a little bit honest about his father.

"Why do you hate him so much?" Lucy had asked. "I mean, I know he treated you and your sister like shit, but there's gotta be … I don't know, I think there's a tipping point for everything."

Dally let out a long sigh. He didn't want to remember this (and he'd gone to extreme lengths to try to forget it), but if Lucy was bringing it up, then he might as well tell her. After all, she was his wife, and wives got to know about this shit.

"I was ten when my old lady," he started, but he couldn't exactly finish. He'd never told Lucy how she died, but it didn't matter. Lucy knew, and he understood that.

"Well, I was ten, and me and V were left alone with the old man," he said. "More an' more of his buddies started hangin' around the house. Always wantin' to talk to V. V was always gettin' bruises and shit, from him and from fallin' down all the fuckin' time, but these were different. They weren't in the same spots. Ya dig?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I dig." She knew he wasn't going to say it, but as someone who planned to one day, work really hard to eradicate this kind of trash; she could hear it in his voice.

"One day it was enough. This was the last thing he was gonna do. He'd done plenty of shit before, understand. But I'd just fuckin' take it. That time, I didn't. I came at him and tried to beat the shit outta him. Woulda decked him a lot harder if I'd been a little bigger, but he was bigger. And I was …"

Dally stopped. It wasn't that he was unable to admit defeat, though that was part of it. It was that somewhere in his mind, he knew that was the moment it was easier not to care about anyone. You care about somebody, and you end up bleeding from your head on the kitchen floor, getting sworn at while your only ally in the world can't help you because she's too damn small.

"Hopped a Greyhound that night," he said. "Went to New York. Came back after a little while. Went back again when I was eleven. Didn't come back here till I was just about fifteen."

"I remember," Lucy mumbled. Her face was on his torso now. Why wasn't he batting her away?

Stay there.

Who said that?

He was almost thinking he might say more, but when he looked down at Lucy, she was asleep, right on his body. He considered moving her off of him and decided not to. There was something about the way her face felt against him, and he wasn't one to chase away something that felt good.

But there they were, just a few nights later, sitting right across from each other on the bed, an ocean of covers between them. They said nothing for a long while, then Lucy, in her impatience, broke the silence.

"Why haven't you left me yet?"

Dally snorted, this time, with more amusement than contempt.

"Dunno. I could ask you the same question."

Lucy sighed. She didn't know what to say. She couldn't tell him that she loved him, even though she did. She knew she did, even though she didn't always think about it in certain terms. So, she did the only thing she knew how. She inched closer to him (not so close that he would notice, though he did) and looked him right in the eye. The surprise was that he didn't attempt to break her gaze.

"You're the only person I've met for as long as I've lived here that's not too scared to tell me what they think of me," she said, amazed that it all came out in one breath. "It doesn't make a difference to you that I'm supposed to be smart. When I'm riding in on my high horse, you know when to tell me to get down from it. You're not afraid to go up against me, but when you do, neither of us wins. You fight with me, but it's not because you don't like me."

Dally wanted to tell her that she was right, though that would have been too vulnerable. Instead, he just sat there and dumbly nodded, hoping she'd be able to hear what he was thinking. Somehow, he knew she could.

"You're a challenge, but you're a challenge I kinda like," Lucy said. "When you look at me, I know you see me. And I … well, I like it. I know that's a stupid word. Like. I know that. But right now, it's the only word I have, so it's the one I'm gonna use. Is that all right?"

"Yeah," he grumbled. "All right."

She smirked a little. As much as she wanted to tell herself that it didn't matter if it was all right—that it didn't matter if he packed up everything and left her in that very second—she was more than relieved that he was still sitting there. He wasn't moving. He wasn't even looking toward the door.

Why wasn't he looking toward the door?

Though he wasn't prepared to say it to her (and wasn't sure he ever would be), Dally thought about Lucy in the same way she thought about him. No matter the shit he threw at her, even the shit he threw on purpose to try to get her to go away, nothing ever worked. He'd heard her mother nearly beg her to leave him immediately, but Lucy would always say that it was her choice. It was her choice, and she was going to stay with Dally until he didn't want her anymore. She snapped at him when he needed to be snapped at, and for some reason, he always listened to what she had to say. Maybe it was that her voice annoyed him so much. He didn't know. Either way, he was never quite able to tune Lucy out. He'd throw bullshit line after bullshit line right at her, and every time, she caught it. Sometimes she threw back more bullshit, like she didn't even care that he was Dallas Winston, and he could make anybody's life hell … but only if he wanted to. He was trying to make her life hell, so why wasn't she acting like it?

Then, he knew. He might have been Dallas Winston, but she was Lucy Bennet. And like Dallas Winston, Lucy Bennet always got what she wanted, too.

She wasn't turning him away because she didn't want to. She refused to refuse him. Some part of him, the part that hadn't been desensitized, the part he thought he'd given up on before he saw the rage in her eyes, knew that Lucy could see right through every layer of hard and tough, to the one place in him that was still untouched. It wasn't that his toughness was a mask. It was as real as any other part of him, and he didn't plan on getting rid of it, either. But Lucy knew there was more. She might have been the only person in the world who did.

She refused to refuse him. And he didn't want her to.

"Then we understand each other," Lucy said.

"Yeah. Guess we do."

It would be months before either of them mentioned divorce again.

What is the ideal ratio of dialogue and interiority? I've been writing for over two decades, and I don't think I'll ever figure it out. This act of the story is winding down – probably only two more chapters on this front. Hinton owns The Outsiders. I quote Oliver Twist in here, which is in the public domain, but I wouldn't own it either way.