barbara

(now)

If you've never seen two brothers bicker before, and you were looking at Soda and Pony go at it, it would be reasonable to assume one of them would end up strangling the other. (and my money was on Soda, if it means anything)

"I wanna know what the fuck Darry said," Pony was hissing, standing like a pissed off scarecrow at the end of the small room, right by the doorway to the kitchen. It didn't look real intimidating, and I'm sure he knew it; he's a small kid, skinny with only wiry traces of muscle popping out from the skin like extended veins. I start thinking of my biology class, for some reason, and how the body produces blood every second (or something), and how the veins keep it going to the heart, going to all the limbs, going going going, and that if you cut a vein it all blows out like Mentos in a bottle of Cola.

Don't know why I'm thinking this. Like I'm always thinking stuff like it when people start screaming at each other. Don't know.

So, Soda tells him to go to his room again, tells him he sure as hell had enough of this crap and why can't he listen for once and Pony gets this real quick look on his face, like he's been slapped or something. But it's gone in a second, hardly a flash of nothing.

Hardly.

And then Two-Bit, who, despite his discomfort, hasn't left yet, paralyzed in his step. It makes me think that maybe this is a real strange sight, these two fighting. Maybe it has never, ever happened before, and Two-Bits too shocked to even move. Maybe that's my fault.

No, that's probably my fault.

And then they start talking like I ain't even there--"I wanna know what the fuck she's doing telling us Darry's her damn father"--and I think:

Yeah, this one's definitely my fault.

Not alot of things have ever been my fault, and I'm not sure how to feel about it.

I've never started a fight, never gotten two guys or anything all macho on each other 'cause of some love triangle (or something), never broke anything or started anything. Never spread rumors or done anything to piss someone off. Don't have any sisters or brothers or anything (or maybe I do, don't know). I stay to myself, keep as quiet as possible. Never once have I been able to say something was really, no connections involved, my fault. Never, in all my nineteen years, have I done something as simple as this and have it turn into something this messed up--

--but I ain't making much sense, am I?

So, I start to get a bit sweaty, the kind you get when your teacher calls on you for an answer that you don't know, and I think--think--that I might throw up. But then I realize I haven't eaten and I get hungry. Then I'm nauseous and hungry and all at once and now I fully understand the life is crap phrase my friend Becky throws around all the time.

I start to fling the papers and all that back into my bag, hoping to make a quiet exit.

In the middle of his sentence, steaming like a chimney, he catches me inching to the door. "Pony, why you gotta do this now--where do you think your going?"

I don't expect this, and I try to tell myself he don't mean to sound like he wants to gut my intestines out, but it really really sounds that way.

He kind of catches himself, like a dog would when he sees he growled at the wrong passerby.

"Ugh," he says, by way of conversation. "Uh, sorry."

"No," I say, back words walking over to the door. "I'm sorry, sorry. I shouldn't have come here. You can just, you know, forget I was here--"

I'm still thinking about what Pony said, that the Darrel Curtis was my age.

Pony frowns at me. "Yeah, we will."

And, on that note, I scoot past Two-Bit and walk to my car, still wondering why anybody would name a boy Pony.

XxXxX

(then)

"Mommy?"

A women with pale, faded blue hair and dull eyes looked up listlessly from the television. Her pink uniform was stained, and her scuffed white roller blades sat in a pile beside the coffee table. "Mm?"

"Can you help me with something?" the women's daughter asked, poking her head through the doorway and clutching a piece of paper in her hand.

The women let out a long, hefty sigh, adjusting the table fan as it whirred haphazardly against her skin. "Baby," she breathed, "I've had a long day."

"It's for school."

Fuck school--"Let's see it," she sighed.

The girl walked quietly around the doorway and stood beside her mother, holding out the paper and waiting.

The women took the paper and glanced it over. "A family tree?"

The daughter bit her lip gently and wrung her hands together. "Mrs. Nixon said we got to know where we come from."

The women went limp against the couch and fanned herself as the fan sputtered and died. "Sweetie..." she said quietly. "Hun, you've met yer gramma. Polish, remember? You know that. Write about that--"

"--but it says I need my dad's side too--"

"--write about yer gramma, Barbara."

A smack of a sentence, like the cracking of a whip.

The girl walked out.

A/N This chapter isn't really like I wanted it to be, but when is it ever?