Author's Note: This chapter matches up to chapter five and six of Ticket to Ride, which is now finished, might I add. I know, I'm devastated, too, but I already have a sequel in the works so it's not the end for Curly, Katie and the rest of the crew (:

Please be aware that all familiar characters and locations belong to S.E. Hinton and her book, The Outsiders. The chapter title and lyrics throughout are from Chris Young's song, Think of You. And the title of this fic comes from the song of the same name by The Beatles.

Wednesday, 8 January 1969

I walk in on Friday nights

Same old bar, same burned out lights

Jodie's eyes met Mike's when she walked into work one morning. He was smiling up at her from the newspaper on the table in the waiting area for clients, his eyes crinkling in the corners and grinning along with his mouth. Today marked the day Arnie Barnes' would stand up in front of a judge and plead guilty, she read, to first degree murder and possession of an unregistered firearm.

"How's Rick doing?" Linda, Jodie's manager, asked her when she walked out of the supplies cupboard to find Jodie poring over the front page article.

"Fine," Jodie said, though she knew it was far from the truth. Linda must have known, too, because she quirked an eyebrow at Jodie. "Maybe he's not dealing as well as he could be," Jodie mumbled.

"Will he be down at the courthouse today?"

"I don't know," Jodie said, tossing the newspaper back down on the coffee table. "I don't think either of us even knew it would be happening today."

"Maybe you should go," Linda said, "just in case he does."

"Maybe," Jodie echoed, moving toward her work station to pull out her scissors and combs, ready for the clients that would be arriving soon. As she pulled a can of hairspray out of a box of tools, Linda winced and Jodie glanced over her shoulder to see her clutching the side of her swollen stomach. "Are you alright?" she asked, her mind immediately jumping to the conclusion that the baby must be on its way now.

"Yeah," Linda waved her off with an uncomfortable laugh, "she's just running out of room in there."

"Are you sure?" Jodie asked anxiously as Linda poked an authoritative finger into the side of her stomach where the baby had kicked her.

"I'm sure," Linda responded, giving Jodie a confident grin. "This ain't my first rodeo."

It was true, and Jodie decided to take her word for it. Linda had a son already, four years old and eager to meet his baby brother, but Linda was adamant he would wind up with a dreaded little sister instead.

It reminded Jodie of the story of George hoping he would get a little brother, too, and not understanding how two babies could fit inside of their mom's stomach. He had gotten his little brother, but he'd gotten Jodie, too. He told Jodie now that it wasn't as catastrophic having a kid sister than what he had originally thought at four years of age.

The morning passed without any more overly painful kicks in the organs or gut and when Jodie's lunch hour came around, she found herself walking the couple of blocks over to the courthouse. She didn't know when Arnie was due to face the judge, he could have been sentenced already for all she knew, but she hoped that if Rick had ended up going she would catch him. She didn't know if she should consider it good luck or bad luck when she walked into one of the courtrooms and saw Arnie sitting beyond the bench seats for the public, facing the judge. She hadn't seen him around Tulsa since before he had been locked away, but she had seen his face once or twice in the paper and recognized the black hair on the back of his head.

A few rows behind him she noticed the back of Rick's head beside Dennis McKay's and Phil Black's to his left, and moved forward into the room to sit beside him just as the judge handed down the sentence of life imprisonment. She sat down next to Rick, but he didn't look at her, not even when she put her hand on top of his and squeezed. His eyes were trained on Arnie as his court-appointed attorney thanked the judge for his time and two police officers pulled Arnie to his feet, his hands cuffed in front of him. They led him out of the room swiftly and Jodie let out air she hadn't known she had been holding onto when the police and Arnie disappeared behind a door on the other side of the courtroom.

Once they were gone Rick finally looked at her for the first time and asked, "What're you doin' here?"

"I thought you might be here," she answered him before giving a tight smile to Phil and Dennis on the other side of him.

Rick seemed to accept her reason and they all stood to file out of the courtroom. They made it out into the cold outside before anybody said anything, and when somebody did speak, it was Phil.

"Let's get fucked up," he said, and Dennis, who pulled his car keys out of his pocket and tossed them into the air and caught them in front of him, grinned at Phil.

"Yeah, whatever," Rick said somewhat distractedly, his hand still holding onto Jodie's, "let's just get outta here."

Jodie walked with them to where Dennis' car was parked a couple of streets over and Rick turned to her once Dennis and Phil were already in the car and ready to go. "Are you gonna come back with us?" he asked her and she shook her head.

"I've gotta get back to the salon," she said, and added teasingly, "Some of us actually work for our money, you know."

Rick managed a pained grin. "Will you come 'round tonight then?"

"Yeah, if Troy or George can drop me," she answered.

"Call me at Phil's if they can't and I'll come get you," Rick insisted and Jodie, glowing from clearly being wanted, kissed him goodbye.

Later when she finished work and climbed into Troy's car, she asked if he could drop her at Phil's house before heading home.

"Sure," Troy answered with an easy shrug of his shoulders, "I might come in for a beer, too. I haven't seen those guys since the funeral."

"Arnie got life," Jodie told him and Troy's eyebrows shot up into his hairline.

"How do you know that?"

"I saw he was facing the court in the paper this morning," she answered. "He got his sentence on my lunch hour."

"You were there?"

"With Rick and a couple of his guys," Jodie nodded.

"How was Rick?" Troy asked, eyeing Jodie with a mixture of what she interpreted as wariness and sympathy.

"He didn't say much," Jodie said, remembering how he hadn't even noticed her until Arnie had been led away. "I think he was relieved when we got out of there, though."

"He might not be in the best shape tonight," Troy warned.

"I know, but I'd rather be there than not."

When they arrived, Phil answered the door and let them in to find several of the Brumly boys sitting around in the lounge room drinking beer and smoking joints. Troy clapped some on the backs and shook the hands of others as Rick wrapped an arm around Jodie's shoulders and offered her his beer with his free hand. She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek before accepting the beer, happy to see his expression lighter.

"Got a big night planned?" Troy asked and Jodie glanced at her brother and where his gaze had fallen. Phil was kneeling at the coffee table and seemed to have returned to sorting a powdery substance into small, straight lines on its surface.

"That son of a bitch is gonna be behind bars 'til he's grey," Rick said with a tone of sick delight, "it ain't as good as the electric chair, but it's good enough for now."

Something in his words made Jodie feel clammy and ill, but she soon forgot about it when Phil offered them a line. She and Troy exchanged a look and in moments like that she suspected that they might have some sort of twin telepathic power after all.

Why not, she heard her mind echo his, and with a shared shrug she followed him and Rick closer to the coffee table.

Same drinks that we're all raising

But all of the toasts just don't feel the same

The next day at work was exhausting, and not because it was any more busy than normal because it had actually been quieter than was typical for a Thursday. Jodie was tired and the mere act of standing on her feet all day was enough to exhaust her. Troy looked about as tired as Jodie did when he pulled up outside of her salon at the end of the work day and she climbed in.

Rick called her once she was home and invited her out again tonight, but she was about to pass out where she stood twirling the phone cord around her fingers and decided that she would stay at home. He came to her half an hour later instead, and though she suspected he wasn't able to sleep all night, he stayed with her while she did.

The next morning, with red and tired eyes, he drove her to work so that Troy could go straight to the garage he was employed by, and he promised to pick her up and take her out when she finished work that afternoon. He kept his word and was there waiting for her when the salon's closing time came. He even waved to Linda through the glass front of the salon as Jodie bid her goodbye and walked out.

It was Friday night and Rick and his boys had decided to throw a party at Phil's house, so Rick drove Jodie home and laid back on her bed and admired her as she changed her clothes and touched up her make-up and dark brown hair.

"I don't know why you need to make such a fuss about gettin' ready," he told her, though he didn't sound frustrated one bit at how long she was taking, "you're fuckin' gorgeous already."

George and Troy followed Rick and Jodie to Phil's place and a few of their boys joined them not long after. Jodie guessed that Arnie being put away was the reason for the party, but part of her thought that Rick and his buddies were just looking for any reason to party, and Arnie just happened to be the perfect one. When she voiced this suspicion to George he gave her a long, analyzing look.

"They might be goin' a bit overboard," he agreed with her, which did nothing to ease her worries. She knew plenty of people who smoked grass and had a line of coke or whatever their particular poison was on the odd occasion at parties or in similar sorts of social settings. Heck, she was one of those people, along with her brothers and their buddies, who she even knew sold some of the stuff to help them get by. But she had also seen people take things too far and if ever there was a situation that predisposed somebody to going overboard it was the one Rick and his friends were in now. "Everyone has their benders, though," George said, seeming to have noticed the worry lines in Jodie's frown. "He'll pull himself out of it in a few days; he has a gang to run." He clapped her on the shoulder and squeezed before heading off to the kitchen for another beer.

Jodie sipped her own beer and rejoined Rick, who was talking animatedly to a couple of his buddies. As she listened to him recount a story from when they had still been in high school and his gang was just coming into formation, she told herself that she didn't have anything to worry about.

George was right. Rick had a gang to run and it was clear from the way he spoke to and treated his members that the gang was the biggest thing in his life. And the killer of his best buddy had been locked away for the rest of his life. Rick had a right to be celebrating!

Jodie had desperately missed this side of Rick over the past month – the side that was funny and light-hearted, that looked at her like she was the most beautiful person he had ever laid eyes on instead of someone that was hardly worth his trouble alot of the time.

We used to be the life of the party

We used to be the ones that they wished they were

Jodie and Rick spent all day on Saturday between the sheets in Phil's spare bedroom that was more or less Rick's anyway. The day had been long, but had stretched into the night without Jodie even noticing. It was only when she started to notice Rick crashing that she realized that whatever he had taken that morning was starting to wear off. She knew when he left the room for a beer and came back with what he claimed was an itchy nose and no beer that he had gone out to his buddies for a pick-me-up instead. She was no fool and she wondered why he would care to hide it from her after he hadn't bothered to do so on past occasions.

"When was the last time you slept?" she asked him as he pulled his jeans off and joined her in bed again.

"Last night," he told her, but she knew it wasn't true. Perhaps he had slept intermittently, but she didn't think he had slept a full, solid night in several days – the truth of it was all over his face. "I love you, you know that?" he said, resting the side of his head on the pillow beside hers so that he was facing her. She smiled despite her worry.

"I love you, too," she said back, having already lost track of how many times they had exchanged those words over the past few days. Things hadn't been this good between them in a long time. "I worry about you sometimes, though," she said, lifting her hand to touch the side of his face softly.

"You don't need to," he said through a lazy smile meant to reassure her, "I can protect myself."

"It's not protection from other people I worry about."

"Then what is it?" he asked, taking her hand from his cheek and bringing it to his lips.

"Protection from yourself," she answered, not sure if it even made sense. "Your head," she elaborated, her tone still soft and kind, "it's so dark in there sometimes."

Silence fell as Rick stared into Jodie's brown eyes, his eyebrows pulling together as if trying to hold back something strong. Jodie thought for a moment that the floodgates of ease and honesty between them might slam shut again, but when Rick spoke he was raw with emotion.

"I miss him," Rick said, squeezing his eyes shut, "is it crazy that I still see him everywhere I go?" Jodie didn't know what to say, so she stayed quiet and Rick continued, his eyes opening up and showing her Mike's ghost in them. "But he's not really there. I can't talk to him."

"Maybe he is there," Jodie tried helpfully. "Maybe he can still hear you."

"But I can't hear him," Rick responded, anguish in his flaring nostrils. "And I hate that. He should still be here."

"I know," she said trying to soothe him. "Arnie got the justice he deserved, though. That should help you move on now, right?"

"That's not justice," Rick said, letting go of Jodie's hand and rolling onto his back to stare up at the ceiling. "Not even close."

"He won't be able to kill anybody else, at least," Jodie countered.

"I doubt he would've killed anyone if Shepard hadn't told him to," Rick said, "and yet he's walkin' around free still."

Jodie winced; it always came back to Tim. She didn't know if she'd ever be able to escape him, but the memory of what he had told her on new year's eve floated forward to the front of her mind and now seemed like a better time than ever to tell him about it. Rick seemed to be more open and clear-minded now than he had been in a while. Jodie thought that maybe she could convince him that Tim had nothing to do with Mike being shot and that Rick would be able to let go of that anger and bitterness as a result and ultimately move forward from this horrible mess.

"Tim didn't do anything, Rick," Jodie said and when Rick turned his head to her and opened his mouth to shoot a dagger at her she continued, "he didn't know Arnie was going to shoot Mike until it had already happened. I don't think any of his boys knew."

"Don't be stupid," Rick started, but Jodie cut him off again.

"I spoke to him," she said, knowing that this would be the part Rick would dislike the most, "on new year's eve. He was at Buck's and I told him off for coming at you like he did just before Christmas, but he said it was retaliation for you jumping one of his guys or something..." She shook her head, she was getting off track. "He said he didn't know Arnie was gonna shoot Mike. He never gave that order."

Rick's jaw clenched and his lips settled into a straight, thin line. "Why the fuck would you talk to him?"

"That's not the point –"

"Why the fuck would you go near him?" Rick wrenched himself out of the bed and grabbed his jeans up off the floor beside it. He pulled them on, ignoring Jodie's desperate attempts to calm him and get him to see the truth she had been trying to tell him.

But now it's like they don't know how to act

Maybe they're like me and they want us back

The atmosphere at Buck's changed the moment Rick and his boys walked in, it was what caused Tim to look around and catch sight of Rick making a beeline for him, his shoulders squared arrogantly and his face furious. Tim stood and moved around the table he had been sharing with his own gang and stopped in front of it. Tim's boys stood, too, ready for whatever drama Rick had clearly brought into Buck's with him.

"We have a problem," Rick said, coming to a stop a few feet away from Tim. "Several, actually."

Tim resisted the urge to roll his eyes. When didn't this guy have a problem?

Just as he was about to open his mouth and ask which problem Rick had plucked out of thin air this time, a smaller girl pressed through the front of the crowd that had gathered around them, calling Rick's name. Tim vaguely recognize her as Rick's sister, though last time he had seen the girl her face had been flecked with the blood that had started this whole new problem between her brother and Tim.

She came up from behind Rick and planted herself in front of him, pressing her hands to his chest before his hand came up to push her by the shoulder to the side, away from whatever was about to go down. His push was too forceful, though, for a pretty little thing her size, and she stumbled to the side, her body twisting from the push and toppling over. She landed with a loud crack from her head on one of the unoccupied wooden tables, then rebounded off of it and fell further down until her body hit the ground.

There was a collective gasp from those who had witnessed it and the room suddenly felt void of air as a single girl came rushing forward, yelling her name. Katie. The other girl, Katie's friend, Dale's girlfriend, dropped to the ground beside Katie as Jodie, who had come into Buck's with Rick and been standing behind him, followed suit.

"Katie!" Dale's girl repeated as she lifted Katie's head and cradled it in her hands.

Jodie leaned over her, hiding Katie's face from view, but she must have opened her eyes because Jodie looked up at Rick over her shoulder and said for everybody gathered there to hear that the girl was fine.

Tim looked back to Rick, aghast and disbelieving at having just witnessed him shove his sister so hard. The shocked look on Tim's face reflected in Rick's as Tim heard Curly start up.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?!" Curly shouted, stepping forward from where he had joined Tim just a few steps back from his side. "That's your fuckin' sister, man," he said and Tim stretched his left arm out across Curly's chest to physically tell him that he shouldn't take another step further.

Curly stopped and Tim, whose eyes hadn't left Rick for a second, said, "Let's take this outside 'fore you go and hit your girlfriend next."

Tim glanced at Jodie, still kneeling beside Katie, and their eyes met for a second before Rick turned and Tim followed. Most of Buck's place emptied out behind them in eager anticipation of the fight sure to happen out the front.

"You wanna tell me what problem you've got now?" Tim asked once they were out the front, standing on dirt not too far from where plenty of cars were parked. "Just so I can keep up, y'know," he added smart-alecky and Rick scowled at him, his grinding teeth sending his jaw around in circles. He was off his head on something and Tim was willing to bet that Rick had started taste testing the shit he sold now.

"What makes you think you have any right talkin' to my girl? Feedin' her bullshit about how innocent you are," Rick said and then spat on the ground at Tim's feet.

"I didn't say a thing that wasn't true," Tim said, feeling like a broken record. "I didn't know Arnie even had the gun, much less that he was gonna use it on Mike, not until it was too late anyway. But hey, ain't that the risk you run when you get a guy's girl drunk and use it to your advantage?" Tim glanced around to see his boys, Pete, Curly, Dale and Glenn among them, nodding their agreement with him, contrasting against the foul looks on the faces of the Brumly boys. Billy Prause and a few of his Tiber Street boys were nodding, too, and Tim hoped that if this turned into an all out brawl between the two gangs he might have some back up from the Tigers.

"Fuck you," Rick growled and his hand reached into his jeans pocket, pulled out a switch and flicked the blade out.

Tim shouldn't have been surprised. "You're gonna fight dirty?"

"Your brother did with Mike," Rick responded, nodding his head at where Curly stood to Tim's right. The light shining out from inside Buck's caught Rick's eyes and Tim saw a craze in them he hadn't noticed earlier. "Punched him from behind right before he was shot." Something new crossed his face, "Was that the plan? Distract me with your brother; make me think he was the danger while his buddy had the gun."

Tim let out an exasperated breathe, not even knowing how to respond to a story so wild. "You're fuckin' crazy," he said and Rick must have decided he was sick of talking now because he lunged for Tim, his knife held out in front of him, before Tim even finished his last syllable.

Tim was quick, though, and slipped out of the knife's aim before it plunged into his chest. He threw a punch at Rick's ribs as he moved and it connected, hard enough that Tim thought he might have broken a rib or two.

Rick stumbled and Tim went for the wrist holding the knife. He grasped Rick's wrist tight in his left hand and, distracted by trying to reach his other hand out to grab at the top of the knife's hilt, he copped a blow to his right cheek. It knocked him to the side a little, but he refused to relinquish his hold on Rick. To do that could be disastrous. He continued his attempt at reaching for the knife and when his free hand wrapped around the top of the hilt, just above where Rick's fingers were wrapped around it, he wrenched it out of Rick's grasp. The left hand that had struck Tim in the face had been reaching up for the knife, too, and in one fluid motion Tim sliced the blade down over Rick's left bicep and then flicked the switchblade closed and tossed it at Pete's feet behind him. Pete didn't miss a beat and snatched the switch up so it couldn't be used again. Not by Rick, at least.

The crowd of people gathered around cheered and yelled, and when Tim turned back to Rick he found it was because Rick was coming at him again. He didn't have the time to dodge his attack again and he was tackled to the ground, landing hard on his back. Rick punched Tim in the throat and in reflex Tim brought a knee up and slammed it into Rick's groin. He figured that if Rick was going to fight dirty then so could he.

Rick grunted and Tim shoved him off of him easily, Rick rolling onto his back beside him. The tables turned and Tim rolled over on top of Rick and brought his right hand back high and then smashed it down into Rick's mouth and then again into his right eye. Rick's eyes fell shut and all the fight in his body disappeared immediately. His hands, which had been reaching for Tim's neck, fell to the ground, limply stretched out on either side of him.

Tim pushed himself up and shook his fist out as he glanced around at the remaining Brumly boys. None of them seemed eager to continue the fight, so Tim left them behind and headed back inside. He needed a fucking beer. And some ice for his stinging cheek.

When he brought his hand up to feel the bruised lump that was likely there it came back wet with blood. Tim cussed under his breath as he stopped at the table he had occupied before Rick had walked in, and a few of his boys crowded around.

"Your shirt's ripped," Pete pointed out and Tim glanced down at his white shirt to find that the bottom of it was indeed slightly ripped.

He reached down and ripped it further, tearing off a sizable chunk, and lifted the material to his cheek. He pressed hard despite the pain; needing to put pressure on it otherwise it would bleed all night long.

Tim glanced around for Curly, hoping the kid hadn't jumped in to kick Rick's unconscious body after Tim had turned his back. Sure, it had been a shock to Tim too to see Rick knock his sister flying like that, and he didn't like it, either, but Curly's response had been all guns blazing and Tim wasn't sure where it had come from. He was probably drunk, Tim thought, remembering Curly had been at the drive-in cinema before coming over to Buck's – there wasn't much else to do at the drive-in than drink, and drink hard. Tim's eyes didn't find him standing anywhere nearby, but they did spy him disappearing up the stairs across the room with Dale.

Tim had no way of knowing for sure because he had walked out of Buck's before Katie was even off the floor, but he guessed that Jodie and Dale's girl would have taken Katie upstairs to clean her up since her head had hit the table hard enough to break skin. He kept an eye on the stairs and when people continued to try and talk to him about the fight he moved closer toward the staircase, telling them he just needed a moment. He was standing to the side of the bottom of the staircase when Curly and Dale came back down.

"What's goin' on up there?" Tim asked Curly as Dale walked on without him toward the kitchen.

"Dale's girl thinks we need to take them to her sister to see if she needs stitches," Curly said, "so Dale and I were gonna drive them there in the car they came in."

Tim didn't understand how it was Curly's responsibility to get Brumly's younger sister home safely, but he couldn't find a good enough reason to stop him. She was a girl, and she needed help – he had heard Pete say when they'd come back inside that Rick's boys had taken off. Curly obviously knew her from school before Arnie shot her brother's friend and Tim guessed that maybe they had been friends before, perhaps they still were despite their older brothers wanting to beat each other up all the time.

"You make sure you come find me if there's any trouble," Tim told Curly, who nodded.

"How bad is your cheek?" Curly asked and Tim pulled the cloth of his shirt away to show his throbbing gash.

"Thomas was off his fuckin' head, man. He was all over the joint, just cause I told his girl that I had nothing to do with his buddy dyin' but that that's what happens when you fuck with another guy's girl." Curly nodded and Tim remembered the way the wild look in his eyes had glinted in the light shining out from inside. "He's a fuckin' lunatic if he's willin' to pull a knife on me for tellin' the God damn truth." Dale appeared again, holding up a bag of frozen peas and declaring his find. "Remember what I said," Tim warned Curly as his brother turned to go back upstairs. "Don't go off half-cocked if there's trouble, you come to me."

"Yeah," Curly said and took off up the stairs with Dale, though Tim hardly believed that he would listen and heed his instruction.

It's like there's always an empty space

Those memories that nobody can erase

Of how bright we burned