Sorry I've been gone for so long— I'm really behind on replying to people/reviewing since I started college a few weeks ago. I hope the chapter was worth the wait!

"Is your shirt tucked in?" I asked Pony, my eyes wide with horror.

"... Yeah?"

I immediately yanked it out of his pants and ruffled his too-greasy hair, despite his squawking. "It took Darry twenty minutes to do that!"

"Darry is trying to get you shoved inside a gym bag," I sagely informed him. "You're already runtier than all the other guys without dressin' like a nerd, too."

"You kids got your lunches?" Soda asked over the din, while Pony tried to murder me with his eyeballs. "Books? Hand grenades?" He kicked his feet up on the dashboard of the truck. "Damn, I don't envy you two. Day I said goodbye to Will Rogers was the best day of my life."

"Quit rubbin' it in before you're late for work." I grabbed my lunch bag out of the backseat and slammed the truck door shut as Soda pulled away from the curb. "We won't be here forever, either."

I had no idea what brilliant city planner decided to put a high school on the border between the hood and the west side, but they deserved to be taken out back and shot for it, because they'd created a war zone. "Don't talk to Socs," I said, elbowing Pony in the ribs and pointing at some polo-shirted assholes gathered around a Mustang. "I'm serious. If you see a Soc, cross to the other side of the hall."

"I'm not a pussy, Jas," he said with the beginnings of a pout. "Got my blade an' everything, an' I'm good in a rumble."

"Yeah, yeah, you're a real tough guy, but if you pull that blade here, the Soc'll get a slap on the wrist and you'll get led out in handcuffs." I stopped to think for a second. "Actually, scratch that. When Darry hears about you fightin' at school, you're gonna wish the police had gotten a hold of you first."

"Fiiiine." He stared at the crowd like a lamb marked for slaughter. "I'm screwed. Got it."

"If he tries to go after you first, fight like hell," I made sure to point out. "Just... stick to our kind, okay? Remember what happened to Johnny."

Not the best image to evoke right before his first day of school— Johnny on the ground, curled up in the fetal position, his blood soaking the grass— but I hoped it was solidly imprinted on the backs of his eyelids. Almost losing Johnny was hard enough, without even contemplating losing one of my brothers. "Anything I can do?" Ponyboy asked once his face looked a little less green.

"Study hard so Darry won't ground you forever. Run track. Be careful."

"You hypocrite," Sylvia said, silently coming out from behind me. The column of her neck was covered in hickeys she hadn't bothered to hide, and the second a teacher clocked the length of the skirt on her, she was going to spend the first day of school in detention. "Pony, she always pretend she's so square around you?"

"Most of the time," he said, while I slowly dragged my finger across my throat. "Anything Darry would wanna know about, big sis?"

"Not one damn thing," I insisted. "Look, there's Two-Bit doin' his third tour of junior year. Go say hi."

More interested in the black-handled switch Two-Bit was flipping around near the dumpsters than potential blackmail, he scampered off, leaving the two of us alone. "I'm still mad at you," I said, turning to her with a huff. "Without you tellin' Pony on me."

"Don't be a bitch," she chided, running a hand through her neatly-coiffed hair. "You on the rag or somethin'? I told you, Dally an' I worked it all out."

"For what, the next five minutes?"

Sylvia never got offended; always pleaded no contest to anything said about her, even when it came from me. Instead, she just smirked. "Listen, Jas, you're my best friend and all, but he's taken."

"What the hell have you been smoking?" I sputtered. First Curly, now her? "God, my parents practically adopted him to keep him off the streets. I've seen his dirty socks hangin' off every square surface of my house, and I'm supposed to wanna hook up with him?"

"You're right," she said thoughtfully. "Seems like you an' Curly were gettin' real cozy after you left. Anything I should know about?"

"Curly's my annoying kid brother's annoying friend. All we did was smoke a few weeds." I shook my head, then shook it again, for good measure. "You must really think I have shit taste. Next you're gonna throw Nate into my dating pool."

"Nah, the only broad ever touchin' Nate's lips is Mary Jane. But Curly... I've heard glowing references. He's been to the pen twice already." She winked at me, and there was something dirty in that wink. "For two different girls."

"That's just great. Can't think of anything better than visitin' my fifteen-year-old boyfriend in prison and knowin' he's there because of me." (What made him so similar to Dallas and Steve and Two-Bit and all the other guys I'd grown up with; broken and hard and reckless, throwing their lives away because they had nothing else to gamble on? What made Curly's biggest declaration of love a prison sentence?)

"The real world ain't always what your mama and daddy wanted it to be, okay?" She jostled her purse higher on her shoulder as the bell rang. "You ain't foolin' me. I know you think it's romantic. So loosen up."

Before I could contradict a word of that, she'd already walked away from me.

Most greasers at our school were quarantined in B-level classes, which permanently reeked of cigarette smoke, emitted the odd scream, and had teachers who freely admitted to just being there for the paycheck. On unfortunate account of my (and now Pony's) A-level brains, we hadn't ended up in these peaceful oases, but with the Socs.

"Heyyy, Jasmine," Brenda White said, smacking her gum and prodding me between the shoulderblades with a pencil. "Cherry wants to ask you something."

I'd known Brenda and her entourage ever since kindergarten; she'd called Soda a retard while we were playing in the sandbox, and I'd clocked her so hard with my Walking Wanda doll that her mouth had spewed blood; even after I'd gotten sent home from school for the day and Mom had whacked my butt good, I hadn't regretted it. Nine years later, in first period geometry, I still remained unrepentant. "Um, you know what, I don't, Brenda," Cherry Valance said from the desk beside her, uncomfortably twirling a strand of bright red hair around her finger. "It's really not that important."

"No, go ahead." I slammed my textbook shut and spun around to face them both. One was the jellyfish, the other the stinger. "What?"

"She wants to know if you need some help picking out your clothes," Brenda said, her voice flowing from her lips like poisoned honey. "Did you get that skirt from Goodwill? I mean, it must be hard when your family doesn't have a lot of money, but still."

I couldn't help my blush as I stared back down at it, because the truth was, it had come from my mother's closet... back in the forties. It went to my calves, the colors were faded, and there were stray threads coming out of the hem, but we hadn't had enough money left over to buy more school clothes I hadn't outgrown. "Must be hard to find decent clothes when your ass is that big, Brenda, but we've all got our crosses to bear, right?"

Her turn to scowl; she wasn't fat, honestly, but anyone in a ten-mile radius since last fall could hear her complain about how her amphetamine diet pills didn't work anymore. "You don't have to be so mean," Brenda finally said, putting the sweet act on again. "I'm just trying to help. Without a mom—"

"Brenda, come on, stop it," Cherry said, but without any real conviction in her voice. Bile rose up my throat, hot and acidic, and I was afraid I might be sick all over Danny Harris ahead of me if she finished her sentence. Why did it bother me so much? I'd heard it so many times before, had months to get used to the empty space in my life, and her casual cruelty still stuck right where it hurt.

"I guess it's not your fault you don't know how to act like a girl," Brenda triumphantly concluded. "Not when you don't have a mom around anymore."

The girl Dallas and Curly thought I was would've decked her without a moment's hesitation. The girl I thought I was would've decked her without a moment's hesitation. But I wasn't six years old anymore, and my mother's scolding echoed in my head, delivered unequivocally as she'd swatted the back of my thighs. Ladies don't fight, Jasmine. Ladies use their words. Not to mention the speech I'd given Pony that morning. "You can say whatever you want about my mom, but at least my dad didn't leave her for a younger model," I hissed, my throat closing shut. "He even call for Christmas?"

Brenda's face turned an ugly, splotchy cross between red and white. "You'd better watch it, trailer trash. He probably wasn't even your real dad."

"Good morning, class," the teacher droned as he strolled into the room, dropping a stack of papers onto his desk— narrowly saving Brenda from a fist to the face, consequences be damned. "If you would open up your textbooks to page seven and begin to read the introduction—"

Math had always been my best subject, but my vision swam as I tried to pore over the words and figures, something about Pythagoras and Euclid. Just another reminder that not having a mom made me some kind of deformed freak— one in desperate need of an intervention. Another reminder that my aunt was coming in three days, because I couldn't be trusted to act like a lady, not when it counted.

When the principal called me down to the office at the end of the day, I hoped it was to kill me, or at least expel me. Sylvia had bailed by lunch to go for a joyride in Dally's car— she'd invited me along, but I would never willingly get inside any vehicle he was driving— and conversation between me and her other friends was always stilted without her around as a buffer. Not that I was in much of a mood to socialize. I'd finally given up on trying to make nice and left halfway through to sit in a bathroom stall, legs folded up, and calculate how many days I had left before graduation.

"You're not in any trouble, dear," the secretary said as I came inside, taking her phone away from her ear for a moment. "Just sit down; it's about your peer tutoring assignment. Why, no, Mrs. Sheldon, I'm afraid we can't transfer your son to another homeroom so he can be with his friends—"

Peer tutoring— Darry had volunteered me to keep me off the streets in the afternoon, despite my protests that I'd really prefer a job that paid an actual salary. Won't distract you from your schoolwork, he'd said, holding up a hand to end all my whining, and I don't need a little girl's help payin' the bills. I'd wanted to say that I didn't see the point in school anymore, when I knew there wasn't a red cent to send Pony to college, much less me, but I hadn't felt suicidal enough to push it. With the secretary insisting that no, Mrs. Sheldon, her son just wasn't that special, even with the generous donations her husband had made to the school, I crept over to the closed office door and peered through the glass.

"Miss Shepard," the principal said, steepling his hands on his desk. Well, if that wasn't a surprise. "Angela. I've had both of your brothers at Will Rogers. I can't call either of them exemplary pupils."

Angela yawned, stretching her arms languidly above her head. She was a beauty, I had to admit, a real femme fatale, with long, blue-black ringlets falling down her back and a rouged, pouty mouth; she looked a lot older than fourteen, and I could see how she'd managed to attract so much attention. "Worried I'll break Tim's suspension record?"

His crusty lips narrowed into an invisible line. "I've received reports from your junior high principal, and the headmistress at St. Catherine's. Neither are what I'd call... glowing. Insubordination in the classroom, poor scholastic performance, slamming another girl's head into a desk—"

"Trust me, she had it coming."

"That is conduct I absolutely refuse to tolerate in a student here— especially a female one," he continued as though she hadn't said anything. "You are skating on very thin ice, young lady. This is a school, not a reformatory for juvenile delinquents. Now, I understand that you have had some... difficulties at home."

She straightened up in her chair, some of her nonchalant amusement gone. "I don't think that's none of your business."

"I understand that with your father's passing, things have been difficult for your family, but that's no excuse for this kind of behavior. There will be serious consequences if it continues here, and you'll be lucky if they aren't legal."

"Serious consequences. Right." She picked up her satchel and slung it over her shoulder. "Can I go now?"

"Sit down, Miss Shepard," he said, pointing a commanding finger at her chair. "I've decided that you could clearly benefit from our peer tutoring program— why, even from a role model, of sorts. Miss Curtis, if you could come inside..?"

I pushed the door open and smiled innocently, pretending that I hadn't been eavesdropping on their entire conversation. "Yessir?"

"I know that you were assigned to tutor Brenda White in geometry this semester, but I've found a better place for you," he said. "This young lady is Angela Shepard, a new freshman. I think she could use some guidance as she begins the year, in joining the school community, and I hope you're willing to assist her."

Translation: Welcome to your new career as a probation officer.

"I'd be happy to, sir," I said, fighting a grimace— this was better than Brenda, but having my wisdom teeth taken out would be better than Brenda. Angela's eyes skidded over me, and she quickly went back to examining her nails, her lip curling up.

"Wonderful." He sat back, observing a job well done. "Three days a week, in the library after school— and Miss Shepard, I'd really suggest you attend."

Without another word, or waiting to be dismissed, she swept out of the room, her head held as high as a queen's; I followed to find her leaning against the lockers, staring off at the end of the hallway. "Let me get one thing straight," she said. "You can run along home now, okay? I don't need no fucking tutoring."

"Guess you do if you got expelled, huh?" Her clear, dark eyes unnerved me— I felt like I was sinking into a black hole every time I looked at them. "I don't give a shit if you don't wanna be tutored, but you'd better at least show. I'm not trackin' you down all over the city and haulin' your ass into a chair."

"You wouldn't be able to haul me far." She opened her skirt pocket enough to show metal, glinting under the fluorescent lights. A switchblade— so the rumors were true, then. I'd never seen a girl carry one before, not even Sylvia.

"Your brother know you have that thing?"

"Curly? He gave it to me." She pulled it out, twirling it between her fingers— nervously, I glanced around for any passing teachers, but the hallway was deserted. "And what Tim don't know can't hurt him."

"He wants you and Curly to finish school, doesn't he?" I said, realizing that I had a much more potent weapon. "Curly was goin' on about it yesterday. He wouldn't be too happy if he found out you're cuttin' your last shot at graduation."

She looked close to taking that knife and slashing Tim's scar into my cheek. "You try that, I'll tell Darry exactly what you been doin' at night— and by the time he hears it from me, you'll be blowin' every guy on the east side, and some on the west."

"I'll cut off my nose to spite my face," I said, my tone as flat as a sheet of paper. "You just try me."

"Jesus, what's your damage?" she demanded, putting a foot up on the locker— her shoes were a lot nicer than she should've been able to afford, coming from this side of the tracks. "You that eager to teach me algebra?"

"Because Brenda White's an even bigger bitch than you" seemed like the wrong thing to say. I said it anyway.

"Shit, she really bad enough to make you wanna hang with me?"

"She's a Soc."

"Hey, St. Catherine's was full of spoiled rich cunts, too," Angela said, the word 'cunt' effortlessly rolling off her tongue, looking a hell of a lot more sympathetic. "I get it."

"Please tell me that means you'll show up."

She gave me the kind of smile wolves gave the rabbits in their jaws. "All right, all right. Just don't expect us to do a lot of studying."

Pony was sitting at the kitchen table when I got home, holding a bag of frozen peas up to a badly bruised jaw. "I can explain, okay," he said once he saw me, wincing in pain from the words. "He was askin' for it. I couldn't live with myself if I didn't punch him, shit."

"What'd he say?" I asked, deliberately calm, pouring myself a glass of orange juice. Pony had always tried to extract himself from fights before— not like Darry, who had too much muscle and stubbornness for his own good, or Soda, whose temper could be as wild as Dad's had been. He'd changed. We all had.

"That Mom and Dad were drunks. And that Dad was drivin' drunk that night."

I stared at him, unblinking. "Ain't you gonna yell or something?" he demanded, prodding the spreading damage. "You're the one who told me not to fight."

"You get caught?"

"No."

"Then make up some story for Darry, and keep it that way," I said, the mantra of this house lately. "I don't care."

I couldn't cry anymore, not even after seeing his hurt face— sorry, little brother, I'm out of service right now. Back in my room, I took the glass of juice and dumped the better part of a vodka bottle into it.

Bottoms up.