Author's Note: Hey, y'all! Thank you for being patient with me – college is a big adjustment. But we're back to it!

Happy reading :)

XXXXX

I made a really good investment.

XXXXX

"You have to be jokin'."

"Ain't that usually your beat?"

Two-Bit gave me a withering look from over the top of his sunglasses. We were really running out of things to do, so I guess we'd been reduced to hanging around the discount store. Man, we must be the least creative people on the planet, and I can definitely imagine that Two-Bit is getting sick of hanging around me when even I know he'd much rather be hanging out with his, well, girlfriend. I know I would if I were him – I'm a dullard, and Bridget Stevens has better legs. But I mean, it was barely July, and here we were.

We were standing in front of a discounted kiddie pool. And I was going to buy it.

"Don't you have anything better to spend yer money on?"

I shook my head. "Not exactly. There's not much I really wanna buy, 'sides Pepsi and cigarettes. Who says I can't buy a kiddie pool?"

"Kid, you'll look like white trash."

"I thought we were white trash?"

Two-Bit tilted his head – touché. "Yeah, but we're tryin' to improve our station."

"We are?"

My buddy was clearly getting fed up with me and my one-sided game of twenty questions. Two-Bit usually doesn't get enough credit for it, but he's got the patience of a saint, even if he doesn't share any of the other saintly qualities. I just grinned at him. I was sure in a funny mood, but hey – I've had a lot of crap thrown at me already this summer.

"You think you could find something better?" I challenged. Two-Bit looked around stealthily.

"And for cheaper," he mumbled, trying to look inconspicuous.

"You're going to steal from a discount store?" I hissed, and Two-Bit shushed me.

"Quiet down, kid. But, yeah. I'm just gonna…take a stroll, m'kay? See ya in a few."

Then he waltzed off. Ya know, you would think that maybe Two-Bit would sorta…grow out of something like this, constantly using the five-finger discount, but he hasn't yet, not entirely. I think he likes the challenge. Actually, if we're being totally honest, for a bum like him, I think he likes the challenges life throws at him – I think he likes sticking it to the universe. He's poor, so he swipes as much crap as he can. He's a redneck, but he somehow managed to snag one of the cutest, wealthiest girls in town. Life was a crapshoot, and I think he liked that aspect of it; he grinned in the face of adversity. But he should still cut back on the stealing.

I looked back down at the kiddie pool. It was plastic, light blue, with little wave imprints in it. Of course, it wasn't very deep, but I think I could make it work. I looked back up; there was a lady who looked like a mom working her way slowly towards me, and I knew what she'd be thinking once she saw it. She'd want to get her hands on this thing for sure, and it was the last one! So I did what any sane person would do and I grabbed that sucker up, and awkwardly carried it to the cash register to pay the two dollars and sixty-eight cents it cost. The old lady behind the counter gave me a gummy smile.

"Got li'l' silbin's?" she asked.

"Yeah," I lied. "It's been real hot. I thought they might like it."

"Well, ain't you a sweet boy."

Let's just say it was a good thing she didn't recognize me from the papers.

I took my kiddie pool and went outside, and sat on a bench under the awning of the store, the shade infinitely cooler than sitting on the curb. A few minutes later, Two-Bit reappeared, looking pretty pleased with himself. He walked up and started to wordlessly empty his pockets of the junk he'd found. I know for sure I saw two yo-yos. He was smiling, but I scowled up at him.

"Thou shalt not steal."

His face dropped. "Come again?"

"Thou shalt not steal," I repeated more emphatically. Two-Bit looked a bit taken aback for a moment before sighing and rolling his eyes.

"Kid, Pony, man," he tiredly laughed, running a hand down his face, "I appreciate you tryin' to be my conscience – "

"Well, someone's got to," I said hotly.

"Hey, Jiminy Cricket – cool yer jets. C'mon, let's go."

I guess he was kinda ticked at me because he didn't help me carry my pool; I had to awkwardly hold it and talk from behind the lip, which made me feel like I was shouting through plastic. Which I guess I was. "Don't you believe in Hell, Two-Bit?"

"Don't you?" He retorted.

"I guess. But ain't you worried that this stuff'll catch up to you?"

Two-Bit barked a sarcastic laugh. "Kid, I'mma have a lot to answer for before Saint Peter when my time comes, least of which is gonna be swipin' dime candy and kiddie toys. And I can't exactly say I'm a fan of the Big Man, so He prolly ain't a fan of me. What's with the concern? You haven't been one to worry about my soul – that's my mother's job."

I had to set down my pool so I could adjust my grip on it. I guess Two-Bit – who can't stay mad at me for long, thankfully – took pity on me, and he took one end and I took the other and we carried it home. It once again looked like rain, and the greying skies made my heart clench a bit. "I ain't worried about your soul."

"Seems to me that you are."

"Do you really think you're going to Hell?"

Two-Bit was getting tired of me, I could tell, and he's usually the only person besides Sodapop who could tolerate me. I was running out of friends, and fast. Maybe I should take Evan Peters up on his offer to go to his lake house for a bit, give the guys a break from me. They deserved to have a nice summer vacation, too, and I'm sure Darry wouldn't mind it, either. I seem to just stress people out.

"Kid, I don't know," he grinned, but I think that was just to keep himself from yelling at me. "I don't know what's gonna happen to me, I don't know if it's even real, all I know is that I don't really care."

"What if you get caught?"

"I have been caught, you know that. The idea is to not get caught. That's the challenge."

See? That's what I was talking about earlier. He won't try in school, but he'll put plenty of effort into making sure he doesn't get caught doing illegal crap. I dunno, it never used to really bother me, but now it does.

XXXXX

The kiddie pool was definitely one of the best purchases I have ever made. Now, when I was alone for the day, instead of just sitting around the house feeling sorry for myself, I could sit in a little plastic pool and feel sorry for myself, and stay cool doing it. I filled up the pool every morning, let it warm up just a little because cold water doesn't feel good down…there, and I'd pull on my swim shorts and grab a book and just sit out there and it was great, thanks very much. I missed the library, but this was okay, too. And because the library was being repaired, I'd had to do a little rereading, but not much, so yeah, it was all okay. It was all good.

When Darry saw the pool, he kinda just shot me a funny look, but I guess he figured that I could do worse things than spend a few dollars on a plastic pool, so he just shrugged and left it alone. Steve used it as an excuse to make a bunch of jokes about what a baby I am, but we'll see who's complaining when he's spent all day under cars getting sweaty and gross and doesn't even have his own personal pool to go to at the end of the day, and when he comes to me for a turn in the pool, I'll turn him away. Then I'll be the one who gets the last laugh.

There were only two problems that I could see with the kiddie pool. One was that whenever Darry mowed, the grass would get in the pool and I would painstakingly scoop it out of the water, and even then I would sometimes just give up and dump it out, refill it, and then get annoyed when the grass stuck to my feet got in the pool. The other problem that in my opinion wasn't really a problem (well, not always) was animals. If I forgot to empty it, they'd end up drinking out of it. Mostly cats and dogs. Sometimes raccoons. Like this morning – some old mutt was hanging out there when I walked out of the house. I approached him carefully, hoping he wasn't mad with rabies or something.

"Hey, dog," I greeted. He didn't seem to hear me. I tried again. "You thirsty?"

He still didn't seem to hear me. He was just lying by the pool, not doing much, and I got kinda concerned that he was dying or something, but I didn't want to touch him or anything because, you know, rabies. Apparently, once you start noticing symptoms of rabies, you're already a goner, so I kept my distance. But this little guy seemed nice, just tired. I crept a little closer. I couldn't tell what he was a mix of, but he was kinda medium-sized and dark. He must have sensed me coming because he looked up, and we stared at each other, but he seemed cool, so I stuck out my hand and let him sniff it. Then he let me pet him, so I came to the conclusion that he wasn't rabies-invested and we could hang out.

"I'm just gonna sit here," I told him when I got in my pool. It was the temperature I liked it, so I just sat in there and read my book while the dog came over and lay down behind my back.

"Howdy, Ponyboy. See ya found my dog!"

I turned around. There was Howard Long again. I waved at him. "He's your dog?" Damn. I was hoping to take in a stray. But I doubt Darry would ever let that happen.

"That he is. Been lookin' for 'im. Did you find him, or did he find you?"

"He found me, sir."

Howard laughed. "Fair 'nuff. He gets out sometimes, hope he's not a bother."

I shook my head. "He's no bother, Mr. Long. Does he have a name?"

"That Damn Dog." I guess I must have made a pretty funny face because Howard started laughing. I wasn't quite sure what sort of name for a dog that was, but it was something. "TD for short."

"Not TDD?" I asked.

"Naw. That sounds stupid." It all sounded pretty stupid to me, but I didn't say anything. Just nodded. "Well, hey – if you don't mind, he seems to like hangin' out with ya. Could you just make sure he gets back eventually? He usually just wanders back to get fed, the mutt."

I shrugged. "Sure. He's good company." Better company than my friends and brothers, that was for sure.

So TD and I hung out that afternoon, and he followed me inside when I made a sandwich, and I gave him a piece of ham. Then we went back outside and he let me pet him. He wasn't that interested in the water, but he let me pet him while he slept. He was still hanging around a few hours later when I headed inside to hit the head and found Two-Bit had wandered into the house.

"Woah. Who's the stray?"

I looked down. TD had followed me into the house. "Oh. This is That Damn Dog. TD, for short."

Two-Bit cocked an eyebrow. "Not TDD?"

I shook my head. "Nah, that'd sound stupid."

"Who does he belong to?"

"The Longs."

"Ah," he nodded. "Why's he with you?"

"Cuz he found my pool. We hung out. He's a better friend than you are," I said, crossing my arms. TD sat next to me and joined in my defiance. Two-Bit chewed his lip.

"Sorry kid. Ya know what they say – relationships are a lot of work. This one's more demanding than the others. Not that I mind," he added, smirking.

"Gross, Two-Bit."

"Aw, shuddup. That's not what I meant."

He brushed past me into the kitchen and started rifling through our icebox, looking for beer. But I wasn't done with him yet. TD and I cornered him in the kitchen. "Two-Bit, you can't just keep abandoning me like this."

"Abandoning?" He repeated. "Kid, I'm not abandoning you. And hell, I've got other people in my life. You're one of my best buddies, Ponyboy, but that don't mean you're the only person I wanna spend time with. And like I said, I'm kinda tryin' to make things work with Stevens, and, ya know, I really wanna make that happen."

I sighed. Well, I guess it was time to ask him the same question I'd asked Sodapop back in the fall about Sandy. "Two-Bit? What's it like bein' in love?"

He slammed the refrigerator door shut in surprise. "What? Oh. Yeah. Uh. Nice?"

God, and that was an even worse answer. I just waved him off. "You're pretty much the only friend I got anymore, Two-Bit. You know that?"

Two-Bit looked genuinely sad. "Yeah, kiddo. I do."

XXXXX

"Well this is just…just great."

Sodapop poked his head out of the bathroom. He was getting ready for another blind date, this time at the benefit of Two-Bit and Bridget; Bridget had apparently told Two-Bit to tell Soda that she knew a nice girl from one of the central neighborhoods, and that they were in choir together or something, and that yes, she was attractive, she didn't just have a "nice personality." I'd like to think my brother isn't so shallow, but, well, he probably is. I've heard him talk to the guys; I know what he's looking for.

"What's great?" Soda asked, and his tone suggested that he hadn't heard the sarcasm in Darry's voice and was actually expecting something wonderful. Darry held up an envelope.

"I got picked."

I was gonna ask what exactly he was picked for, but then I remembered: jury duty. Darry had to go in for this interview to get picked, and he'd come home pretty confident that they wouldn't want him. Well, guess that had all gone out the window. Darry was wrong sometimes. "For what?" Soda asked.

"Jury duty."

Soda sighed and wrapped his towel tighter around his waist and strode into the living room. Darry handed him the envelope, and Soda started to read. He twisted his mouth from side to side. "Welp. What does this mean?"

Darry shrugged. "Means I gotta go in and be on the jury."

"What's the case?"

Darry rolled his eyes. "I can't tell ya that. I can't tell you anything, so back off."

Soda looked a bit disappointed. I hoped it was a murder…actually, wait. Nevermind. No I didn't. "Okay, but what does this mean for us? You can't go in to work 'til this is over. What're we s'posed to do about that? Can't you get outta this?"

"You can't get outta jury duty, Sodapop," Darry said, looking slightly amused underneath his annoyance. "It's a real perk of our justice system that each of us gets the chance to participate," he said wryly.

Sodapop furrowed his brow, but then brightened up. "Hell, all's we gotta do to do that is get jailed." Darry just scowled. "Anyways…"

"We'll talk about it later," Darry sighed, and I knew that they'd stopped talking about it because of me, which was just as well because that's when Steve and Two-Bit decided to show up, all in a huff.

"Are you hearin' this shit?"

Steve blustered into the house, Two-Bit hot on his tail, and immediately turned on the radio. The DJ, who had a real funky smooth voice, was wrapping up his spiel, saying something about how he was just gonna shut his trap now and let the music do the talking. My brothers and I looked at them funny, having missed the DJ's whole intro. All I heard was something fading in. "What is it?" Sodapop asked.

"This is the second time they've played it, and they're playin' it all the way through," Steve said.

"Playing what?"

Steve looked to Two-Bit, who sighed in resignation and said, "It's called Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." He didn't sound all that happy that he knew that. Or maybe he was just embarrassed to know it around us, because then he added, "It's the new Beatles album."

"You can't escape it," Steve said, shaking his head. "It's everywhere."

I listened carefully, which seemed to be what everyone else was doing, too. I'd never heard of a radio station playing a whole album all the way through, and certainly not twice. I remembered that this was the album that Curly and that blonde girl at the party said I needed to listen to. Now, I wouldn't have done that voluntarily, but now that it was just playing on the radio, I don't know – it kinda…rocked.

Soda nodded his head from side to side. "Groovy," he surmised. Steve's eyes went wide.

"Groovy?" He repeated. "Take that back."

"Aw, I dunno, Stevie, it ain't so bad," Two-Bit said happily. "It's better than their other stuff."

"You're all traitors. Darry, whatta you think?"

"It's fine." Darry didn't have time for music.

"Pony?"

I shrugged. "I like it." Again, Steve shook his head. This was going against our entire belief system – Elvis had always been in, and The Beatles were out, on our side of town, at least. But I feel like we haven't heard much from The King lately, so I guess this was just the natural order of things. And I hated to admit that Curly was right but – yeah. He was right. It was worth it, all five of us just sitting there and listening all the way through.

"Of course you'd like it," Steve said to me as he left. "You've got flower child written all over ya."

Later that night, I had to ask Darry what a flower child was.

XXXXX

We were somehow the only people in Crutchfield Park that night. I guess people thought it wasn't the best venue, but I don't know – we could always see the fireworks pretty well from here. Maybe the people in our neighborhood would rather just burn down their own yards. That's what Steve and Soda had wanted to do, buy a bunch of fireworks and set them off from our place, but Darry being as smart as he is knew that it wouldn't be as simple as that. Any fireworks display that Steve and Sodapop were in charge of would probably kill us all, or at least burn down our house.

"How'd it go the other night?" Steve was asking about his blind date. Sodapop just shook his head.

"Ya don't wanna know. 'Sides – little pitchers."

Soda was referring to Sadie Mathews. She and Evie and Evie's younger sister, Beth, had tagged along with us. The gang liked to insinuate a budding relationship between me and her, but Beth…well, she was Beth. She was a little too much for me, and I didn't want to date anybody anyways. Two-Bit kept glancing over at Steve and Evie, and I'd bet money that he was wondering why the hell Bridget Stevens wasn't here, or why he wasn't with her. I think that's how relationships work, at least.

"I wanna hear, Soda," Beth said sweetly.

"Yeah, Soda, I wanna know, too. Is Stevens really such a poor matchmaker?"

Soda then told them all about his second horrible date in a matter of days, this time almost getting to kiss her before her old man threw open his front door and threatened to put a cap in him. But he said it hadn't been that spectacular an evening, anyway. Guess the girl had been a little too fickle for his taste, even if she was decent-looking.

"Two-Bit, you're now officially banned from setting me up, too."

Two-Bit looked askance. "What? I wasn't even the one who set you up! Look, it's not like I wanted to become part of Operation: Get Sodapop Laid, but I was just the messenger. Take it out on Stevens."

"Fine, then," Soda said happily, "I will."

"Fine."

"Fine!"

Sadie poked my arm. I looked down at her. She and I had been relegated to the kiddie corner, probably because she's ten and I spend my days in, well, a kiddie pool. "What does 'laid' mean?"

"It means sleeping!" Two-Bit called over to us. I was surprised he'd even heard the question. Maybe he'd been anticipating it, in which case, he shouldn't have even said it in the first place.

"No it doesn't! That makes no sense!"

"No more questions!"

Sadie rolled her eyes and looked back up at me. "I don't see how you can be friends with him. He's insane." I chuckled.

"He's not so bad. You're just sayin' that cuz he's your brother."

"If he was your brother, that's what you'd be saying, too."

Sadie smiled at me like she had just shared her biggest secret and entrusted it with me, and she looked like a little grown-up for a second there, more grown up than I probably ever have in my life, and she's ten years old. Ya know, maybe she's not so bad. All us guys have always been kinda wary of her, mostly because of Two-Bit, who prides himself on being pretty chivalrous to his sister and his dates alike. We mostly just forgot that Sadie even existed, but maybe that wasn't fair to entirely ignore her. She was experiencing a lot of the same things we were experiencing, even if from afar and from a totally different, little kid perspective.

"Jesus, Sodapop, what is that?"

Soda had a few unlit matches in his teeth as he pulled out a box of sparklers. He lit up a few and passed them down to Sadie. "For the little lady," he explained.

"What about me?" Evie asked. "Don't I get a sparkler?"

Suddenly, everyone was clamoring for a sparkler; even Darry accepted one. Soda, the patron saint of pyrotechnics, started lighting up sparklers for everyone. Sadie and I drew pictures for each other with the light, the impressions burning into our brains. By the time we were through the whole box, the real show had started.

There's nothing quite like the Fourth of July. It's a holiday all for making noise and eating junk food and being glad we live in a country where we get to do things like jury duty. People sure do complain about it here a lot, but at least once a year, we can agree that we're glad we at least have a country to complain about. Again, I don't know much about politics – I don't know if any of us really do – but I do know that there's something special about it. People shut up and watch fireworks. Gals like Evie will rest their chins on top of the heads of guys like Steve. Big brothers like Two-Bit will let little sisters like Sadie climb up on their shoulders so they can see the show better. And brothers like me and mine can just sit on the grass and just hang out like nothing's ever gone wrong. I don't know much about American history, either, really, but I know enough that I think this is what those guys back a couple hundred years ago had in mind.

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AN: Thanks for reading!