Chapter 7-

The only person I had to see in that group of parents ahead of us was Darry to know that I had better start running in the opposite direction. Actually my friends were the ones that took off first, but I wasn't far behind them. We ran around the corner and down the street so fast that I hadn't even realized what I was doing. I didn't think that anyone had spotted us, but we kept on running. Finally we had to stop on a corner and catch our breath.

"What," Mary Alice asked, breathing deeply, "are we going to do?"

Neither Kathy or I answered as we were still trying to catch our own breath. I couldn't believe that this was really happening. All morning I had worried about getting caught, and then when I was sure that we were going to get away with it, it had to happen. I had only seen Darry clearly, but I was sure that Kathy's mother had been there as well, along with our teacher and principal.

"I've got it," Kathy said. "We'll go to my house. Obviously my mom isn't going to be home, so we can just tell her that we've been there for awhile."

"But Mr. Roberts was there," Mary Alice told her. Mr. Roberts was our principal.

"Oh well. We'll just tell my mom that we decided to go to my house straight after school."

"Don't you get it!" I cried, becoming slightly angry. "If the principal was there with your parents it means that they already know we skipped school! What are we supposed to tell your mom about that? That we forgot to go today?"

"Lily's right," Mary Alice agreed. "Maybe we should go back. If they saw us they'll get even more mad for running away."

"But we'll be able to avoid them for longer." She did have a valid point there. I wasn't exactly looking forward to facing my brother, especially since he shouldn't have even been off work yet. I knew he wouldn't be please to have had to leave his job early, and because it was my fault things would only be worse for me.

"Let's go to Kathy's," I said quietly in agreement, and slowly we walked on towards her house, naturally taking a different route this time. None of us wanted to talk to each other, and I had this feeling that if I spoke someone I knew might hear me and know where I was.

I tried thinking of all of the things that we had done wrong to determine how much trouble we were actually in. First and foremost there was skipping school, which was a big enough offence on it's own. Then there was the part about going all over town to places we weren't even sure we were allowed to be. Next was taking the bus, and going downtown. I had never actually been told I wasn't allowed downtown, but it was one of those things you just knew you weren't allowed to do. I personally had stolen as well, but that wasn't anything I would ever tell Darry about. The last thing that we had done was run away just before being caught, but as I saw it the only thing we really had to worry about was skipping school. If we didn't mention the wandering around, the bus taking, or the fact that we were downtown at all, things would have been better than imagined.

Yet I still had this horrible feeling of regret in me. It wasn't like the guilt I felt for stealing, where I felt like I was a bad person. This was the kind of regret where I wanted to scream and cry and stomp my feet because I was so angry with myself for having ever believed that I could get away with something so stupid. There was even a little part of me that wanted Darry to come and find me so that I would just be able to get all of this over with. I was terrified of seeing him, but was scared me more was not knowing what was going to happen.

"I bet my mom's going to yell at me for this," Kathy said, but no conversation came out of it. I think that both Mary Alice and I were too busy thinking about what she had said to respond. The most Kathy would ever have to worry about was being yelled at, because her parents never punished her. I think she even liked being in trouble, maybe because each time she pushed her parents a little bit further over the edge. Mary Alice was the one that I felt the worst for though. There was no secret as to what her parents would do to her when they found out about what we had done. They weren't the most strict parents I knew, but they did have pretty specific views and disciplining her. Having said that, I did feel that she was lucky in a way, because at least she knew what she had coming to her. I could only imagine what was going to happen to me.

I was about to tell my friends that we should probably come up with an exact story to tell all of our families so that we could be in as little trouble as possible, but the sound of a car pulling up beside us kept me from it.

"Wowie!" a humoured voice sang. "You girls are sure in a lot of trouble!"

I groaned. Why was it that Two-Bit happened to be popping up everywhere lately? Normally he would be welcome company, but not at such a time.

I looked over at him as he leaned out of his car window. Kathy and Mary Alice stopped walking too, but they looked at me as if to ask what he was doing there. I'm sure they were both wondering the same thing I was: Why was he driving his car if he had had to take the bus earlier?

"Can I give you kids some advice?" he asked. Even if we didn't want it he was going to give it up anyway. "If you know that the fuzz are after you, and you spot them, run away. But if it's your parents looking, and they spot you, go towards them, otherwise they'll just beat ya harder when they catch you."

"Did you see our parents?" Kathy asked worriedly. "Are they looking for us?"

He laughed like it was the funniest thing he had ever been asked. "You're kidding right? Everybody's out looking for you. Lily I even had to tell Darry that I saw you on the bus."

"Why'd you do that?" Forget that I was the one in trouble, he didn't have any right to tell on me for that.

"Hey I didn't want to tell," he admitted, "but there's a lot of people who wanted to know where you were. When your brother asked me if I had seen you I had to tell him."

"You couldn't just lie? You do it all the time, it wouldn't have been much of a stretch for you!"

"Hey!" Two-Bit said, pointing at me and raising his voice a little. "I already told you I didn't want to tell him, but all your parents were around. Say you went missing, I could get in pretty deep if somebody found out I had seen you and didn't tell."

"We wouldn't have gone missing," I pointed out rudely.

"Probably not. Nobody would want to kidnap kids like you.

"That's not funny!"

"I wasn't trying to be funny." He had lost all of the humour in his voice, and now he was looking at me in this deadly way I had never seen before. Truth be told I had never really acted that way in front of Two-Bit, so it must have been pretty surprising for him to see me acting so rudely. The only people I ever dared talk to that way were my brothers, but things were just different around family members.

I didn't have anything left to say to him, and I was angry that he was getting involved in the first place. He wasn't my brother and he didn't have any right to talk to me like he knew better than I did, so I turned and began walking away. My friends followed me, but Two-Bit didn't seem to think that I should be doing this.

"Hey!" he said, rolling along slowly beside us in his car. "Lily I told your brother I'd bring you home if I found you!"

"I don't care!" I called over to him, becoming more and more bold. "I don't have to listen to you." If he hadn't been in his car I wouldn't have said that, because as he and I both knew, it didn't matter whether or not I had to listen to him, he was bigger, and he could make me.

"I'm not trying to get you in trouble," he said, although not very nicely. "But you're going to be in trouble anyway, and I'd rather not get dragged down with you. Come on now!"

"No." I started to walk faster.

"Lily!" He drove faster.

"Uh uh!" No longer was I just angry at him. I was enjoying this, and it was becoming like one of those games I had played when I was really small where I would test people until they were actually angry at me. Even Kathy and Mary Alice seemed to think that it was funny, but were too afraid to laugh out loud.

"If you don't stop walking and get into this car right now," Two-Bit threatened, "then I'll get out and drag you in. All three of you!"

Now it was Kathy's turn to get upset.

"You can't touch me!" she squealed.

"We'll see 'bout that!" he barked, and stopped his car. None of us had sense enough to walk away, and besides, we wanted to know if he would really drag us over.

We never found out though, because, as luck had it, he couldn't get the door open. I don't know what the problem was, but his door was jammed and he couldn't open it. I thought he might crawl through the window at one point, but our cruel laughter must have got to him because finally he gave up and sped away in anger.

There was something strange about the way I acted when I knew that I was in trouble. Instead of trying to be good and polite so that it wouldn't end up getting any worse, I always acted horribly. I became rude and defensive, only because it was the only thing keeping me from admitting that I knew I had done something wrong. As Ponyboy had once put it, I didn't know how to quit while I was ahead.

After the little incident with Two-Bit I began to wish that I had gone with him. I wasn't sure why, but there was something about how angry he had become with me that made me feel uneasy. Maybe it was the fact that if he could become that mad at me it meant that Darry would be ten times worse. And I was right, because not five minutes after Two-Bit had driven off, Darry pulled up beside us in our car, and let me tell you I had never been more afraid in my life.

He didn't have to say anything to me for me to know that I had get in. As I climbed in he said something to my friends, and thought I didn't hear what it was that he told them, the next thing I knew they were slipping into the backseat.

I don't know what was worse, the fact that I was now face to face with Darry or the fact that he hadn't said anything yet. To anyone who didn't know him it wouldn't have even seemed like he was that angry, but I could tell from his white knuckles on the steering wheel that he was trying to think of what to say to me.

The second he pulled up in front of the school Kathy and Mary Alice bailed out, only to be met by their own parents. I noticed that Kathy's dad wasn't present, but there was no time to speculate on that because Darry drove off after only a few quiet words with Mr. Weston, Mary Alice's father.

I struggled to come up with something so say as my brother drove home, but the only thing I could think of was to tell him that I was sorry. I knew that it would be pointless to say, but the silence was near killing me and I had to say something.

"Darry I didn't-" I began, but he cut me off right away.

"You don't get to talk right now Tiger Lily!" he said forcefully, and sped up the vehicle.

If ever I wanted to know just how much trouble I was in, I could just rely on the name that Darry called me. If he said "Lily" then it meant that things weren't that bad. If he started snarling things like "sweetheart" and "kiddo" then it meant that I had better keep my mouth shut because he didn't even want to look at me. But when he said "Tiger Lily," I knew that I was in for it. Just like Sodapop and Ponyboy I had one of those original sounding names, only I wasn't the first person to have it, as there was a character in Peter Pan with the same name. I didn't actually know anyone else named Tiger Lily, but it didn't matter. Pony and Soda both seemed to like that they had names that weren't the most common things you might hear of, but I hated mine. To me there was nothing worse that being named after a dumb old flower, especially one that was orange, my least favourite colour.

Darry, of all people, knew how much I loathed to be reminded of my name, and usually respected that. So when he actually called me Tiger Lily I knew just how much trouble I was in, and of course I was scared. I was even more terrified to get out of the car when he pulled into our driveway, because I didn't know what he planned on doing to me.

"You go inside," he said so calmly that I got a chill down my spine, "and wait for me. We're going to have a long talk about what happened today, and you're going to tell me every detail of what you did. After, I'll decide what's gonna happen to you."

It was sort of like in the movies, where the leader of the mob tell the guy he's out to get that he doesn't know what he's going to do with him, but the guy knows that he wants to kill him. I had this slight fear in me that Darry might actually want to kill me. Which could have been a good thing, depending on how I looked at it.

It probably only took Darry a couple of minutes to come in after me, but waiting for him felt like forever. As soon as I walked in the door I rushed over to my bedroom and pulled the lipstick and blush out of my backpack. I opened the top drawer of my dresser, where I kept my underwear and was sure that no one would go into, and hid them as far back and as deep down as possible. Then I closed my schoolbag up and rushed back into the living room to sit on the sofa, afraid that he might walk in and know that I had been trying to hide something.

I ended up waiting for him for so long that my stomach was starting to turn, and thought that if I hadn't forgotten to eat lunch I probably would have thrown up all over the carpet. As I heard Darry opening the front door and shaky feeling ran down from the back off my neck all the way to my knees, and I was more worried than ever about what he wanted to say to me.

He walked into the room, big arms crossed over his chest. I wished that his shirt hadn't been so tight, because although I usually admired how strong he was, I didn't need anything reminding me of how much bigger he was than me at that point. He didn't sit down as I wished he had either, but instead stood right in front of me, which, as anyone could imagine, was the most frightening view to have before me.

"How on earth did you possibly think that you could get away with this?" he demanded. "Didn't you think that your teacher might notice that all three of you were out of school today? And you girls had your principal in a panic trying to find out where you went off to. He couldn't get a hold of me to find out if you were sick and both of your friends' parents weren't around either. He almost called the police to make sure that nothing happened, but the only reason he didn't was because he knew that if the police got involved with our family they would throw you, Ponyboy, and even Sodapop into homes so fast it would make your head spin. I don't know where you got the crazy idea to skip class in the first place, but believe me, you're not going to do it again."

I felt my eyes fill up with tears. He was so big and scary, but he wasn't yelling as loudly as he could. I wanted to tell him that it had all been Kathy's idea, but knew that he wouldn't want to hear it.

"Now I already know that you missed the whole day, and that you took the bus somewhere, but the first thing I want to know from you is where you went."

I didn't answer him, not because I was afraid to, but because I was racking my brains trying to think of what places I could have taken the bus to that were in my limits.

"Tiger Lily," he growled. "Now!"

"Downtown," I said as quietly as possible.

"Excuse me?" he asked, moving in closer to me, but I knew that he had heard.

"Downtown," I said, looking at him nervously.

"What the hell did you have to do downtown!"

I jumped back when he swore. I was used to people swearing around me, but not so much when they were angry.

"We just went to walk around," I said, tears starting to fall from my eyes. "We didn't do anything wrong."

"Really?" he snorted. "You didn't go to school and then you went downtown, on the bus, but you didn't do anything wrong? Tell me how that works."

"I d-don't," I stuttered. "I don't know. I just mean that we didn't do anything wrong downtown. And you never said I can't go there. You never said I couldn't take the bus either." I was getting into my defensive mode again, and even though I knew better, once I started, I couldn't stop myself. "Nobody ever told me I wasn't allowed downtown, but you never want to take me there! We just wanted to have fun, and it's not like we're the first kids to ever skip school!" I even stood up at this point, trying to show him that I wasn't afraid of him. "It isn't fair that Two-Bit told on me, and the only reason you're getting mad at me is because everybody hates me and likes to see me in trouble! I didn't feel like going to school today and I felt like going to the store, and it's too bad if you don't like it because next chance I get I'll go again. Nobody ever wants me to do the things that I want and it isn't fair!"

"You're not in the position to tell me what's fair or not little girl!" Darry roared. "You don't get to skip school, and worry all of us and have people out looking for you wondering if something's happened to you and then try and tell me that you don't think something's fair. And I didn't have to tell you that you aren't allowed going downtown alone for you to know that you aren't allowed to do it. And don't you dare yell at me like that again, or I swear I will hit you so hard it'll knock your teeth out!"

Lovely. My idea to show him that I wasn't afraid of him was cut short by my bursting into tears and sitting back down on the couch. This time he sat down next to me, but didn't say anything for a long while. Once I had stopped crying so hard he moved my head so that I had to look at him, and began to speak.

"I understand if you didn't want to go to school today," he said calmly, but not comfortingly, "but you should have gone anyway. It wasn't like you'd asked me if you could stay home, and you know that it's wrong. Not only are you at school to learn, but you're there so I know where you are and that you're safe during the day. When my boss told me that your principal needed to talk to me I was afraid that something happened, and for you to say that the only reason I'm mad is because I hate you is just mean. I wouldn't have left work, and I wouldn't have spent my entire afternoon looking all over and hounding everyone I came across for help if I didn't care about you." He was starting to raise his voice at this point, and I had a feeling that if I said something wrong he would get angry again. "What if you had gotten hurt downtown, or one of your friends had? Nobody would have known where you were, or any idea where to start looking for you. It wouldn't have been fair to anyone else if Two-Bit had kept it a secret that you were on that bus with him, because I wouldn't know where to look for you."

"But nothing even happened!"

"Well then don't you think you're in a lot of trouble after nothing happened. You don't get to go to that sleepover you were looking forward to tonight, and you had a lot of people out there who were worried sick. Mary Alice's dad told me what he was going to do with her if he found out that she was alright, and let me tell you for a while I was considered the same thing myself. Two-Bit told me about how you wouldn't come with him either, and he didn't need you talking to him that way when he was only trying to help. Was it worth having to spend the next few weeks in your bedroom to miss just one day of school?"

"What?" I asked. I hadn't actually expected him to ground me for this. I don't know what I had been expecting, maybe that I wasn't going to be able to sleep over at Kathy's for awhile, maybe he would warn me about the bus and leave it at that, but I never thought that I might be grounded.

"I think you've had enough freedom for the next little while," he informed me. Before I could even begin to argue that I didn't think I deserved that much of a punishment, he sent me off to my room, telling me that we would talk about this more at dinner after I had had more time to think about things. I couldn't wait.