Std Disclaimer: I don't own anything even remotely relating to the Outsiders, but this is my own work. Blah, blah, blah.


I had no conscious notion where I was going, but when I pulled open the heavy door of the old Winslow barn, something flashed through my head. I didn't know it then, but Simpson had picked up Rossey that morning. He got caught trying to hop a train in Lawton. Which was a shame, because I think in my crazy, crushed heart, I was hoping I'd surprise him and he'd shoot me, too.

It still didn't seem real. I didn't seem real. But when I saw the smears of blood at my feet just inside the doors, I knew that it was. My brother's blood. I bent to touch it, but of course, it was dry. I fell back against the door then, too numb to cry. But I was shaking all over, so hard my teeth clattered and bumped.

No matter how much Darry yells at me, no matter how mad he got, I guess I never really thought he'd want me gone. But maybe it was something that just built up in him to boiling, and the thing with Rossey sent him over. Soda was too weak to really fight for me, which must have made it the right time. It's time, I remembered Darry saying. It's time.


The first week of May passed in a blur. After all that not being able to sleep, I'd spun around full circle. I couldn't do anything but sleep. I'd made a nice little bed of dusty old feed sacks and even older hay in one of the old stalls, and I only got up a couple times a day to wobble down to the far corner of the property, where there were peaches just barely ripe enough to eat. And even then, a couple bites in, they tasted like baloney and I couldn't eat them anymore.

I considered the way things were almost from outside myself, like it was happening to someone else and I was only watching. I imagined the state watching our place suspiciously to see if I'd come back home. I imagined Soda out searching the countryside for me, Peggy the farthest thing from his mind. And I pictured Darry at home, reading about the Sooners.

Soda would wonder if I'd gone back to Windrixville. Him and Steve would probably wind up out there. Soda would politely ask someone at the gas station where the old church used to be. He'd probably spend some time just looking at the ashes. But not much. Soda can't rest on anything for long. Once he satisfied himself that I wasn't anyplace nearby, he'd start checking houses. Curly's. Two-Bit's. But I wasn't anywhere. Not anywhere he'd looked.

I wondered offhandedly if he'd think of the barn. And that made me wonder if I should find someplace else. But I didn't know where else to go, really. And I couldn't muster up enough strength to care. Whenever I started really thinking hard about what I should do next, I wound up falling back to sleep.

It rained almost every day. Early May is usually ripe for storms, and this one was no exception. I'd wake up and listen to it raging and booming, the barn creaking madly like it was about to fall down around me. But I kept falling asleep. I couldn't stay awake. Didn't care to, anyway.

But finally I woke and I couldn't sleep again. My head hurt something fierce, the way it does if you oversleep or if you read a long book in one sitting. The barn was making all sorts of noises, too. Groans and creaks and loud cracks. I knew I had to eat something. Baloney sure didn't appeal, but my stomach…the gnawing emptiness was so fierce I couldn't think about much else.

Outside, though, the world was darkening. I wasn't sure what time of day it was or even what day it was. Saturday? Tuesday? That's the trouble with sleeping too much. You lose count of the dark times and light times, and if you lose track of them, you lose everything.

I let the wind whip at me, ignoring the little bits of grass and small, dried out twigs it slung. Like angry dogs, it growled past me on both sides. Thunder rolled in long waves overhead. As I came up on the peach trees, it boomed so loud the ground shook. When I squinted up at the sky, it was a sickly, clotted smudge of grayish-green. Tornado, I thought, as nonchalantly as if I was telling someone it was half past three.

A sheet of rain dropped from the sky like a stagehand losing control of the curtain. Guess I didn't really want those peaches, anyway. Turning back, the wind gusted so fiercely that I might've been able to lie down in it and not fall. I waited to feel the alarm, the rush of panic, the…anything. But there was nothing, and I just leaned into it and kept putting one foot in front of the other.

The little bits of grass and tiny, dried out twigs graduated up to small branches torn too soon from old trees. Little young ones with fresh green leaves, ripped away from all they knew. Guess the green ain't gold no more, I thought faintly as the wind moaned. I caught a fallen fence post with my toe and hit the ground face first. My body went rigid as the roar increased to that of a freight train. It wasn't for Windrixville, either.

I guess I wasn't completely numb, after all, because right about when I caught sight of an entire tree being yanked up from the ground, I started to run for the barn in earnest. There wasn't any fuel in me, though, and my whole body ached from the effort.

The east door slammed behind me, literally shoving me inside. Meanwhile, it ripped the north door halfway off its hinges and sent it banging. Part of the already patchy roof ripped away and sent a beam crashing down right behind me, so that I tripped forward into a post. I did what every Oklahoman learns in school drills: I dropped to my knees and held on to that post for dear life as more of the roof tore away and the updraft tugged hard on me.

I must've been a little out of my mind by then, because I thought I heard my name in the moaning of the wind.

"Pony!" I closed my eyes and held on tighter as the wind got even worse. But then it came again, and it was so real, I couldn't help but lift my head in the darkness. "Pony!"

I rose, feverishly, searching wildly. It sounded for all the world like Darry, and if he was talking to me, finally talking to me, I didn't want to miss my chance. I turned toward the south side of the barn, where it seemed to be coming from. That's when the north door burst free and came at me like a runaway train.