Author's Note: I've written this story a few chapters ahead, but I'm currently writing the last chapter now, so it won't be long until this is all over :(
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 Nicki Minaj's song, The Crying Game. And the title of this fic comes from the song of the same name by The Beatles.
Sunday, 2 February 1969
Is it too late to talk? Did I wait too long?
A thousand words don't change a thing
Is it only three, three words that you're missing?
Katie had declined Susan's invitation that morning to meet her at Jay's, sure that Dale would be with her, and wherever Dale was Glenn and Curly were usually nearby, too. Katie had spent far too much time avoiding Curly in the past week and a half to put herself in his line of fire again.
Since their fight at school Wednesday before last, she had made a point of refusing to speak to him altogether, even last Thursday afternoon when he had seemingly cooled off a little from their fight and started addressing her again, though it was often to make some snide comment.
It caused many an awkward moment for Susan, Dale and Glenn whenever Katie moved on with another conversation and made it clear she wasn't going to dignify Curly with a response, but at this point she didn't have the energy to care. It was a surprise to her, however, how easily her lack of reaction to Curly clearly frustrated him, and what a thrill she felt every time he shook his head in exasperation or threw his pen down on his desk in tantrum.
So instead of going to Jay's with Susan, Katie hung around at home, watching television, studying a little, and even attempting to clean up for her mom, which was truly testament to how incredibly bored she was by afternoon.
She had just finished cleaning up her bedroom when she decided to do a load of washing with the clothes that had begun to form a small pile in the corner of her room. Not wanting to waste water and detergent, though, she decided to mix her small pile with Rick's to make a full load, and made her way into his bedroom to collect whatever of his clothes needed washing.
She thought it odd to see his bedroom door slightly ajar instead of completely closed, and when she stepped into his room she found him asleep on top of his bed covers. Sunlight poked through the small gaps in his closed blinds and cast shadows over his face.
It struck her, like it had time and time again lately, how dark the circles under his eyes were. His eyelids looked so heavy, and though she hadn't heard him come home last night or this morning and despite the fact that his treatment of her hadn't improved any since she'd gotten in his way at Buck's, she felt a wave of relief wash over her at the sight of him asleep on his bed. He was home. He was safe and sound. And in sleep he looked so much more like the brother she'd had before Mike died.
She frowned at the ache inside of her that stretched its hands out in search of him, wanting so much for her brother to smile at her again, to squeeze her breathless in a hug. She wondered as she tossed his pile of washing into a basket already half full with her clothes what would happen if she were to gently shake Rick awake and tell him that she wanted her brother back.
As she turned to leave the room she figured he would probably tell her that he wanted Mike back, but that they couldn't always get what they wanted.
Katie noticed as she opened his bedroom door to leave that he had discarded a pair of jeans on the floor beside his bed, and when she stood again after picking them up to wash with the rest of the clothes her eyes caught on the half open top drawer of his bedside table, or more accurately, what was in it. By a tiny crack of sunlight she could see notes half fallen out of a bulging sock. She froze in her half turn back to the doorway and peaked a little closer, careful not to make any noise and wake Rick.
There was a lot there. She didn't know how much, but it was certainly more cash than alot of people on their side of town would normally have at one time.
Dread churned in Katie's stomach and she felt the overwhelming clamminess that normally preceded being sick in a toilet bowl. It was just money, she told herself as she rushed out of Rick's room as quietly as possible and tried to take deep breaths, but it wasn't the money that had her struggling to breathe.
Welcome to the crying game, where you lose your soul
Where it ain't no easy pass, you got to use the toll
Ain't no cruise control, you 'bout to lose control
Bradley picked Katie up for school the next morning and Jeff was noticeably absent from the car again. He hadn't been to school since Tuesday last week.
"Is Jeff ever coming back to school?" Katie asked Bradley as he sped through an orange light.
"School ain't for everybody," Bradley said with a shrug.
"Is he working for Rick instead?" Katie asked and Bradley glanced at her warily.
The question had come out bitingly, but for once she didn't feel bad for asking Bradley questions that could put him in an awkward position with her and the gang. After all the years they had known one another, she felt he owed her his honesty at the very least.
"I dunno, Katie," Bradley responded tiredly with a low sigh as he turned the car into the parking lot of Will Rogers High School. "He ain't comin' to school, that's all I know."
Katie turned to him as he pulled into a parking spot and shut off the engine. "You're lying to me," She didn't know when she had started to shake, but she could feel her body quivering now, alive and bursting with rage. "Are you really so loyal to that stupid gang that you'd stoop so low with me?"
"You don't want to know, Katie," Bradley answered, his voice wearing thin with frustration.
"Yes, I do!" she shouted at him, slamming her hand down on the front dashboard of the car and immediately cringing at the pain that shot up her wrist.
"Watch it," Bradley warned with an accusatory finger in her direction and a seriousness that made Katie pause in her next scathing comment. "I'm not having this conversation with you." Then he looked her in the eyes and the hurt in his would have made her feel bad if not for the fact that he had just spoken to her like she was a child. "And my loyalty shouldn't even be in question with you. Did I not keep quiet with Rick about you leaving Buck's with two of Shepard's boys? You think he would be happy about that?"
Katie snorted derisively. "Do you think I was happy about being pushed over in front of a party full of people by my own brother and then being left there stranded by you?"
"I came back for you," Bradley replied, just as Katie knew he would.
It didn't matter that he had come back for her. It mattered that he had left her there. But this wasn't the discussion she had gotten into the car wanting to have.
Katie looked away from Bradley and spotted Susan and the Shepard boys standing around Tim's car. Curly was sitting on the edge of the hood, and when Katie found his eyes she decided that her argument with Bradley was pointless. Rick and the gang were ultimately his first priority. They always had been. She should have known as much the moment Bradley had left her behind at Buck's. He wasn't going to tell her anything he wasn't allowed to.
"Whatever," Katie huffed; grabbing her notebook from the floor of the car and pushing open the car door.
She heard Bradley start to say her name, but it was muffled by the slamming of the car door behind her.
Several cars down Curly watched Bradley Simons climb out of his car after Katie, who was already flying down the aisle of parked cars toward where Susan stood wearing a bored expression as Dale and Glenn talked car engines.
Curly had noticed Bradley's car the moment it turned into the parking lot – a habit he would never admit, but couldn't change as much as he had told himself he should - so he had seen what looked to have been a pretty heated exchange between Katie and Bradley, and grinned to himself when he caught sight of the scowl on Bradley's face as he watched Katie come to a stop beside Susan.
"Are you alright?" Susan asked immediately.
Katie flared her nostrils wide, trying to take deep breaths, and nodded as the warning bell rang from the school building.
Glenn dropped his cigarette on the ground and stepped on it with his boot. Curly stood up from the hood of Tim's car and made to start walking to class with the rest of the group, but Katie caught his eye and stayed still. When Susan glanced back at her she waved the others on and told them she would catch up. Curly couldn't say what possessed him to hang back with her, but he nodded Dale and Glenn on without him anyway.
Curly sat back down on the edge of the car hood and lit up a cigarette. The spark of his lighter sounded unusually loud in the silence between he and Katie, but at least she was looking at him. It was when she refused to look at him that his blood began to boil.
"Lover's quarrel?" Curly asked, looking behind her pointedly at the car she had come from.
"Shut up," she said, rolling her eyes and crossing her arms.
"Wow, I was startin' to forget how pleasant you were to be around," Curly said sarcastically.
"You said that I shouldn't bury my head in the sand," she replied cryptically, ignoring Curly's comment and instead remembering the night they had spent in Susan's lounge room.
"So?" Curly asked with a nonchalant shrug and another drag of his smoke.
Katie bit her lip and looked up at him and he didn't know how he was going to continue being mad at her when she looked at him from under her eyelashes like that.
"I found money," she said quietly, rushing to elaborate. "I wasn't looking for it. I was doing his washing and his drawer was open and I just saw it..." There was a pause and then she added timidly, "There was more there than he has any business having."
Curly didn't need to ask to know that Katie was talking about Rick, and he wasn't surprised at all to hear he was making good money. Still, he didn't understand what she was doing here talking to him about it when she had almost convinced him over the past week and a half that she hated his guts.
"Why're you tellin' me this?"
Katie let out a short, exasperated laugh. "Because you're always so eager to tell me what a bad person he is and now I want to know why."
Curly looked her up and down and knew that the scattered state she was in was probably his doing. He had planted this seed. And here it was – growing. But who was he to deny her the truth?
"You sure?" he asked her. "You ever heard the sayin' 'don't ask questions you don't want the answers to'?"
"I'm asking, aren't I?" she answered shortly, crossing her arms over her chest.
Curly could tell she was trying hard not to tell him to get lost and just figure out the answers herself, and he would have laughed at her struggle to stay calm if his next words weren't going to be such a blow to her gut.
"He sells drugs," he tells her, cringing right away at the half step she took backward in recoil almost immediately after the words were out of his mouth.
She stared at him for so long that he was sure she didn't believe him anyway. The bell rang again and startled her. She jumped and glanced back at the school building as movement behind her caught Curly's eye. Bradley was slinking away from his car toward the school with the last of the stragglers from the parking lot.
Curly turned his attention back to Katie, who was looking down at her shoes now, scuffing them on the ground. She sniffed and then forced herself to look up at him again.
"Thanks," she said in a small voice, and not wanting him to see the childish tears in her eyes she turned to leave.
"Let's get outta here," Curly said, causing her to turn back to him, confused.
Despite her attempt at hiding them, Curly had seen the watery glint in her hazel eyes and forgot that he was meant to be angry at her still. "C'mon," he said, standing up and pulling the keys out of his jeans pocket.
He got behind the wheel of Tim's car and a moment later Katie was beside him in the passenger seat. By the time Bradley got to the main entrance of the school building, they were gone.
Where did you go? I couldn't see
I was too busy, could've just said no
Where would you go, I think that I know
Katie had been to the Shepard house once before. It was in her sophomore year, back when being on Shepard turf got only a groan out of Rick, which would then be followed by Mike whacking him on the shoulder and telling him that she could go where she wanted, she was a girl and they'd taught her how to defend herself well enough anyway.
It looked different now to how it had two years ago, but that probably had something to do with it being daylight this time and the fact that she wasn't drunk off her second beer right now. It was quiet in the house as Curly explained that everyone was gone and that they weren't staying, he just had to grab something.
She followed him up the stairs and stopped in his bedroom doorway. She took in his unmade bed and the distinct smell of boy as he rummaged around in a box from under his bed before retrieving a bottle of whiskey from it.
"Angel's always stealin' my booze, so I gotta hide it," he said with a sheepish grin as he stood up.
"We're gonna drink?" Katie asked, checking the watch on her wrist; it was just after nine in the morning.
"It's what you do when you skip school, dollface," Curly said, smirking at how awkwardly she was standing in his doorway.
He wondered how far he'd get if he were to kiss her right here in his room. He wondered if she was thinking about the same thing, but on second thought he doubted it very much. He had just dropped a bomb on her. The least he could do was give her something to drink and somewhere to let out whatever was in her head right now. He would have to leave luring her further into his bedroom for another day, perhaps when they weren't fresh off a fight that had left her ignoring his existence for almost a fortnight.
"C'mon," he said again, heading out of his room and, grabbing her by the hand on the way, bringing her back downstairs and into the front yard.
They walked a while, handing the bottle between themselves every few minutes or so. Curly laughed at the bitter face Katie pulled after each sip and she called him a liar when he told her it didn't taste that bad.
They made it to the children's playground and park a few blocks from Curly's house and sat down in the sand of the playground.
"This doesn't exactly seem like the most appropriate place to drink," Katie said before taking another gulp of whiskey anyway.
"You a soc or a hood?" Curly teased freely as he took the bottle from Katie's outstretched hand.
Katie let out a short laugh. "My brother's enough of a hood for both of us," she said lowly as she clutched a pile of sand in her fist and let it slowly fall through the small gaps between her fingers.
"Hood or not, we all gotta make money, I guess," Curly responded.
That was as close to defending Rick Thomas as he would get, and it was purely to help make it easier on Katie, not because he'd grown a fondness for her brother overnight.
"He had a job, though," Katie said angrily, running out of sand and refilling her hand. "We made do between that and my mom's jobs. He just never went back after Mike died."
Curly didn't know what to say, so he didn't say anything. He just sat back beside her a little and watched the emotions run wild on her face. She was looking up at the sky, blinking back tears she didn't want to shed for the second time already this morning. She was sick of feeling so useless, unable to fix or change anything. When a tear spilled over onto her cheek she let out a frustrated cry and tossed the sand she held at the set of swings in front of them before burying her head in her hands.
This was well out of Curly's realm of experience. He hardly ever dealt with crying girls unless Angela was so drunk that he couldn't even understand her explanation for why she was crying. But his heart leaped out of his chest at the sound of Katie choking back more tears and his arm moved instinctively to wrap itself around her shoulders.
She leaned back against his arm and turned her cheek to rest on his shoulder, her hand coming up and clutching the front of his shirt tight.
"How did we get here?" she asked, her breath hot against his neck. "How did everything get so crazy?" And then she pulled away from him and he missed her warmth immediately. "And why do I have to deal with it all?" her tone was resentful now. "I didn't ask for any of this. Rick can sell drugs and never come home and pick fights with whoever he wants, but I have to feel guilty for being friends with people I was friends with before he decided to have a major problem with them. How is that fair?"
"It ain't," Curly answered simply before sipping from the bottle and handing it to Katie.
"No," she responded, "it ain't," and then laughed a little.
Maybe the whiskey was starting to take hold of her, but all she could think about was how hypocritical all of the standards and expectations placed on her were. Here she was sitting in a sandbox at a children's playground with a boy she liked – yes, she admitted to herself, she liked him – and she couldn't kiss him because Rick would think it was wrong.
Well Rick didn't give a damn about what Katie thought was right or wrong, so she decided that she didn't have to either and quickly closed the distance between them again.
She faltered at the last moment, though, and pulled up short, her nose almost brushing his. But Curly had anticipated in that quick movement the kiss that she had wanted and he wasn't going to let her pull away again.
As he reached out for her lips with his, he thought to himself that now they were even. She had stolen a kiss from him a fortnight ago, this was just payback. The best kind of payback, he decided, when she scooted closer to him and wrapped her arms around his neck, giving him the best angle to deepen their kiss. His hands found her waist and his fingers stroked a bit of bare skin between her blouse and skirt, giving her goosebumps and a warmth in the pit of her stomach that meant, in this case, that they should stop.
She savored him a few moments longer, though, before pulling away from him again with a contented sigh. She liked how all of the problems just fell away each time they kissed, even if the peace was only momentary.
Curly grinned at her, his lips turned up toward the cheeky glint in his eyes. "Don't you dare tell anyone," he said, mimicking her words right after she had kissed him last.
She gave him a small smile. "I won't if you don't," she said quietly as if somebody might overhear.
Though Curly was eager to hold her to her word, he was wary of how often she changed her mind, constantly afraid of the set of problems that might arise from each decision she made.
"You sure about that?" Curly asked.
"No," she answered, hating the uncertainty in his eyes, but wanting to give him the honesty he had given here earlier. She let out a small laugh. "I have no idea what I'm doing. I don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow or if whatever we've got here has any kind of chance." She sighed. "But I want to give it one."
She hadn't wanted to admit it at the time, but Curly was right about her being miserable. She had spent the past two months grieving, anxious and afraid, and Rick played a big part in that, but she was sick of it now. She wanted a change, and she needed to make it herself.
Curly laughed and it lit Katie up. "I s'pose that'll have to be good enough for now," he said, grabbing her hand and pulling him back to her, but she pulled away and gave him an even look.
"You don't sell drugs, too, do you?" she asked, suddenly afraid she might be trading one devil for another.
"Nah," he grinned, "mostly I just lift car parts – the usual JD stuff."
Katie frowned. "Craig used to sell grass," she said, remembering the way it had smelt when Craig Chambers had smoked around her a couple of times when they had dated briefly.
Curly's eyebrows furrowed, but he answered her. "Tim's not really a fan of any of that stuff. He thinks it'll be the death of the gangs."
Katie wondered if he meant that literally or figuratively. "It's not just grass Rick's selling, is it?"
Curly shook his head and after a moment of taking it in, Katie finally nodded and gave him a sad smile. When he moved to pull her in close again, she didn't resist. She melted against him and wished that she didn't ever have to go home. She knew she would, though. At the end of the school day she would need Curly to drive her home. But they still had several more hours until that time and she decided to spend them enjoying what she could loosely call a first date.
She and Curly laughed and teased one another; they talked about school and how neither of them had any clue what they wanted to do after graduation. They finished the bottle of whiskey and swung on the swings, trying to swing higher than the other before jumping off and landing in a ball of limbs, cackling their heads off the whole time. They lay under a nearby tree and Katie admired the perfection of the blue sky above them and Curly's fingers trailing softly up and down her arms. At one point she dozed and Curly dared not move a muscle, hoping that the dark circles under her eyes would lighten and disappear the longer he let her sleep.
He had no idea how things between he and Katie were going to work from here on out, or if they would even work at all. He didn't know if it was a smart move to tell Tim, but not telling him would just mean bigger trouble if he were to find out another way. He didn't know what would happen to Katie if Rick found out, and he realized that there was a chance she would be in danger now because of his own selfish want to be close to her. But for today everything was fine, better than fine, even – better than anything had been in a while.
Sayin' we don't miss each other, but it's all ficticious
Sayin' that we had enough, but enough of what?
Another slap to the face, another uppercut
I'm just abusive by nature, not 'cause I hate ya
