You guys remember how I said this chapter would be 'lighter'? I lied. Buckle up for this one.

No. No, I don't wanna— I said—

And once again I was trapped back there, his hand bearing down on my throat, his eyes gleaming electric; in the dim light of the smoking room, I hadn't realized just how hollow they were until he was watching my broken body. He did it for the same reason anyone did anything: he liked it.

I woke up in a puddle, some disgusting mix of snot and spit and tears, clutching at my neck in the dark; I could still feel the pressure, the primal fear crawling up my windpipe, and it was enough to make me—

run to the bathroom, angry bile rising into my mouth. Retching acid, I barely made it to the toilet on time, collapsing with my cheek pressed to the bowl after I was done. Cold sweat pooled on my forehead as I shook, my mouth filthy, the tile digging into my knees, and God, did I want to die.

"Jas?"

Fuck.

"Jas, you okay?" Soda asked in his best attempt at a whisper, rapping on the door. "You got the stomach bug or somethin'?"

"I'm fine," I forced myself to say, hoarse from vomiting. I pushed up on the seat, reeling from the remaining nausea, and tried to take deep breaths as I rinsed my mouth out. One, two, three. One, two, three.

"No, you ain't." Despite our feud, he still sounded so concerned, like my sickness now wiped all that out. "Fine people don't spew chunks in the middle of the night, last I checked."

I yanked the door open to find him standing there in his faded pajamas, and I stumbled right into him, dizzy and exhausted. "Hey, hey, easy there," he said, like he was talking to a spooked horse, and led me over to the couch. "What happened?"

"Just a nightmare," I muttered, rubbing the cushion's velvet the wrong way. "It ain't a big deal."

"'Bout Mom an' Dad? Like Pony has?"

"Yeah," I lied, because the worst part wasn't him touching me between the legs, his fingers insistent and probing and painful. It wasn't him taking my clothes off, or shoving his dick inside me, or putting his hand around my throat. It was how I'd been stupid enough and drunk enough and reckless enough to get involved with him in the first place. And if I told Soda, it'd become my fault faster than he could've strangled me and left my corpse there. "'Bout the... ICU."

(The truth: I didn't remember the ICU much, the whole place fading into a dreamy mess of fluorescent lights and constant beeps and blood on scrubs whenever I tried. I barely remembered Uncle Gene and Darry's brawl over, of all things, Soda's weed habits, or the funeral, or the social worker telling me that she'd be keeping a close eye on 'this situation'. It was like everything was thrown into sharp relief from the moment I was on my back, his hands all over me, and I knew that I had reached the point of no return.)

"I feel all mixed up, Jas." He bent over and shoved his elbows into his kneecaps. "Looks like my baby sister ain't so much my baby sister anymore."

"If this is gonna lead into some anecdote 'bout the day Mom brought me home from the hospital—"

"Who do you think I am, Pony?" he snorted. "I was a little kid, shit, I was just pissed someone else was gonna be suckin' on Mama's boobies." He sighed, in the overdramatic manner that characterized the Soda sigh. It was meant to be noticed. "This is gonna lead into some anecdote 'bout me beatin' up bullies for you on the playground."

"Like hell you ever did," I couldn't help but snort in return. "Me, Brenda, Walking Wanda— that's the one that's gonna go down in the history books."

He ran his fingers through his hair, making it even messier than usual, and hugged me to him with one arm; I was too tired to protest. "You and Curly an item now? The right answer's no, by the way. I don't need to see more Shepards than I absolutely have to."

"Trust me, it is no." Curly and I had passed each other in the hall a few days ago and averted our eyes as fast as possible, after a second of awkward staring. I expected we might be able to have an actual conversation in a couple years, if everything else went well. "It was a mistake. Lord. I ain't fixin' to walk down the aisle with him."

"He didn't... make you do nothin', did he?" I couldn't see him well in the darkness, the living room only illuminated by a stream of moonlight through the window, but by the tension in his arms, I knew he'd clenched his fists. "Nothin' you didn't want to do?"

"He ain't like that." Curly was an idiot, your average not-too-bright downtown hood, but if I'd told him to stop, he would've— he had that much decency. "I'm sorry," I then said for the first time in days, and I meant it. "I shouldn't have put you in the hot seat with Darry. Made you cover for me."

"Eh, I've been in worse, and you came back before I had to nark," he said, and let it slide with the most casual of shrugs. That was Soda for you, his temper flaring up and fading faster than a firework. "Try to forget about it, okay?" He started to propel me towards my room again, supporting my rubbery limbs as I walked. "Or else we're gonna have to take you to Pony's brain doctor and get you a script for football and readin' Dickens."

I missed my old comfort, nips from Daddy's collections of beer and whiskey and scotch— last time I attempted to go without my crutch at night, see if anything had changed inside my fucked-up head. Sleep haunted me otherwise, making me fantasize about the calm flowing through my veins, down through the wrists into the soles of my feet, the sweet rollercoaster dizziness when I closed my eyes and tilted my head back... even if it usually ended in me cranking the sink up to hide the sound of me worshipping the porcelain throne.

It'd take brain surgery to make me forget. A lobotomy, like they did to Rosemary Kennedy, separating the two hemispheres with an icepick. No ordinary shrink was up to the challenge.

Dallas and I didn't really talk much; it wasn't that kind of relationship. So when he flipped me off of him and took his hand out from feeling up my tits, it came as a bit of a shock.

"Angel says you want in on the business."

"Not sure if I got the right CV for it." I pulled my shirt back down and readjusted my Wonder bra. "Since when am I a conversation topic for you two?"

"Did you think she decided to take you all on her own?" He laughed, the sound tinged with disdain. "I told her to feel you out, see if you liked it. She says you 'bout made Miguel piss himself when you told him you was my girl." He searched for a reaction in every curve of my face; he didn't get one. "Guess you come by it honest."

"So I can't drink at parties or hang around Buck's place, but I can sell drugs?" I said coolly, holding my cards close to the chest he'd just been all over. How very manipulative. How very Dallas. And here I thought he might be starting to go soft.

"Look, I wouldn't get you involved in nothin' bad," he said, hooking an arm around my waist and pulling me towards him on the bed, going in for the kill. "Shit, this ain't some cartel. We're just messin' with Tim's head a little, you know, makin' pocket change. All our customers are dumb motherfuckers who rubbed the Kings the wrong way. It ain't serious."

Not like your daddy's operation.

"Yeah, I figured you ain't no Al Capone." I curled up against him, resting my head on his side. He smelled like my father did, stale whiskey and Old Spice, and it comforted me in spite of myself. "Dunno why you gotta start all this shit with Tim. Ever wondered how good you'd breathe if your ribs weren't always busted?"

"'Cause he's Shepard," he said like that explained everything— and in his mind, it probably did. "Fucker keeps beggin' me to join his little outfit— as his second-in-command. Satan's gonna be makin' snowmen in hell before he sees that day."

"You might like it," I taunted, wishing I had a smoke. "He's your friend, ain't he? And if his outfit's little, Darry's is microscopic."

"He ain't my fuckin' friend," he was quick to say, and crinkled his nose at the thought. "I just need to get my kicks from more than poundin' Bobby Sheldon's face into the dirt sometimes, so I string him along." He started kissing down my neck, sending a shiver through me. "Fightin' Socs— God, it gets old. Like runnin' on a hamster wheel. Dealing's where it's at, even in this hick city."

I knew what he was too embarrassed and stubborn to say out loud— that we were his family, the only one he'd ever have, and that he'd be adrift without us to anchor his worse impulses. But I had enough tact not to push for the truth. "All right, I gotta get my kicks somehow too," I said, feeling like an orange peel that had been taped back together again. Hollow inside. "Just promise you won't make me find out how a girls' reformatory works."

He looked sternly down at me, his hands pressing into my hips. "You better know not to talk to no cops. Don't make me regret this."

All I did was raise my eyebrows at him, trying to put as much contempt as I could into the gesture. Wasn't I a Curtis, same as Ponyboy and Soda and Darry? "You gonna keep talkin', or are you gonna kiss me again? I liked that better than the interrogation."

"I didn't even have to corrupt you none," he said with a disbelieving smirk, then fell back onto me, our mouths colliding again. "Can't believe outta all four Curtises, the girl's the dirtiest one. Goddamn. Never saw that comin'."

"Jasmine, how many times do I gotta tell you not to leave your cardigans on the back of the chair—"

I hadn't even heard him approach until he was throwing the door open. Dallas immediately rolled off me, but it was much too late; he'd witnessed everything in Technicolor.

Darry blinked once, and dropped my cardigan on the floor. Then he blinked again. He did quite a lot of blinking.

"What the hell?"

Though he'd prefer a more flattering account, Dallas got his ass kicked straight out the door, because Darry was almost half a foot taller than him and roofed houses for a living. In defense of his manhood, he didn't really fight the ass-kicking that hard— I'm pretty sure he'd figured out that if he wanted to date me, he needed to pay his dues first. It was about as romantic as he got.

After that charming display of violence, Darry stormed back in and crossed his arms over his chest, making his biceps bulge out. "I don't like this, Jasmine."

"Yeah, thanks, I think I got the picture." I slouched against my headboard. "God, you're such a caveman. What was all that for?"

"He's too old for you."

I started to laugh, but I choked on it when I saw that he was dead serious. "C'mon, you're gonna have to come up with a better excuse than that."

"You're fifteen—"

"Sixteen in February, that ain't so far away—"

"And he's almost eighteen," he concluded grimly. "Old enough to go to real prison, in other words."

"Lord, Darry, you need to get a date, if you're this involved in my love life. The kind with a happy ending."

"Funny, the broads usually ain't so eager to drop their panties after they find out I got three smart-mouth kids at home." He tilted my chin up, in a way I hated, and forced me to look him in the eye. "You get involved in any of his shit, I'm gonna skin you like a bobcat, little girl."

"You can't just stop us from bein' together. I'll sneak out the window."

He smacked the side of my leg, hard. "Then I'll lick the sense back into you, and you see if I don't. It'd do that mouth some good, at least."

Yeah, sure, that'd be the day. Maybe he'd throw making me eat a bar of Ivory into the mix, while he was at it. Still, I made the worst face I could at him and rubbed the sore spot a lot more than it deserved, until he started scuffing my floorboards with the toe of his work boot— a nervous habit he'd never managed to outgrow.

"You don't look nothin' like her, but you're startin' to remind me more and more of Mom."

"How?" I asked, even though the answer was already etched into the grooves of my brain. I wanted to hear him say it.

He worried his bottom lip between his teeth, biting down. "You're too young to remember—"

"I'm old enough to remember doin' all y'all's laundry and cooking, 'cause Mom was too tired to move after workin' at the diner," I cut off sharply. "I was eight, Darry, not two."

"And I was thirteen." He collapsed onto my desk chair, almost tipping it over. "No one loved Dad more than me."

"But?"

"But she should've left him, and you know it." He rested one hand against his forehead. "We could've all died, God. Mom came home from the supermarket one day and found all the damn furniture slashed up— it could've been our throats. You think Dally ain't got enemies like that? He's made a hell of a lot of them— he kind of just makes them by existing."

"Dad's too dead to defend himself, so leave him alone." I gripped the bedspread, feeling the world tilt off its axis and grasping for purchase. Darry never criticized Dad. He never talked about this— none of us did. "You hid his product, didn't you? Doubt he would've gotten as far as he did without your help."

"I'm sick an' tired of you givin' me shit, Jasmine," he said with enough harshness to make me flinch. There was genuinely threatening Darry, some mixture of Dad's temper and Mom's cutting tongue. I hadn't missed him. "You ain't grown yet, believe it or not, and when I tell you that you ain't gonna act like some delinquent—"

"Like you did?"

He was no doubt tempted to backhand me, and might have if I wasn't headed to Rose's soon after; I didn't care. Maybe I would've even welcomed it, the opportunity to feel something. "You don't want to follow the rules around here, you can get out," he said quietly, hovering near me like a snake about to strike. "Rose is waitin' with open arms. I'll even help you pack."

You'd love that, wouldn't you— one less mouth to feed? One less reminder of your ruined life?

I shook my head.

"No, no, I get it now. She's loaded, she wants to be your best friend, the state's behind it a hundred percent. Guess that's why you can't be bothered to listen to a word I say anymore, 'cause it don't matter for you, does it? You got your escape hatch."

I couldn't just leave Pony here to face Darry every day, alone. As bad as it was between them, something even more terrible would build up and erupt without me around to absorb the brunt of his anger. So I bit back every retort itching its way out of my mouth and shook my head again. Not trusting myself to speak.

"Then you don't tell Rose none of this," he said, his voice sharper than the edge of a knife. "Not one fucking word. I think you know by now why social services is watchin' every move we make. And if you got two brain cells to rub together, you'll stay away from Dallas like he's nuclear waste."

"If you came to live with me, I'd never stop dressin' you up," Rose said, rotating my shoulders in front of the mirror. A sausage stuffed into too-tight casing stared back. "You don't seem much like a knee socks and saddle shoes kind of girl."

I weighed the pros and cons of being my aunt's personal Barbie and getting clothes that hadn't a. already been worn by my mother for the past ten years or b. come from a consignment shop, now that Sylvia and I were on the outs. Sadly, this took more than a couple seconds.

Her new apartment was sure nice, for someone who'd rolled into town on such short notice, and a damn sight neater than our ramshackle house that seven boys trashed every day. She'd set up the beginnings of a bedroom for me, even, and goddamn, if that didn't fill me with a sense of creeping dread— mostly because she'd decorated the place in a shade of pastel pink I'd found appealing when I was ten, complete with lace curtains and spotless white furniture. She'd also taken the liberty of stocking my closet.

"God knows you ain't been doin' so hot in the wardrobe department, baby," she continued, attacking my face with a powder puff— I fought the urge to sneeze. "Livin' with all those boys, of course no one's been payin' attention to how to accentuate your figure."

(My brothers' thoughts on my figure were indeed, fortunately, minimal. Two out of three would've preferred if I'd never grown one at all, and the third was due for a booster on his cooties vaccine.)

"It don't fit right," I said, wincing at the way I'd just managed to squeeze myself inside the size four— perfect size four, as she'd insisted— dress. To be quite honest, even my hipbones had protested at being shoved into a perfect size four dress. I couldn't breathe. "I mean, I appreciate it an' all, but—"

Rose traced her finger down the side of my cheek. My bloated cheek, a combination of alcoholic water retention and stubborn baby fat, and I could tell right then where her mind had gone. "Oh, honey," she said, declaring me a maternal disappointment with the way she sighed the end of the sentence. "I know just the thing."

She vanished into the hallway and returned just as fast, her fist tightly clenched around something. "Here." She pressed a bottle into my palm, unlabeled, unmarked. "Just don't tell Darry I gave it to you, for the love of God."

"What is it?"

"Diet pills." She smiled at me, in a way that didn't reach her eyes, only stretching her lips out. "Not that I'm sayin' you need them, mind, but just in case... it's never too early to start watchin' your weight."

A hot flush of shame rolled over me, as I zeroed in on all of my physical imperfections— the zit beginning to form on my chin, the slight gap between my front teeth, my decidedly not Indian cheekbones. My mama might've cussed her way through combing my hair, but she'd never talked to me like that. Like I was a sculpture that hadn't had enough carved away yet. "I think it'd be easier for you to get a dress that fits me than try to make me fit the dress."

Her smile turned brittle. "Don't be silly," she chided. "You have such pretty bone structure— there's no reason why you shouldn't fit into this one. I don't want to have to return such a gorgeous gift because of a few extra pounds."

I could picture it— grabbing the bottle, pulling my arm back, and throwing it right at the wall opposite, the aerodynamics perfect, the way my daddy had taught me to throw a softball. Maybe it'd even scratch up the pretty pink paper, if I was lucky. But then I took it, smiled back at her from behind my eyelashes, and did nothing so unladylike.

Thanks to listening to Brenda talk for more than ten seconds, I knew exactly what was inside these pills. And I could think of a better use for them than lying around on the shag carpet.