My eyes widened and I shook my head to try and wake up a little more. "Wait, what do you mean they ran away?"

"Ponyboy ran out the house before and he still hasn't come home so I went out to see if anyone knew anything about it. I guess he asked Johnny to go with him when he ran. I got to Buck Merrill's place and Dal was there and told me they ran away," he answered in a shaky voice.

"Did you call the rest?"

"Yeah… look, can you come to the house? I just wanna make sure nothin' happens to anyone else or I feel like I'll go crazy."

"Yeah, sure. I'll be right over." And with that he hung up.

I told the two Shepard siblings what had happened and that I had to go. Tim had offered to walk me there, saying he would've driven me but the tires on his car had been slashed earlier that night. I thanked him for the offer, knowing it'd be better if I went on my own because of the situation. I didn't actually say the reason, I had only said I didn't wanna be a bother and he actually bought it.

I packed my overnight bag up and left the house, still wearing the flannel pajama pants and the Doors t-shirt I had changed into to go to sleep in, and slipped on my sneakers then left the Shepard's house to go the Curtis' house. I thanked the Shepard's for letting me stay over, kinda thankful that I hadn't decided to ditch the whole thing.

When I got to the house, Soda was staring at the phone like he was waiting for a call, Darry was pacing, and Two-Bit, Dallas, and Steve were playing cards to most likely, take their minds a little off the situation. All eyes fell on me when I walked in, but then almost in less than a second everyone went back to their previous activities. I decided to sit at the table and try to get my mind off the situation with the three. "Care to join next game?" Two-Bit asked, holding up the deck of cards in his hand.

"Yeah, sure," I answered. I nudged me head toward the two nervous brothers, "How they holdin' up?"

"Terrible," Steve sighed, "Darry hasn't stopped pacing for nearly twenty minutes. Soda's better, before he couldn't stop bawlin' about it."

"I hate seein' them like this," Two-Bit sighed and handed out the cards between the four of us.

We all kept on doing whatever we had been doing for the majority of the night till we all dozed off. When I woke up, I looked around and- despite the situation- had to hold in a laugh at the sight in front of me. Darry was asleep, but was leaned up against the wall. Soda was spread out in the chair closest to the phone. Steve was leaned up against the chair Soda was in, his head tilted back onto the cushion. Two-Bit was on the couch. Dallas was up against the front edge of the couch. And judging by where I was when I woke up, I had been asleep on a blanket spread out on the floor.

Really? They made the only girl they were friends with sleep on the floor?

I pushed myself up off the ground and quietly made my way to the front door to get to the porch, doing my best not to wake any of them up. I somehow managed to get outside to the porch without any of them waking up and without stepping on any of them. I don't know how, so don't ask me how.

I went outside and sat down on the porch. "Hey Rain," someone said from behind a few minutes later, making me jump outta my skin and nearly scream. I turned and saw Darry. "Sorry," he mumbled.

I waved it off, "It's cool… did I wake you up?"

He shook his head and sat down next to me. "I've been awake for nearly two hours… Rain, can I uh, talk to you about something?"

"Of course."

He let out a sigh. "Johnny and Ponyboy running away is… it's my fault."

I gave a confused look. "What do you mean it's your fault? How is it your fault?"

"Last night, Ponyboy got home real late… and I yelled at him. Soda defended him, then I yelled at Soda. Then Pony defended him, and I lost my temper and… and I hit Ponyboy… hard. He fell then ran out the house."

"Darry…"

"I didn't mean to do it, ya know. I just… I don't know, lost my temper, I guess. I didn't mean to hit him, it just happened."

"Darry, it's ok. You didn't mean to."

"But I still did it!" He sighed again and his voice started to shake, "I was… I was just real worried cause I thought something might've happened to him and I didn't want us to be separated, ya know? And it happened."

"How long did you and Soda look for them?" I asked.

"About an hour… we came back and called all of you to come over, make sure the rest of you were alright or if y'all knew anything about them running off."

"Well, Dallas or Two-Bit might. They went to the drive-in too."

"Soda and I asked them already, they both said they don't know. Soda doesn't believe Dallas though, that he don't know nothin' about it."

The paper boy drove past the house and tossed a paper our direction. Darry got up from the porch and picked it up. He turned to come back on the porch, but stopped and looked at the cover page of the paper with a weird and confused look. He unfolded it and started to read over the cover page. His confused facial expression slowly changed and soon became with fear and worry, even more than he had before or when we all first got to the house hours earlier.

"Darry?... What's wrong? What happened?" I asked, getting up from the porch. He handed me the paper and I opened it to the front page and my eyes widened at the headline: TEENAGE BOY FROM WEST SIDE OF TULSA STABBED AND KILLED BY TWO BOYS FROM THE EAST SIDE. I looked down and began to read the article:

"Three boys came to the station late last night saying that their friend had been stabbed and he got killed by two boys from the East Side at about two or three in the morning. I asked them why they were all even out, they said they were at some birthday party for another friend. They told me where it happened so I decided to go out and see what all the commotion was about. And sure enough when I got there, their friend was lying down on the ground- dead- and there was a pool of blood around where he was stabbed and blood all through the fountain he was next to. They said it was two boys. The one who had the knife they said looked to be about sixteen or seventeen years old with dark eyes and dark long hair, and there was some sort of mark on the left side of his face. The second boy was a little smaller than the first boy. They said he looked about thirteen or fourteen years old, fifteen at most, with long brown hair and kinda small." The police chief had said in a statement.

I looked at Darry who was sitting on the porch with his hands over his face. He moved them down that they were just covering his mouth and his fingers were on the edge of his nose. "When they get back home, what's gonna happen to them? What if they take Ponyboy away cause they don't think I can take of him, they'll take Soda too. And what about Johnny? His parents won't care, so what's gonna happen to him?" he asked quietly.

I sat back down on the couch next to him. "It'll be ok," I started, "Whatever happens, they'll be fine. They're smart."

"He's my baby brother… if something terrible happens to him, I dunno what I'll do… I can't lose him, either of them, we've already lost Mom and Dad. I'm not losing my brother's too. I'm not losing them, I'm not gonna let it happen." His face showed an expression that was a mix of worry, fear, confusion and the most apparent- determination. Determined that he would do whatever he could that when they came back, he'd do anything he could to keep them all together and not be separated.

Ahhhhhhhhhh they ran away! No!

This chapter is mostly to show a little thing about how Rain and Darry act with each other, that she's the only one he can totally freak out (emotionally) to and for once, not be thought of us "Superman" or "Superdope" and that the hero broke down (other than Soda, he can too)

Anyway, until this story is finished, I won't really be working on my others cause this is about half way done, so I wanna get this done as soon as possible so then I have one less thing to worry about… makes sense right? Good.

Peace from all the hippies of the world! =^-^=