"You probably should take me home first. I didn't really think things through to the point that I'd gathered clothes. All I have are these jeans." I said after we'd all gone out to the Ribbon. Everyone was gone, left, or still out. Only me, Ash, and the Curtis boys were together.
"I wear jeans!" Ash protested. "What's wrong widdat?"
"Jeans are for guys! I wear skirts," I replied. "Why do you wear jeans?"
"Why do you wear skirts?" she demanded back, turning around in her seat. Darry was driving, and he snorted at her.
"Turn around, Ash. You're over-excited tonight."
She turned to him indignantly. "O' course I am! Soda's safe, an he's brought home'a broad preg'nt widda dead man's kid!" she exclaimed crudely.
"I just have to gather some clothes and my schoolbooks. I only came back because I didn't have anywhere to go." I admitted. "I'm lucky I didn't miss any work. It can be like this never happened."
Darry snorted. I'd've wagered Soda was gonna get it when I left. But maybe he was just skeptical of that idea. He didn't seem like he was holding any hard feelings for Soda.
"You can pick up right away where you left off," Soda said eagerly, "Only this time, Buck an me'll take care of ya."
"We'll look out for you now, there, Marigold."Ponyboy said quietly, looking out the window.
"Ain't that the truth! You need some help now, dontcha," Ash turned again, looking at me with piercing silver eyes, her nostrils flaring, her freckles seeming to dance. "You need friends atta time like this. Me and Pony and Steve and Two-Bit and Mercedes'll stick by ya at school, and you got erybody else outsida it. You won't lack for no friends, now." she grinned at me, her whole face lighting up.
Darry used one hand to shove her back in her seat, his fingers spread. He was enormous compared to her, and she grinned up at him loopily. He softened a little, and she held his fingers, her entire hand wrapping around his thumb. She was tiny, but not delicate: he was enormous, but not scary. Not scary at all. Maybe if I repeated it, I'd believe it.
I looked at Sodapop and Ponyboy, comparing them. Their coloring was different, but they looked so similar sometimes it was startling. They noticed me staring at the same time and turned, Sodapop's eyes soulful and brown, Ponyboy's eyes green and dreamy. I jumped a little. It was almost like seeing twins. The main difference between them was size: and Ponyboy would grow up fast. They'd all be tall: taking after their parents and Darry, who topped six feet, and then some. Sodapop was leaner though, more catlike, while Pony was growing into Darry's wide frame. It was strange to see it, and now that I noticed it, it seemed to be happening before my very eyes, both of them growing by the second.
Everything seemed to go into slow motion for a minute, and I faded from my body, as if my soul was floating away. Then I jammed back to earth as Darry slammed the breaks.
"Jesus Christ!" he hissed, unbuckling his seat belt. But Ash was already out of the car, her shouts nearly unintelligible.
"WHADDAFUCK YA'LL TRYNAPULLWIDDER SPEEDIN'!" she hollered. "WE GOT KIDS IN THE CAR! YOU DRUNK OR SUMMIN? YA ALMOST HIDDUS!"
The man climbed out of the car—no, the boy. He stumbled drunkenly out. "Shuddup, grease," he mumbled. "Duddnt matter… nobody cares 'bout you." His voice rang through the empty street. Darry ran up to Ash and pulled her back a few feet.
"You do understand that if I hadn't stopped, you could have died?" his voice was cold and authorative.
"Nubudy giva shits, bout any of ya'll, n 'specially not me," he mumbled, his voice carrying eerily. "Aint nubudy tryna care."
Darry pushed Ash away. "Get back to the car. Soda!" he called. "You're driving. I'm taking this guy to the police station. I'll get Steve to pick me up."
Ash obeyed, mutiny in her eyes. Soda slipped out and took the driver's seat. Darry was someone who you listened too in a crisis.
The Soc's car was in the middle of the lane.
"My pa was kilt by a Socy drug dealer," she hissed under his breath. "Workin' on 'is car wit Charlie, he got shoddat. Fuckin' Socs. Fuckin' cars. Fuckin' guns." She climbed into the seat and curled into a ball. "Fuckin' people."
Soda turned on the engine and slowly slid by the Socs car, askew in the middle of the road. He was silent. Ponyboy burst out: "Why do they think they can get away with that! Johnny and Dally are dead, and in the end, it's because of the Socs!"
I held my stomach tightly, feeling the slight firmness of it, the tiny bit of rounding in the middle. Three months. Six more months of holding this child inside me. Boy or girl. It was so scary to think about.
Soda was quiet when he answered. "They can't get away with everything. But some of them have changed."
"Cherry Valance," Pony mused.
"Randy Adderson," Ash nodded.
"I think the whole situation changed everyone and everything, even a little." I answered quietly.
"Two-Bit hasn't been sober in ages," Sodapop said soberly. "Mercedes said it's from sunup to sun down."
"Steve and Evie are falling apart," Ash confided.
"Cherry Valance doesn't come to school very often," Ponyboy admitted. "And when she does, she'sa mess. Bob and Dallas dying tore her up."
"I bet she feels guilty about Johnny too," I spoke up. "Johnny killed Bob, but it's because he attacked you guys, after jumping Johnny once before, right? The entire situation was Bob's fault. He was his own downfall'n she knows it, and it's probably killing her."
"She's probably never had a single awful thing happen ever," Sodapop said softly, eyes on the road. "Now that all this tragedy hit at once, she aint ready to handle it. Especially alone, which she is."
"Alla the Socs are alone." Ash spat bitterly. "They don't got no depth to 'em, treat each other like shit, aint got one true friend to speak of."
"That's why we aint one of them," Sodapop joked, putting a hand on her arm. "It aint cus we're poor or nothin'."
Ponyboy swallowed. "I wish somebody could get through to her. She's diff'rnt from alla them, the resta the Socs."
"She's a big-timer," I recalled painfully. "Her and Marcia and Bob and Randy, along with Lia Jones and Tony Michaels."
"We're big-timers too," Ash grinned, bittersweet. "Greasers, all of us. You, me, alla these Curtis boys, Steve n Two-Bit n Mercedes. Not to mention my boys, Charlie bein'a dealer an all."
"Evie and Sandy too," Sodapop said, reminiscing. "Sandy came froma real messed up place, for real, man."
"Tuff enough," Ponyboy grouched. "She aint around now, is she?"
Ash turned around and smacked him across the face. "Shut your mouth, kid. Other people have hurts too, and you can't make light of em." Her eyes were hard. "You think it's fuckin' easy for Darry? Workin' full time, takin' care of ya?" The lines around her face crinkled firmly, giving her a mean appearance, angry. "You judge too fast, Pony! Lay off!"
He glared sullenly back at her. "Sandy didn't have it hard at all, until she did what she did!" he burst out. "Johnny had it hard, getting beat every day of the year, sleepin' under park benches, gettin' jumped by random Socs! Dallas had it hard! When Soda helps my nightmares, I think about… you know who helped Dally with nightmares? Nobody! He had to grow up by himself! What about Steve?" he demanded, real tears coming down his cheeks. I shrunk away, frightened. "Steve gets kicked out every other day, fights with his pa, his mom doesn't do nothin' about it! And what about us, Ash? Mom and Dad died, all me'n Darry do is argue, you and Soda and Darry all hafta work… and you're going to school, too! What happens if the state figgers out you're livin' with us and not the Cades? You'll be out faster'n me and Sodapop would be!" he started to cry in earnest now. "What about Big Red and the boys, huh? You know they don't have it easy, and neither do Mercedes and Two-Bit, so poor they could get evicted any second! What did Sandy worry about besides what skirt to wear on a date?"
Soda stared at the rear-view window. "Things are rough all over, Ponyboy. You're a smart kid, but you're just a kid. Sandy had to go through shit you aint never gonna understand." He seemed angry, not at Pony, but at the world. "Some shit I still aint gettin'."
"Life aint fair, Ponyboy," Ash softly mused. "Darry's proofa that. He works two jobs, almost erryday of the year, man. He works for you and Soda, and now for me."
"He coulda dumped us somewhere and gone off to college, worked his way through. But he kept us around, Ponyboy!" Soda said passionately.
I listened, fascinated, to all of them argue back and forth. The three of them were so different. It amazed me. Ponyboy's youth, his aches for what he didn't even understand. Sodapop's generosity, flushing away any hurt with a smile, putting every other person first. Ash's honesty, her ability to simply state the truth and leave it at that. All those conflicting personalities under one roof, the same shower and kitchen.
I didn't know what my personality was. My mother didn't have one. My father was too drunk to have one.
Why did my parents get married? It had been nothing but twenty years of heartache. After my brother ran away, my father disowned him, hasn't spoken of him since, and gets drunk every night. It isn't my fault that Derek left, is it? I was left behind too.
"Ash, stay in the car. You too, Pony." Sodapop said, pulling over. I cringed at the sight of my house in the sunset. I got out, rubbing my stomach frantically. He followed me up to the porch and looked at me. "You ready?" he asked kindly. I swallowed and looked up into those soft brown eyes.
"Ready as I'll ever be," I sighed and opened the door, taking one last longing glance at the outside world before stepping into hell.
The sight in front of me was frightening. Blood was stained on the carpet, broken glass and bits of old food littered the ground. Beer cans and bottles were scattered around, the ancient television askew, on its side on the flat brown rug.
I realized, embarrassed, how dingy everything was in here. Compared to the Curtis house, even the Mathews'. Everything was dull and dreary, old and gray and brown. I bolted forward into the kitchen, Sodapop on my heels.
"Jesus," he breathed. A train had come through the house, a whirlwind, a superhero. My father laid on the kitchen floor, shallowly breathing, his nose bloody and his eye black and blue. I stared, my eyes huge, like a deer's.
"Oh my gosh," I breathed. I ran a finger along my jaw, feeling the bruise that I'd been given only hours before. "What… DEREK!" I screamed. "DEREK, ARE YOU IN HERE?" I ran around the house, searching for him. Soda followed me into my room, and I held my abs tightly, as if protecting the tiny thing inside. "My mother isn't here. Nobody would try to break in here: our house is literally falling apart to the point where it almost isn't inhabitable. It has to be my brother!" I exclaimed desperately, grabbing his hand and squeezing it. He squeezed back.
"You're right. But it might not be him." Sodapop said hesitantly. "I don't wanna give ya false hope. Is there anybody else it could be?"
"Not that I can think of," I admitted. I began to pile stuff into a trash bag. Hairbands, brushes, a few shirts, my skirts, my toothbrush and tooth paste, soap and shampoo, my schoolbooks. "But maybe I just want it to be him." I closed the bag and began to drag it behind me. Sodapop picked it up easily, and took my hand, leading me down the stairs.
"Goddamn, I'm just glad he aint awake." Sodapop admitted. "When he was hittin' you like that… scariest thing I ever saw, man. You don't hit girls."
I shrugged. "I guess after a couple years, you get used to it. Derek never did though. He could never take the hits. I always wondered why he didn't take me with him, you know?" I asked sadly, surveying the damage in the house. "Its tuff enough that he managed to leave at all… but I wonder who I would be right now if he brought me with him. I'm afraid of my own shadow. Everything I do, it's because I'm afraid of my father, of being like my mother. And it hurts to wonder if he cared enough about me. I haven't heard from him since he left."
"When did he leave?" Soda asked sympathetically, hanging on my every word. I was embarrassed, but I knew that Sodapop Curtis cared about me. We'd been friends for two days, and he cared. It meant more to me than anything else.
"When I was ten. He was thirteen. He was friends with Two-Bit for a while. But this was when everybody was still a kid." I still remembered it. He'd spoken of it for ages, and I hung onto his every word. Then, one day, all of his stuff that he needed had been gone from our room, and his bed was made. I had known he was gone right then and there. He hadn't cared.
"He just bailed?" Sodapop's mouth softened, as if he wanted to ask a question but thought he shouldn't. His eyes were mournful, and seemed to swallow me up. They were enormous, with long fans of spiky black lashes.
"We're greasers," I grinned bitterly. "We already know that nobody cares. Raised on the mantra."
'It's not fair," he said quietly, his soft blonde hair falling across his forehead. "You have to live like this, while the Socs jump greasers and get articles in the paper about how great they are. Where gangs attack gangs and drugs are more important than life."
"Life isn't particularly fair," I mocked. "I bet the Socs have problems too. What if their cars break down?"
"Can't fix it themselves, don't be absurd!" Sodapop laughed quietly, careful not to wake my father. He stepped outside, holding the door for me. The night chill tightened my muscles, refreshing me. Maybe it'd snow soon. "Gotta take it to them greasers. They can't do anything else worthwhile!" he said snootily, opening the car door for me.
I grinned, and slid into the car, hands on my stomach. Ash and Ponyboy were silent. "What tookya so long?" she asked curiously.
"Surprise visit," I said shortly, not wanting to talk about it. I didn't wanna jinx my brother's return.
Ponyboy put down the window and lit a cigarette. "Jesus, what the fuck're ya doin'?" Ash demanded of him. "It's fuckin' freezin', man. You're quittin' anyway, you gotta do track, 'member?"
"Smokin' is for stress anyway," he answered.
"I should probably head off to work," I admitted. "Do you think you could take me to the Nightly Double, Sodapop?"
"I'll pick you up at the end of your shift and take you to Buck's." was all he said, turning the car.
Beba78, my wonderful reviewer… the answer is YES. But not yet! It's a process! (Sorry, haha, fanfic won't let me answer a review and I couldn't figure out the PM system)