I glanced at the date on the newspaper on the front porch. November 21, 1972. It was the more or less the same date back in Vietnam, of course. But November had a different definition on this side of the Pacific.

Dally stood behind me like a prison guard as I rang the doorbell. The doorbell was one of a million tiny changes that I had already noticed after only walking up the front walkway to my childhood home. However different the exterior of the house was, nothing could have prepared me for the man that answered the doorbell.

I almost called him Darry by accident when I first saw Ponyboy. He was just as tall if not taller than our older brother with the same dark hair. But he was still built like a runner and his facial features were more delicate than Darry's. He kept his hair long now, but without all that ridiculous hair grease. All trends had to come to a finish, after all.

We just stared at each other. I looked at him like he was a photograph or a figure in a museum. I didn't really expect him to be able to look back at me or speak or react. I certainly couldn't make a move. We might have stood there all day, but Dally shoved me hard in the small of my back. I toppled forward over the stoop, banging my bad leg on the welcome mat.

"Ow, fuck you, Winston," I gasped around gritted teeth.

"Sorry, I forgot," Dally didn't sound remotely sorry, and I was certain that he hadn't forgotten since he had spent more time on the drive over staring at my leg than the road.

But whatever he had planned seemed to work because Pony rushed to help me up. My fall actually broke the awkwardness of seeing him for the first time, so as much as I hated to admit it, I reminded myself to thank Dallas later. Much later.

Pony sat me down on the couch (a new one, I noticed) and he shuffled off to the kitchen to get me some juice which I had tried my hardest to turn down. Dally took Darry's chair, which had been Dad's back in the day.

"Is Darry home?"

"They're coming."

"Who's 'they'?"

Dally just shrugged. He did that sometimes, and in Dally-language, it didn't mean "I don't know" but rather "I'm bored with this conversation and I don't want to tell you." I found it endlessly annoying. It was crazy how soon after our reunion I already wanted to strangle Dally.

Pony came back with a glass of orange juice. He seemed uncertain if he had to feed it to me since I was disabled now. I glared at him and wrenched the dangling cup out of his grasp.

"You never wrote," Pony said after minutes of avoiding eye-contact. He tried to hide the hurt in his voice, I could tell, but he didn't do a very good job. I guess the kid was still as sensitive as ever.

I didn't have a good excuse for not writing. I didn't think they wanted me to contact them, true, but our parents had also taught us that blood overcame every boundary. That no matter what happened, we were always brothers at the end of the day and brothers don't screw each other over.

"No," I decided to say, "I didn't."

"Is there no paper in Vietnam?" Dally asked sarcastically and I looked at him in shock. Had he wanted me to write to him? Truth be told, even if I had gone off to war with all of my old relationships intact, I still probably wouldn't have written Dallas Winston.

"There's paper, I just didn't think you knew how to read," I retorted. Then I remembered that even if I was angry with Dally for reasons even I didn't care to dissect, I had to keep my cool for Ponyboy's sake. I took a deep breath and said in a much more pleasant tone, "I'm sorry Pony. I know there's no excuse, but I thought you didn't want to hear from me."

Pony nodded sadly at his hands folded in his lap. I couldn't stand the silence anymore.

"When is your graduation?" I felt like an old, obnoxious parent as I made small talk with a person that I used to feel such a connection with.

"Three years from now?" Pony said it like a question and must have seen me struggle with the mental calculations of his age because he clarified, "My college graduation. I graduated high school last year."

"You go to college!?" I forgot the stilted conversation as overwhelming pride came over me.

"It's not a big deal," Pony grumbled, embarrassed.

"He's acting humble, for once," Dally drawled, "He goes to some fancy east coast school where everyone drives a Porsche and says words like 'metacognitive' in everyday talk."

"It's just The University of Massachusetts, it isn't like that at all."

"The University of Massachusetts," I like the sound of those words, although I didn't really understand their meaning. "Pony, I am so proud of you."

"God, this is sappy," Dally said in a bored voice as Pony and I beamed at each other.

The back door opened and closed with a familiar slam and a babble of male voices came through the kitchen. "Pony? Are you home?" Darry called. There was so much anger in his voice. Constant layers of it that had been slowly accumulating since Mom and Dad died.

"In here, Darry," Pony's voice was full of apprehension. Every muscle and ligament in my body was tense.

Darry, Steve, Two-bit, and for some reason, Curley, came into the living room. In turn, each pair of eyes landed on me and froze there. A horrible realization came to mind as jaws dropped or clenched in either surprise or anger: Dally hadn't told them I was coming. I felt my face grow hot underneath the scrutiny. I wrenched my bad leg off the coffee table and started to hobble as fast as I could out of that living room.

Dally caught me easily by the arm. "Hang on just a second, Be calm."

"You didn't fucking tell them I was coming?!" I spoke only to Dally, although probably the entire street could hear me.

"It was a...need to know basis."

I gaped at Dally, who didn't even have the dignity to look ashamed. Without thinking, I flung a punch towards his face. He dodged it and then we were really fighting. I was stronger than him, but he was the superior fighter. He also had the added advantage that I couldn't decide whether to scream at him or hurt him physically. He pinned me to the ground and I played the only card left in my arsenal: I groaned in pain and clutched my leg. Dally scrambled off of me, a stream of curses and apologies flowing from his mouth.

I used his temporary distraction to my advantage and got to my feet again. This time, I was home free, although lamentably, without my duffle bag. There was only one thing that could have made me stop running away. Darry yelled, "Soda, stop," and like always, I listened.

Darry had run out onto the front lawn with me. He looked shiftily around at the various nosy neighbors who had come outside to watch. "Come back inside, Sodapop."

Dally and I had a stare-off when I had finally managed to hobble back into the living room. I was trying my best to transmit the message I hate you with only my eyes and he was quite obviously internally yelling ditto.

I sat out of necessity, although I would have rathered remained standing so I could look more intimidating. "What happened to your leg?" Steve asked.

I was surprised that he was talking to me. After I had come out two years ago, he had refused to even be in the same room as me. I think he saw it as an ultimate betrayal that I was the one to get all of the female attention, and yet I had no desire for it.

I pulled up my army fatigue and showed the enormous scar surrounding my right knee. "A bullet hit my knee cap and shattered the patella to tiny pieces. It's entirely useless. They wanted to amputate it so at least it wouldn't hurt me for the rest of my life, but..." I trailed off.

"But you're a stubborn bastard," Two-Bit finished for me, jovially.

"He hurt his side also," Dally interjected.

"That's fine. A piece of shrapnel just grazed my ribs, it will heal."

And then there was the silence which I had been dreading. The silence radiated from each man like an infectious disease and breaking it was impossible. I felt that we could have sat there with our hands shoved stubbornly into our pockets and our eyes fixed anywhere but at each other forever. Of course, it was fucking Winston who broke the silence finally.

"I'm tired of this," He sounded so angry and...almost hurt if I dared call Dally out on his show of human emotion. "Haven't we been through enough without this shit? After Mr. and Mrs. Curtis, then those douchebag socs, that bitch of a social worker, Soda leaving, and then to top the fucking cake of bullshit, Johnny?"

My heart went cold. I stared around at each face, everyone mollified by Dally's unusual speech. "What happened to Johnny?"

Dally was the only one who could meet my eyes, and I knew what he was going to say before it happened. "He's dead."

There was nothing to say now, and the absence of things to say made the silence more contemplative than uncomfortable. I could imagine Johnny so well. His overly-greased hair and huge brown eyes. He didn't deserve to die. In the war, everyone always talked about fighting for the people back home. I would think of my small group of friends and know that I could keep going for them. But it seemed that I had been fighting for a dead person for some time. It wasn't fair that I went to Vietnam with morbid doubt that I would come home alive and Johnny, who was supposed to be safe here, was the one to die. I felt as though I had stolen the breath from his lungs. I was living off of stolen life.

Then I remembered the person in the room who would have been most affected my Johnny's death. My head snapped up to look at Dallas. He was already turned toward me, so I couldn't help meeting his eyes. He looked vulnerable through all that anger and defiance. After two years of watching men break, I knew that anger and defiance were delicate emotions. I knew that I had to fix my remaining family, even if it killed me. I owed that much to Johnny, who had died with two broken families.

"Darry, I am so sorry," I stood up with the help of my cane. "I'm sorry I hurt you and Ponyboy. I'm sorry I haven't kept in contact. I'm just...real sorry."

Darry nodded slowly. I stuck out my hand to shake his.

"What about you, Darry? Ain't you gonna say sorry too?" Dally asked.

"What for?" Darry said, turning toward Dally with a challenge in his eyes. Dally backed off for once, perhaps because he had already won a battle today. "You can stay here, Soda. But I can't support your lifestyle. While you live here, I want you to be normal."

"I want that too, Darry, but it's not something I can control."

"Well then, pretend. I don't care."

I nodded because there was nothing and no one I wanted as much as I wanted my brothers back. I wasn't destined for any great romance. David had been the end of that for me. But, as the gang dissolved into various nightly activities, I knew that didn't mean I didn't have love in my life.