I'm so so so sorry for the wait, but really excited about this chapter! Enjoy and please give feedback... I just want to reinforce that this is not going to be a slash story. Not that I am against those, thats just not what I've planned for this.

Lately, I had begun to change. I felt like a butterfly that had just left its cocoon and I found myself looking in the mirror quite a lot. Not that I had suddenly become Narcissus, or had any thoughts that I was some perfect Marilyn type... it was just a way of occupying time and of satiating my curiosity.

My eyelids half shut in what I hoped to be a seductive way- though, at the time, I really had no grasp of that words meaning- I unsnapped my bra and pulled the straps off of my shoulders. My breasts had recently grown and I had a few new bras, lacy and satiny, that made me feel like a right Elizabeth Taylor when I removed them in front of the glass. My hands came up slowly and cupped each mound, just for sizing calculations. I had begun to feel crazy things lately; things like how it might be to have a boy cup them and I guessed it would feel a lot better that way.

The door creaked and behind me I spotted Ponyboy. He had opened the bathroom door since I had forgotten to lock it and currently stood, mouth wide open, eyes glued to my shape in the mirror.

"PONYBOY! Get out." I shrieked, and then covering my mouth finished with a harshly whispered demand.

Ponyboy turned abruptly and closed the door silently behind him.

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Minutes later, I left the restroom, hoping that nothing about the episode would come up.

"Ally-Bug, did you see a lizard or something?"

Soda seemed to appear out of nowhere and I started.

"Oh! You startled me..." I fished for an excuse or distraction.. something...

"Umm no, I'm just practicing for the next Alfred Hitchcock movie.. I've decided that once I get out of here I'm going to live life to its fullest."

Soda gave a dry chuckle and wrapped me in his arms. A month or so ago, I would have found this to be comforting... but now, I could think of only one thing. Soda inside of that fort in the Attic, groaning Sandy's name and touching his...

My thoughts ended and I was eternally grateful when everybody came up from the Attic and quieted down from a rowdy game of Football.

Steve seemed more interested in talking to me as of late and he sat next to me on my bed, offering me a drag of his smoke. I took one without coughing, which was a first. Steve smirked and took the cigarette back.

"Damn it all Steve, giving her drags every day... soon she'll be an addict... mom'll be pissed." Darry spewed his usual spiel, but I don't think there was any real anger behind it. And if there was, it certainly wasn't about the cig.

I looked up and my eyes locked with Ponyboy's for an instant, before he pointedly broke the contact.

"Well, I can't very well say no with her all in my ear like a gnat about it all the time."

"I am not!" I shot back and punched Steve playfully in the arm giggling.

"Brat." He leaned over to my side of the bed and gave me a noogie. This time I punched him for real and tackled him to the bed, my giggling ensuing. Steve easily took the upper-hand and flipped us so that he was on top.

My laughing stopped and the room was silent enough to hear a pin drop.

"Its getting late. The Grandmother will be coming in soon... Steve." My brother Darry dragged Steve off of my bed and I sat up frowning. Soda looked pissed but not as pissed as Pony. Johnny was doing his own rendition of a glare, pointed directly at Steve and Two-Bit was sleeping in the corner. Dally looked angry, but I think that was just his resting face.

Sure enough, the lock turned and the door creaked open as Grandmother entered with a trolley of food.

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After dinner, I found myself wandering around the attic with Wuthering Heights in hand. I had begun to find new meaning in the book and had recently read it through again three times. I was at the part where Cathy Earnshaw is saying how she loves Edgar Linton and Heathcliff;

"My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being. So don't talk of our separation again: it is impracticable."

"Didn't you just finish reading that?" I looked up and was surprised to see Steve, lounging against a nearby rafter of the attic, a cigarette in hand and another tucked behind an ear.

"Yes but, a re-reading and re-pondering of a story is an important part of the consumption of literature that is often overlooked." I highly doubted that Steve cared anything about some of my new wittier and cannier outlooks, mottos and catchphrases, but I could hardly prevent myself from spouting them like a fountain.

He stubbed the lit end of the cigarette on the side of the rafter and let the disintegrated carcass fall to the ground. Steve came closer, until two more steps could have brought us nose to nose; that is, if I had been a lot taller.

"Brat." He whispered and I gulped, feeling like this was a whole lot different from the times he had called me that in the safety of the room where we were all in close quarters and my brothers were practically stepping on my toes at all moments.

Steve leaned forward and his hand reached out. I almost relaxed, thinking the usual noogie might occur... instead he cupped my chin in one hand and then reached back to fondle a few stray strands of my dark red hair. And then he brought his face closer and moved a hand to my waist. Steve lifted me up onto his shoes and I was too startled to do anything. The smell of cigarettes and mint, and though he hadn't been in contact with a car for sometime, gasoline, filled my nostrils. And then his rough lips were on mine and his teeth nibbled on my pink lips, parting them, his tongue filled my orifice and entwined with mine. His hand came up to one of my breasts and gave it an expert squeeze.

I let out a shocked gasp, tripping over his feet and almost hitting the ground.

"I-i-i-i-ii-i... think I have to get to bed now." I turned and scrambled for the door out of the attic, noticing with much chagrin that I had left the book in my rush.

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Once back in the safety of the room, there was nothing left for me to do other than sleep. I refused to venture back into the attic, even after Steve entered minutes after I had looking smug as anything. I prayed to some sort of god that my dreams could carry me away to a different world and hoped that it could be one of those dream nights where you registered the dream and then recollected it once awake.

But that night, I fell into a dream that I never would have wanted to remember, and would not soon forget.

I was in the attic again. I wasn't alone. I knew this because I was standing on somebody's shoes. My fingers and their's were entangled and a hand was in my red hair. I supposed that I was recreating the scene with Steve in my mind and as I felt him grasp my breast and rub it through the fabric, my dream self and out of dream self both felt rather... I couldn't think of any word to describe it... like I was on fire everywhere. The hand tugged on my hair and my half lidded eyes opened as they peered into someone else's eyes. But they weren't the brown of Steve's eyes. They were the green of my brother, Ponyboy.