A/N: Thanks to everyone who reviewed - the feedback was greatly appreciated. (:
I'm not sure whether I made it clear in the chapter, but Ponyboy started working at the bowling alley mentioned later on.
Disclaimer: Hinton owns.
Chapter Twelve: Telephone Calls and Nights on the Ribbon
"I'm sorry, Melanie, Chrissy is still grounded," I heard my mother say on my way downstairs. I hurried the rest of the way down. I was craving any contact with anyone outside my house; three weeks of being grounded was torture.
It had become a routine by now: One of my friends would call the house—Mom expressly forbade me from even letting the phone ring in my room—and I would come down to see who was calling, only to find her hanging up the phone and saying something about how I should have told my friends that being grounded wasn't just an excuse to call the house instead.
"Mama," I whispered loudly before she could hang up the phone.
Mom glanced at me and sighed. "Just a moment, Melanie." She rested the receiver on her shoulder and turned to face me. "What is it, Chrissy?"
"Can I talk to her?" I pleaded. Mom sighed. "Please! You haven't let me talk to anyone since Friday when school let out. Do you have any idea what I'm missing out on because of this?"
"Chrissy, you chose to disobey me."
I sighed. "Please, Mama." I couldn't believe I was actually begging to talk to Melanie, who had given me the cold shoulder for most of last week. But I was desperate to talk to someone, and I missed her. I'd never realized just how accustomed I'd grown to seeing Mel at least six days a week and talking to her every night on the phone without fail.
"All right," Mom said with a disapproving tsk. "You have five minutes."
"Thank you!" I snatched the phone away before she could start up with her polite Goodbyes and It was nice of you to calls. "Mel?" I asked, darting out of the kitchen and into the living room, stretching the cord as far as it would go.
"Merry Christmas!" Melanie squealed as if nothing had happened last week.
I couldn't help laughing. "It's Christmas Eve."
"I know," she said, "but I probably won't talk to you tomorrow."
Kelly was sitting on the floor with a bowl of cereal, completely riveted to Miracle on 34th Street, so I tried to talk quietly, because she got real upset when she was interrupted while she was watching television. "Don't remind me," I said.
"Dave was asking about you the other day," Mel continued.
"I'm grounded until Friday," I reminded her with a sigh. "I told him that."
Melanie sighed too. "Your mother is being so unreasonable," she said.
I rolled onto the couch and stared glumly at my pants-clad legs. No going out meant I could wear whatever I wanted, and I chose to lounge around the house in pants because I knew my mother didn't like them. "Don't you think I know that, Mel?" I asked Melanie. "I've tried to reason with her, but … well, she won't listen to me."
"I guess you had to get your stubbornness from somewhere," Mel said with a giggle.
"Excuse me!" I sat up, indignant. "I am not stubborn."
She laughed again. "Sure you aren't, Chris." She changed the subject, probably so I couldn't argue with her any more. "So did you hear about what happened with Tricia and James Carson last night?"
"What do you think?" I said glumly. "I don't hear about anything when I'm not allowed to talk on the phone."
"Well, anyway, they broke up," Melanie said.
I was surprised. "They were going steady?" Sometimes it seemed like Tricia had a new steady every week, but I was sure I would have known if the two of them were going together.
"Not really, I guess," Mel agreed, "but they went out twice last week, and they went to the dance together, you know. I think they went out before that, too. She didn't have a ring or anything, but she was sure upset when she caught him with Barbie."
"Atkins?" It wasn't exactly a surprise, but boy, I sure wouldn't want to mess with Tricia's guy, even if I were as dumb as Barbie was.
"Yeah! I was sure Tricia was going to slap her," Melanie said delightedly. She just loved delivering gossip.
"Gosh, I'm glad I wasn't there," I said, imagining just how mad Tricia must have been.
Kelly turned around from the TV to give me an irritated "Shhh!" I guess I'd been getting louder.
"Sorry," I whispered.
"And you must have heard about Ponyboy and Libby Burns, right?" Melanie asked, as off-handed as could be. If I hadn't been expecting her to bring it up somehow anyway, I would have been suspicious just from her casual tone of voice.
"Yeah, I heard," I told her.
Melanie paused, clearly waiting for me to say something else. I didn't, and she finally got impatient. "And?"
"And what?" I asked, keeping an eye on the kitchen door in case my mother happened to walk in. The last thing I needed was for her to hear me talking about Ponyboy and giving me another lecture about "delinquents."
"Come on, Christine," Melanie said impatiently. "You weren't exactly being real secretive-like."
I was turning red, I knew it. "Melanie, we w—we're friends. That's all there's ever been." It was the truth.
"Christine …" She was really losing patience now.
"Sorry, Mel, that's it," I told her. "I liked him, all right? I'll admit it. But you did, too. He's good-looking and he wears a leather jacket and we're sheltered West Side girls and we were curious. You lost interest before I did, and that's the end of it, so you can stop bugging me about it, all right? You're no better than I am."
There was a long pause. Kelly had turned around from the TV again, but she hadn't shushed me; she was hanging on my every word. Glory, I wished I was having this conversation in my bedroom.
"Chrissy?" my mother called from the kitchen. "Say goodbye."
"Just a minute, Mom." I was waiting for Melanie to say something, because it was about time she knew the score. Well, most of it, anyway. She didn't have to know that I might have been more upset than I was letting on. It wasn't as if she'd care.
I had half-expected her to yell at me, but she just said, "So you lost interest, then?"
"Christine!"
"In a minute, Mother!" I was starting to get impatient. I put the receiver back to my ear. "Yes, Melanie, I lost interest, all right?" I ignored the funny sinking feeling in my stomach when those words came out. "Look, I have to go now, okay?"
"Okay, if you're sure." She sounded a lot happier now. I knew it wasn't because I was supposedly feeling better.
"Yeah, I'm sure," I said hastily.
"Christine Elizabeth Collins, if you're not here in ten seconds, you're grounded for another two weeks!"
I sighed. "I'll see you on Friday, okay?"
"Okay. 'Bye."
I hurried back into the kitchen and hung up the phone before my mother took drastic measures. "There. I'm through, all right?"
Mom looked at me suspiciously, and I couldn't help wondering if maybe she'd heard part of my conversation. But she just said, "You can talk to her again on Friday, but I don't want you taking any more phone calls."
"Fine," I said vaguely, already on my way upstairs. Maybe I'd find a book to read or something; there was never anything on TV right before Christmas except for Christmas specials.
As I picked up my book, though, and heard my dad's car in the driveway, I wondered just how long all the lies that had been brimming under the surface—between Melanie and me and between my parents—could stay there before everything bubbled over.
A minute later, I heard my parents having "discussion" in the kitchen about Dad working on Christmas Eve.
Merry Christmas to me.
xxxx
Cherry came by to pick me up on Friday evening around seven.
As soon as I saw her car in the driveway, I ran out of the house like the devil was after me. I'd been ready to go out all day, and nothing could have kept me inside at this point.
"Hey!" I jumped into the passenger seat of Cherry's Sting Ray.
"We missed you, Chrissy," Cherry said, reaching over to squeeze my arm. She gave me that smile she had where you couldn't help but feel special, just to be friends with her. It was one of the reasons everyone wanted to be friends with her, I guess. You couldn't help feeling special when someone like Cherry Valance wanted you as a friend.
I grinned back at her. "Yeah, I'm sure Mel and the others missed me nagging them about having too much fun and stuff."
Cherry laughed. "It got lonely being the only one with some common sense, I'll tell you that."
"I'm sure," I said, thinking of Laurie, Val, and Sharon. "So where are we going tonight?" I'd been so excited at the prospect of going out that I hadn't thought to ask where we'd be going.
"The Ribbon," Cherry said. "Maybe Jay's or Rusty's."
Just like every other time we go out.
"Sounds like fun," I replied, forcing myself to smile. "So what else have I missed out on?"
"You probably heard about Tricia, right?" Cherry said with a wry grin. When I rolled my eyes, she continued. "Yeah, I figured that's the first thing Mel would have told you. Tricia's already at work making Barbie's life miserable."
Any other time, I would have laughed with her, even though it wasn't funny, because we were the same that way. But knowing what Pony knew about her and seeing her act the way I did made the terribly hypocritical part of me want to shake some sense into her and the more honest part of me hope to high heaven that, somehow, I was different than she was.
We pulled into Melanie's neighborhood before long. Her house was the third on the block and huge, about average size for the houses in this neighborhood. I'd been over so often that it seemed like a second home for me, but from the outside—the inside too, really—it was intimidating as all get-out.
Melanie bounded out of the house not ten seconds later, slammed the front door behind her, and skipped down the driveway in her high heels.
"Do your parents know we're here?" Cherry asked when she climbed into the back seat.
"They won't even notice I'm gone," Mel said, rolling her eyes. She leaned forward and put her chin on my shoulder. "Hey, Christine! Long time no see."
I laughed. "We talked on the phone on Sunday."
"That's why I said 'see,' silly!" She pinched my cheek, then leaned back in her seat. "What'd you get for Christmas?"
How could I have forgotten? I sat up straighter and grinned. "My mom talked my dad into letting me get a car." I still didn't know how it had happened, but sometime between arguments about Dad's work hours, they'd managed to agree on something.
"What are you getting?" Melanie leaned forward again.
"I don't know yet." I grinned, relishing the idea of being able to drive myself around instead of needing a ride home from school every day. Maybe now I'd finally feel like I was sixteen instead of twelve, which was how old my parents seemed to think I was most of the time.
"You have to bring it to school when we get back," Mel gushed. "I want to see it!"
"I can drive you," I reminded her.
Mel's eyes lit up and, as Cherry looked on in amusement, she began to talk animatedly about what cars were too flashy, which ones weren't flashy enough, and so on.
She didn't notice, of course, when I stopped listening fifteen seconds in.
xxxx
"Let's try the bowling alley," I said as soon as we drove past Jay's. We'd already made one trip down the Ribbon and had run into pretty much everyone except Tricia, Sharon, and the others—either in cars or hanging out by the hot dog stands. They must have parked somewhere.
"All right." Cherry knew what I meant. There were several bowling alleys on the Ribbon, but Lucky Strike was the only one that mattered when it came to seeing and being seen in the parking lot. It was positioned near the center of the shops and restaurants that lined one side of the street and was close enough to see what was going on without having to stay in your car like you did at Jay's. That meant there were always a bunch of kids hanging around in the parking lot, and the bowling alley itself was the busiest in town, too.
Sure enough, Todd's green Thunderbird was parked, facing the street, in front of the bowling alley. Greg, Andy, and David were sitting cross-legged on the hood, yelling things I probably didn't want to hear at a few girls passing by in a red Camaro.
"Hurry up!" Melanie waved at them. I was glad I was sitting up front instead of her, or she might have tried something with the steering wheel.
Cherry turned into the parking lot, and Melanie jumped out of the car the second it stopped.
I took my time getting out. David was motioning for me to come over, and his smile was so sweet that I wished I could feel the same way about him that I did about Ponyboy. I wished his smile tied my stomach in knots, but it didn't. Gosh, I was a horrible date.
What had I gotten myself into? I smiled back and followed Melanie and Cherry over to Todd's car.
Melanie and I jumped into the back seat while Cherry disappeared to find Todd. I could tell Melanie was watching me, waiting to see how I'd act with David, and I knew she was thinking about our phone conversation.
Well, I'd show her she didn't have any reason to worry. Maybe then she'd mind her own business.
David and Greg climbed into the front so we could talk. They had food from one of the diners with them, but I knew from experience that Mel and I weren't allowed to have any, even if they offered. It was just one of those rules of being a cheerleader that you didn't question. So even though I was starving, I declined David's offer to share with me.
Sharon, Tricia, Valerie, and Nancy wandered over before long, and I was glad; it took some of the pressure of the conversation off of me.
David was a nice boy, and even nicer to talk to, and I was glad. While I felt terribly awkward trying to make small talk, he was completely at his ease. Then again, there was never much need to talk with Melanie around. I swear, that girl could hold a conversation with herself all day.
Hanging around the Ribbon was always fun, and I liked it a lot better when I was parked and moving from car to car than when I was riding up and down the street. Moving around and jumping into the cars of people we knew was how we communicated; you could hear all the latest gossip—and overhear even more if you were quiet. And I had missed out on a lot by staying home for three weeks.
You'd think that since school was out for Christmas, people would have less to talk about since we didn't all see each other every day and so much was always happening at school, but it was just the opposite; people were out every night now, and that meant more dates, more fights, and a lot more to talk about.
I was so caught up in finding out everything that was going on that, until Libby Burns' name was mentioned, I completely forgot the main reason I'd wanted to check out the bowling alley in the first place.
And then that reason walked right out the side door wearing a Lucky Strike uniform shirt with his arm around Libby.
Melanie saw Pony at the same time as I did, I think, and shot me a sideways glance that she must have thought was subtle.
Casually, I let my hair fall across my face to shield it from view and moved closer to David. Maybe he wouldn't see me.
"Curtis!" David put his hand up and waved.
Shit! "Why'd you do that?" I blurted out; clearly, David had gone crazy.
Melanie stared. David stared. Even Greg frowned in confusion at how upset I sounded. I kicked myself for being such a coward.
Ponyboy lifted his hand to wave, spotted me, and frowned. He said something to Libby, and the two of them started in our direction.
I couldn't do this. I wasn't going to talk to him. Melanie was watching me and David was still staring in confusion and—
"I'll be right back," I said, and jumped out of the car before anyone had time to say anything.
I ducked into the bowling alley and ran for the bathrooms, just in case Melanie came in after me. She didn't, so I fixed my hair and make-up in front of the mirror and convinced myself I was being an idiot. Pony'd probably just stopped over to say hi. He was probably gone already.
But I should have learned by now. I was never right about these things.
Ponyboy was still standing by Todd's car, chatting away. I could tell even from behind that Libby was annoyed, just from her posture. She'd be even angrier if she knew I was there. I was sure she hadn't seen me; she'd taken to glaring at me when she saw me at school, and boy, for a little thing she sure could be intimidating.
At that moment, Libby turned to go, maybe over to Jay's, and Ponyboy turned, too, to say something to her. He caught my eye before I could duck back inside. He said goodbye to David and loped over to where I stood rooted to the spot.
"Hey there," he said, as if I wasn't staring at him, feeling something between astonishment and anger. I noted confusedly, in some detached part of my mind, that he was wearing hair grease—I could tell even from under his cap.
My feet finally came unglued from the ground, and I turned to leave, but Pony caught me around the waist quicker than anything.
I would have been able to get free—he would have let go if I'd struggled—but I was too stunned to move.
"What's wrong?" He had a few bruises along his jawline and a new cut on his chin that was sure to leave a scar. I wondered vaguely when Anthony Meyers had caught up with him.
"I—nothing." I tried to keep my breathing regular, but I couldn't even seem to think straight. I carefully avoided looking at him.
Pony leaned closer. I gasped in spite of myself. "You're lyin'," he said without hesitation. His green eyes bore into mine like he was just waiting for me to break down and tell him what was wrong. Like he could make me do whatever he wanted.
"I'm not." I managed to keep my gaze steadily on him until his fingers laced through mine and I blushed and looked down out of habit.
"You are," Ponyboy said.
I looked over his shoulder. "So what?"
"Well, what's the matter, then?" He wasn't going to leave it alone. When I looked at him again he was watching me, intently, frustratedly.
"Ponyboy …"
"I want to know, Christine."
"What do you care?" My voice sounded breathier than I'd intended, because he'd moved even closer and still hadn't let go of my hands.
Pony frowned and stepped back a little, allowing me to breathe properly again. "What does that mean?" He looked genuinely confused, and I didn't know whether I wanted to kiss him or slap him for being so stupid.
Then I thought about Libby and my anger came back in a heady rush. I wasn't going to let him keep playing games like he was.
"That means you'd rather be comforting Libby Burns than me from what I've heard."
I could tell from the look on his face that my comment had hit its mark.
"Christine, I don't—"
"No, wait, don't tell me," I said sarcastically. "You didn't mean to kiss her, right? Just like you didn't mean to take her out?"
Ponyboy's jaw clenched. I'd hit a nerve. When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet. "What do you care?" He repeated my words from just a minute earlier, threw them back in my face.
"What?" I was caught off guard.
"What does it matter to you?" he asked.
My jaw went slack with surprise. Was he trying to make me say it out loud, or was he really that blind? Could he really not see what I had been showing him over and over?
Either way, I didn't have the patience. I pulled my hands back and turned away abruptly.
"Christine—" Pony caught onto my hand again.
I pulled it right back, sputtering helplessly as I tried to think of something to say. "Are you … do you really … ?" I honestly couldn't think of anything else to say. I was speechless.
"I didn't mean it that way," he said.
"Yeah?" I lifted my chin angrily. "What did you mean, then?"
Ponyboy wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me closer. I gasped. "I meant"—one hand threaded through my hair—"yellow's a real good color on you."
This wasn't fair. Did he think he could kiss one girl and make another fall at his feet just by—just—
Oh, Lordy—
Our foreheads pressed together. My mind was reeling, I seemed to have lost control over my actions, and I couldn't have pulled away if I tried.
My eyes closed of their own accord, and my hands moved to clutch onto the sleeves of his shirt because I was afraid I might collapse. His lips barely brushed over mine, but I felt it everywhere. My skin tingled, and any rational thought had left my mind as he kissed me again.
Until a rather loud voice broke through my hazy thoughts and brought me crashing unpleasantly back into reality.
"Are you sure? I'm going to go look." Valerie. Oh.
Oh.
"Glory," Ponyboy choked out, and we were suddenly broken apart. I didn't know who had pulled away, but it was just in time. Valerie came around the corner of the building.
"Chrissy?" She frowned in confusion and looked at me closely. "Where on earth did you get to?"
"Um …" My mind still hazy, I looked over at where Ponyboy had stood.
He was gone.
Whoa. I had the whole chapter outlined and I still wasn't expecting that. Was it worth the wait?