The new kid was scared. They mostly are. Either they don't understand why they were sent here, or their lives have been so crappy they're just expecting more shit to be heaped on top of 'em. Trust don't come natural any more.

I could dig that.

I was the new girl once.

xxXxx

It was freakishly quiet in the room, despite how busy all the hallways were in the rest of the courthouse building. Like the door that shut behind me was real thick, or closed up real tight.

Like they were trying to get you used to being in a cell.

Although cells never had thick carpet and dark wood furniture; a long polished table with three people lined up and facing me, all neat grey hair and Socy clothes, staring at me like I'd interrupted their coffee and chat.

The table freaked me the hell out. I'd been expecting a courtroom, like in the movies. A dock, somewhere for witnesses to sit while they stuck the knife in, told everyone what I'd done, what I was. These stiffs looked like they were waiting on someone to bring their lunch. I couldn't even tell which of 'em was the judge, although there was only one old guy, so if I'd hadda place a bet my money would have been on him.

"Elaine, why don't you sit here." The woman in the middle pointed to a chair, opposite her. At the table. I slid into it, warily.

"Ain't I supposed to have a lawyer? Someone on my side?"

The other woman, the one with the biggest pile of papers in front of her, smiled. "We're all on your side."

xxXxx

'Indoor-question cop' must've had a hall pass. He'd arrived in a separate car, after the lights and the sirens, after the uniforms were done shouting and both Wes and Jerry were bundled onto stretchers. Part of me had wanted to tell the ambulance guys to only concentrate on Wes.

Of course, the body on the floor was way more interesting to the fuzz. The body and then me, once I'd said what I said.

They'd let me sit back down on the couch, and I'd persuaded myself it was still warm from Wes lying there. That had to be a good sign, that he was warm, he'd stayed warm.

Indoor cop had taken one look at me and snapped out an order for someone to take off the cuffs.

The beat pig hesitated.

" . . ." Not-wearing-a-uniform obviously trumped the rules regarding murderers. When my hands were free, he bent down, pulling something out of his pocket that turned out to be a handkerchief. He passed it to me, gesturing at my lip. I dabbed it, because he obviously expected me to, surprised to find that it was still bleeding. I rubbed it over my chin a little more forcefully, wondering what the hell kind of mess I was in.

"You remember me, sweetie? Detective Felson."

I nodded. Since yesterday? Did he think I was some kind of retard?

"You wanna tell me what went on here?"

I took a deep breath. My eyes slid past him, to Tom's corpse.

xxXxx

In the courtroom that wasn't, the various files and notepads seemed to contain my life story. Only maybe the freaks hadn't gotten around to reading everything yet because they asked me to "talk about myself a little".

I pressed my shoulder blades against the hard chair back, wondering how they expected me to trip up. Keep it simple was the rule, when it came to lying effectively. That and keep as close to the truth as possible. Easy enough, all that I'd changed was who pulled the trigger for the second time. And if I hadn't screwed up the first shot, it would have all been gospel anyhow. Self-defense. That's all there was to it.

"I thought he'd killed my friend. I thought he was gonna—"

"Wait." The older woman smiled. Again. "That's not what I meant. We have your statement and the police report about that night. I want you to tell us about who you are." Like some kind of lame-assed school essay? 'Who is Elaine Coleman?' Where do you see yourself in five years time? Ten? Ever? Ain't that down to you, lady?

My tongue had glued itself to the roof of my mouth. But there were rules for this too. I folded my arms, hardened my expression.

"I'm a greaser chick."

xxXxx

Third time of telling. The story was starting to support itself, burned into my brain, falling out of my mouth, I barely had to think about what to say.

Detective Felson had apologized—apologized—that I had to go in the holding cell while they got their themselves organized. Now he was offering me soda I didn't want, like he had the previous time I'd been questioned by him. Maybe he was the retard. He didn't seem to be reacting right to what I'd told him. But he was buddied up now, some other cop sharing his side of the table. This one wanted to go over everything one more time, only now he was doing the telling and all I had to do was nod along.

"So, you're the one responsible for the drug dealing, not McManus? And you shot the punk who firebombed the diner, not Gibson?" It was weird, thinking that Nate wasn't 'Nate' and Wes wasn't 'Wes' to them.

I shrug-nodded and he threw his pen down, grimacing at Felson. "This is bullshit."

Felson leaned towards me. "Is someone threatening you? Making you say these things?" When I shook my head, he sighed. "Listen, sweetie. You don't owe these guys anything. If you tell us the truth, they won't be able to hurt you. I promise."

"They wouldn't hurt me. It was the Tigers tryin' to hurt me. I'm telling the truth."

Newcop snorted. "Your kind wouldn't know the truth if it up 'n bit you!" My kind? He shot Felson a filthy look. "When was the last time any Northside trash punk offered themselves up voluntarily? I say we put the screws on the two in the hospital, get to the real story and stop wasting our time with this little...patsy." He changed the last word as Felson growled.

Now I was worried. I didn't know what Felson's deal was, I never had asked if he had a daughter my age, to explain why he seemed determined to help me out. But put together with Newcop's suspicious nature, it was getting to the point where I was going to walk away from everything I was trying to confess to.

"Nate musta thought he was saving my purse," I said. "I mean, don't it seem freaky to you that he would keep his stash in a pocket book?" It wasn't my actual purse, with my wallet and all—that had gone up in flames, they'd told me—but it was a girly design all the same.

"It was a bag, is all. Suede hippie tassles and—"

"—blue beads and a stain on one corner where my eyeliner leaked one time? Two pockets inside an' one with the zipper busted?" I interrupted before I reeled off the contents as near as I could remember; greens, reds, the lot. I could see I was getting the quantities right, as Newcop twitched, checking the paperwork in front of him.

I laughed and it sounded mighty realistic. "Man, the Tigers knew it was me, 's'why they came after me."

"Which still makes it self-defense." Felson, for the love of God, was still on my side.

I nodded. "I thought he'd killed Wes. I thought he was going to kill me." Round and round and round.

xxXxx

The three of 'em were on a roll. Announcing that I was a greaser was apparently enough for them to start explaining why that put me at the bottom of society's pile. Nothing I hadn't heard from various principals over the years, just not in such swanky surroundings.

"We understand that a difficult homelife can mean..."

"...insufficient parental guidance..."

"Outside influences of a criminal nature..."

I was awful tempted to start singing "Officer Krupke". Hadn't these freaks never seen West Side Story? "I'm depraved on account of I'm deprived..." Gimme a break.

It took some effort to hide my smile and I shuffled on my seat a little. I wondered whose job it was to clean these places, with the fancy pictures and the carefully arranged flag in the corner. Pretty cushy number. The air in here was so still, I'd be willing to bet there was barely any dust raised.

"Disrupted schooling..."

"Several grades behind..."

I tuned back in, suddenly pissed off, because the trash talk had switched from the general to the personal.

"I ain't 'disadvantaged'. I got done with school is all," I protested.

The man cleared his throat. Pulled a sheet from the pile in front of him, then slid it across to me. "See if you agree with this assessment." They waited in silence as my eyes roamed over the unfamiliar words and tangled sentences. "Perhaps you could read the opening remarks to us?"

A wave of heat spread up from my throat. Well, fuck him.

"I don't see what 'how good I can read' has got to do with how long you send me away for." They blinked in surprise. "What?" I demanded, on a roll of my own. "So what if I'm...unteachable"—one of the words that I had worked out jumped into my brain—"just decide how long I gotta serve and be done with it."

The man clenched his fist slowly and I tensed. "Nobody is unteachable," he growled. "Only bad teachers say that."

Huh?

"Do you remember where you went to school for second grade?" He looked up, snatching back the paper that I couldn't read. I shrugged. "How about fifth?" He flicked the cardboard folder as he shoved the piece of paper back. "Your records are incomplete."

New houses, new names to go with them. Sometimes when we left, it was dark and cold, and all I wanted to do was lay my head down on the bus seat.

"We moved."

The paper-stack woman nodded, like she was deciding something, then asked the other two to 'give her a moment' with me. They paced over the soft carpet to the door, without arguing.

"Elaine...Lainey, is that what you prefer to be called?" My shoulders seemed to be getting a lot of exercise. I paused, mid-shrug because she raised her eyebrows. Her eyes were a real pale blue, almost grey, but not soft-looking, and she kept them on me as she spoke. "You are very close to a fork in the road. A choice about where your life might go. I want you to understand that we are trying to help you make the right choice."

"Me?" I scoffed. "Ain't you making all the decisions? Ain't you got me all typed up in there?"

"Would it surprise you to know that not everything in here is negative? We have some character details, 'references' if you like, from people who came forward on your behalf. A Mr Curtis, for one—"

"Darry?" Darry ratted on me?

She ran a finger down the page. "...Darrel Curtis, yes. Also—" She blinked, then smiled. "Someone by the name of Sodapop Curtis? They told us some of the difficulties you've faced. That you lost some close friends, that you—"

Stop.

"What's it matter?" I interrupted before she could go into detail, flicked my hand at the folders and papers. "What's any of it matter?"

"Your mother's lifestyle must have been...difficult for you. Possibly even dangerous."

Difficult.

Dangerous.

Dallas and the wedge under the door. "Who we tryin' a keep out, doll?"

Stop.

I held my breath.

Stopstopstop.

"But it doesn't have to be that way anymore. And once you're an adult, I'd like to think—"

"What? Why? How old will I be when I get out?" I wasn't used to thinking of myself as only sixteen. Most of the boys I knew went away for months, not years. But then most of them were car thieves, or vandals, or run-of-the-mill menaces to society. I was a drug-dealing killer, even if half my rep was a fiction.

"We want to offer you the opportunity to change your life around. To live in a different place, to go back to school."

I squinted suspiciously. "Are you saying I ain't gonna be locked up?"

"Do you particularly want to go to the reformatory?" Was that some kind of trick question? I felt like I was in some kind of trap. "We want to offer you an alternative. We have a program in place at the Meadowsweet Children's Home—"

"Children's home? I ain't a kid!"

She moved her hand from the papers, reaching across to me, like she wanted to touch me only the table was too wide and I was too far back in my chair anyhow. "Lainey. Let us help."

xxXxx

Turned out the home was run by do-gooders. I wasn't even surprised.

"I ain't got religion. You can't make me believe in nothin'!" I told 'em straight, on my first day.

Turned out, being saved wasn't nothing to do with the Sunday morning church services.

"This place is nice." Ponyboy made no effort to disguise his complete shock, as we walked around the gardens, between the three huge buildings that made up the place. Darry had made him wear a dress shirt, like his own. But Darry had stayed back, talking to the house mother, letting Pony bombard me with all his news.

"You didn't need to drive all the way out here." I was torn between being embarrassed and weirdly shy that they had. Sunday afternoons were for visitors, but only after the first six weeks. Some kind of reward, for toeing the line and not trashing the place—or, in my case, for not cussing in front of the little kids, which was my particular 'target'. That and wearing the lame knee-length skirts they gave me.

Pony climbed up on the fence, looking out at the orchard and the farm, where the older boys got to work. "I thought it might be more like Oliver Twist." I didn't know what that was, but it seemed to amuse him. He asked me if I was back in school, for real.

"Yeah. But only here, not like a real high school." I didn't tell him what grade the shit was, that they had me working through, it was too embarrassing. I doubted I would ever graduate, and maybe that was the plan—to keep me here forever, repeating and repeating.

My 'sentence' was real enough. I had to stay here until the court lady—I never did work out if she was the judge or not—thought I was turned around from my delinquent life. Or whatever. The fact was, they'd told me Stella had skipped town again, so I figured I might as well take advantage of their clean sheets and three meals a day. Where else was I gonna live? Maybe I could convince myself it was like a vacation. Sharing a dorm with a bunch of little girls—I was about the oldest in the place—was still better than some of the things I'd heard about being locked up in Girls Town. If they wanted to experiment with turning my life around, maybe I could sit through a few remedial classes.

Ponyboy asked, though, what books I was studying, for English. And then he offered to bring me any notes he had 'still lying around'.

"Or maybe I could mail 'em? Do they let you have mail? Do they check it?"

I had no idea. Who cared where I was, these days? I hadn't even known to expect him and Darry.

He nodded. "Hmm. Yeah. Let's test that. I'll mail you some stuff on Steinbeck, you let me know if they opened the envelope, when I come see you again."

"Why the he-heck does it matter?" Damn, but they were winning. But only because some of the kids were real little. I didn't want them copying anything bad that came out my mouth.

Glancing around, although there was no one near—some of the kids were throwing a ball, a bit further back, near the main house—Pony pulled something out of his pocket and handed it to me. "Save me playing mailman, if he can write to you direct."

Turned out Wes was no better a letter writer than me. And no better at picking postcards.

xxXxx

Three years later

I never would have put money on wanting to stay in a place that I'd had no part in choosing for myself. But when I turned eighteen—and I never had gotten any school certificate. Just a whole set of practical skills that crept up on me, without my even noticing—and they asked me if I wanted to work at the children's home, swap my dorm room for an assistant's badge, I said 'yes'.

Wes still had a year to go at that point, and he was talking about staying in the Army, making a long term thing of it. He hadn't quite asked me to up sticks and follow him, but then he hadn't quite asked me to wait in the first place, and both of us were happy enough that it happened anyhow.

In the meantime, I was...what? Nursemaid, playmate, cleaner, dresser, hairbrusher—

One thing about every imaginary life I'd ever dreamed up, I'd never made myself into a big sister. Never put myself in that position. When I'd so desperately wanted to be part of the Curtis family, I still saw me and Ponyboy on a level. Besides, it was never about brothers and sisters, it was about Mrs. C. and what she represented; safety, comfort. Love.

It took me a little time to recognize it, when it eventually came my way.

And being on the other side, being 'staff' instead of 'inmate' I was sometimes frustrated at how much it was still missing in so many lives. Oh, believe me, the little kids could be annoying as all get out. Especially the ones with problems. They were noisy, messy, sometimes destructive.

But mostly they were scared.

"Hey," I held out my hand to the new kid with the wide eyes. "It's okay. How about I show you where you're gonna sleep, huh? Then we can see if there are some cookies going." She bit her lip, still nervous. I smiled. "It's okay. You're home now."

The End

A/N: Thank you, if you stuck it out this far. I know the posting schedule has been erratic!

I found some evidence about changing attitudes to delinquency at the time, enough that a hopeful ending for Lainey wasn't too fantastical.