"You can't have him."

There was a cigarette dangling between Eli's fingers, and instead of taking another drag, he ground it right into the bar; it began smoldering, a definite hole forming in the wood. I imagined that same hole branded into the skin on my arm, close enough that I could feel the heat coming off the tip, and somehow I knew that was exactly what he wanted me to imagine. "I'd rethink that, if I were you."

"Why do you even want to take him on full-time?" I asked, like he was the hiring manager at the fucking DX. "He's already in a gang, anyway, even if he works for y'all. In my brother Darry's."

"I'm supposed to believe fightin' some spoiled rich kids from Will Rogers is the most he wants outta his life?" He stubbed the weed out, flicked the ashes off the bar. "I like him, all my boys like him. He can charm the panties off any broad who needs them charmed off. He's a good thief."

"And what makes you think you're gonna win him over so easy?"

"Because I always get everything I want." He sounded more wistful than triumphant as he said it. "'Sides, tell any guy that his kid sister's gonna be stalked and killed— or worse— unless he joins your gang, shit, he'll be leavin' bigger dust clouds than Road Runner on the way here."

I glared at him, and he laughed. "Don't look at me like that," he said, "like I ran over your puppy. You can't get somethin' for nothin' in the real world, that's how it works, and I'm bein' mighty generous. Just get your brother jumped in, and not only will I provide Ramirez with all the money and guns their hearts desire, but you can have your own personal protection detail wherever the hell you go."

Still must've looked at him like he ran over my puppy, because he sighed and fumbled with his car keys. "Lemme give you a ride home, c'mon. You shouldn't be walkin' around all by your lonesome at this hour."

I grabbed my purse from one of the leather seats, sticky with spilled beer. "I can find my own way back, thanks."

The smile he gave me was like the edge of a knife. "You're miles away from your neighborhood, and to get there you'll need to pass through King territory... not to mention that you're all alone. You really wanna take that chance?"

When I blinked dumbly back at him, the smile vanished. "Get in the damn car before I change my mind."

I went.

"Little girl," came Darry's slow, menacing drawl as I slipped in through the front door, "what the fuck is goin' on here."

He sure wasn't asking a question, his foot tapping against the floor like a metronome, arms crossed; I carefully set my heels down before answering. "High-risk trading."

His laugh was about as pleasant as a root canal. "Let's see. I come home from work, the bathroom looks like a murder scene, Pony's out on the Ribbon because 'Dally said I'd get arrested if I didn't leave', and now you just got personally chauffeured by the head of the Tigers. I think the least I deserve is an explanation right now."

"Angela overdosed." I swayed dangerously in front of him, inches away from complete physical and emotional collapse. "She came over and... she was throwin' up like crazy, havin' a seizure. Dallas thought she might die if we didn't take her to the hospital."

"Yeah, I got that much outta Pony... is she okay?"

"Fuck, I dunno." It was a testament to the seriousness of Angela's condition that Darry didn't say a word about my cussing. "I left before I heard any news. She got her stomach pumped, though, the doctors said she'd probably wake up."

"You know what, doesn't matter," and there was the Darry I hadn't exactly missed. "You should've called, Saint Francis has payphones— and I don't want you bringin' no more Shepards 'round this house, you hear? Dally's right, if she died, we could've all been investigated."

I just nodded at him, and he squinted his left eye. "You're grounded. Two weeks. You can keep Soda company."

"Okay. Guess that's fair 'nuff."

"... What, that's it?" He gave me a hard, scrutinizing look. "No talkin' back, no screamin' about how grown you are, no threats to crawl out the window? You gettin' sick or somethin'?"

"Dallas broke up with me," came out in a tiny voice, and just to add insult to injury, tears were starting to prickle at the corners of my eyes. Like all I had to cry about was my hood boyfriend ditching my ass. "I'm pretty sure."

"Thank God," Darry said, and wasn't a hint mollified by my facial expression. He even heaved a sigh of relief far too dramatic for the situation. "Thought I'd have to put him in the morgue before he left you alone."

My bottom lip wobbled, and Darry sighed again at the pathetic figure I cut. "C'mere, baby." He led me over to the couch and wrapped his arm around me, pulling me close to him. "Shit, I been downright decent. Dad used to take his gun out the dresser drawer and tell your dates he wasn't afraid to go back to prison."

"That ain't somethin' to be proud of, Stan Michaels passed out cold on the livin' room floor." I wouldn't cry about Dally, not when Angela was fighting for her life, not in front of Darry. I didn't even know if he really wanted to break up, or if he'd just wanted to throw a tantrum in there, express his anger and powerlessness the only way he could.

"I'm gonna miss you," Darry said awkwardly, like me leaving was similar to the heat death of the universe, something inevitable he had no way of preventing. "Really, Jas, don't give me that eyeroll. You're a pain in the ass, but you're still my sister."

I was starting to feel guilty, for what I'd said to Two-Bit, that I didn't love him anymore. Maybe I did. Maybe I always would.

"Heard from Darry that we're gonna be jailbirds together," Soda said as he crashed through the bathroom door without knocking— I glared at him when I saw him in the mirror, my reflection surrounded by dripping condensation. "Guess I'll get out Dad's old harmonica and you can sing along."

Shampooing twice with a healthy dose of Prell hadn't done much to improve my smell— maybe because I'd spent the past half hour with my eyes closed, facing the shower spray, opening them to see blood falling down my body and circling the drain. "Mrph."

"Heard you and Dally are on the rocks, too." He shifted his weight to one leg and started bouncing it up and down with manic energy— drove his teachers crazy when he was still in school. "Can't say I don't hope it's true."

"You ain't my boss, Soda Curtis." I spit a mouthful of foam out into the sink and turned around to face him. "Do you see me gettin' all up in your business with Sandy?"

As much as I want to.

"Last I checked, it's a big brother's job to get all up in his kid sister's business, not the other way around." He had the kind of smile that could've been in a Colgate commercial, straight and gleaming white, despite the sheer amount of sugar he consumed. Like most greasers', my teeth were pretty messed up. "Not that Sandy an' I have nothin' to be interferin' with."

That's what you think.

His expression sobered, though, in the span of a few seconds, and he pulled something out of the pocket of his jeans— Mom's engagement ring, real diamond, no, I didn't want to think about what Dad had done to afford it. He tossed it back and forth in his hands, like it was a rubber ball. "I think I'm gonna ask Sandy to marry me."

... What?

Images of her flashed through my mind— her gleaming blonde ponytail, her poodle skirts that came down past her knees, her blue eyes barely framed by makeup. The All-American girl. Dom probably gave it to her through the backdoor, in the dark, and Soda just didn't have one goddamn clue.

"I know we're young, but... I want to do it," he said recklessly, fearlessly, interrupting my train of thought. "Have a family with her. Spend my whole life with her."

What the hell do you know about her, after dating for a few months? I wanted to ask him— really grab him by the shoulders and literally shake the sense back into him. How does she feel about her parents? What would she do in a crisis, an injured child, a husband doing time, a terminal illness? What did she want to be as a kid, before she found out that all she got was wife and mother?

Who were we? What had we done to each other?

"So who's gonna be your best man?" I asked instead of saying any of that. "Pony or Darry?"

"Damn you." He came over and gave me a light punch to the arm. "Steve. That's the only way it can be fair."

"It's still a terrible idea. Don't get me wrong." I started applying acne medication with a cotton ball, not caring much about his presence when he plucked nose hairs with the door wide open. "How you gonna support her, huh, gas station man?"

"Join the army," he said with a perfectly straight face, "Uncle Sam always needs more boys to shoot gooks in the jungle." We looked at each other for a moment before bursting out snickering. "She won't have to worry 'bout nothin'," he added, clear determination streaming in through his voice. "Dad always took care of us, no matter how bad things got. I'm not gonna do my family worse."

He looked so happy as he gazed off into the distance, wearing the most lovestruck, soppy expression, that I couldn't bring myself to shatter the illusion and tell him that his Dulcinea was actually a cheating whore. Even putting aside her promise to nark on me, what good would it do— would he believe me? Would it accomplish anything but causing even more pain than I already had?

And that was when the biggest secret I'd ever kept shriveled in the base of my throat, the truth about what I'd discussed earlier, like selling livestock from one gang to another. Because I knew as sure as I knew the sun rose in the east, that if I told Soda what happened that morning, he'd come home that night with bruises and broken bones, a blue Tiber bandana wrapped around his bicep. Wouldn't think twice about it, neither.

So I would solve this myself, even if it killed me.

If they rotated Twist And Shout one more time at this party, I was gonna shoot somebody. Maybe myself.

Dallas was the undisputed ringleader of our little operation, the one who procured most of the product, found venues to sell at, distributed the profits— without him, I felt like I'd had a limb cut off, flailing around untethered in space. What was I doing here? What was I going to do? I should've been at Rose's place, talking up a storm about how much I loved Buddy Holly, or catching the 505 out of Tulsa, or just diving off a bridge somewhere, but instead I was staking out my old haunts behind Darry's back, the swan song of the person I'd so briefly and intensely become.

"Hey, Curtis." Buck gave me a rough tap on the shoulder— I still couldn't focus on anything but his missing front teeth when he spoke to me, not even on the oversized cowboy hat threatening to fall off his head. He always had girls flocking around him like seagulls, though, I had no idea how he'd dislodged them now. "Where's Dallas at, huh? I want my fucking reds. Party's gonna blow without 'em."

"Cool your heels, I dunno," I said without any inflection. "Am I my boyfriend's keeper?"

His hand hovered close enough to my arm that I could feel the disturbance in the air; he wasn't trying to sexually intimidate me, just intimidate me the regular way, but I still shuddered. "I'm gettin' real tired of his shit, you know that? He don't pay the rent half the time, he runs his mouth like he owns this place— you go ahead and tell him that if he keeps messin with me, I'm gonna—"

"Heyyy, Jasmine, girl, where you been?" Evie swept onto the scene and yanked me away by the elbow, her face artificially bright and cheerful, and not just because of the electric-blue eyeshadow she had on. I'd never been happier to see her in my life. "You ready to go home yet? Everyone's waitin'."

"You shouldn't be out," she hissed into my ear as she led me up the stairs, which was when I remembered her brother was a King. "Especially not at one of Buck's parties. What the hell?"

She was using her big sister voice— I used it often enough myself to recognize it. "I just had to get out of the house—" I tried to tug the baggie into my purse behind my back— "get away from..."

"Angela?" Sympathy shined through her eyes as she registered the confusion in mine. "I ran into Ponyboy down at the Ribbon last night, he was real messed up. Rode in the passenger seat of a drag car, if you wanna yell at him."

I shook my head ruefully, more mad about the fact that he'd told Evie than about the drag race— like Angela's story wasn't already going to be whispered all around the school. "Stupid kid, could've broken his neck," I cussed good-naturedly, pressing my back into the columns of the staircase. "You heard 'bout the fatwa I got on me, huh?"

"Girl, if I were you, I'd be too scared to go piss, much less walk 'round outside." She poured some of her lukewarm punch down her throat, needing a dose of liquid courage to even contemplate the hypothetical. "That Angela Shepard, she's bad trouble all right. Can't believe she dragged you into it."

I'd washed her puke out of my hair, but I couldn't bring myself to defend her right then, as the knowledge of what she'd done to me seeped into my veins. Downing the shot in my hand made me feel slightly warmer and looser, but only slightly. "Evie..." I hesitated, like almost tripping over a stair you didn't see. "If it came down to you or your brother, what would you pick?"

Being around me made Evie's drinking increase exponentially. I didn't blame her. "Gonna need some more context," she said between frantic gulps. "Which one d'you plan on usin' as a meat shield again?"

"Say... if you could maybe get protection from another outfit... an outfit your brother's sort of involved in but not really," I helpfully tried to explain. "But in exchange your brother has to join that outfit and maybe get shot or sent to the slammer or dismembered or somethin'. What would you do?"

Her answer was drowned out by one of the bedroom doors opening, and Dallas and Sylvia spilling out into the hallway, Sylvia giggling, clutching his shirt collar to keep herself upright. There was lipstick on it, sloppy red marks; her messy hair screamed just-been-fucked; Dallas's neck had a hickey suckled into it, the purple standing out obscenely against his translucent white-boy skin. It didn't take Sherlock Holmes to deduce this mystery.

I wished I could've felt shock, horror, humiliation, anything but the grim acceptance that swept over me as I saw the two of them. He offered me no apology, just looked at me the way he had at Sylvia's house, what felt like so long ago, his hand up her skirt, his eyes boring straight through me and calling my bluff. I own her, I can do whatever I like with her. And I can do whatever I like with you.

"Jasmine, hey," he said like his fingers weren't still wet with Sylvia's—

With Sylvia's—

She couldn't look me in the eye, instead studying the grooves in the floorboards— I hadn't expected much better from her. Guess you're a fucking whore, Syl, same as all of Will Rogers claims, I wanted to say. Does Johnny know Steve was right about you— you're completely faithless, chimerical, putting out for any guy who throws you a few empty compliments?

Except my mean mouth, usually so adept even when confronted with rapists and hardened drug dealers, couldn't manage to get a single syllable out. I gaped like a dead fish.

"What the fuck, Dallas?" Evie demanded in my place, though challenging him, especially as a woman, led nowhere good. "What the fuck are you doin', huh?"

He barely swept his eyes over her, tightening his arm around Sylvia's waist. "Ask Jasmine," he said with a careless shrug. "Or no, ask Curly. He got a lot of stories about her."

I didn't give him the satisfaction of a reaction, a feat I wouldn't have been capable of just a short month ago. He wanted me to get angry, cuss him out, lose control, so we could end up fucking and he could get away with it. "Here," I said with terrifying calm, pulling the bag back out of my purse and dropping it at his feet. "Think you forgot somethin' of yours."

I shouldn't have left Buck's without an escort— at first I strode heedless of where I was headed, just trying to vanish into the velvet-dark sky, righteous indignation fueling every step and whatever they'd mixed into that punch doing the rest. It was how I didn't notice the looming figure coming up until he was in front of me, blocking my path.

It wasn't a King, they had better grooming standards, but a homeless guy with badly-matted hair and a grimy bottle in his hand. Dad always told us to give up the change in our pockets, that it was so, so hard to be Indian, that they deserved compassion and not scorn, but right then he was a man and I was a woman and we were alone on a deserted street at night. I cringed away.

"Am I scarin' you, sweetheart?" He laughed, unsteadily, stumbling towards me; I couldn't tell if his words were rueful or threatening without seeing more than a rough sketch of his face, badly illuminated by the half-moon overhead, and I didn't plan on sticking around to find out. "Am I scarin' you?"

I shoved him aside with strength I didn't know I had and bolted all the way down the East Side, ignoring traffic lights, my heart hammering at my chest cavity, until I reached the Shepards' front door and banged on it. What was wrong with me? I castigated myself harshly, trying to catch my ragged breath as I clutched their porch railing. I'd kept my cool around far more dangerous men than him, who probably didn't want anything except spare change, carried a knife on the regular, and I'd lost every ounce of sense I'd ever possessed.

But Joe's hit had changed everything for me, chipped away at my last delusions of safety, and I realized how stupid and naive I'd been all along. It was a dark, dangerous world for a girl without a man— especially a girl like me.

Tim came out onto the porch, barefoot, yanking down his t-shirt to scratch the thatch of dark hair on his chest— Curly was better-looking, a mean part of my brain noted, even though he was the younger and less-developed one. "Jasmine, what the hell?"

"Hey," I said, unable to sound anything but caustic and mocking. "Thought I'd find you here."

"Obviously, I live here. When I can't avoid it, anyway." He leaned against the door frame, one arm reaching up above his head— he still looked like he hadn't slept in days, the same dazed, disoriented look in his dark blue eyes. "What do you want? I got a sister in the hospital right now, so—"

I was beyond girlish seduction at this point, batting my lashes, playing coy— I was sick of all that shit. I pulled my shirt off over my head and stared him down like a matador going after a particularly stubborn bull. "You wanna really stick it to Dallas?"

"Always, but..." Now he looked like a toaster that had had a glass of water poured all over it. "What are you doin'?"

Only fumbling with the hooks a little, I slipped my bra off my shoulders and let it fall to the floor, too. "Then take off your clothes."

... And on that note, we're getting VERY close to book events :) (Only took 100k to get there!)