I didn't hate hospitals any less now, but I preferred this to being in the ambulance to Saint Francis, worrying the same scrap of my skirt between my fingers and listening to my brother's increasingly hysterical rambling. Ponyboy sat next to me, slumped in one of the hard plastic chairs; Jerry, the fat guy who'd ridden with us, furrowed his brow as he lit up a smoke.

"Y'all shouldn't be doin' that."

"I don't see a No Smoking sign nowhere," I said more waspishly than he deserved, sucking on my own weed just for something to do. I dared him to tell me it was because I was a broad, I'd heard more than enough of that mess for one day.

"Well... y'all are too young, even if there ain't one." He gave us looks of stern, paternal disapproval, like he couldn't believe what kind of hole we'd crawled out of, though Pony had already broken the whole 'wanted for murder' situation to him. "How old are you, thirteen, fourteen?"

"He is, I'm almost sixteen," I exaggerated by a fair few months; though I realized I should've been grateful Jerry was still there, I wished he'd just fuck off and leave us alone already. The air in the Burn Unit stank of a heavy load of antiseptic, I fought the urge to sneeze. "What's the big deal? Johnny, he started when he was nine—"

Pony gave a small, pained squeak at Johnny's name, and I shut my trap after that, silently working at the rest of the weed; Jerry fidgeted with his wedding band and finally got up, the nervous anticipation coming off of us too much to take. I didn't need to ask Pony to know what he was thinking about right now. My hand grasped at empty air, overtaken by the muscle memory of clutching Soda's, as we waited for news like it was our execution coming down the pike.

"Dally... he'll be all right, Jerry said as much," I said in a feeble attempt at comforting him; he shot me a trademark condescending look from behind his rusty eyelashes, so different in color from the bleached mess on his head. Glory, would Darry's jaw drop when he saw—

Forget about that.

"Johnny won't be." He picked at his cuticle until he ripped it off altogether, producing a bright flash of blood that was out of place in this sterile ward. "He broke his back. You don't recover from somethin' like that."

"He might." The artificial quality of my voice was obvious even to me. "People survive—"

"Don't lie to me." He might as well have slapped me, with the force he put behind the sentence; he clenched one fist, his veins and tendons bulging out from under the skin. "Y'all treat me like I'm in kindergarten or somethin', I'm sick to death of it. Even if he lives, he's gonna be paralyzed; he's gonna be stuck in that house with people who hate him— forever."

"You're a spoiled brat, you know that?" I projectile-vomited the angry words at him; I hoped some flecks would hit him square in the face. "You've had us lookin' out for you and protectin' you your whole life, just 'cause you're the baby, so quit actin' like you could handle—"

Handle—

I didn't need those eyes trained on me, the same way they scoured the hems of my skirts, the cigarettes dangling between my lips.

Pony smacked me on the arm, pretty damn hard too, and we might've ended up really getting into it if Darry and Soda hadn't burst through the entrance before security could escort us out. "Someone's here to see you," Jerry said with a completely unnecessary wink.

Soda threw himself at Ponyboy first, crushing him in a hug with all the force of a boa constrictor; he damn near knocked him off the chair. "Pone... your hair, your tuff, tuff hair..."

Showed where priorities lay in our family, honestly.

Darry hadn't approached the scene, hanging back while the two of them choked the life out of each other; it physically hurt to look at the picture of devastation he made, hovering near the doors, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his olive jeans. He was crying, something I hadn't seen him do in years, not even when the rest of us had broken down at Mom and Dad's funeral— I wouldn't even have known where to begin, comforting him, but Ponyboy broke free from Soda's grip and sprinted to him before I had to. "Darry!"

"God, I thought we'd lost you, like we lost Mom and Dad..." he managed to say through shaky, breathy sobs; Ponyboy clung to him, his own shoulders trembling, and it didn't take Soda long to make his way over there too.

I didn't try to enter the hug; instead, I felt like I was watching my brothers after my inevitable absence, like my face had been wiped from a photograph with correction fluid. If I was really being honest with myself, the open display of emotion in public made me uncomfortable and itchy. "Dally"— I turned to the doctor— "the blond one, is he gonna be okay?"

"Well, he's certainly healthy enough to run his mouth to every nurse in the vicinity..." We shared a wry grin. "There's some nasty damage that's been done to his arm, though— I don't think the functioning will be overly impaired, but he's going to have impressive scarring for the rest of his life. I hope he isn't too vain 'bout his looks."

Dallas would love that, having a scarred arm, but he probably wouldn't want to admit he got it saving kids from a church fire. Might pretend he took a Molotov cocktail full-on instead. "Can I see him?"

The doctor fiddled with the stethoscope around his neck. "It's really supposed to be family only, in his condition—"

"He ain't got no family." I shuddered at the thought of Norm hitting up the ward. "Me and his gang, that's it. I'll be quick."

His eyes darted around the waiting room, but everyone was far too preoccupied with Tulsa's Most Wanted to pay us any mind, and so he took me by the elbow and led me down the hall.

"Honey, I ain't fixin' to tell you again, you won't find a decent vein in that arm, so quit wastin' your time," Dallas drawled, with far too much smugness in his tone for someone with severe burn wounds. He'd been in the bed for an hour and already looked like he wanted to stage a prison break. "Jasmine!"

Over the course of our relationship, that was the happiest he'd ever been to see me, his face lit up like the sun; he tried to prod the long-suffering nurse out of the way with his good elbow and gestured me towards him. "My girl's here, lady, you mind givin' us some privacy?"

"That heart monitor's real sensitive, so don't be gettin' no ideas," she shot over her shoulder as she walked out; I blushed scarlet, and Dallas laughed out loud.

"Didn't I tell you not to ever shoot up for a reason?" I'd never noticed the collapsed quality of the veins in his inner arm before, the chewed-up, scarred skin; I preferred to look there than at the cocoon of loose bandages surrounding the other one. "Shit, I thought lil' Ponykid was a goner, I about had to break his back to put the fire out in it. 'Least you had the sense to listen to me."

I sat down on the edge of the bed, the springs digging into my ass; he smelled like smoke and flame and ash, like the aftermath of a volcanic explosion. It got deep inside my nostrils and stayed there. "Dally... Johnny... he ain't doin' too hot."

"He'll be fine," Dallas said too quickly, "kid's tuff, real tuff, ain't nothin' he can't handle."

Even a shattered spinal column? I didn't say it, though, because I didn't want to consider it so much myself. Pony wasn't the only member of our family skilled at self-delusion. "We might be allowed to see him tomorrow," I said, trying to bring that lie back into my voice. "He's in critical condition, but they gave him plasma—"

"Never mind all that stuff." He tugged me closer to him with the good arm; his rare bursts of protectiveness usually irritated me, but not tonight. "You real scared? With me headin' in there?"

At any other time, I would've thought it a display of machismo, seeing if his little woman was real, real impressed by his heroizing, but he looked as genuinely concerned as he was capable of being. "Yeah." I took a ragged breath. "I dunno what I would've done if you'd—" I trailed off, smacking my fist against one of the pillows to fluff it for him. "I love you."

I'd never said it to him before, but as I did, I realized that it was true; a faint flush of pink tinged his cheeks. I wondered if they might've given him something for the pain, or more than a little something. "I know. I—"

But I never discovered what he was going to say, because that was when Rose burst onto the scene, accompanied by a convoy of cops. "Jasmine!"

Well, fuck me. With all this shit going down, I'd clean forgotten I was supposed to be running away from home.

Rose reached out and hugged me against her chest once they'd dragged me back into the hall, but the gesture was performative, she didn't even pull me close enough to wrinkle her freshly-starched blouse. For all of my mama's faults, more than Pony or Darry ever wanted to admit, she would've held me for real, and her lack struck me like I was one of those monkeys in the experiment that had been given a wire mother instead of a cloth one.

Cop didn't buy the touching scene for a moment, and I was grateful that him clearing his throat made her break away from me. "Young lady," he huffed, one hand hovering above his regulation heater, "did you know that running away is a crime?"

I curled up my toes in my shoes, trying to anchor myself against the floor; the last dregs of adrenaline in my blood had left me shaky and lightheaded. "I ain't on probation—" His expression didn't budge at hearing that. "You fixin' to charge me?"

"Not this time." He tugged me back over to Rose's side; she didn't move to touch me again. "Pull a stunt like this again, though, you might just be spendin' the night at a halfway house, not goin' home with your aunt. Lot of kids would kill to be livin' with a nice lady like her."

Somehow, with all the turmoil around me, it hadn't quite occurred to me that upon getting caught, that was the inevitable conclusion. Maybe if I had, I wouldn't have hopped into the ambulance. "I can't go nowhere with her," I tried to protest, "my brother's still here, he just got back—"

"Uninjured," the cop said without an ounce of sympathy; a few rows over, Soda was mugging for a reporter like he was Marlon Brando, his arm slung around Pony's shoulders. I couldn't really argue the point. "He doesn't seem much worse for the wear, if you ask me."

"Johnny—"

"Isn't allowed visitors," Rose picked up his slack, "I'll bring you back tomorrow, if he stabilizes." She grabbed me by the upper arm before I could get another word out, like a misbehaving toddler. "Officer, thank you. I don't know what I would've done with myself if you hadn't—"

Hadn't done what, exactly? Police mediocrity was really getting to be something else in this precinct, and pondering that fact kept me unhappily preoccupied for the next couple of minutes, before I could realize that I hadn't gotten to say goodbye to my brothers.

"I oughta whoop your ass, is that what it's gonna take to keep you in line?" she hissed the second we left the public eye, in the vast emptiness of the concrete parking lot; I clutched my duffel bag, that the fuzz had managed to extract from the wreckage of the situation, like it was an anchor. "My mother never put up with anythin' from me when I was your age."

"I'll tell Miz Edwards you're beatin' on me." I rolled my eyes way back in their sockets as I buckled my seatbelt. At least she looked sober enough not to kill me on the drive home. "In gratuitous detail."

"She'd probably give me a medal, after all the grief you've given that poor woman." Gravel crunched under the wheels as she pulled out; I still hadn't stopped thinking this was a car made to be stolen. "The devil's gotten into you?"

I pressed my cheek up against the cool glass of the window. "Devil's always been in me."

"You're a spoiled brat, Jasmine." The words stung more than I wanted to admit, an uncanny echo of what I'd just thrown at Ponyboy. "You do whatever you feel like and never think about the consequences."

"That ain't true—"

"Ponyboy's on the lam for murder, family's torn apart, and you decide to go on your own joyride to top all that off— I just don't understand you sometimes." She angrily shifted gears. "If you wanted to stay with your brother so badly, why couldn't you at least try to behave yourself, convince that woman you didn't need to be moved? You're not stupid, no matter what your grades say, you should've figured out that it wouldn't reflect well on your case. Seems you don't even care enough about him not to give him grief at a time like this."

"It don't matter— nothin' matters anymore, didn't you hear the state?" I wasn't sure if I was trying to convince myself or her, at this point, why I was wasting my breath on the effort. My voice sounded distorted; when I closed my eyes, flames licked up the edges of my lids. "They're even takin' Soda now, and he's near old enough to look after himself. They were never gonna let a drug dealer's son raise no kids."

"Nothing matters to you. That's your whole problem." She took her eyes away from the road long enough to tilt my cheek up with her palm. "You always got a smart answer to everything. You're your daddy's daughter."

"My mama's, too."

"A twenty-year-old has no business raisin' his fifteen-year-old sister, and that's the end of that." We were heading into her temporary neighborhood now, on the West Side, where the apartments downright gleamed— I wondered if I'd be jumped as a traitor if anyone saw me over here, and if I wouldn't welcome it. "My husband's comin' to sort this out. God help me, maybe you'll listen to him better than you ever listened to me."

I could've mentioned so many things then— a crack about their estrangement, her lost son, her pills for waking up and going to sleep— made threats, extorted promises, but I kept it zipped. What she said had really gotten to me, and I didn't feel so comfortable passing judgement anymore. I'd never even considered how Darry must've felt when another sibling went missing.

Being at Rose's house full-time was about as pleasant as I imagined Angola State Prison was from the inside, except with better plumbing. She didn't make me go to school, which I thought I'd be grateful for, but not when it was because she didn't trust me not to pull another runner— instead, she took the day off from her job and spent most of it glowering at me, or on the phone with an unpleasant mix of her estranged husband and her lawyer. When Angela came knocking, I was almost happy to see her.

I must've looked like a Soc as I answered the door, simple, pretty makeup on, a blouse that was buttoned up all the way, pulling a cardigan onto my shoulders— Angela's drugstore blush gave her face the effect of having been freshly slapped. She made no effort to hide her sneer; the past few days hadn't tempered her anger. "We oughta talk."

"I don't have time for this," I said sharply. "You better leave, my aunt's gonna have a coronary if she sees you."

"Ain't you just a real lady now. Nice flats, you borrow them from Cherry Valance's closet?"

"Shut up." Any patience I'd ever held towards Angela had vanished, along with most of the uneasy reverence. "Did you really show up here to take the piss out of me? You itchin' for a fight, you think it'll make you feel better about yourself?"

Maybe we should've fought, grappled with the disappointment in ourselves and each other in some kind of tangible way, but that just wasn't how girls operated— we traded in secrets and lies, in words with a thousand hidden meanings— and Rose never would've tolerated blood being spilled on her clean linoleum, after she'd woken up from her Valium nap. Not for the first time, I thought I should've been born a boy.

"No." She tilted her chin up and gave me a defiant look I would've recognized on my own face. "Soda told Darry that he's in the Tigers now."

The sheer stupidity of the action actually made me stumble back and clutch my chest, like I was having a heart attack or something. Darry wasn't the most observant guy in the world, or I never would've been able to get away with half the shit I'd pulled in the past few months. "How would you know?"

"I was over there to say hi to Pony, see how he was doing—" why was I not surprised— "could've heard them hollerin' at each other from the next state over."

"Was it bad?" I managed to plant my ass into one of the dining room chairs, get out the question through numb lips, like I'd eaten an entire bowl of pineapple in one go.

"Darry said he'd kick him out of the house, but he was probably goin' to end up in a boys' home anyway, so he didn't see the point in botherin'."

"... Did he say anythin' about me?"

The soft, pretty lines of her face— fat lot of good it'd done her, but Angela would always be a beauty— calcified with contempt. "That's the most important thing, huh?"

"Least I ain't usin' him as a tool for my revenge." I turned away from her, disgusted; I wanted to cut the rot out of both of us like out of an apple. "Don't pretend you ever gave a flyin' fuck 'bout what happens to him, with that crazy plan of yours. Joe was right, only thing you know how to do is look out for number one."

She didn't hit me. I would've deserved it if she had.

"I'm tired of your fuckin' games— I've had enough. I been shot at, held up, threatened—" I pinched the bridge of my nose. "Your whole family sees me as a thing— and maybe I walked into it, but you can't just use my brother the same way."

Angela had my mama's ability to break down inside and gather herself a minute later, without ever revealing that she'd been hurt. "You think Pretty Boy Curtis has what it takes to be a Tiger, then?" She let out an ugly, flat guffaw, like one of the horses Dallas corralled. "You know what you have to do just to get initiated into my uncles' gang? Kill somebody and bring back proof. Once you're in the life—"

"We're all comin' up with a million and one plans to get him out, everybody has their two cents." Rose wouldn't like me lighting up in her apartment, the smell of smoke leaching into every nook and cranny of neat chrome, else I would've done it before I said the next words. "But why ain't Soda comin' up with his own? Face it, he's in that gang because he wants to be."

"If it were my brother—"

I snorted and looked away from her. "Your brothers were born hoods and they'll die hoods. I don't see you jumpin' to get them on the straight and narrow."

"Soda was born a hood, too. Don't you at least wanna try to save him, 'fore he turns out like mine?"

My daddy stared back at me, in an orange jumpsuit, his eyes an empty vacuum— I couldn't recall what he'd said during my one visit, only the sheer miasma of hopelessness that surrounded him. His face morphed into Soda's in the bank of my memory, the differences minimal, their destinies the same.

I didn't know why I'd kept the paper from the cop around in the shallow pocket of my school skirt, but I still pulled it out— it didn't matter that the lead pencil was smudged into illegibility, because the numbers were seared into my mind. With suddenly shaky muscles, I stepped over to the phone and reached for the receiver.

"Yes?"

"I need your help— I need to meet with you." I swallowed hard. "But it has to be discreet. Or else I'm gonna be buried in a ditch somewhere."