A/N: Thanks for the reviews! I'm glad you liked it.

Chapter 37

I have to be honest. The pain went away rather quickly and I was disappointed by this because it made it harder for me to feel sorry for myself. All I had after the pain was the embarrassment, but it was hard to feel sorry for myself about that too when I was still home alone. I didn't dare leave my bedroom, not after Darry had told me to stay, but I started to get restless after a shorter time than I thought I would.

Trouble was that I couldn't think of anything else. I didn't want to read, didn't want to find a game to play. There was nothing to do but sit around and pout, and finally I found myself standing in front of my window waiting for someone to come home and feel sorry for me.

Soda came back first, and of course Steve was with him. They were up to something in the kitchen and if it had only been Soda I probably would have tried to get some attention, but I didn't need Steve knowing anything. Soda had probably told him anyway and that was bad enough, but I couldn't face him.

Pony came home shortly after them and Two-Bit followed, but I sat patiently (sort of ) in my room waiting for someone to look for me. They probably didn't know that I was home, but I was too busy being miserable to think of this fact.

When Darry came home I jumped back down on my bed. I didn't want him to see me in the window and think that I had been waiting around for him, but of course he would have to be the one to come into my room and look for me.

"How are you?" he asked, standing in my doorway.

"Fine," I replied into my pillow.

"How much does it hurt?"

"More than anything else." Okay, maybe I was exaggerating, but he didn't know that.

"You hungry?"

"Nope."

"Did you eat already."

"Nope."

"You want something."

"No."

He disappeared from the room and came back a couple of minutes later with a plate in his hand. "Here."

I rolled over and faced my wall. "I said I'm not hungry."

"I want you to eat something." I heard him put the plate down on my dresser before leaving me, closing the door behind him. I waited a couple of minutes, or what I thought were a couple of minutes to make sure that he was gone, before jumping up quietly and wolfing down half a plate of food. I spread the leftover spaghetti around to make it look like I hadn't touched it, before laying down on my bed again. I was surprised at just how easy it was for me to feel sorry for myself, and I kind of liked the feeling.

Darry didn't leave me alone for long though. He was back in my room a couple of minutes later.

"Come with me."

"Where?"

"To my room."

"Why?"

"Because I want to talk to you."

"You can talk here."

"I said I want to talk in my room."

"Why?"

"Because it's further away from everybody so I know they wont be able to hear us."

I reluctantly got out of bed and followed him, only because I knew that if I didn't go he would leave me alone and I would be left without any attention again.

I raced quickly down to his room to avoid seeing anyone else. He followed behind me into the room and sent me over to the bed as he shut the door.

I sat down, waiting nervously for him to do something. I don't know what I expected, but I did know that I didn't want him coming and sitting next to me the way he did.

"Look," he started, but didn't continue. I didn't want to look up at him, didn't want him to touch me. I didn't even want to be in the same room with him. All I wanted was for Darry to go away and leave me alone, or at least send me back to my room.

I think it was the longest I ever sat in a room with my brother where neither of us said anything and we weren't busy with something else. In my head I kept saying over and over, "I just want him to go away, I just want him to go away," but I could feel that he was thinking about a lot more.

That's when I blurted out, "Can't you just yell at me again so we can get this over with!"

Slowly he replied, "What makes you think I want to yell at you?"

"Because you're mad at me for trying to fight you."

He sighed. "Lily, I'm not mad at you for that."

I knew he must have been lying to me. He was probably so angry at me that he didn't even want to yell any more. I understood, and I was determined not to cry again. If he could stay angry with me then I would stay angry with him.

"Look," he started again, and this time was able to go on. "I am upset that you didn't come home earlier, but that's the only thing I'm mad at you for."

"You're mad at someone else?"

"Yeah."

"Who else could you be mad at?" Was Soda in trouble too? Or was it Ponyboy?

"I'm mad at myself."

That didn't make any sense.

"What for?" I had to ask.

"For what I did to you."

Now I was really confused. I looked up at him and cocked my head a little to the side. "But you wanted to do it."

"That's the thing," he tried to explain, and I could tell he was having trouble helping me understand because he thought I was too little. "I got angry, angrier than I should have, and I let things go too far. I shouldn't have been so - well, I mean that - see Mom and Dad weren't violent people, and especially not with us kids, and they never would have done something like this. Mom would have sat you down and talked about it and Dad would have found some creative and strange way of scaring you out of ever doing it again. They wouldn't have hit you so I know that I shouldn't have hit you either. It isn't right."

"But people hit kids all the time," I offered.

"That doesn't make it right."

"It can't be wrong if so many people do it." I don't know why I was trying to argue this fact, and I realized at that moment that I should probably stop.

"A lot of people steal to but it doesn't make it right, does it?"

I shrugged. "Guess not."

"So doing what I did wasn't right either."

"But you hit other people besides me."

He looked shocked. "I don't."

"Do too."

"Who?"

"I don't know."

"Why would you say that I do?"

"You fight in rumbles don't you?"

"Very rarely."

"Well, don't you have to hit people when you fight in rumbles?"

"Well…"

"Then you do hit other people too," I concluded.

Darry leaned in closer to me and lowered his voice. "I'm gonna tell you something alright, but you can't say anything to anyone."

"Why not? Is it a secret?"

"No, it's just not something I need you repeating to the whole neighbourhood, okay?"

"Fine."

He took a breath. "You're a smart girl, and you know that most people 'round here got it rough. Maybe you're friends don't talk about it much but some of them have it pretty bad."

"I know."

"And some of those kids are mean, maybe even angry. Well, take a kid like that, and if you keep roughing him up for another six or seven years, and then you're gonna get a kid that's even meaner, angrier, maybe even hateful. So you've got this kid and they don't have anybody to talk to about it but their friends, who are mean and angry too, so instead of trying to fix their problems, they look for a way to feel better, even if it's not the right way. Those kids start fighting because it's a way to let out their anger and they get to be tough. It can make a kid feel powerful to win a fight, like he matters. But then that kid's gonna grow up and without anybody teaching him that fighting is wrong either. So he has kids and the only way he knows how to let out his anger is to hit them. And you know what happens?"

I shook my head. "What?"

"That kid's gonna be angry too, and it starts all over again." He looked at me for a second, trying to read my face. "Do you get what I'm saying?"

"Sort of." I knew what he was trying to tell, but I didn't understand why, or what it had to do with him.

He looked a little defeated. "You don't get it, do you?"

"Not really," I admitted apologetically.

"What I mean is that the only reason people fight is because they are angry, but it doesn't really solve anything and in the end it only makes it worse. I feel bad about hitting you Lily because I know it's not really going to help either of us. I got angry and I lost control. I should have given myself time to think first. And then when I had you there in the kitchen and I was giving you the spanking I saw the marks I was making and I knew - it's just - I had to walk away before I hurt you even more. I know that smacking you isn't going to make you listen and it isn't going to help you understand how serious things are right now, and the only thing it did was make you scared of me."

He was talking so fast and I was having trouble following but I quickly said, "I'm not scared of you."

"Oh please!" he said. "Look at you. You're afraid to be in the same room as me."

"I'm always afraid to be in the same room as you," I tried to joke, but he didn't laugh.

"I don't mean that you're intimidated because I'm bigger and supposed to be in charge, I mean that you're really scared that I'm going to hurt you. You're not supposed to be scared in your own house. This is supposed to be the safest place in the world for you, and I didn't do a very good job of making it that way tonight."

"It's okay." I didn't know what else to tell him. Sure, I didn't want him to feel so bad about it, but we couldn't go back in time, and it didn't change the fact that I had made him hate me. "Can I go now?"

"In a second." He was taking forever to say what whatever it was that he wanted to say and I was starting to get fed up, but I wasn't going to roll my eyes at him again. I didn't want to upset him again. That's when I realized that I was afraid of him. Even though I didn't want to be I was scared of what he would do if I crossed him again, and it wasn't a nice feeling.

When he still kept quiet I got off the bed to leave, and suddenly Darry grabbed my arm and pulled me to him. My heart raced for a second before I realized that he wanted to hug me, so I relaxed. A little.

"I'm sorry," he said softly, one arm around my shoulders while his other hand pulled my face into his chest. "I promise you that I will never let anything like this happen again. Never." His grip around my shoulders tightened slightly as he kissed the top of my head, but I was determined not to cry. This time I had to be strong, because Darry was the one who was upset.

He ended the hug all too soon and let go of me, but before I left the room there was something I had to do first. I threw my arms around his neck and gave him the biggest hug I could manage, and kissed him on the cheek.

"I'm sorry Darry."

"For what?" he asked.

"For being bad. And for making you hate me."

He pushed me away from him right away, and looked at me all concerned like.

"I don't hate you."

"You don't?"

"Of course not. You're my sister I'm never going to hate you. Don't you think that for a second, okay?"

"Okay."

I must not have sounded very convincing because he went on. "I mean it Lily. I don't hate you. I don't even hate what you did today. The only thing I hate is that I made you feel that way."

I didn't know what else to say, maybe because that was all I needed to reassure me that things were alright, so I just said, "Can I go back to my room now?"

He shook his head. "No. I don't want you locking yourself in there all night. Go out to the living room instead."

"No."

"Why not?"

"I don't want to." It wasn't that I wanted to stay alone for the rest of the evening but everyone was still out there and I wasn't ready to face them, not yet.

I think he understood how I was feeling because as he stood up he grabbed hold of my hand and squeezed tight. "Come on. I'll stay with you."

"But - but everybody's out there."

He half-smiled. "Don't worry about them. Nobody's going to say anything." When I refused to walk with him he added, "I promise."

I didn't really have a choice about staying away from them though. Darry sort of half dragged me to the living room then sat me down with him in the armchair. Nobody said anything to us for a while, Two-Bit and Ponyboy were too busy wrestling while Soda and Steve were standing in the front doorway looking over at something.

I stared at the TV with it's volume down, silently begging them to ignore me. Things were going fine too until Two-Bit and Pony ended their wrestling match. Two-Bit jumped up off the floor and rushed passed everyone into the kitchen.

"Hey," he called, "you guys got anything to eat in this place?"

"We would have if you fellows would stop coming over here and eating all of our food," Darry replied loudly. "Why don't you go to your own house and eat the stuff in your refrigerator?"

"Because my mom seems to be working on a penicillin factory in there or something."

"Maybe you could clean it out," Pony offered jokingly.

"Ha!" Two-Bit laughed, running back into the room with a beer in his hand. "That's never gonna happen."

"Hey!" Darry said. "Where'd you get the beer?"

He looked back at my brother innocently. "Fridge?"

"Get your own beer from now on."

"Sure thing Darry," Two-Bit promised, but I knew that wasn't going to happen anytime soon at our house.

Steve and Soda came back from the door way to see what the fuss was about. Steve leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, probably trying to look tough, while Soda sprawled out on the couch next to Ponyboy.

"How you doing?" Soda asked me. I think he was trying to be nice and he did ask quietly, but the room was small and everybody heard him.

"What happened?" Two-Bit asked, and I could feel my cheeks going red.

"Nothing," Darry said, but of course they couldn't just drop the subject.

"Lily finally got what she deserved," Steve muttered.

"Shut it," Soda almost begged him.

"What do you mean?" Two-Bit asked.

"Nothing," Darry repeated, but Steve couldn't, or wouldn't, take a hint to save his life.

"She got spanked," he told Two-Bit.

"Watch it buddy," Darry warned him, holding his hand up to let him know that if he said anything else he was going to come after him.

Two-Bit just let out a wild howl, and though I was focusing my attention of Darry's watch I couldn't help but feel all eyes in the room on me.

"Gol-ley!" Two-Bit laughed. "Your face sure is red Lily."

"Come on," Soda tried to stop him.

"Look at her!" Two-Bit must have been pointing to me. "You'd think that she's the first kid ever to get it."

"That's enough!" Darry said, raising his voice. "Now are you boys going out or what?"

"We're going," Soda said, getting up and urging the others to go with him.

"I don't want you and Ponyboy staying out too late tonight," Darry called after them, "you hear me Sodapop?"

"Yeah, yeah, I hear you."

"Good."

As Two-Bit walked by me he stopped and smiled. "Don't look so sad kid."

"Just go," Darry ordered him.

"I'm going." He got all the way to the front door before he turned back to us. "Both of you need to cheer up. Hell I had to spend almost every day from '55 to '62 standing up."

"That doesn't surprise me," Darry said, then waved a hand at him. "Goodbye Two-Bit."

"See you later," he said happily, finally going outside. A second later I saw him hopping into the back of the car with the others.

What he had just said did surprise me though, and it made me feel just a little bit better, knowing that I wasn't alone, or fully alone anyway.

Darry didn't make me go and sit by myself now that the others were gone, and even though it felt kind of strange practically sitting on his lap I was content enough to stay. He kept an arm around me and I sort of leaned into his chest, but I wasn't focusing on watching TV with him. Instead I was thinking about something he had said to me earlier, and I finally got up the courage to ask him about it.

"Darry?"

"Hmm?"

"Can I ask you something?"

"What?"

"Who spanked you?"

He raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"Who spanked you?"

"Uh, when?"

"I don't know."

"Well why are you asking if you don't know?"

"Earlier, I said 'nobody ever hit you', and you said, 'don't kid yourself'. Who ever gave you a spanking?"

He closed his eyes for a second and seemed to be cursing himself for saying that. "Forget about it," he finally said.

"Why?"

"Because we don't need to talk about this right now."

"Why not? Nobody else is around."

"Sometimes I don't feel like sharing everything with you."

"But-"

"No."

"Come on."

"I'll tell you another time."

I wasn't going to argue anymore. I didn't see why he had to keep it a secret but things were going alright between us at the time so I decided to try and be good, at least for the night.

Darry sent me to bed at ten-thirty, and it was pretty nice of him to let me stay up so late, but I wasn't ready to go to sleep yet. I sat up in bed for what felt like forever, because there was something I had to do once I knew that everyone was asleep.

A/N: I hope that this was able to make some of you feel a bit better about Darry!