... I'm sorry about Darry in this chapter. Darry himself is sorry about Darry in this chapter. I kind of debated with myself whether or not he'd be this much of an asshole, but he is the brother of Ponyboy 'and you can't blame them' Curtis...

One of the more annoying parts of our new alliance with the River Kings is them getting all up in my business. Specifically, Diego hauling a Tiger off of me before he can slit my throat.

"I had him," I try to say with my usual cool authority, but instead it just comes out in a squeaky burst of adrenaline— Diego clubs him with a tire iron hard enough to knock him out, or at least I hope that's 'knocked out' and not 'dead as a doornail', because he's not really stirring on the ground and there's blood leaking from his left ear. One aspect of Dally's record I'm not too keen on catching up with is a murder rap, even if this asshole wasn't being remotely subtle about homing in on Ramirez territory.

"Sure you did," he says easily, "right before you got a haircut that started below the chin." He surveys me, maybe hesitates to say something, then decides to go for it anyway. "You know what your problem is? You ain't a bad fighter, you have the technique down, but you're all heated when someone lands a hit on you, then you get sloppy. He wouldn't have managed to get you on the ground if you hadn't left yourself wide open."

I don't seem to remember asking. Now I'm even more embarrassed than I was ten seconds ago, so I make the unwise choice of turning to Alex, who's wringing some blood out of the sleeve of his flannel and who's also become my scapegoat lately. "I really can't count on y'all for nothin', can I?" My temper's sputtering and flaring all over like a garden hose, looking for a convenient target, and well, maybe I'm still not as over the whole Maria Teresa incident as I want to believe. "I need to start havin' my back watched by Kings now, that's what things have come to with this outfit?"

I used to be able to intimidate them, believe it or not. Nate shrugs before taking another huff on a joint he's definitely not supposed to be smoking on the metaphorical clock, which explains those slow reflexes. Alex meets my eyes and holds my gaze for so long, I'm almost the first one to drop it. "Talkin' a lot of shit for a guy who needs it to be two on one to win a fight now," he says, runs his hand up and down the shaft of his pool cue like he's jerking it off. "Sorry you couldn't handle it, jefe—"

I'm not used to getting backtalk— or I'm not delusional, I'm well-aware that I've been gossiped about, but not this directly before. It sends a nauseous thrill of anxiety from my gut up into my throat, which is when I push him up against the brick wall opposite us, get close enough to his face that I can smell the cigarette smoke clinging to his breath and hair. "You been gettin' real, real brave lately," I say. "You liked breathin' out your nose proper, after them bandages came off? Disrespect me in front of them again, you're gonna need reconstructive surgery."

When I let him go, let him slump against the wall and get his bearings again, Diego's got a pretty firm grip on my shoulder and he's pulling me away from the scene. I don't even realize what the hell he's doing until we're on the main street, in front of some pharmacy, and he asks, "that how you always talk to them?"

"And what about it?" I shake him off once we reach the intersection. I'm painfully conscious of the fact that I'm barely legal, that I'm barely much of anything, compared to the Kings and the other outfits; a jumped-up kid making his name off his uncles' reputation. If I want an ounce of respect, I have to puff myself up like some yappy dog after it's been kicked, just so everyone knows the score. "Listen, man, what do you think they are, some real accomplished fighters here? They're my old friends from middle school, and no matter how much I beat on them, they don't get no smarter. I do the best I can with them."

"You call those your friends? I'd sure hate to see your enemies." Diego pulls out his switchblade and starts twirling it around, shiny and new— either it hasn't seen much action or he keeps it real polished. "Look, I'm not gonna tell you how to run your own outfit—"

"That'd probably be a good idea, seeing as I don't know how many you've ever run before—"

"You want to keep gettin' mouthy, I can quit tellin' Agustín to lay off Gabi 'bout you, leave you to run interference all on your own." He looks me up and down with an unbearably condescending, older brother sort of look I'm accustomed to giving, not being on the receiving end of. "For some reason I like you, or at least I like you better than that hijoeputa she used to date, so I guess I'm gonna have to give you advice. Quit makin' such an ass out of yourself over every little thing. Whatever you think you're accomplishing with them, you're doin' the exact opposite."

I should listen to what he's saying, because part of me knows he ain't wrong— there's a cautionary tale in my father's death, a reason why Luis tried to stick me behind a bar and get me to work on my people skills. But the trouble is, I've never been any good at getting anybody to obey me through love rather than through fear, and it seems a lot easier to stick to my usual course than to fail doing it another way. So instead I sneer at him, which makes him laugh, which makes me even more hacked off. "I can see she's runnin' around with you for your good sense of humor, not just to get under Papi's skin."

That suspicion's entered my brain before, but I put it into the mental trunk where I keep everything I don't want to think about, where it belongs. "That why a rich boy like you got involved in slinging? Tryna piss your daddy off until he pops every blood vessel in his head?" I'm surprised he never joined one of the Soc packs, though he might've been too old or too middle class by the time those started to gain popularity, and I don't doubt Agustín would probably approve of him stomping greaser heads into the pavement.

"Nah, I just like gettin' high and the spare cash," he says in a breathtaking display of self-awareness— most gangbangers, my uncles included, would start giving me some bullshit spiel about 'loyalty', 'brotherhood', and 'protecting our streets'. "Pissin' Agustín off is just a fun bonus. 'S why I think we're gonna make good friends."

I shouldn't have assumed that Ed getting clean would last, much less let it lull me into a false sense of security, but as he actually made it a few weeks off the booze and got a new job at the Ford factory downtown, we all managed to sucker ourselves into believing that miracles could happen just in time for Christmas. He brought home a paycheck that he hadn't immediately cashed and taken down to Charlie's, and bought Ma a new dress and department store perfume with a decent chunk of it. He tried showing Curly how to drive and they both somehow made it home in one piece— laughing, even. We were watching The Tonight Show after dinner and he and Ma started making plans to take a trip down to Wichita, for fuck's sake. The only places they've ever taken a trip to have been the corner liquor store, the corner bar, and the corner pawn shop.

Then I walk in on him cussing out my sister, and all my goodwill towards him vanishes as quickly as his commitment to his sobriety. Why am I always right? It's like a fucking curse.

"When I tell you to do somethin', I don't want no backtalk, go change your clothes or you ain't leavin' this house." His words are thick and garbled, he's not even bothering to hide the fact that he came home piss drunk, before five o'clock even; he stumbles towards her with the shakiness of a baby taking its first steps, steadies himself with the arm of the couch. "And go take that shit off your hands too, while you're at it, them spiderweb bracelets. You look like those girls hangin' around the North side, pregnant at fifteen, pushin' another baby around in a buggy with a cigarette hanging out their mouths— is that what you want?"

Angel's like me, proud and haughty as hell— if Ed can make her cry anymore, she sure as shit won't do it where he can see, she's not the type of girl to use tears as a weapon and they wouldn't work on him anyway. But there's a shimmer in her eyes, one she blinks back as she tilts her chin up and stares him down, and that's what prompts me to enter the scene with all the grace of a bull entering a china shop. "You think you get to tell Angela how to dress now?"

If I'm really being honest with myself, catching sight of the get-up she's trying to walk out of here in, there's no way I wouldn't have something to say about it. But Ed and I have been scrapping over who's the man of this house since I was thirteen, and I can't shake the indignant feeling I get whenever he tells Curly or Angela what to do, like he's got the first right to. Especially when he's hammered as all get-out— I'm not so afraid he'll hit her, Ma and I are his usual targets when he's lashing out, but his temper is still unpredictable enough it's a possibility.

"Excuse me?" He's probably glad for the shift in his attention, I've always been the one he wants to usurp. "Your sister's a little girl walkin' around dressed like a two-dollar whore— where'd you even get this shit from, Angela, huh? I'm supposed to believe your mama bought it for you?"

I'm well-aware that she either shoplifted it or sweet-talked some money out of Luis, who, whenever he remembers she exists, spoils the hell out of her. But she's not near dumb enough to mention shoplifting, or worse, Luis, in front of him. "I got it from a friend, Dad—"

"A friend? You better not tell me no guy—"

I kind of want to stop this before I find out it's a guy myself. "Angel, get out of here," I say with a flick of my hand, and I wonder if she'll have the nerve to walk out the front door, but she darts off to her room instead. "You don't get to talk to her like that, call her no whore." He doesn't know, but he shouldn't have to, either. "I'm a little confused about why you think you can tell her anything at all."

I expect him to take a swing, when he backs me up against the wall; none of my arguments with Ed ever last much longer than two minutes, he doesn't have the patience— or, honestly, the wit— for any verbal back-and-forth. What surprises me is that he wraps his fist around my throat.

It's not the first time I've been in this position, and I know that it's crucial not to struggle, but I can't help the primal fear that surges up in me as the pressure builds and the next breath doesn't come. He's not going to kill me, he's just trying to fuck with me, but I'm well-aware the cool glare I try to shoot his way comes off more as bug-eyed panic. He lets me go before my vision can start to blur enough to knock me out, and when I instinctively gasp and massage my neck, that's when he goes in for a blow that snaps my head all the way back.

And I wish I could tell this story another way. I wish I could say that I got him in a headlock as soon as I got my bearings again; I know how to, hypothetically, even though he's bigger than me, where to aim. I don't do any of that.

He's not my daddy and I don't think of him that way. Dallas's old man beats on him whenever he darkens his doorstep, and according to his stories anyway, he's been giving back as good as he gets it ever since he hit puberty. I don't know why I feel as limp as a ragdoll, why my vision slides out of focus, why I should do something but I can't. He's laughing at me, I register from somewhere off in the distance, and all I'm feeling around my jaw with my tongue like an idiot, trying to figure out if he's knocked any teeth loose. My mouth tastes like blood, like dirty pennies, like defeat.

"Yeah, ain't you a real big man now, Tim." He gives me a final shove back into the wall, then I guess decides I'm down for the count. "Full grown, practically."

Ed gets his kicks fast, at least he's got that much going for him, he leaves me alone after that. I should head after him, and instead I just try to catch my breath. Shove this deep down, into the old mental suitcase, but the trouble is that it doesn't have unlimited room. The more I stuff into it, the closer the top gets to blowing off the whole thing.

My throat aches the next morning whenever I swallow, like a secret reminder of what happened— there's no bruising, he didn't squeeze hard enough for that, but I still know and I still remember. And if I want bruises, hell, I can just look at my jaw— between the scar running from temple to chin and the blue, purple, and black starbursts there, the whole right side of my face is a lost cause. My eyes are bloodshot like I just got back from a week-long bender. The thought of calling out from work flits across my mind, but like hell I'm going to do that, miss out on a day's worth of money and admit that kind of weakness. If anybody has the balls to ask, I'll tell them the other guy looks worse, I doubt I'm going to get questions.

That is, except from Darrel Curtis Jr. himself, who isn't remotely subtle about ogling me once I show up on the scene. "The hell happened to you?" he asks with all the tact of a bulldozer as he grabs a billet of wood. I wait for the sarcasm, for some smart remark at the end about me punching above my weight, and I'm surprised that there isn't any— which pisses me off more than any insult could've, the faint hint of pity in his voice. I got enough of it when we were friends, I sure as shit don't need it now that we're enemies.

"Got into a fight." I bite it out so hard I want the sentence to rip into his skin, too. I realize on some level that he's not who I'm really angry with, not who I want to lay into, but he's here and a convenient target and it's not like I mind getting my digs in at him. "You remember what those are like, don't you, fair ones? Or did you just hold greasers' arms back while your buddies took turns kicking the shit out of them?"

I'm repeating a nasty rumor I heard about a month before I dropped out, and by the way Darry's lips narrow, I'm delighted to know it's true. That is, until he rakes his eyes over my face again, and I know he knows, and I swear right before it happens, the whole thing flashes through my mind like a slow-motion car crash. "You sure talk a lot of shit for a guy whose stepdad still smacks him around like a basketball."

I fucking fly at him. He's bigger than me, probably outweighs me by a good thirty pounds and he's got a few inches on me too, but none of that matters as sheer adrenaline lets me knock him to the ground and start pummeling the absolute shit out of him— hell, maybe we should've done this years ago, settled the score between us the only way scores ever do get settled in this neighborhood. And there's my fighting spirit, it's all coming back to me now as I operate on pure muscle memory, find the best way to hurt him as much as I can. I dig my elbow into his eye socket, I've never been too honorable to fight dirty, but that's when he gets the bright idea to grab a fistful of my hair, which is when I remember I never dropped the hammer I had—

"What the fuck is wrong with y'all?"

I'm too strung out to figure out what's happening immediately, then I realize Darry's dad managed to drag us apart, that I'm back on my feet. His face is a wreck, worse than mine; one of his eyes is swollen shut, and he's pinching his nose tight, which doesn't stop blood from flowing between his fingers and seeping into his polo shirt, creating a deep stain that blossoms in the fabric like a flower. He's cussing me with some words I've never even heard before, nasally words from said nose-pinching, but I'm pretty sure they're nothing polite. I'm no more polite in return, my mouth twisted up in a snarl— I don't have the presence of mind to come up with any kind of half-decent insult, but I can sure fill the air with a good volume of them.

"Can it," Darrel says in a voice he doesn't raise, but somehow it's menacing enough we both have the sense to shut the fuck up. Holds up a hand as he steps in the middle of us and surveys this whole sorry scene— which is when I realize I'm bleeding too as I blink it out of my eyes, that cocksucker actually managed to yank an entire clump of hair out of my scalp. "Son," he says as he turns to Darry, all slow disapproval, "this better be the last time I ever root against you in no fight."

I'm grudgingly touched by how he threw his own son under the bus like that, for my sake; the same guys who were laughing at me before, watching the show like it's a fight in the schoolyard, are stifling snickers behind their fists again. Darry's face turns a splotchy shade of red, like tomato soup with patches of sour cream, but he doesn't get the chance to say anything else before his daddy's hauling me off by the elbow. Guess he wants to embarrass us both equally. "Let's go," he insists; I think about trying to shake him off, but he's the size of a tank. "Long since time we had a talk."

Darrel doesn't have an office or anything, just a dusty trailer a few yards away from the main site— I almost sneeze my brains out when he yanks on the chain dangling below a bare lightbulb, sits down behind the messiest desk I've ever seen in my life. He gestures for me to sit, too, on a folding chair that looks like it'll collapse under my weight. I decline the offer with what I know is an insolent jerk of my head, and can't bring myself to care.

"I'm not sure what part of puttin' my own rep on the line made you want to repay me by stagin' Clay vs. Liston just now," he starts, pinching the bridge of his nose. Then his voice gets real harsh and raspy, but in his calm, he's more dangerous than if he was yelling. "But my site, it ain't one of your uncles' hole-in-the-wall bars, and it sure ain't some back alley, neither. You better start figuring out how to act real quick, you hear me?"

Curly and I used to play at Clay vs. Liston, right before I went inside— we must've watched that fight a million times on our own shitty TV and the one on our cousin Temo's lawn, he blew a shitton of meth money on the only color TV on the block. For obvious reasons, Curly always had to be Liston. I try to think about this to calm me down and it's not working in the slightest. "Your boy's a dead man," I say, rage and humiliation entwined inside me like snakes on a cadeceus. "Let me back out there, and I'm gonna knock all his fucking teeth out his mouth. I'm gonna kill him."

"I can't let you beat nobody's head in with a hammer, Tim, my boy or not." He leans across the desk on his elbows. "Y'all are supposed to be grown men, you could've fooled me. Scrappin' like you're in some high school cafeteria, not a work site with all sorts of equipment lyin' around—"

"Did you hear what he said to me?" I get that he's biased in this situation, I really do. But did he... fucking hear what he said?

"Believe me, I ain't none too thrilled about it. 'S sure not how I raised him, I'll tell you that much." The worst part is that the lines of his well-carved face soften with sympathy, for a moment, before vanishing so quickly I wonder if it was there at all. "I also saw what you did. And let's be honest here, somehow I don't get the impression that you ain't been tauntin' him as much as he's been tauntin' you, lately."

My hand's actually shaking, I try to hide it behind my back to hide the tremor that I can't seem to stop. "The idea of fightin' words a whole new concept to you all of a sudden? He deserved everything he got. Yeah, he deserved a hammer right to the skull."

"You know what, you keep this kind of thing up, Tim, all your tough talk? You're not just gonna be a kid bouncin' in and out of reform school. You're gonna be a grown man doin' time for assault and battery, you don't get a grip on that temper." Then he narrows his eyes, and he really goes in for the kill. "Thought you had more sense in your fool head than your uncle, but maybe I was mistaken."

And I guess the spirit of Dally Winston possesses me right then, because I start hollering my head off. I don't even remember the last time I yelled about anything— maybe when Curly burned a hole in the kitchen ceiling trying to cook homemade meth— but there's no putting the genie back in the bottle now. "Fuck you—" I knock a couple of papers off his desk too, just to establish that I've completely lost any grasp I once had on my self-control. "Fuck your goddamn son, but fuck you too, and fuck your little idea to try to turn me straight— you happy now, you gotten your revenge on Luis by usin' me yet, pendejo? This work out exactly the way you plan?"

He sits there and lets me get it out until I'm done, breathing hard, my fists balled up. I half-expect him to backhand me— I'm surprised he didn't backhand me long before I got to pendejo. "I practically raised Dallas," he finally says. "I've been cussed out better than that, to be honest, I ain't impressed. Can't even give you points for the Spanish, he's got a real wide vocabulary from growin' up in Bed-Stuy."

I just stare at him. He snaps his fingers, points at the chair across from him. "Sit down, Tim."

I obey him mindlessly this time, slump into it, all of my energy drained from me. "You gonna fire me, then?" I ask, my throat raw. "I quit first."

"You wish," he says with a snort, "no, you're gonna have to sit here and listen to me talk instead." Then he reaches into a drawer and pulls out a bottle of whiskey— Christ, I should hope he's not usually boozing on a job that involves balancing on roofs with power tools.

"Drink this." He pushes a decent-sized glass across the desk at me, a couple of drops sloshing onto the worn-out wood. "Not that I want to say alcohol solves your problems, but it might calm you down some."

I take a gulp so hard my eyes sting, and I fight the urge to massage my throat once I do. He doesn't call me a lightweight, at least, and he looks at me more softly this time. "Your stepdaddy, he—"

"Nah, we ain't doin' this." The shot of liquor makes me brave; I cast my eyes at the blinded window, away from him. "I don't need no pity party. Let him get the drop on me once, is all, sure as shit won't make the same mistake twice."

He drops the point, thankfully. "You used to be around my place a lot," he says instead. "Your daddy used to bring you, remember?"

"Yeah," I say, look at the black-and-white picture on the wall— Darry and Jasmine at the lake, his arms wrapped around her shoulders, both of them badly sunburned and still grinning at the camera. For a tantalizing but brief moment, allow myself to wander down the rabbit hole of wondering what my life would be like if I'd been born into this man's family, how I would've turned out. I can't imagine it, though. "I remember."

"I wanted to knock his lights out every time he did." The sudden vitriol in his voice surprises me, and I wonder how he manages to make it in this world, getting so angry on behalf of his ex-partner-in-crime's son, of all people. "Might've brought my boys around too much of that shit, and I'll take that with me to my grave, but at least I can say I never thought no ten-year-old had any place pushin' product."

"My daddy figured I was smart for my age," and now I sound like I'm reading some comment off a report card— not that I ever got much written about me to that effect. "Real advanced. I could handle myself."

"You weren't handlin' nothing," he waves off my words like he's shooing a fly away from himself. Then he heaves a sigh. "You weren't so wrong, hollering at me," he says. "I was tryna get back at Luis, more than a little, figured it'd sure stick in his craw if I went after you. I ain't some kind of saint, I'll never become one. But I should've done more for that kid sittin' at my kitchen table, too, up in grown folks' business before his voice dropped."

"You don't owe me nothing."

"Not everything's about owing."

I let the words sink deep into my skin, and an unfamilar feeling rises up in me to take anger's place, apart from the embarrassment of having had an emotional outburst my fourteen-year-old brother is too old for; shame. I don't believe in regrets, I don't have the humility or self-examination for them, but he didn't deserve that, getting the full dose of my anger thrown in his face like acid, after he went well out of his way to cut me a break I'd done nothing to earn— shit I couldn't yell at my uncle or my stepfather without losing half my dental set. Maybe that's why I did it. "I'm sorry," I say, and I mean it. Mean it when I add a 'sir' onto the end, too, though that one comes out a little trickier.

"Water under the bridge," he says with a wave of his hand, "that's just about every week with Dally around the place. You really want to apologize, you can try to make it through a week here without forcin' me to file them workers' comp reports."

I swallow a laugh when I get home and my sister's at the door, because she's wearing a skirt that goes straight down to her ankles, with a white sleeveless blouse and a cardigan over it— one I'm sure Ed buttoned up to the neck for her. She looks like one of the girls we called bobby-soxers, back when I still went to Will Rogers, the kind with neat, organized notes and boys lining up to carry their books— Christ hell, is that a pink bow tied up in her hair? "You rob a Woolworths this time? Whatever you did, I doubt Ma's gonna be fooled by your new sense of style."

"Dad bought me new clothes, for school," she says with a scowl, and the amusement sloughs off of me like water coming off a dirty washcloth. "To say sorry, I guess."

I don't say anything I should, that she's not a slut, that I'd always throw myself in front of a pair of fists for her, that she's worth any beating or act of psychological warfare and I don't even have to think about it. Angela and I are too similar, pricky and proud in a way that makes us get along with our sentimental brother better than with each other— Curly just understands all of these things, without me having to say them. I'd only make her uncomfortable. "I made supper, since you was at work and all." She twirls a pleat on her skirt. "There's a plate on the stove."

Angel's cooking... well, I mean, she's getting better. It's more edible than Ma's, at any rate, and she's still young enough she's got time to improve. She didn't have to do that for me, maybe she is growing up after all. "Your hair's a mess, nena," I say gently, she never learned how to do any styles herself. Think about how she'd come crying to me when Ma pulled at her scalp too hard, said only I knew how to do it right. "Lemme fix it first."