this was written as part of a "spooky szn ficlets" i did last year. mirroring it here.
i.
it wasn't fair. none of it was fair. johnny can't stop repeating that thought for weeks now. one night, and he'd been too slow. one night and ponyboy had been shoved beneath the fountain, lungs filling with water. johnny pinned beneath a soc, beaten too hard to be able to stop them.
ponyboy had drowned in that fountain. sucked up so much water, held so long by those socs.
there was going to be a trial. johnny didn't have faith in justice, just an open wound in his chest where his best friend used to be. he can't even make himself look at his brother's openly broken faces from his place in the hospital bed, with husted ribs and arm, and scars on his face that feel like they aren't enough punishments.
it isn't fair.
ii.
ponyboy is buried besides his parents. it's not much for a gravestone. johnny doesn't make it to the funeral, still too fucked up from the violence, and he's not sure he could ever make himself think about ponyboy's body, dead like that.
dallas took off some time before the funeral. two-bit attends, and so does steve. none of them condemn him.
he wishes they would.
iii.
the socs get manslaughter, not murder. it churns his guts.
iv.
johnny heals, physically. mentally, he's not sure if he's back in his body. he leaves the hospital, and he doesn't know how he makes it past the lot, how he looks at the curtis house. it looks emptier, sadder for the brother that it's lost. walking up the steps, walking in feels worse with all the little reminders of ponyboy, of the way the house feels that much colder.
he cries, alone, for the first time in years.
v.
months pass. darry and soda still don't chastise him. they welcome him in as best he can. soda's laugh doesn't even sound the same in the moments he can laugh. darry, that exterior that hard to harden so quickly, seems to go limp. dallas still doesn't turn back up, and two-bit starts drinking more, harder. steve is the only one who seems unchanged, and even then, johnny thinks that it's just that he's good with a mask. better than the rest of them.
vi.
on halloween, in 1966, it dawns cold. the moon is high that night when johnny finds himself too much of a coward to go into the curtis house for shelter. he finds himself dreaming of ponyboy again: the quiet way he used to talk, the times they'd used to walk together, the last night at the theater.
he thinks he says, "i sure miss you pal. wish you'd come back."
he thinks that ponyboy gives him a smile that's sad, and hungry all at once.
he knows that when he wakes up, his stomach curdles and he feels as if a chill is down his spine. he goes to the curtis house after all.
vii.
darry's face is pale and drawn the next morning when he listens to someone on the other end of the phone. he almost looks as bad as he did when they'd found out ponyboy had died, and johnny's stomach drops.
when darry sets the phone down, he sits down heavily on the recliner, fingers pressed on his knees.
johnny ventures to ask, "what happened?"
it takes darry a few heaving breathes to say, "those - bob. he died in jail. said he drowned in- in his cell."
johnny has never been to a jail in his life. he knows things that dally used to say about them, and he knows that he doesn't have to say that cells don't have water.
viii.
a call comes hours later that randy, bob's friend, is found drowned, too, slumped in his car on the other side of town. there's no one to haul in, no one to accuse.
no one except a dead boy.
ix.
there's no sense, he thinks, in thinking that ponyboy is back from the dead, to take revenge on the living. he tells himself that in the dark. he tells himself while waking.
he tells himself right up until he finds his way to ponyboy's grave, where the earth is overturned, and the casket completely empty. he thinks he can smell groundwater as he stands over it, not wanting to believe.
x.
he dreams of water that night, and wakes up gasping for air.
thanks so much for reading! i love any and all feedback.