I'm lying, or maybe I am sitting, or slouching, I used to slouch a lot. I still do. Anyways I am on the couch. I'm on the couch, no one's shouting at me to remove my shoes, complaining that I'm getting scruff marks or dirt all over the upholstery. I think that's when I'd remember that my parents are dead, I mean I don't remember exactly what was going through my mind at that moment, but I can make a conjecture. So when I think about it now, when I think about being thirteen, my hair was shorter than it would be in the spring, the summer, the first few weeks of fall, before I'd chop it all off, I see myself now lying on the couch, a corpse pose.
My eyes stay open.
I watch Darry with his mom and his youngest sister. Julia's real name was Bertha, but she went by her middle name. I don't think, I don't know, or remember, if she's really been to our house before. She wouldn't have any reason to, I don't think, not until now. I've been over to her house a few times though. She shifts, her body as if she wants to fold herself into our house's corners. There really weren't that many great spots to hide in our house, I knew that all of first hand. Julia, or Bertha, or Darry's mom, she used to be a circus performer, an aerialist. I don't blame her, I didn't blame her, for feeling awkward, for feeling out of place, displaced. That first week, I can't remember where I slept, I mean, if I slept in my bed, or on the floor, or on the couch. I guess now, or maybe I thought back then too, she was worried about sitting in my mother's spot, sitting on her chair, or spot on the couch. But that wasn't like that with our family, we didn't have a designated spot, though I guess I kinda claimed the far side of the couch for myself, I liked to curl up into it, read a book and sometimes the T.V. was on, and sometimes I'd watch it, but mostly just let it play in the background. But dad, and mom, when she was alive, she didn't have a chair or special place that was hers, everything was hers, and now nothing was.
Julia had called Darry baby, I guess he still was that, still her baby. When she says that Darry looks at me, apologetically. I didn't want Julia as my mom, I wanted my mom back.
I had forgotten sometimes the age difference between Darry and his two oldest sisters, too. She wasn't a shy woman, at least, I didn't think so, and being around people who are normally outgoing when the suddenly freeze up or something, it can make me uncomfortable. But I don't know, if that's what I felt watching her, the way she looked at photos, our family photos on the wall. Am I wondering if she's looking at my dad, her former husband? Or maybe mom? When she saw her son with his dead parents and orphaned brothers. Then she quickly looked away, then looked at Darry and Angela.
Darry and Angela, her first name is Linda, but she went by Angela, her middle name, most of the time, sometimes she went by Angie, or Angel, sometimes, she was called GeGe, the same way Julia called Darry, Dash. Julia had six children, her first husband had died when she was young and she had two daughters with him, Lou Ann and Mona, my parents had dated each other and had broken up and my dad ended up working as a canvas man, but then as a bull rider, something like that, in the circus where Julia worked. Their marriage didn't last and when I was little I thought that having divorced parents was the worst thing that could happen to you. But maybe it isn't, anyways Julia married her third husband and had three children by him.
I didn't know Darry's older sisters that well, except that something about Mona's husband, Cole, gave me the creeps. I couldn't, and still can't explain why, but he did. I think, that after being thrown into an orphan or to a boy's home, being sent to live with Cole was my worst fear. I would think, later on, what it would be like if we had no family, no other relatives, I mean Cole and Mona had some money, which no one else really did, but they had four or five kids, and I don't think they'd have enough to take on me and Soda too, I had hoped not. I mean, I didn't want to leave Darry, leave my buddies, even if it meant we'd get to live out in the countryside, the way I had dreamed of, with mom and dad too.
It's funny though, I remember, I'd still dream about living out in the country, about Soda getting his horse back. But I don't think Cole would have wanted us, me and Soda, I mean, I think he thought we were a bad influence, or we looked like a bad influence. Or maybe that's how I sort of wanted to be perceived as, back then, though it frightened me too, as tough.
I couldn't explain it, I wanted to be seen as tough and I didn't want to be seen as a hoodlum and I wasn't sure where that line was between them, where I was.
I didn't really know Tim, or Ken-who back then we called Curly, or Angela, even though we shared a brother, by blood, we share a brother. But they were living in Tulsa, too, not in the same neighborhood though, they went to a different school and all. But more than Lou Ann or Mona, I had thought of the Shepards as being a sort of mirror of us, a reflection, not us exactly, but maybe we were distorted versions of each other, like a fun house mirror, I think. Anyways, when I do this, or when I did this, when I see us, reflecting each other, the Arkansas, blurry between us, I always have Darry on our side, maybe because I had wanted to create some sort of balance, and well we know how much I dig math, or maybe it was because Darry grew up with us, and I thought, maybe selfishly here, that he was my brother more than he was theirs.
But the Shepards, Julia's three youngest, the existed at the time, I had though, as a self-contained ecosystem, I had wanted I think, to have that with my brothers, to have a world of our own.
I watch Angela and Darry in our living room, there were times where I wondered, I mean, really wondered what it would be like to have sisters, I asked Darry and he shrugged said something like how it was just like having brothers, but that answer, back then, felt like bullshit. I mean, I don't think I wanted a sister, but sometimes I'd wonder, I did that a lot, wonder about things I didn't have. I had wanted everything.
In our living room, Angela's about half the size of Darry, Julia's not that tall, but my dad and Sammy Shepard were tall so her sons all took their heights from their dads. It was funny, I mean, back then, watching them, watching another version, I guess, of myself. Or maybe a version, of myself which had existed, a week ago, before mom and dad died. The way the two of them talked to each other, I think i saw Darry crack a grin, I had no doubt that Angela was telling him, or calling him, something vulgar. I wonder, who Darry was, when it was just them, I mean, without me and Soda, or back when they were alive, mom and dad.
They didn't know him the way we did, but maybe they knew him a different way.
Darry and me, that week, he had asked me, like I would have known, like I would have remembered if I had gotten my immunizations. Trepidation, that's the word, the way he was around me, like I was fragile, like I had shifted into something new, and different. But Angela, GeGe was still his little sister and I watched them, with a kind of envy or wanting or jealousy, I guess. I wanted what she had, she had parents, and brothers, and she had my brother, too, still. He was more relaxed I think that was it, when he was with me, his shoulders tightened up, his eyes were sharp, but with Angela, he was at ease.
The worst part I think was when I looked past them and looked at Julia, that look she gave me, it was more than pity, it was a kind of pity, with understanding, a kind of empathy I think. I froze up, I didn't want her, or anyone, really, except maybe Soda, to know what I was feeling, or thinking, I wanted to hide. I lifted the blanket, over my head, like I did when I was a toddler, and covered my face, covered myself, and erased myself. Negated, I think, my existence.
My parents died in the winter, I mean, in Oklahoma, usually our winters aren't so bad, I mean, I lived, will live, in much colder climes, but they died in the winter. Which is why, I don't know how in my dream, in my memories, really I see us on the back stoop, and Angela has a midriff on. She was a year older than me, her and Curly both, which made me the youngest, and she used to wear flowers, though really they were just dandelions, in her hair.
"Ain't you cold?" I look at her, sitting on the stoop, next to me. That's another thing, I remember it was winter of course because of how cold the concrete was, under my pants.
"Aren't you cold Ponyboy? Why you haven't even got a coat on." She makes a tsk, tsk sound. It would be funny maybe, if she wasn't who she was, if I wasn't who I was.
I shrugged, "I'm fine."
"Don't be such a damn hypocrite Ponyboy. Here put this on." She handed me an olive sweater. She liked to toss in random swear words whenever she could.
"I ain't wearin' a girls sweater. Jesus."
She laughed, "look it's Dash's."
"Did Darry give you this for me?" She shouldn't call him Dash, Darry, everyone, even his high school buddies called him Darry.
"Nah, I just took it."
My father and Darry were about the same size, my dad was a bit bigger, though maybe I'm not remembering it all correctly, and I wonder if my dad had worn this sweater, it wasn't really something he'd wear, I don't think. But I put it on, and for a second I imagined that I was my dad.
I used to cry a lot, so back then every time I cried, even at things like funerals I'd get embarrassed, but here in the yard, all my grief.
I sobbed and shook and I leaned forward grasping onto the grass, dead, I think. Angela her voice is sort of a blur, sort of underwater, and she asks me if she should get Darry, I shook my head and tried to settle myself, I didn't want him to see me, not like this. I didn't want Angela to leave either, I guess that what it all comes down to, I didn't want her to leave.
Okay, okay, she rubs her hand on my back, circles I think. Shh it's okay, she was fourteen, I was thirteen, and my head, I put my head in her lap. I don't think she expected it, I mean, I wasn't planning on it, the way my head fell into her lap, but she ran her fingers down my face. I wanted her to shut up and I wanted her to keep on going, she would go home, go home with her mom, with her family.
I don't remember the points between but the next thing I know I'm sitting up and I'm kissing her, she was, I thought, beautiful, I wasn't a good kisser, back then, I mean, I had only been kissed once before, and it was playing Spin the Bottle so that didn't even count or nothing, but there, here I was, and am, crying and then I'm not and my mouth is opening and her mouth is opening.
The first girl I had kissed, my first kiss with tongue, was with my brother's sister. It was like being with a part of myself that wasn't me.
"Angela, you can't tell Darry."
She scoffs, "why? I'm not afraid of him. We didn't do anything wrong." Angela, especially but that whole side of the family, they were a type of fearless, when I was younger I had wondered what it would be like to be Darry, to be out in the football field, to have people chant your name, I mean, no one really came to a track meet, Soda did and Darry, when they could. But maybe it wasn't so different in some ways, from Tim, from how I thought of Tim.
I had wanted to laugh, I didn't know, I had always felt myself on the edges of lines that I shouldn't have crossed, wanting and desiring things that weren't mine, that shouldn't be mine. What would mom think? What would dad think? But maybe maybe dad would understand.
Instead I grab a hold of her wrists, too tight, the way later, much later, I would learn, too, how pleasure gives into pain. How I think, it's inevitable. "Please, he's gonna throw me into a boys home." I didn't know I had said this until my words had left my mouth, I didn't know how much I feared it, feared being sent away.
"Okay, okay, I'm not going to tell."
"Don't tell Tim or Curly neither."
She rolled her eyes, told me that I had no idea what it was like to have five older brothers, though Curly was only older by ten minutes or so, oh yeah, she had two brothers, and a sister, her brothers were Joe and Eddie, on her dad's side.
I didn't want to think of that, I didn't want to think of us, the two of us, me and Angela, us, having the same brother, even if Darry lived with and grew up with us, me and Soda, if that should count.
That I had liked it, that I had liked it more because it was something I wasn't supposed to do. That maybe even besides who Angela was, who I was, that I shouldn't have done, it so close to the funeral, to my parents deaths, that I had violated something sacred, that I was, or that I could be, broken. That I was messed up. Instead I stayed up all night, the way I had, before, before mom and dad had died, and read, again, the Call of the Wild, reading and re-reading, the part where he talks about the ecstasy of forgetting that one is alive.
Which is what I tried to do, which is what I sometimes try to do, now.
After that, I think, the worst part wasn't the kiss, I mean, it was weird, but I don't think it was that weird, maybe it's because of all the books I'd read, but I remember how I had cried, how Angela saw me cry, not just cry, but sob, how my body felt that it was going to give out, how she looked at me afterwards, every time she saw me, with a sort of pity or like we were friends, or more, like we had shared something, that we were still sharing something. Afterwards, most kids avoided me, like I had the plague, or something, while adults, adults, teachers, and neighbors and people, some whom I hardly knew it all. It's strange how it feels when strangers know more about your life than you do, as if they have a type of claim on it, a type of possession. It was what I was known for, I was the boy whose parents had died, had been killed, I was the orphan. I thought of Darry, how he still had a mom, it didn't matter that he called my mother, mom too, he could, if the weather was nice, walk over to Julia's house. He wasn't an orphan, not the way me and Soda were orphans.
What I didn't want, what I couldn't take was the way she fussed over me, the way she saw me, saw me bent over and my breathing, how it gagged and grew shallow.
The act of creation, reinvention, a type of destruction, too. That's what people don't tell you about writing, what you'd have to find out on your own, what I had to find out on my own. I had written for Mr. Syme, my English teacher, my semester theme, and I was sorry, sorry but not really, when he had praised me because I wasn't really being honest. I had discovered or maybe I had already known that when you write, when you write someone you can make them into who you want on paper, that you can siphon them into new forms. In my paper, I didn't want anything to do with the Shepards, with Darry's family, and so the family which had most of my life existed on the margins of my life, I had thrown off into corners, into the abyss. I'd tell Julia that I know where she could hide, in my story, in my theme, how no one would find her there. I took Curly and Tim and painted them on the edge of existence, or maybe I painted them the way I'm sure people saw me, how I feared they'd see me, when they saw me with my long greasy hair, as lousy, as marked. How I feared myself, maybe, as stuck, as not being able to leave. How I wanted and did, rip apart our families, our bonds, whatever bonds we had, by virtue of having the same brother. How I didn't want to see me, see us, when I looked at the Shepards, how I didn't know who or what us meant, who it all encompassed. Who it had left out, spit out, thrown away. I didn't make any mention of Mona or Lou Ann, or anything that was part of Darry's life that wasn't part of us. When I went to the hospital, to see Johnny, it was Joe who spotted me, who drove me, he knew me by name, which was kind of unnerving, but in my book I could make him anonymous. So in that too, I had recreated Darry to be something, someone he wasn't.
I guess I was doing that to Soda, to myself too. A type of displacement.
The whistle, we had this whistle that Tim shared with us, that he taught us, that he learned from circus guys when they were putting up and taking down the tents, I put that whistle in but I had divorced it, split it from it's origins, from it's contexts, till it floated free. I thought Julia being in the circus was cool as fuck, I mean I really did, but I had ignored it all. And Angela? In my story, she doesn't exist. I had ran into a burning building but that didn't mean I wasn't scared, didn't mean that I wasn't a coward.
Instead I made it about us, about Soda, about Darry about us three, as if we had existed by ourselves as if we weren't who we were, who we are. I wouldn't so much capture us, but take us and erase and redraw and make us not us, but ourselves on paper, or in my composition book. It's strange I think, as an act, as a physical act, to recreate, to lie I guess, to reimagine with your own hand, as opposed to the mechanical act of using a typewriter. The way you can touch it afterwards. The way you can feel the curve of every word, every line, the way it can only exist in your hands, as opposed to the typewriter which makes everything uniform, undistinguished.
Afterwards, after Julia and Angela went home, I had my first nightmare, I mean the first real one, the first night terror, not the little kid stuff, the stuff I used to have the monsters my dad could kill for me. I needed Soda. I love Soda, I don't think you know what it's like unless you have someone in your life like Soda, he was my everything. I thought about Darry, less as my brother, and more as Julia's son, more as my guardian, but I had Soda, Soda would be my brother, would be the same, would be a constant. And it's funny, or maybe hypocritical, I think Angela's right with that, about me, how I can be sort of hypocritical, how I could take people and bend them until they no longer resembled themselves or existed in my life, in my life that I wrote and shared and claimed as my own, as my whole life, as my only life, to my English teacher, but what I loved, or one of the reasons I loved Soda so much back then was that he was still Soda. The idea of losing him, I think as a brother, scared me more than anything.
That I guess is where I first began, in a way not so much of being a writer, I had written stories, plays even since I was a little kid, but as a ghostwriter. I became a ghostwriter a bit by accident, or at least I wasn't planning it, but I turned out to be not bad at it. It turned out the essay, my theme I wrote, the one I called The Outsiders, the way I had felt about myself, turned out to be great practice for ghostwriting, to submerge myself into another person, to pretend I was someone I wasn't. To exchange myself, for something else.
In ghostwriting, I would get to know everything about my clients, about the way they talked, or how they formed words, and I would interview them, and sit with them as just hang out because I think you get to know someone best when they're comfortable, and I would find myself taking on them, on their way of talking, on their way of seeing the world, I would lose myself, or maybe I'd willingly let myself go, inside of them.
I had read about people with multiple personalities, and it wasn't that, but I'd lose my voice, my own voice, or they'd become my voice. That's how it was for non-fiction, with fiction, and depending on the contract too, but for fiction it was an even more immersive act, especially when I had to write in first person, when I would pretend I was another author writing as another character, a type of doubling. A type of shrouding, too.
There's a flip side, I mean isn't there always? I would write these other people, these other voices, so much, I would forget my own, myself. I don't know how to explain it, but I'd be with my girls, and I'd say something to them, I don't know, and they thought it was a riot, so it was all good, but it wasn't me, and then I remember, that it was an autobiography I was ghost writing, it was them, I didn't know where I was, or who I was.
Sometimes, I read my old essay, the way someone looks at an old picture of themselves, the way you try to find yourself in that person. I wonder sometimes who that kid was, the Ponyboy in my essay, how easy it was, how easy it is to lie, to become something else. I wonder sometimes if I could go back to that kid.
I won't tell 'em, not now, that it ain't all it's cracked up to be, I'll tell my babies that they can really be anything they wanna be.
But they're daddies now.
They don't have the same daddies, they found that out years ago, when they were teenagers. That Soda's father was a guy named Shaw who ended up in prison. They found out that their mother wanted to tell Soda who is father was before she had died. Pony would still see their dad when he looked at Soda.
And when they go to the park it's the sun that provides the light when they stake their claim to a picnic table to watch their girls run and squeal.
"Where're the other kids?" The playground empty except for their three.
"It's December?" Pony shrugs as his foot pushes around into a patch of slush that reminds him of home, before he remembers that this is his home.
And that it's cold enough for Oklahoma or even Kansas that their little girls are bundled up for in layers and will have pink cheeks soon.
The only picnic table on this side of the park, sloped on an angle and Soda Curtis is under dressed for late fall let alone this weather; hopped backwards on the table with one leap. Now his elbows resting on his knees and his chin in his hands. Every few seconds he cups his hands against his mouth and blows heat into them. No matter how cold it is, Soda is heat: breath, sweat, fire.
"Man, your hair could play in a Metallica cover band," Ponyboy says with a grin that makes Soda just feels like this could be a good year. The baby and his son and his wife have made him an optimist again. It's true too, he wears his hair longer and younger than he's worn it in years. Patrick, and Angela's oldest daughter, Chrissy, are on a date, and they've been serious about each other for a while. Soda will joke with his big brother, "so which side ya gonna sit on at the wedding, huh?" To which Darry will show a shit eating a grin, one that Tim also has too, and crow that he's leaving Tommy as his stand in and he's taking a break to some place where he can really let loose. To which Pony will deadpan, "Branson, Missouri?"
At the park Pony's beard is back and he has a corduroy jacket on.
It's nothing compared to the bright colored scarves, hats, mittens, snow pants and coats that he dug out of a box mislabeled 'VHS.' And what they couldn't find or what no longer fit, they picked up at Sears. Later the clothes will dry while his girls walk around in their underwear with blankets wrapped around their skin like a salwar kazeem, that's what seven year old Paige says.
"Like what the women in India wear," she'll say blowing on her hot chocolate, her tongue already sore and her eyes burning from taking her first sips to quickly.
She's like her daddy that way, as much as they live inside their heads when it comes to physical sensations they have to experience it too quick, without thinking. The burn of processed cocoa. The burning of flesh against a lighter.
"A sari?" Pony will ask, pushing back Daffy's hair while she moves under his leg because it makes for a good bridge.
"No! I'm sorry, I mean Pakistan, what they wear in Pakistan, hold on, I know the word, I just saw it in a magazine article I read with Mommy, I know it! Hold on!" And Pony waits, and because he knows Paige, his face is patient and solemn.
"Salwar kazeem!" she'll burst out, a bright grin on her face at the end.
Bare handed, Pony's arms span the length of the table and stretching under Soda's knees. He's slouching enough that he feels the table's edge scratch against his back.
He was an Oklahoma boy, once; now he's used to winters harsher and fiercer.
Now he feels overdressed in just a thin corduroy. Now he shivers.
He thinks about Dally's coat, his leather jacket and what it felt like. What it feels like to wear a dead boy's jacket on you. It was warm, he remembers that, it was warm. Though maybe he's confusing that with the heat, with the flames and with the fire.
Between Hazer and Daffy's age, a little boy arrives with Pony guesses, even though he's been orphaned more years than not, is his mom. Two minutes later the kid is crying and being carried off.
"I told you it's too cold," The woman says under the little boys cries, like he drove himself to the park.
"Couldn't cut it," Soda says, his eyes still set on their girls.
"Yeah, the little pussy," Scoffs and then doesn't notice Soda's chuckle because he's too busy breaking into a grin of his own, watching Soda's daughter, her mouth opening wide and her face lighting up after Paige gives her a double high five after Hazer goes down the baby slide.
Then Hazer puts her hands back up in the air, like she's surrendering; but: "she thinks we're playing patty cake," Paige turns to interpret, giggling, as if this isn't the same world where daddy was on the lam from the police when he was fourteen.
Or where her parents are divorced.
Or Or Or...
With Paige's help, Hazer arms spin around, faster and faster.
"Hmm mmh, you bake that cake for Daddy, baby," Soda says under his breath, popping his thumb out of his mouth with a flick.
"You're nuts." Pony likes marijuana brownies himself, the brownies aren't a perquisite. It's not hard, Soda is sort of reminding him of Aimee, how they talked, when they were alone together and weird. And married to boot. His fists tighten around the table's corner, but his face remains unchanged.
"Way to go Hazer!" Paige exclaims and claps for her cousin.
"She's doing good..."
Pony snaps back into the world as it is and the air leaves his mouth. Daphne smiles and waves at her daddy from the top of the slide and Pony waves and smiles back, before angling his head to look at Soda, squinting to avoid the midday sun overhead.
He looks at his brother for a few seconds, pushes his tongue against the inside of his cheek. "It's up and down," he begins slowly, "but she's doing a whole lot better overall." He perks up and snaps his fingers as if he just remembered, "Did I tell you? She's goin' to her first slumber party."
"Aw really? Good for her," Soda climbs down from the top of the table to the bench.
"Now 'course Daffy wants to go to one too."
"Yeah? So whatchya gonna do about that?"
A slow smile comes to Pony's lips and he throws his head back a bit."Man, I'll tell ya, we're gonna have the greatest living room slumber party, that's what the fuck we're doing. We're invitin' motherfuckin' Teddy Ruxpin and Rainbow Brite." But he keeps his voice down, cause he doesn't want the girls to hear him swearing, though his own aren't exactly strangers to it.
His girls aren't strangers to a lot of things.
Soda laughs, though he doesn't know shit about Rainbow Brite, but Pony has a 4 year old, and does.
"We're going on the swings," Paige calls out, pointing the swings maybe fifteen feet away, but separated by a small path. Her arms wrapped around Hazer like the toddler is actually gonna be able to make a break for it in her purple and pink and Oshkosh B'gosh straitjacket her daddy wrangled her into. And then remembered she still needed her diaper changed, it's still a new experience, raising his child from birth.
"Alright, look out for your cousin, Paige" Pony's eyes serious as his tone is firm. His eyes are a stricter dad than he had.
But he doesn't need to remind her of that, and Hazer's mitten is already wrapped in hers.
And Daphne who earlier was using his knees as a butterfly press and her Daddy's thick thighs as parallel bars, balancing on them while he kissed her and rubbed noses.
Daphne's doing a wobbly handstand next to a snowwoman that when she stands right side up barely goes up to her knees, next to the big kid's slide. The snowwomen's name is Beatrice.
Daphne tries to do a cartwheel and crashes, and Pony's nose and eyes squeeze while he says just barely audible, 'ouch.' Before he can say anything more, she jumps up, shakes herself and skips towards her sister and cousin.
"You alright there, sunshine?"
Daffy gives her daddy the thumbs up sign.
Hazer who doesn't want to be carried, fusses. "You want down now?" Paige says, in her tone she uses when talking to doggies and babies alike and puts Hazer back down.
Daffy grabs for Hazer's other hand, but not gentle like Paige, more like a jolt or yank. Hazer gives her cousin a look, still many years before Hazer will master an eye roll that reminds everyone that despite being her mama's clone in looks, she too is Pony's niece. Soda wonders what features his children, Patrick and Hazer, get from Shaw. It's not really a secret, but everyone also knows Darry and Soda Curtis are brothers, will always be brothers.
"I owe your kid another arm," he says in a wry tone, scratching his beard and adjusting his neck.
"Sure do," Soda says, but laughs, but is glad Mary ain't here, to watch the way Daphne, who is truth be told Mary's favorite even as she doesn't have favorites, almost pulled her Hazer to the ground. Sheesh.
"Beatrice!" Daphne cries out and takes off back to the snowwoman, throwing herself on the ground next to her, "oh my sweet girl, my dahlin' love Beatrice," then she stands up locks her legs and extends her arms, "you must die now BEATRICE!"
"NOO!" Paige, still holding Hazer's little hand, cries out, her face contorting into panic, "don't kill her! Please don't Daffy, don't kill Beatrice!" she shrieks.
"Paige," Pony hustles towards them, but his voice is on it's edge, annoyed by her.
Daphne kisses the air around Beatrice. "Beatrice you must pull through! You must LIVE! Oh Beatrice! You're alive, you're alive! You have melted my heart. Your illness is gone darling Beatrice."
Meanwhile Soda, who grew up with Pony and all of his imagination, eyes widen a bit, what the hell?
Paige's chest rising in panic begins to ease.
"Thank you Daffy," he says.
This is their normal.
Hand in hand the girls walk, forming a migratory V, with Hazer toddling between.
"Look both ways Hazer," Daphne instructs in her Rainbow Brite snow boots, ready to cut across the path made more through decades of foot traffic and weeds than intention.
Paige looks both ways and Daphne looks both ways and then Hazer looks both ways too, even though she only turned one in October.
And then Paige looks again.
whew. ;)
Thank you SO much for reading :) I appreciate it so much and I'm so grateful.
Here it it is my DARRY IS A SHEPARD STORY. AHH.
Okay so I could go into a really really long explanation of the whole history of this storyline, (elements have been in my head for years, some like the Shepard element for about a year, some like Soda having a different biological father than Darry (and therefore Soda & Darry not being biologically related) for a few months. BUT that would make this a 20,000 word note, BUT I seriously would LOVE LOVE LOVE to discuss it ALL or ANYTHING with everyone! SO feel free to PM me :)
Most importantly the biggest shout out to my amazing friend Happier. Y'all know her as the fabulous writer she is but she's also a lifesaver, I had the idea of having Soda with a different biological father than Darrel Sr, and she very generously allowed me to use her fabulous creation: Shaw. Shaw in her world (the right world!) is Darrel Sr's brother, so mine is a parallel version of her Shaw. I am so incredibly grateful for her, and if you want to know more about Darrel & Maggie (and Shaw's) background and family check out The Beginning by HappierThanMost. Also most of all a huge shout out to my girl for being with me on this (I admit it! A bit crazy trip) from the very beginning. It's cliche maybe but it's true, I couldn't do this without her.
Hinton owns the Outsiders, she also owns Eddie & Joe who are in Rumble Fish, Cole and Mona Collins (because I couldn't resist the idea of Cole being Tim, Curly, Angela & Darry's brother-in-law). Lou Ann is my original character :)
OH and yes the circus whistle thing that I used as the origin for the Shepard-Curtis whistle is a real thing. Also I didn't put it in the text, but Pony & Aimee have watched Freaks the 1932 movie anytime it's the theater. That my friends, is just canon. ;)