uhhh is anyone even reading this anymore lmao. lmk if u are i guess.
xxx
"Kinda weird, ain't it?"
Steve reflexively tensed up as soon as he felt the strong, calloused hand clap his shoulder, followed by the familiar voice of Darrel Curtis. He resisted the vital urge to shrug away his childhood friend's hand and question, not really in the mood to take a trip down memory lane. He gripped the neck of his beer bottle a bit tighter, trying not to let Darry sense the growing tension in his neck and shoulders.
"What's weird?" He countered nonchalantly, not bothering to meet his friend's gaze. Instead, his eyes darted across the back patio, with its well-maintained lawn and swanky-looking furniture. It looked too picturesque to belong to the house; the suburban scene clashing immensely with what he had known all his life. The only word that really came to mind when describing the backyard was...soc-y.
"Bein' back here after all these years,'' Darry clarified, letting his hand on Steve's shoulder guide the shorter man towards the glass patio table where Keith, Ponyboy, and the woman who Steve assumed to be Ponyboy's girlfriend were currently sat with their own drinks. "Man, we haven't seen you since that kid out there was just a few weeks old," The older man continued, his voice replete with disbelief as he took his own seat adjacent to his youngest brother. "It's gotta be freaky, right? Seein' the old town again?" He questioned, and Steve took another much-needed swig from his drink. He would need to rely on more than one Coors to get him through the night, that was for certain.
"Only thing freaky about it is this guy getting hitched," Steve commented dryly, referring to Keith who sat across from him, already a solid two or three drinks in. Keith let out the same raucous laugh Steve had once been way too acquainted with.
"Hey c'mon, man!" The immature man protested loudly. "You don't think of me as the husbandly type?" He questioned mockingly, pouting slightly. Steve offered a placating chuckle, but still felt rather uneasy at the whole scene. He was glad that the attention had shifted away from him, however momentarily, but it still felt so damn surreal. Being back in that house with a group of people that he once called brothers but were now nothing more than faded faces from a past life— it just didn't feel right.
"I don't think of you at all." Steve tossed back sardonically, finishing off the rest of his beer. He contemplated skulking off to the blue cooler he had seen Darry initially fish the two Coors from but doubted he would considering the fact that he still had to drive the kids back to the hotel that evening anyway. No way in hell was he going to accept Darry's inevitable offer of just crashing there for the night. He could just envision Superman's smug look now, cool eyes boring into him like a couple of laser beams and predicting his every move. Just as he always had in the past.
"One thing I know is that the world's gonna be a lot safer with Two-Bit Matthews as a married man." Ponyboy chimed in, using his left hand to raise a toast as his right arm was slung across his girlfriend's shoulder. The woman, who couldn't have been much younger than Pony himself, was a real looker. Her thick, dark curls framed her round face, bobbing around her like a halo when she laughed. Steve would've probably found her attractive enough to dust out his moves for if she hadn't happened to be the girlfriend of his best friend's younger brother. Not that that fact had stopped him in the past.
"I'll drink to that." Keith agreed heartily, raising his own drink and taking an impressive swig. From his peripheral, Steve caught a glimpse of Darry rolling his eyes as the all-knowing smirk returned to his countenance with natural ease.
"You'll drink to anything." Darry pointed out bluntly, earning a comedic wink from the man in question. The companionable silence stretched on for about twenty more blissful seconds before Darry spoke up once more, unfortunately fixing his gaze back on Steve.
"How's Texas been treating you? Get into any scrapes with the cowboys down there?" Darry questioned, chuckling at his own joke. Steve resisted the urge to sneer a snarky response. He knew that coming in hot with blazing defenses was no way to act, but for some reason, he felt the indescribable need to have his guard up. It was almost ironic considering how the Curtis home had— at one point- been the only place where he felt as though he could actually be himself.
"It's been good. Got my own auto shop and all, kids are doing good in school," he responded casually, purposefully omitting any major details. "What about up here, man? Still got that West Side Story thing going in the high school?" He countered, eager to switch the topic of discussion away from his life.
"Nah, luckily that all died down," Darry shrugged, idly thumbing the paper label on his half-empty beer bottle. "You know kids these days, they've got their little cliques or whatever. I guess nowadays they ain't tryna kill each other like we were back in the day." The older man laughed, but it was anything but joyful. The sentiment hung in the air for a few moments, lingering as if it were a pesky fly they couldn't bat away.
"Yeah, they know better nowadays, not like us back then," Keith chimed in, gleefully repeating the gist of what Darry had just explained. "D'you remember that one time in gym class when that soc tried to tackle you and you whipped out a blade?" The man asked, turning his attention towards Steve. Steve felt his blood run cold at the mention of the event. Tentatively, he spared a backward glance towards the glass patio door, suddenly wary that one of his boys had wandered outside and heard that damning piece of evidence. The last thing he needed was an interrogation from Daniel and Chance or an onslaught of confused questions from James. "Man, I thought you were gonna get yourself thrown straight outta school, right after you got your clock cleaned, of course." Keith laughed, running a hand through his receding hair. Steve offered a curt nod, but nothing more. He wasn't really one to reminisce about all the stupid shit he pulled as a teenager, unlike some people.
"Yep...sure do," Steve confirmed dryly, popping the 'p' in 'yep' to communicate that he wasn't too thrilled about it either. Desperate to talk about anything else, he found himself turning to Ponyboy and his girlfriend across the table. "You still live around here too?" He inquired, not really interested in the answer but wanting to shift the topic once more.
"Nah, me and Brenda are just bumming around for the week," Pony explained, drumming his fingers against the glass tabletop with his free hand. "We got our own place over in the city, but we come down sometimes." He shrugged, a minuscule smile decorating his face to pair with his breezy response.
"Not often enough, little brother." Darry reminded him, but his voice was soft and playful. Steve had noticed almost immediately that Darry had lost most of the rigidity in his personality that had once made him the kind of guy that nobody wanted to pick a fight with. Unlike Dallas Winston or Tim Shepard, Darry was only putting on the tough-as-nails front as a temporary stint. The man had a heart of gold, but dire circumstances had forced him to learn how to protect wearing said heart on his sleeve as he had done as a naive kid. Steve could tell that Ponyboy and Darry's relationship had only grown stronger over the years, but he also figured that had something to do with the absence of the middle Curtis brother. Grief had a funny way of forcing people together in the end.
"The place looks real good. It's nice you kept it after all these years." Steve commented hurriedly to clear the slightly uncomfortable silence that was settling in. Well, perhaps it had only been uncomfortable for him. All of the other occupants at the patio table seemed perfectly content with one another's company— it was really just Steve who stuck out like a sore thumb and was painfully aware of it too.
"Yeah, couldn't seem to let go of it," Darry chuckled, shrugging nonchalantly as his eyes darted between the glass tabletop and the neatly maintained lawn. "My parents and Soda...they would've wanted me to stick around here I think," he added. However, Steve noted the marked absence of tension in his jaw. In the past, it had always been difficult for Darry to mention his late parents. Now, it just appeared as if it were a faint memory to the older man; something to work through, but not against. "It's funny though, it's never felt the same since we all cleared out. It always seems too quiet when I come down in the morning and the couch is empty or there's not a horde of teenage boys going through my fridge." He joked, eyeing his friends and younger brother pointedly as he made his last statement.
"You ate more than all of us put together!" Pony protested ardently, his girlfriend bringing her hand up to cover her mouth as she laughed. Even Steve managed a weak smile at the response.
"Nah, that was Soda," Darry remarked wistfully, having already drained the last of his beer. "He could've eaten an entire cake and still saved room for two dinners." The oldest man chuckled, his eyes crinkling in the corners as his statement hung in the air. Steve did his best to cover up the way his jaw clenched at the mention of his best friend. The words lingered in the air but didn't seem to bother anybody half as much as they bothered Steve. Thankfully, Keith seemed to notice the change in the atmosphere across the table and immediately switched the subject to his impending bachelor party that coming Friday.
The conversation continued with forced ease and pretty soon Maureen joined them at the patio table, pulling up a mismatched chair next to her husband. Steve joined in with a few begrudging comments, but it was evident that he was the odd man out amongst the group of only somewhat familiar faces. He wondered if his 17-year-old self would have believed that he would one day never talk to some of the people he considered to be his closest friends again. It was an easy pill to swallow when considering most teenage friendships— kids graduate, go off to college, meet new people, and sometimes people just tend to drift away from each other naturally. However, there was nothing natural about their situation. The four men at the table had experienced more loss in each other's lives than what could be considered normal. They were like members of the same platoon, bonded for life by the most unfortunate circumstances. Steve always figured that what they had endured together would keep them tied for life, but in the end, he had been the one to break away and cut off communication completely.
Now? Now he was feeling as if he were watching their conversation from behind a locked window. Peering through the glass panes, struggling to make out what they were saying from his position. The feeling of unease settled deep in the pit of his stomach, making him all the more aware of how blatantly he didn't fit in here anymore.
He was just about to excuse himself in hopes of retreating inside and bribing one of his kids to fake a headache so they could dip out early when the sliding glass door behind him was shoved open frantically. James and Darry's daughter stumbled outside, nearly tripping over one another as they ran up to the table in disarray.
"Dad! Dad!" James cried, rushing up to his father's side. Steve instantly felt the flare of irritation in his chest, knowing that James only got this upset whenever Chance or Daniel lost their cool on him. What was more worrying, however, was the way that Darry's daughter also ran up to her parents in a similarly distressed manner. Steve suppressed a groan, wondering absentmindedly if he'd have to ground Chance or Daniel for pulling some stupid shit just a few hours into their trip and effectively torturing their little brother and some random kid.
"Mama! Mama!" Darry's daughter cried, clinging to her mother's side. Maureen set her glass down, diverting her full attention to her daughter as Darry looked on with concern.
"What? What's wrong, baby?" The woman asked. Her questioning was pointless, however, as immediately after both young children began frantically talking over one another in a desperate frenzy to explain their hysterics.
"Mark— an' I told him not to go!" The young girl cried
"And Chance...he-he, I didn't even notice!" James piped in instantly, his eyes going as wide as saucers as he stared up at Steve.
"And I said you'd be mad!"
"And Danny said they were probably dead!"
Finally, the incoherent shouting was put to an end as Darry took on his usual authoritative tone, silencing both of the children effectively.
"Alright, alright! One at a time!" The older man commanded. "Winnie, what happened?" He inquired, regarding his still hysterical daughter with a concerned gaze.
"Mark said he'd show Uncle Steve's kids around the neighborhood, but I told him not to go cause Mama'd be mad, but they left anyway and now it's been an hour and they ain't come back and they're dead!" The young girl cried out in a single breath. Steve took in the explanation, narrowing his eyebrows as she hurriedly informed her parents of the situation. He groaned in exasperation as he realized what she was saying and immediately pushed back his chair, clambering to his feet and pinching the bridge of his nose as he squeezed his eyes shut. Dammit. He wanted an excuse to get the hell out of there but this wasn't exactly his ideal situation either.
"Jesus Christ, that stupid kid. When I get my hands on him—" he muttered agitatedly. He took a step forward to retreat into the house in search of his car keys, but a protest from the table stopped him before he could depart.
"I'm sure it's fine, Steve-o, calm down. We used to stay out all night and we were completely fine!" The cheerful voice of Keith Matthews chimed in, irritatingly carefree. Steve could have punched him right then and there but figured it would have been slightly inappropriate to attack the groom a few days before his wedding ceremony.
"No offense, Keith, but I'm not really in the mood to take parenting advice from you right now," he snapped impatiently. He placed a hand on James' shoulder, silently instructing his youngest to kid back inside by beckoning towards the door. "Sorry to cut this short but I've gotta go find my son." He grumbled, pushing an agitated hand through his hair, feeling as though he wanted to rip the short strands from his scalp. Of course Chance had to go and do the one thing he knew would piss Steve off more than anything. Of course, he knew his middle son was too clever to pull the excuses that Daniel or James would offer up if they were caught in the same act. Of course, he had to be the idiot to drag them out here in the first place.
He stepped towards the sliding glass door once more, making a mental checklist of who to chew out first when he felt that same strong hand on his shoulder once more.
"Steve, I know my kid. Mark's not dumb, he and Chance are probably on their way back already," Darry rationalized. Steve flared up at the older man, vehement defiance flickering in his dark-eyed gaze. "We can go out looking for them if you want, but I guarantee they'll be back in thirty minutes anyway and you can yell at him then." His friend chuckled light-heartedly. There was a part of Steve that wanted so desperately to take his advice and take a load off. To not worry about Tulsa, Oklahoma, and whatever mess his son was getting into. There was a part of them that wanted to believe everything Darry had ever told him, just as he had when he was 17 and the world seemed so forgiving.
But he wasn't 17 anymore, and Darry wasn't the trusted friend he could turn to in any situation.
"Really, man? You think now's the time for this?" He retorted harshly, letting Darry's hand fall from his shoulder. He was acutely aware that the eyes of everyone on the patio were trained on them, but somehow he couldn't care less.
"What? I'm just tryna help—" Darry protested, his own eyes searching Steve's for any indication of meaning. Unfortunately for Darry, Steve didn't buy that dumbstruck saint act for a second.
"I don't need another condescending lecture about how to raise my kids, Superman," He snarled, absolutely seething at this point. It was as if all of the repressed emotions and disregarded casualties of the last sixteen years had hit him head-on in that instant. "You've given me enough shit about how irresponsible I was to last a lifetime, so how about you back off and let me go find my kid?" Steve concluded, rendering the other man and the rest of the group effectively speechless.
Finally, he retreated inside and grabbed his discarded car keys from the kitchen counter. He shot a warning glance towards his two remaining sons in the living room, knowing that they could tell he wasn't in the mood for any more shenanigans that evening. He made the familiar route out the front door and past the chain-link fence that surrounded the yard to his car parked on the street.
Just as he was about to climb inside and furiously start the ignition, he heard the screen door slam once more and he reflexively tore his gaze away from the driver's side door of his car as he was greeted with the image of Darry and Keith standing in the front doorway, looking anything but infuriated. In fact, they even looked...remorseful.
"C'mon, don't be a hothead," Darry admonished as if it were still second nature to him. Steve figured, in a way, it absolutely was. "Just get in and we'll help ya look." The older man offered, gesturing towards his pick-up parked in the driveway. Steve hesitated, his glare still very much fixed on his face as he regarded the two men. Couldn't he just say no? Tell them to fuck off and let him decide how he would handle the situation? Couldn't they see how frazzled he was by being back here in the first place? Didn't he have a right to tell them no after all that they had put him through?
He couldn't answer any of his own questions. It was almost like when James would ask impossible nonsense to him and Alice because he was eight years old and that's just what children did. All he knew the answer to was that his kid was wandering the streets of Tulsa with the son of his best friend's brother and he couldn't get the image of socs driving up in tricked-out Mustangs to terrorize boys from the East side of town. He couldn't forget the scars on his old friend's faces or scabbed over cuts on kid's necks left by sharpened blades. All he knew at that moment was that he was cramming his own keys into his jacket pocket and silently following Darry Curtis and Keith Matthews into the cab of the pick-up. He breathed in deeply, the leather interior providing some sense of false comfort. His stomach lurched as Darry turned the key in the ignition and Steve willed himself not to be sick as they started down the once familiar road.
There was only one place in the world more miserable than the humid, triple-canopy rainforests of Vietnam— and that place was undoubtedly Tulsa, Oklahoma
xxx
"So...what do you do around here for fun?"
Chance absentmindedly kicked at a pebble against the cracked, concrete sidewalk as the two boys made their way through the neighborhood that afternoon. The late September sun was hostile and unrelenting. Chance swiped the back of his hand across his sweat-streaked forehead, silently regretting not removing his flannel shirt before agreeing to follow Mark out into the dull, drab streets of Tulsa, Oklahoma. That wasn't the only thing he was regretting either.
"Oh, y'know, track and field, rock climbing, running with the bulls." The other boy droned, listing off the activities in a casual tone. Chance tensed up as soon as he processed the words leaving Mark's mouth. The arid silence that followed didn't exactly ease any of the growing tension. Chance glanced at the other boy's pair of metal crutches, warily eyeing the handgrips he was clutching. He couldn't help but let his eyes wander to the empty space in the boy's pant leg, but then immediately realized how awful that was. He felt his face involuntarily heat up and he quickly focused his gaze upwards, pretending to let the passing clouds catch his eye.
It took two seconds before Mark burst out laughing.
"No shit, dude, you really can't take a joke huh?" The other boy chuckled, leaning his body forward and taking another step across a crack in the sidewalk. Chance suddenly felt ten times worse than he had just seconds prior after the other kid's initial answer. His tongue felt heavy in his mouth as he struggled to come up with a response, but found himself falling short. "That's okay, I heard that they banned humor in Texas recently. Wouldn't expect you to know anyway." Mark assured him with that same mischievous smirk to match the glint in his bright blue eyes. Chance rolled his eyes at the other boy, shoving his hands deep into the safety of his jean pockets.
"Yeah and Tulsa seems like a real culture fest," he scoffed, glancing around the dusty street they found themselves walking down. It really was as dull as any place could get, which was why Chance was confused as to his father's reasoning to hide his hometown from them in the first place. What was so serious about dead lawns, run-down businesses, and empty parking lots? If anything, it just looked like the town that time forgot. "What the hell do people do up here? Get shitfaced and go cow tipping?" He questioned, only half-serious in his line of inquiry.
"Don't knock the most successful sport in the state, man, we're ranked third nationally," Mark warned him jokingly. Chance managed an indulgent scoff at that.
"Maybe that's why my Dad hasn't told us anything about this place. It's too boring for any kind of introduction." He sighed, wishing that he had just declined Mark's generous offer to take a walk around the most mind-numbing town in the United States. He'd at least rather be back in an air-conditioned house with a TV set, even if he did have to put up with James talking his ear off or Daniel shooting him exasperated looks from across the room.
"Hey, same reason my Dad hasn't told us anything about you!" Mark retorted quickly. Chance nearly laid a playful punch on his left shoulder, as he would have done with any of his friends had they said something similar, but immediately abandoned that idea when he realized how that could go south. Instead, he just took a page out of Mark's own book and opted for the biting, sarcastic responses that the boy seemed so skilled at conjuring up.
"You're hysterical, really. Somebody get Johnny Carson on the phone." He scoffed, running a hand through his hair and using the sweat from his forehead to slick back the dark brown strands.
It was surreal, almost, walking down the same avenues he knew his Dad must have walked down once when he was Chance's age. It served as a bridge between the man that Chance had known all his life and the man— or boy— that his father had been before having kids. He hadn't realized until actually being in the ever-mysterious yet boring Tulsa that there was such a strong disconnect between those two versions of his Dad. As Chance and his brothers matured, it became more clear that they really didn't know much about their Dad before Daniel's birth. They had, of course, heard about Vietnam and how their parents had met, but beyond that was a void. Being there in the same town that his Dad had grown up in made Chance wonder what there was to hide in the first place or why he had never told them about his young life.
"What's got your panties in a twist?" Mark inquired, pulling Chance from his reverie and yanking him back to the reality of the hot afternoon. Chance merely kicked at another pebble in his path, twisting his mouth into a tight-lipped frown.
"It's weird," he sighed, earning a raised eyebrow from the other boy. "I just didn't know my Dad had this whole other life that he never told us about," he explained, surprising even himself as he revealed the actual reasoning behind his thought process to this near stranger. Mark merely shrugged, which didn't exactly translate well due to the crutches, but Chance caught his drift. "You don't think you'd be bugging if you figured something like that out about your dad?" He countered, attempting to put his situation into perspective for the other boy.
"Dunno, my Dad and I don't talk that much," Mark responded curtly, for once leaving off the snappy remark. "Here, we'll turn here." He added, jerking his head towards the right and Chance dutifully followed as Mark led them down another similar-looking street.
"How come?" He pressed, wondering whether or not he should have asked in the first place. He figured it was a fair questioning considering he had answered Mark honestly. Besides, clearly, the other boy wasn't too sensitive about certain topics that Chance wouldn't have the courage to bring up.
"Well he works 9-5 and I work 5-9, it's a very convoluted schedule, but I see him every three weeks or so at the conferences in Kenosha," Mark responded, reverting to his usual sarcastic nature. Chance furrowed his brow, waiting for further explanation but just received another mocking laugh from the boy.
"Dude, lighten up! I swear you're about as fun as roadkill," he groaned, light brown curls spilling over onto his forehead as he navigated them off of the concrete sidewalk and into a crosswalk. "Do you tell your parents everything? Every time you get a hard-on for your English teacher do you have to give your Dad a call?" Mark demanded, his thick eyebrows raising so far up into his hairline that they nearly disappeared under his bangs.
"Hey, science teacher, not English," Chance corrected jokingly, earning a genuine chuckle from the other boy. "And obviously not." He added hastily, wiping the back of his hand across his sweat-streaked forehead once more.
"Alright, so neither do I. My Dad's a good guy, we're just not really similar so we don't have that much to talk about," Mark half-shrugged, his tone bordering on defensive. Chance remained silent for a beat, figuring that Mark still had more to say on the matter. They meandered their way down another half block before Mark spoke once more.
"He's this big sports guy, right? He was this huge football player in high school and he was supposed to play in college but he never went," Mark explained unprompted and Chance furrowed his brow. "He won all these trophies, watches the games like it's a religion, but obviously I'm not really what he's looking for in a son if you couldn't tell," Mark scoffed as he gestured shakily towards his empty pant leg. For once that afternoon his voice was devoid of its usual sarcastic light-hearted air. Chance tried not to focus on the rhythmic clicking made by Mark's crutches as the silence grew between them. "And it's not like he openly resents me for it or anything. We get along okay, it's just another barrier between us I s'pose." He added with finality and Chance swallowed dryly. He had never considered that could have been the reasoning behind Mark's standoffish reply. He had no idea how to respond to such a daunting explanation without unintentionally offending the other boy. Obviously, he had never experienced anything in that same vein— and he never would, nor would he be able to understand how Mark felt.
"That's rough." He managed to choke out after a beat of silence. He nearly kicked himself as soon as the words left his mouth with nothing to follow up with.
'Nice going, Randle,' he mused inwardly, feeling his stomach churn with anxiety as Mark processed his response. Suddenly, he felt his face heat up with shame when he realized that just moments before he had been complaining about his own perfectly acceptable relationship with his father. What the hell did he have to complain about in comparison to Mark's situation?
"It's okay, we've got those Kenosha conferences," The other boy scoffed, always deflecting back to his natural sarcastic state. "Can't forget about those." He reminded Chance with a sardonic grin.
The two boys walked for a few minutes longer, Mark leading the way with the direction of their tour and the conversation. Finally, they approached a downtrodden-looking park, guarded by a broken chain link fence and patches of dying grass. The sun was beginning to flirt with the edge of the horizon and Chance absentmindedly wondered how long they were planning to hang out or if his Dad was wondering where he was. Part of him wanted to just throw in the towel and ask Mark if he was ready to head back to the house, but the other part of him defied that instinct. In actuality, this was probably the only time he'd be able to check out the town his father had grown up in without the stilted excuses or censored stories. Mark didn't strike him as someone too knowledgeable about his father's backstory, but he was a more reliable narrator than his own Dad had been throughout the course of Chance's life.
Mark led them through the vacant park, ambling past overgrown hedges and a few abandoned climbing structures. Finally, they approached a drained circular fountain with a crumbling brick structure and Mark slowly eased himself down to sit on the edge of the empty fountain. Chance followed suit, removing his hands from his jean pockets as he steadied himself against the wall of the fountain.
"So is this all you guys do around here? Hang around creepy abandoned parks?" Chance questioned, regarding their surroundings with light skepticism. The park was depressing, but he figured it certainly matched the energy of the rest of Tulsa.
"If by "you guys" you mean me, myself, and I then sure," he chuckled, removing one of his arms from inside the cuff of his crutch and using his now free hand to push back a few of his messy curls. "It's a regular Mark Curtis pastime, patent pending." He added with a smirk. Chance kicked at the sidewalk beneath them with the scuffed toe of his converse. He tried not to think about how Mark couldn't do the same.
"You never invite any girls back here? I bet they'd get a real kick out of the moldy fountain and dead leaves." He joked, running his hand alongside the wall of the fountain they sat upon. The early fall dust circled in the air, kicking up a few leaves in its wake. It was serene— almost a temporary sanctuary from the rest of the unassuming town. Chance could see why Mark liked to hang out here. He found himself wondering if his father and his friends ever discovered this park, or what it had looked like back in the day when his Dad was a kid.
"Shocking as this might be given my sparkling personality, there's not a whole lot of chicks begging for my attention right now," Mark scoffed, an edge of bitterness lingering in his tone as he followed Chance's gaze over the scene before them. "They're usually looking for the type of guy who can drive them to dates in a BMW, not a public bus." He explained, his sharp blue eyes narrowing on something in the distance. Chance shot him a bemused glance that Mark instantly shrugged off.
"Don't look so shocked, kids are dicks. That's the way it's always been," The other boy added casually, but Chance could hear the bite of venom in his voice as he explained. Being 13 and subjected to the trivial horrors of public junior high, Chance was well acquainted with the idea of kids their age being assholes, but he figured it happened to hit Mark a lot harder than it could ever affect Chance.
"It's a pecking order, y'know?" Mark continued. "Find the weakest guy and give him shit until he turns around and finds the next weakest guy. Of course, only problem is there's not a whole lot of guys below me on the food chain right now," the boy concluded with a laugh, but it was void of any genuine humor. "Maybe I just gotta find someone with no arm, kick him around a little bit," He proposed, but stopped himself as soon as he caught the unintentional meaning behind his words. "Hah, kick, get it? I crack myself up, man." He mused, chuckling slightly at his own play on words. Chance, still slightly shocked at the truth behind his revelation, merely rolled his eyes.
"You're a nut." He retorted, shaking his head in disbelief. Of course, all of what Mark said was absolutely true, and Chance figured it went double for the boy who had experienced a lot more in his life than Chance ever would. However, the cynicism was what shocked him most. Mark spoke as if he had already seen what the world had to offer and turned his back on it. Chance imagined some of that had to do with his feelings of not fitting into the perfect family image that had been curated, but it was still alarming to hear a kid Chance's age speak as if he were a jaded man well into adulthood. The way he spoke reminded Chance of his own father— the biting, bold sentences and strong, unwavering opinions— it was a real wake-up call if anything. Most of all, it was refreshing. The conversations that carried on in school and with the baseball team were anything but intellectual. Who was kissing who? Who was looking cute that day? Who cheated on what test? Speaking with Mark was like speaking to a teacher or somebody equally as wise. Although Chance didn't agree with his every word, it was still interesting to hear.
"I'm a realist," Mark protested, combatting Chance's observation with his own truth. "When our Dads were kids they used to catch shit all the time for being from this neighborhood," he explained. Chance perked his head up at that, intrigued by the new addition to his Dad's shrouded backstory. "The rich kids would come down and terrorize them, fighting in bars and in the streets and all that. You couldn't even look at a kid from the West side without getting your ass beat from here to Bixby. They called themselves Greasers, cause of all the shit they put in their hair." He expounded and Chance scoffed in disbelief. Part of him wanted to believe Mark's tale, but the logical side of his brain was against it. His words were plausible, but Chance could barely picture his father as the type of man to get caught up in a bad fight—- especially considering how pissed he got whenever he caught Chance and Daniel picking on James or fighting in the slightest. However, the information he did have about his father's childhood was so scarce that Mark could have said anything, and Chance would have believed him.
"What? Like John Travolta? Did they burst into song in the cafeteria too?" Chance clarified, raising his eyebrows in disbelief. Mark considered him with a bewildered look of his own.
"Your Dad's never told you any of this?" The other boy questioned, his cool blue stare narrowing in on Chance who suddenly felt rather embarrassed. He merely shook his head, silently waiting for Mark to continue. "Man, that was like this town's legacy. There was always some big fight going down one week or another between our parents and the rich kids. It didn't matter what happened, they just hated each other's guts for no reason," he elaborated and Chance felt his stomach churn with a combination of adrenaline and apprehension. The lingering thought that his father had been hiding from him their entire lives was back in an instant and for once, unable to explain away. Now he was finally getting the truth once and for all.
"Did, uh, do you know anything about what my Dad was like back then?" He ventured warily, nearly having to force the words from his mouth. His ears tinged red as he heard the absurdity of his own question, but Mark seemed to perk up at the prompt, eager to launch into a story.
"Our Dads had this one friend way back then and one night he and my Uncle Ponyboy stayed out super late and—"
"Chance Randle! What the hell were you thinking?"
Shit.
The sudden intrusion pulled his attention away from Mark as his eyes skittishly darted towards the entrance of the park. The voice was unmistakably his father's and his suspicions were confirmed not a second later as his gaze landed upon the image of his Dad heading back towards the fountain. He was flanked by two of his friends from the house and Chance felt his mouth go as dry as the Sahara when he recognized one of the other men as Mark's father. He immediately jumped up from the fountain wall, hurriedly handing Mark his discarded crutch. The other boy expressed no outward reaction as both of their fathers and the other man approached, but Chance felt tenser than he ever had in his entire life.
"Ohh, the full name. That can't be good." Mark joked, but Chance wasn't too inclined to laugh at that moment. His father walked right up to them, the other two men hanging back by a few feet. Chance took notice of Mark's dad shooting him a look, but nothing more. Nothing that could possibly match the level of his father's current exasperation. Chance couldn't even remember the last time he had seen his Dad this pissed— at least not in situations involving Chance.
"I leave you for two seconds and suddenly you vanish? What the hell made you think that was okay?" His father demanded, absolutely enraged. Chance stood there dumbstruck as his father exploded, unsure of how to react or respond. He figured the look on his face matched that of somebody who had just seen a ghost. "Newsflash, kid, you don't live around here. You don't know what to do or where to go if something bad happened, so you really think sneaking off behind my back is a bright idea?" He continued, his eyebrow arching dangerously. Chance had only ever experienced this level of anger from his father once or twice in his entire life. He couldn't exactly say he was a fan of being on the receiving end.
"Dad, I—" he scrambled for the right words to say to remedy the situation, but it didn't matter. The lecture was clearly far from over.
"You don't ever, ever leave without my permission in a strange place," The man commanded, his jaw clenching in rigid agitation. Chance's face burned with a mix of mortification and his own anger. "What are you, two? Do I have to have someone watching you constantly so I don't worry about you wandering off down some random street?" His Dad snapped, his eyes boring into Chance's with an unfamiliar intensity. Chance knew that it was more intelligent to nod and agree, but he felt something boiling within him as he took the condescending lecture. If his Dad had just informed him of why Tulsa was so dangerous in the first place, he never would have left. If his Dad had told him anything at all over the course of the last 13 years of his life, maybe he wouldn't have to rely on fragmented stories from random kids to piece together the story of his father's life. Against his better judgment and years of lectures from both of his parents, Chance fought back with equal frustration.
"I-I was with Mark! Why are you freaking out?" He protested, gesturing to his right towards the other boy. He felt a bit of remorse for dragging Mark into the situation, but it wasn't a fair fight to begin with. "I never tell you when I'm leaving back home." He reminded his Dad, feeling sorely irritated at the whole fight. Not to mention the fact that his father found it appropriate to shout at him in the middle of a public park with three other people lingering just a few feet away.
"Yeah, back home where I know that you know not to act like a dumbass. Just because you're in a different place doesn't give you free agency to throw all of my rules out the window," his father continued, his brow furrowing intensely as he admonished. Chance involuntarily felt his gaze dart over towards the two other men and Mark silently observing their heated discussion just a few feet away. His Dad followed his line of sight as well and suddenly tensed up as well. He exasperatedly dragged a hand down the side of his face, stopping to pinch the bridge of his nose irritably. "Jesus, just— get in the car. I'm not doing this here. We can talk about it at the hotel." He demanded, dropping his volume significantly as he probably realized how unfortunate the setting for their conversation was.
"Talk about it or have you yell at me for two hours?" Chance challenged, a flicker of defiance sparking the mouthy response. His father merely glared, placing a heavy hand on Chance's shoulder and beginning to guide him towards the dilapidated-looking pickup parked at the entrance. The man's friends and Mark silently followed, still keeping a noticeable distance.
"Watch your mouth, kid," his father warned sharply. Chance was surprised that he didn't earn a light smack on the back of the head for that comment. "You're lucky I don't ground you to watch your little brother for the rest of the trip." He muttered, the threat lingering heavily in the air as he followed the furious man back to the unfamiliar pickup truck. Chance shot a withering glance back at Mark and his own father as he climbed into the backseat of the truck. He wondered if Mark would receive even the slightest reprimand for the afternoon. He wondered if Mark had ever seen his own father as a complete stranger. He wondered if Mark ever felt like his parents were hiding something from him— constantly blocking him out from knowing the truth.
Chance heaved a sigh, leaning his head against the window on the right side of the backseat, not bothering to pull the seat belt around his torso. He felt the engine of the pickup startup with a delayed groan and he focused his gaze out the window as the rest of the group clambered into the cab of the truck.
"Yeah, some trip." He muttered to himself. As the truck driven by Mark's Dad pulled away from the abandoned park, he couldn't tear his attention away from the fountain and the ominous energy it carried. One thing he knew for sure— he was going to find out what his father was hiding from him no matter what. He deserved to know the truth for once.
xxx