Author's note: Okay, so I wanted to say straight off the bat that I know that people aren't big on, like, anything remotely involving Sandy, so thanks so much for giving this a try! I felt like there was more to her story, and now I get to write it all unraveling four years later. And there's a lot more going on than just Sandy's return, too, so there's some incentive to keep reading. ;)

Ahem, anyway:

Don't Think Twice, It's Alright

Chapter One

The Sound of Silence

It was a beautiful night, and she almost laughed at the injustice.

She'd crossed into Oklahoma a few miles back. Dust danced along the sides of the road, the twilight painted the horizon gold, and it was uncharacteristically and mercifully quiet as her blue Austin Mini Cooper rambled along the cracked road. Another dim restaurant flew by, and she wondered distantly how hard it could really be to disappear and restart everything from the bottom up.

She knew it had to be easier than this.

The car lurched over a pothole and a small body stirred in the back of the car, and Sandy had to bite back a curse.

"...there yet?" A sleep-dazed voice slurred over the rustling of blankets.

Sandy surveyed her son in the mirror and laughed. His light hair stuck up in tufts after being squished against the bags sharing the back seat with him, and he wore a rumpled expression. "Go back to sleep," she chided softly. "I'll tell you when we get there."

She watched him take a moment to consider the proposal. Finally, he mumbled a content "'kay" around a yawn and burrowed back into his nest of blankets.

Soft snoring filled the car, and she smiled softly. She almost felt bad, but a person could only spend so long in the car with a screaming four-year-old before a car malfunction started to seem like a merciful reprieve, and she'd reached that point about two hours out from Tampa city.

Quiet was a commodity among mothers, which wasn't something she'd ever thought she'd have figured out at twenty years old.

She waited until the breathing from the back seat evened out before putting in an old cassette. She hummed along to an outdated Simon and Garfunkel album and kept her eyes trained forward on the dusty road. The twang of a once-loved song filled the car, and she tried her best not to think about a city that was probably honestly host to a thousand loose strings and lies and heartbreaks but had too many that belonged to her.

So she spent the night reveling in the quiet, but when she passed the sign welcoming her to Tulsa, the lack of sound was deafening.

. . .

It was almost 5 o'clock when the dusty Ford made it back from the county jail.

Ponyboy watched the group file in, silent and sullen, as he weighed his odds of becoming involved in the oncoming shouting match. He settled on standing at the edge of the group, where he could observe without being pressured into immediate involvement, just as Darry broke the silence.

"Three times, Steve." He ran a hand down his face and pinned Steve with a glare that Ponyboy knew all too well.

"I can count," Steve mumbled, scowling at the floor and edging toward the door.

Ponyboy tried to be invested in the conversation, but it was hard to care when he'd been hearing the same argument for the past year.

Darry shook his head at Steve, who was fishing in his pockets for a lighter. "Then how'd you end up with the fuzz on your trail this time?" he challenged. Steve shrugged and fumbled with a cigarette, and Darry scoffed. "That's three times this month - How many more times do you think you can get hauled in before they stick you in the cooler for good?"

Steve bristled, but Soda took his cue to intervene. "Leave it, Dar." He strode toward the kitchen. "Ain't worth it right now."

He received a pointed look for his troubles, but Darry relented. "You get busted again, I'll continue this conversation," he warned.

Steve took a long drag of a cigarette. "Yeah, fine," he growled. "Ain't like Evie's gonna be around, and someone's always gotta end up screamin' at me."

Soda looked up from his rummaging through the cabinets. "You and Evie have a fight?"

Ponyboy almost snorted. Did he need to ask?

Steve picked at the oil underneath his fingernails. "More like she went off at me over nothin', but yeah."

Ponyboy considered Steve's feigned nonchalance and guessed that it hadn't been over nothing, but he knew better than to weigh in. Instead, he turned to Soda. "You still supposed to make dinner tonight?"

Soda emerged from the cabinet and spared an impish glance at Darry. "So long as no one's stoppin' me, I am." He victoriously snatched a box of spaghetti from the top shelf.

Ponyboy quietly worried on behalf of the spaghetti; the last time Soda had cooked dinner, it had been inexplicably dyed blue. Still, Darry sighed in resignation. "Your turn to cook, ain't it?"

Soda grinned and shook the box before opening the icebox to search for God only knew what. "Sure is."

The next ten minutes were filled with the usual din of Soda's cooking, but Ponyboy could feel the tension still clinging to the air like a fog. It had been like that a lot lately.

The past few months, he'd been starting to lose track of whether Steve was in or out of the cooler, and he didn't think that it was for any reason other than that someone in the gang always had to be ready to explode, and they were down a guy for the role. The four years since Dally's death had been heading in that direction, but things had come to a head when Steve's old man kicked him out for good nine months ago. Ponyboy guessed that Steve was doing his best to take up residence at the county jail instead of his folks' place.

A horn sounded from outside, and Ponyboy winced on behalf of the neighbors, who already weren't their biggest fans. The clock in the living room ticked like a countdown, but he couldn't figure out what it was counting to as the gang clanged around the kitchen in somehow detrimental efforts to help with dinner.

Two-bit traipsed into the room and stopped to consider the group. "Boy howdy, you could trip on the tension in here," he declared loudly as he slung his jacket over a chair.

Ponyboy laughed, because Two-bit's blithe commentary had effectively shattered said tension, and soon Soda was unceremoniously shoving plates at people as Darry tried to convince them that the dinner table was, in fact, there for a reason.

They made it five minutes into dinner before Evie stormed through the door, which was marginally longer than Ponyboy had expected.

"Steven Peter Randall," Evie snarled, marching toward his seat at the end of the table in all her bleached blonde glory, "why in hell did I just hear from Tim that you were hauled in last week?"

Ponyboy was reminded suddenly of something he'd heard at school, and he felt a familiar dread settle in his stomach. He shifted in his chair and wondered if they should give Evie and Steve the room.

"Because last I checked, you didn't have any business knowin'," Steve said with a condescending tone that Ponyboy knew wasn't going to defuse the situation.

Evie huffed. "Because we're broken up?" Steve motioned vaguely in agreement, and she scoffed. "That's bullshit and we both know it."

Ponyboy heard Two-Bit cackle from across the table. "She ain't wrong," he muttered and shrugged off the incredulous glances. Ponyboy couldn't decide whether Evie's or Steve's glare was scarier, but the combined force was enough to shut Two-Bit up real fast.

Steve crossed his arms as he stood up and stared Evie down for a second, and she held his gaze. "Are you un-breaking up with me?" he demanded flatly after a beat of quiet.

Evie rolled her darkly outlined eyes. "If you'll be out of jail long enough to take me out every once in a goddamn while."

That seemed to settle it, and Ponyboy had to wonder if all relationships or just this one became this incomprehensibly volatile. Steve glared at the table in general as he sat down, and Ponyboy fidgeted. "I'll get the plates," he mumbled as he stood up and his chair scraped the wooden floor.

Darry casted him a suspicious glance. "It ain't your night to do that."

Ponyboy shrugged it off and collected the plates with a series of clatters. "'S'okay."

As he hurried into the kitchen, he heard Two-Bit mutter a "what's up with the kid?" behind him, which he only sort of resented.

He shook his head; he was almost eighteen, and he was still 'the kid.' He'd spent the last two years complaining about it, and Soda had only told him that it just wasn't something he'd grow out of.

He dunked the first plate into uncomfortably hot water and tried to figure out the best strategy to bring up the news. Maybe he was kidding himself; maybe that crap he'd heard about time healing all wounds was right, and he shouldn't be so worried. But four years didn't seem long enough, and Soda hadn't been on an actual date for years, and Ponyboy wasn't sure that this was the sort of thing that time could erase.

At the table, the group was talking in more relaxed tones than they had been, but Ponyboy got the feeling that Evie wouldn't be sticking around. He was almost finished with the dishes when he heard the tell-tale scraping of a chair, followed by Evie's voice. "I'd better beat it - my folks'll think I got jumped or somethin'."

Ponyboy was already considering how long he'd have to wait after she left to break the news as the obligatory chorus of goodbyes filled the air.

She strode into the kitchen and flashed Ponyboy a grin. "See ya, kid- Oh!" She turned back towards the group at the table "Have y'all heard?"

Ponyboy set down his dish towel and cautiously approached the table as she went on, more wary than he thought he'd ever seen Evie.

"See, I was with some of the girls yesterday," she muttered like she was already regretting where it was going. "And they got to talkin' about the shit that went down a few years ago, and that got 'em talkin' about the shit goin' down now." Evie bit her lip and glanced once at Soda. "And they said Sandy Owens is back in town, 'cause her old man had a heart attack."

Ponyboy counted a solid four seconds of silence before anyone thought to speak, and for once he was grateful for Evie's bluntly honest nature, because he'd have tried to dull the blow, and that wasn't possible.

It was Steve who finally broke the silence, and he spoke gruffly, but Ponyboy noticed that he kept a careful eye on Sodapop. "Ain't like this changes anything." There were a few cautious nods around the table, and Steve laughed bitterly. "She'll be outa here before the past catches up to her."

Sodapop was studying the table, tracing his finger over one of the knots in the wood, but he glanced up to see the stares casted at him. "Yeah," he sighed, nodding like he'd already made himself believe it, "she will be."

Ponyboy, for all his imagination, couldn't quite make himself believe that.

. . .

"He has a hard head, doesn't he?"

They were standing in the park pretending not to notice the empty space where the fountain used to be. Sandy glanced at her mother and laughed.

Her blue eyes were fixed wryly on her grandson, who seemed to have face planted off the edge of a slide but was fast recovering. Her blonde hair was more streaked with gray than Sandy remembered and the crow's feet around her eyes were more prominent, but she looked at her daughter with the same weary fondness as she always had, and Sandy still didn't feel good about being back, but she felt better.

She'd been back in town for a week and her mother had already pegged James as both an angel and a source of unending mischief, which wasn't far from the truth. Linda Owens was an empathetic person, but Sandy was certain she'd reached her capacity for worrying about children's playground scrapes fifteen years ago.

James was already on his feet, squealing and yelling something about Superman as he rejoined the game of tag, and she laughed. "He has a hard head," she agreed, and added silently, don't ask where he gets it from.

It was a quiet day, and the park had been left to smiling lovers and screaming kids, just as it always had been. Her mother watched her carefully out of the corner of her eye, and Sandy felt like she knew where the conversation was headed.

"You been to the hospital yet?" She eventually asked with the measured ease of someone trying too hard to be casual.

Sandy sighed and kept her eyes trained on James, because he had a talent for injuring himself in the time it took her to blink. "No. I haven't."

The only response was a nod, and Sandy decided to let it rest at that. She hadn't seen her father for four years. She wasn't sure she wanted to yet.

"Smells like rain," she commented, more lightly than she felt like being.

She heard her mother laugh. "Looks like it, too," she pointed out. "We haven't had rain for a while. Want me to give the kid his five minute's notice?"

Sandy furrowed her brow. The sky above was blanketed in gray, and what little sun shone through the crevices of the dark clouds was watery and pale. The air was cool, cooler than it had been all week, and the final dredges of the clear day were fast disappearing as the wind blew in the storm. The playground was fast emptying, but there were still a few stray figures ambling through the path around the park.

She nodded. "We should go," she muttered, eyes trained on the pathway before turning back to her mother. "He'll be getting antsy now that everyone's leavin', anyway."

She strode for the playground, where James looked to be engaged in a competitive race to the top of the double slides. When he saw her below, his eyes widened almost comically and he pulled himself up the slide with more urgency and a cry of, "Can't go yet!"

She watched him flail at the crest of the slide before losing his footing and sliding back down in a pouting heap. Across the playground, two figures were ambling their way down the path, and she tried not to think too hard about it. She ruffled James' hair as he glowered. "Alright, kiddo, say bye to your friends."

His gaze shifted to rest on the boy now standing victoriously at the top of the slides. "They ain't my friends."

She raised an eyebrow. "James."

He sighed heavily, and she almost laughed as he turned to wave and muttered a subdued, "Bye."

Her mother smiled wryly, and Sandy got the feeling she was enjoying spectating her struggle immensely.

A bolt of lightning snaked through the sky, and she counted five seconds before the accompanying thunder crashed on the horizon. James was watching the sky with wide eyes. "Mama, can we go?"

She laughed lightly and scooped him into her arms, despite his half-hearted protests. "You ain't too old for this yet," she muttered, looking over her shoulder but barely able to see in the growing dark.

She was almost to the fountain-sized space she hated to look at when the next bolt of lightning danced across the dark background.

The rest of the people in the park were fast fleeing to their cars or houses, traipsing over the empty space like all it was was empty space.

She wondered how many of them knew they were almost standing on a grave.

It was better, she knew, that the fountain wasn't there; it was better that the scrap of a town she'd left behind had moved on since she'd left. But it felt wrong. It felt wrong standing there, being back in that town when four years ago there'd been a murder and missing persons and heartbreak and now all that remained were people trying their best to forget that.

She could see the outline of her car as the first raindrops began to fall and James tipped his head back in an attempt to catch them in his mouth, but he burrowed his head into her shoulder as a flash of lightning illuminated the park and Sandy found herself facing a figure that was taller than she'd expected but all too familiar.

She wasn't sure who looked away faster.

And she almost groaned out loud as she hurried to the car and tried not to process the fact that she'd just seen Ponyboy Curtis doing his best to pretend he didn't see her.

. . .

Rosie's Diner was a small, dilapidated building on the east side of town with fluorescent lights and linoleum tiles and a god-awful bright blue color scheme, and it was Sandy's new favorite place in Tulsa.

She sipped her coffee and relished in the feeling of unrecognition, because the diner hadn't been there four years ago, and she'd needed to be somewhere she couldn't remember.

"Everything alright?"

She looked up from the paper she'd been scanning and smiled at the young, frazzled-looking waitress hovering at the end of the table. "Everything's great."

The waitress nodded hurriedly and flashed her a smile before rushing to the next table, and Sandy wondered why she seemed to be the only one working in the place on such a busy night. She thought she might have seen the redhead before, but she couldn't for the life of her remember where.

She glanced back down at the paper, but the news, as always, was about the war. It was always about the protests, the victories, or the dead. She sighed and refolded the paper.

She was eating alone, for the first time in a long time, and guessed she'd sort of forgotten how to entertain herself without the lingering threat of her four-year-old flinging his fork across the room. James had opted to stay back at home with her mother, probably because he knew he had his grandmother wrapped around his finger, and Sandy was using the precious free time time to re-acquaint herself with the town.

"Never seen you around here before," a light voice pulled her out of her thoughts.

Sandy glanced up at the waitress. "I'm sorta new in town," she told the girl as she added her plate to the precariously balanced pile of dishes.

She nodded. "Ya like it here?"

Sandy had to consider that more than she'd have liked.

When she was sixteen, she'd have said yes in a heartbeat. Sure, there was the dinginess, and the borderline class warfare. But there was also the fact that there wasn't a place on her side of town that she didn't know like the back of her hand. She'd practically lived at the drive-in and the Dingo and Jay's and the places a lot of the town didn't want any part of, and it had been messy at best and messed up at worst, but it had been home.

But four years had changed a lot, and she'd left a lot of broken pieces behind, and Tulsa wasn't as small a place as it used to be.

"I'm still learning to," she decided a little belatedly.

"Well, I hope ya learn to, then." The girl spared her a smile that Sandy could've sworn she'd seen before as she swept away. "I'll get ya your check in- Debbie, you're an hour late!"

A woman a little older than Sandy had rushed out from the kitchen, but Sandy noticed an absence of the blue uniform the red-haired waitress wore. "If ya bothered to pick up the phone, ya'd know why," she snapped.

The girl huffed and pushed past her with the mountain of dishes. "I've been a little busy, Debra," she called over her shoulder.

The older woman rolled her eyes, and Sandy got the feeling this conversation wasn't headed in a good direction. "Listen, skag, this ain't my problem anymore- I quit this morning, so if you'd let me get my shit, I'll be on my way."

Sandy blinked. Dinner and a show, then.

She raised her eyebrows at the scene as the apparently lone waitress' anger turned into shock. "You can't do that!" She spluttered, following the woman into the kitchen. Sandy heard a few snatches of an argument before a door slammed and the waitress marched out the kitchen door into the dining area alone.

She dumped two plates at a table as she passed and hurried over to Sandy's table with a check. "I'm real sorry about that - it ain't usually so busy in here-"

"I used to wait tables," Sandy laughed. "You don't have anything to apologize for."

"Really?" The waitress set the check on the table and sized her up for a beat.

Sandy fidgeted. "Yeah; real run-down place near Tampa."

The waitress nodded distractedly and bit her lip before asking suddenly, "You in the market for a job?"

Sandy stared, and the girl started to backtrack. "I mean, the pay ain't great or anything, but it's consistent and we've all got mouths to feed…"

Sandy wasn't looking for a job. She thought about the change jar in her mother's house, how it was so much emptier than she remembered it being, and she thought about her mom, cleaning houses for a source of income with her father in the hospital. Technically, no; she wasn't looking for a job. But her mother only worked in the mornings and the diner didn't open until noon and they had hospital bills to pay.

And the waitress was watching her with such cautious hope that she couldn't just say no.

She tilted her head and resigned herself to whatever was going to happen next. "I guess I am."

"Boss!" The delighted gratitude on the girl's face was probably worth more than a month's salary at the diner. "Okay! Um… we got spare uniforms in the back, an' for tonight I just need someone to bus tables… Oh!" She grinned and held out a hand. "Ann Mathews, by the way, but you can call me Annie."

Sandy shook her hand with a vague feeling that she'd heard the name before. "Sandy Owens." She followed Annie into the kitchen and winced as the temperature rose about thirty degrees.

Annie Mathews. Where had she heard…

She blinked as a blue uniform was thrown at her. "You got a brother, by any-"

"Unfortunately," Annie rolled her eyes but smiled as she grabbed a plate from a flustered cook. "His name's Keith, but he probably told'ya it's Two-Bit."

Sandy smiled and nodded and reminded herself that unadulterated panic was probably not the best response. "Right."

As the door swung open, she glanced from the uniform she held to her new coworker's retreating back and wondered what she'd gotten herself into.

People writing songs that voices never share

And no one dared

Disturb the sound of silence

- Simon and Garfunkel, The Sound of Silence

A/N: You guys, typing out the line, "I've been a little busy, Debra" made me laugh a lot more than it should have.

Like I said, I know most of y'all aren't big on Sandy, so thanks so much for giving this a try! This story won't really abide by a regular update schedule, but I have everything plotted out, so I can say that time gaps shouldn't get too absurd.

Anyway, reviews and feedback are literally the greatest thing in this life, just as a general hint. ;) Thanks to each and everyone of you who's made it this far down the page!

Disclaimer: S.E. Hinton owns the sandbox that is The Outsiders, I'm just playing in it. ;)