Summer seems to tumble by in a slow, but persistent lull of warmth. The beginning of July always feels like the hottest time of the year, but what made it even worse was the fact that the more I lied about who I was with, the harder it seemed to get away from a very suspicious Two-Bit. Even worse than that, the more Ponyboy and I began to show up at parties or the drive-ins, together, the angrier and meaner Angela Shepard seemed to grow.
"I think one day she might just burst," I sigh into the phone as Lucy hums in agreement on the other end. Henry and she are visiting his family's lake house and she was missing the fireworks shooting from Angela Shepard's thick skull.
"Nellie," Lucy says as I hear a few of Henry's siblings squeal in the background, "you took something she thought was hers. She's like a kid on the playground – she ain't gonna share."
"There's nothing to share," I say. "Angela Shepard's gonna kill me before she ever gets over it."
"Yeah, well just don't go following her into any dark alleyways, ya dig?" She asks and I laugh.
"Yeah, I dig." I say before we say our goodbyes and I hang-up the phone. I heard the loose floorboard on the staircase creak, and I roll my eyes. My mother and Aunt Louise had taken a road trip to Tennessee to visit their older brother and it left me under the watchful eye of my brother.
"I know you're on the stairs," I tell him before rolling off the couch in the family room, "It illegal to eavesdrop."
"Why is Angela Shepard gonna kill you?" He asks, following me into the kitchen.
"No reason," I say and Two-Bit rolls his eyes, leaning against the kitchen counter to watch me carefully. I force my face to stay cool, blank, knowing that he could catch me in a lie from a single eye twitch.
"Is it because of the boy you've been seeing?" Two-Bit asks and I don't look up from the perfect amount of peanut butter I am spreading across a piece of bread. I am making the task look meticulous, spreading the peanut butter evenly to each corner of the bread.
"What boy?" I ask once I am positive, I can answer without an infliction in my tone of voice.
"Listen, Nell," he says, annoyance lining his voice heavily, "I gotta know if I gotta get involved before one of her brothers are."
"Curly Shepard ain't gonna get involved," I say with a shake of my head.
"Is it cause you're dating Curly?" He asks and I look up with a small glare. "Good," he chuckles as I refocus my energy back into my sandwich.
"Is it that kid Bryon, then?" Two-Bit asks, "I know he dated Angela before."
"No," I say, "Bryon's dating some girl named Cathy. She works in the hospital cafeteria in case you needed to know."
"Mark, then." He says and I shake my head.
"Two-Bit," I say with a mouth full of my sandwich, "I ain't telling you who I'm seeing and you ain't smart enough to figure it out."
"One of these days kid," Two-Bit says with a shake of his head, "I'll figure out all of your secrets."
I smile at him and pat his arm as I walk out of the kitchen, "Not a chance."
Two-Bit continues to follow me and I know that he isn't finished with his interrogation. I plop back onto the couch in the family room and pick up a magazine from the table. I am barely skimming the words, but I can feel his eyes boring into me and I hope that I look perfectly busy and uninterested. We sit in silence like this for some time, the grandfather clock ticking away the seconds, the pages of my magazine crinkling with each page flip, and the voices of children screaming outside as the run down the street. I finally glance up at Two-Bit, cocking my eyebrow at him in question.
"Why are you just watching me eat my sandwich?" I ask him and he smiles crookedly with a small chuckle.
"Just tryin' to figure out when we started keepin' secrets from each other, that's all." He says with a fake and exaggerated sigh.
I roll my eyes at him. I had been wrong. He was done with the interrogation and moved onto guilt-tripping me. It's a strategic move on his part, but for a moment it does make me feel bad. It was true, we never kept secrets from each other. I bite my lip, wondering if I should just get it over with. He might even be happy or relieved to know that it's Ponyboy that I am spending most of my Friday and Saturday nights with. The words are on the tip of my tongue, but then I remember that Two-Bit has a mean right-hook and I keep Ponyboy Curtis to myself – not wanting him on the other side of the punch.
"I ain't keeping anything from you," I say, "if it's something serious, you'll be the first to know."
"Well, I tried," he says, throwing up his hands to show he's given up. "Who taught you to be so good under pressure?"
"I learned from the best, Two." I tell him with a laugh. He picks up the unfinished crusts of my sandwich and plops back into his chair.
"Yeah, well I think I taught you too well," he says. After a few more minutes of silence he finally continues, "You gonna be okay by yourself tonight?"
"Huh?" I ask, surprised that Two-Bit would ever dream of leavin' me home alone, but it was Saturday, and I knew Two-Bit liked to play poker over at Buck Merrill's on Saturday.
"I gotta go sweep some cards," he says with a shrug. "Sides, sure you and your secret boyfriend were heading down to that dance at the community center tonight anyways."
"How do you know about that?" I ask and Two-Bit rolls his eyes at me again.
"Kid, those dances have been happening since I was in middle school," he says. "You won't catch me there now," he adds as an afterthought once I shoot him a worried glance, "I got bigger fish to fry than your new boyfriend. I'll catch him another night."
"That's comforting," I say with a shake of my head, "but yes, I'll be just fine."
"Maybe you can ask Annette to stay over," he adds before standing to head back upstairs.
"Or somebody else," I say suggestively and Two-Bit glares. "I'm kidding," I say quickly, not putting it past Two-Bit to show up at the dance unannounced anyways, "I'll ask Annette."
"Good thinking," he says before taking the stairs two at a time back up to his room for his afternoon nap, "I'll see you in the morning."
Ponyboy knocks three times on the front door, and I hurriedly throw it open. Even though I know Two-Bit, and Donna left more than an hour ago for the Roadhouse I still worry that they could be waiting down the street. An almost perfect gotcha moment for my brother, but I knew him better than that. While Two-Bit worried about me, liked to set rules for me, those rules only seemed to count when my mother was here to enforce them. When it was just the two of us – well Two-Bit always seemed to have a better opportunity to attend to than making sure I followed by the rules of his own game.
Ponyboy jumps in surprise at my rush and then smiles as his eyes quickly trail up and then down my body, a low whistle emitting from his lips. It doesn't matter how many times I can see him in a week or in a day, he always made it feel like I was the only person in the room – sometimes the only person in the world.
"This is the first dance we've gone to?" He asks as he takes my hand after I lock up the front door for the night. I can help but notice the amount of lust in his eyes as he once again studies me up and down. I feel my cheeks begin to burn as I wonder what he could be thinking to himself as we head into the night.
I smile as he spins me slowly before helping me down the steps, "It's the first dance of the summer."
"And almost the last," he agrees. Ponyboy was right, the community center held a total of two dances during the summer – one at the beginning of July and one the Friday before school started in August. That one always followed the final summer blow-out at Mark and Bryon's house as well. The rumor last year was that at least five people were arrested before their party even started. I had never been allowed to attend before, but this summer I wondered.
"I hope you don't mind," Ponyboy says as we approach his rumbling truck, "I told Mark we would drive him." When Ponyboy opens the door, I find Mark sitting in the passenger seat with a beer bottle glued to his hand. He wiggles his eyebrows at me but says nothing. This causes me to smile in an unsure greeting, wondering what Mark planned to do while Ponyboy and I were at the dance. Sometimes it was common for boys and of the girls from our side of town to hangout in the parking lot, but that was not how I wanted to spend my night. I wanted to dance – especially after seeing the way Ponyboy looked at me just a few moments earlier.
"He promises to be on his best behavior," Ponyboy says as he pulls Mark out of the seat with a swift tug. For a moment, I am worried that Mark might fall on his face from the force, but he catches himself easily and throws himself into the bed of Ponyboy's truck without a second thought or glance in our direction.
"He okay?" I ask as Ponyboy helps me up. I can't help but notice the deep frown lines that encircle Mark's lips, the dark bags that hang under his usually exuberant eyes, and the amount of beer bottles that seem to have piled up on the passenger side of the car.
Ponyboy shrugs and looks at me before he whispers, "The girl he wanted to come with blew him off." I glance out the back window as Mark settles himself in the bed and then look back at Ponyboy with a crooked, unsure grin.
"He ain't going to ruin our night," Ponyboy promises as his one of his hands lightly rests on my knee and the other tucks a piece of loose hair behind my ear. "Did I tell you how pretty you are?" He asks, licking his lips slightly as he smiles.
"Tonight?" I ask, leaning in a little closer, "No, you haven't."
"Well shoot," he says as a blush forms on his cheeks. He leans into me a little closer and presses his lips against mine in a comfortable embrace. After a few weeks of kissing him, I worried that I would get used to kissing him – that maybe I enjoyed the mystery of what it would feel like, but he proved that idea wrong time and time again. It wasn't the way he looked at me or the way he would talk – the way he felt about me was always the most pronounced when we kissed. For me it was always felt like it would be both the first and last time, over and over again, "you're the prettiest thing I've ever seen."
The drive to the community center is short since we are both entertained and horrified by Mark's actions in the bed of Ponyboy's truck. There are moments when we must laugh, especially when we pull up next to classmates at red lights and he hands beer to them through their windows, but other times when Ponyboy slows almost to a stop as we are cruising down the Ribbon, Mark standing and cheering, refusing to sit-down. It is to the point where we are finally in the community center parking lot that I notice that the grip Ponyboy has on the steering wheel finally loosens. If Mark hadn't been so drunk already, I would have half a mind to tell him to knock it off for the sake of Ponyboy's sanity.
Before Ponyboy can help me out of the truck, I watch from the rearview window as he opens the bed and pulls Mark down by his shirt again. This time Ponyboy is not as conscientious as he was when he picked me up. He almost pulls Mark down so rough that Mark lands on his face. I watch carefully as Ponyboy shakes him, most likely telling him off for acting like such a fool. I am worried that Mark will retaliate, watching as he grabs Ponyboy by the collar of his shirt, but Ponyboy doesn't flinch. Instead, I watch as he stands his ground, suddenly twelve feet taller than Mark and looking scarily like Darry, as Ponyboy shoves him from him and Mark finally walks off. It takes a moment for Ponyboy to catch his cool and admittedly, I have never seen him with a temper. I have always had the pleasure of knowing the Ponyboy that was kind, gentle, and dreamy. This Ponyboy reminded me of someone who was truly from our side of town – distant and angry.
I had no problems allowing him his time to cool off.
When he finally meets me on my side of the truck to help me down, he smiles, dreamily as if no harsh words nor actions happened between him and Mark. I can't seem to stop myself when I ask, "Everything okay?"
"He ain't going to ruin our night," Ponyboy repeats with a smile as he helps me down. There are a small pack of Greasers towards the edge of the parking lot, and I can recognize a few faces just from where we are standing.
Mark has settled himself near Curly and a few other members of the Shepard gang and I notice a few other boys from Ponyboy's grade that don't seem to be either Soc, or Greaser. I can make out Annette and her date, but my eyes settle on the back of Angela's curly mop of hair. She has it piled high and perfectly on the top of her head and despite looking as angry and hateful as ever, she is also beautiful to the point where I am suddenly wishing that the parking lot is darker.
As we walk towards the small group, I am filled with small relief as Bryon calls us over from the doors of the community center, his own date looking more out of place than I felt. "You get Mark here?" Bryon asks and Ponyboy and I approach.
"Wasn't easy," Ponyboy says with a shake of his head and Bryon laughs.
"This is Cathy," he says, gesturing to the sweet looking girl on his arm. For a moment, I feel a little tinge of resentment towards her – she is prettier than any other girl here – including Angela Shepard.
"This is Penelope," Ponyboy says introducing me, "and I'm Curtis."
The names sound weird even to my ears, but I know this as the safe way Ponyboy liked to introduce himself I let it go, squeezing his hands with some support as him and Bryon continue to talk about Mark and his poor drinking decisions. I take a moment to study Cathy, she was indeed pretty, but she also seemed more mature than most of the girls in our grade, like she was simultaneously bored and bothered by the conversation at hand.
"Pone," I finally say, interrupting him and Bryon. Ponyboy looks down as me, just as someone opens the door to the community center, allowing the music and the lights to spill out onto the four of us for a moment, "I think Cathy and I would like to dance now."
I glance at her, but she's already smiling knowingly, pulling Bryon towards the now closing doors as Ponyboy and I follow slowly. Ponyboy tightens his grip across my shoulders and whispers into my ear as I giggle, "We'll dance circles around them." I shake my head at him, but don't look back at anything else. Whatever or whoever was waiting for us in the parking lot could do just that – wait.
A/N: I am shifting a small storyline from That was Then, This is Now as we progress forward. My plans for this story are high and my plans for a sequel are even higher, which is why I always plant so much backstory into each of my chapters. Thank you to those who are frequent readers, reviewers, and visitors into Nellie's story. Reviews are always appreciated and welcomed.
