Chapter 3
"So it's really Soda's baby?" Pony asked Darry.
"It looks like it."
"But why did she lie to him? Why didn't she just tell him?"
"Because she-" Steve started but was cut himself off after the looks that Evie and Darry gave him.
"We don't know." Darry told him, sitting back down at the table. "But we gotta tell him." He saw the look on Steve's face. "We have to Steve. He's got a right to know. What he does with it is up to him, but he needs to know."
"Bitch."
"Steve!" Evie yelled at him.
"Okay, at the moment she's not my favorite person either, but what we think doesn't matter."
"Wow. Soda really has a kid." Pony said again, shaking his head as he poured cereal into a bowl. "What do you think he'll say?"
"I don't know. But I don't think we all need to be staring him down when we tell him. And Steve if you're just gonna give him a hard time, or bad mouth Sandy…"
"I know, I know." Steve grumbled.
"That's them." Evie said, walking back into the kitchen from the living room.
"Okay. Pony you take Two-Bit upstairs for a while."
They all sat there for what seemed like the longest minute while they waited for Soda and Two-Bit to walk into the house. Finally the door opened and in they walked laughing at some unknown joke Two-Bit had been telling.
"Hey!" Soda said, still laughing.
"Hey Soda." Darry said softly.
"So what you all doing?" Soda asked. "Steve did you see that tow truck? Is it in decent shape? Are we gonna get it?"
"Um, I don't know." He mumbled. "We can talk about it later."
Darry looked to Ponyboy and nodded. "Hey Two-Bit, come upstairs, I got something to show you." Pony said as he stood up, still eating his cereal and walking toward the steps.
Darry waited till Two-Bit had followed Ponyboy upstairs before he spoke. "Um, Soda we gotta talk to you about something."
"What's up?" He asked, suddenly not liking the way they were all acting. None of them would look at him. Steve looked really mad and was biting at his nails. Evie kept looking back and forth between Darry and Steve. And Darry kept looking at the floor.
"Look Evie, Evie sort of found out something today. Something you need to know about. Something about Sandy."
After awhile Ponyboy and Two-Bit came downstairs. Darry was sitting in the kitchen paying bills. "Hey." Pony said softly. "Where is everyone?"
Darry looked up. "Steve and Evie went to get something to eat. Soda's on the front porch."
"Should I go talk to him?" Pony asked.
"No. I think he wants to be alone right now. He'll find you if he wants to talk."
"So you all really think it's his kid?" Two-Bit asked.
"Looks a lot like him. A lot like him when he was a baby." Darry told him, putting the bills away.
"What did he say?" Pony asked, putting the bowl he'd been eating cereal out of earlier in the sink.
"Not a whole lot. I think he was a little stunned. I mean he'd kinda come to accept the fact that she had cheated on him and the baby wasn't his. And the fact that she was gone from his life forever."
"Wow. So what's he gonna do?" Two-Bit asked, pulling a beer out of the fridge.
"I don't know. I don't think he even knows yet."
Soda sat out on the porch in the dark. He could hear Darry talking to Pony and Two-Bit but he couldn't hear what they were saying. He didn't really care. He knew they were talking about him. Him and Sandy. Him, Sandy and their baby. Lucas. He had a kid and his name was Lucas.
He couldn't believe it. He couldn't believe he had a kid. Or that she had lied to him. He loved her so much and she lied to him. Why? Because he was some low life greaser who wasn't good enough for her that's why. Wasn't good enough for her or their kid. That's why her parents always hated him, because he was just some high school dropout greaser. Her father always thought he was a loser and he hated Sandy having anything to do with him. He always wanted her to break up with him. Break up with him and date some nice Soc. And that's what he figured she did. Dated some rich Soc and that's who got her pregnant. At least that's what she had said. I mean we didn't even do it that much he thought to himself. Of course it only takes once. And never in a million years did he ever think she had been cheating on him.
God he was so confused. Confused. Angry. And sad. Yeah he realized sad. Here he had a kid it looked like and he was never gonna get to see him. Never meet him. Soda would have done anything to see his own father again, and here he was a father and he was never going to see him. The irony of that almost made him cry. His head hurt from thinking about it all. He didn't know what to do. He wanted to yell and scream and throw things, but at the same time he just wanted to curl up into himself and be left completely alone.
It was still warm out for as late as it was getting. He just sat on the porch. He even tried to stop thinking. To just sit. Trying not to let all the thoughts that had been plaguing his mind for the last hour back in. It wasn't working. All he could think of was that he had loved her. Loved her and she lied to him and left him alone. And left with his baby and he'd never see him.
Somewhere down the street someone had their windows open. Soda could hear the music drifting out. He wished he couldn't, but he could. He couldn't remember the name of the song, but he remembered dancing with Sandy to it. He remembered the powder blue sweater and darker blue skirt she wore that night. He remembered how her long blonde hair was pulled back off her face with a headband. How it smelled like vanilla. And how her lips tasted so sweet when she kissed him. And how he never wanted to lose her. And then he remembered how she was gone.
He loved her and she was gone. At that he silently got up and walked into the house, silently walking past his brothers and Two-Bit in the kitchen and going upstairs to his room. It wasn't until after the door was shut and he had taken off his shoes and sat on the bed that he sat and just stared at the nightstand for a minute. Finally he opened the drawer. There, inside was a cigar box. He carefully lifted it out and opened the lid. Taped to the inside cover was a school picture of Sandy that she had given him when they first started going out. In the box where other pictures of her too, along with some of the notes she had written to him while they were dating. He picked through the items in the box till finding the picture he was looking for. One of the two of them. His arms around her waist as they both smiled.
He picked up the picture and just looked. At that point he silently started crying. He had been in love with her. She lied to him, but he had been in love with her. She said she cheated on him, but he had been in love with her. She left him, but he had been in love with her. He wiped the tears off his face with his sleeve. He had been in love with her. He knew then he still was in love with her. He always had been.
Evie sat at the Curtis' kitchen table paying the DX bills. It looked like they were really having another good month. They had gotten past that putting money out point and now were working on the money starting to come back in. She had just written the check for Ponyboy when she heard him come up the front steps and start to unlock the front door. Evie quickly put the check into an envelope. Pony didn't know it, but Soda had Evie take part of his pay check and put it into an account they had set up for his college fund. That way, he'd had already started paying him back the money Pony had given him. Evie shook her head thinking about it. The Curtis boys were really close. Closer than any brothers she knew. Granted they had to be after all the hell they had gone through the last couple of years, but she had a feeling they'd have been that close even if their parents or Johnny and Dally had never died.
"Hey Evie. What you doing?" He asked, going straight for the fridge. "What that smell? It's great!"
Evie almost had to laugh. God that boy eats a lot. It's like a continuous meal. She knew he ran track and everything, but that was done for the year. It just makes her laugh. Sometimes it seemed when she'd be here to eat, they wouldn't even done cleaning up from dinner and he'd be making himself a bowl of cereal or something. "Chocolate and chili." She saw the look on his face. "Relax, they're not together. I just noticed you were out of chocolate cake, so I made one and I made chili for dinner."
"Oh. That's cool. What's all that?"
"Just the books."
"What are you doing them here for? You usually do that at the station." He said, biting into an apple as he looked into the chili pot.
"Yeah well, there's more room here. Plus I just didn't feel like dealing with Steve today."
"Oh." Pony said softly, looking at the floor. "I wish everybody would start acting normal again."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I don't know. Everybody's acting weird. I mean it's been over a week. Soda's still not talking. He just mopes around. And everybody else is all mad at everybody. I just wish it would go back to normal."
"Everybody's not mad at everybody." She told him.
"Yes they are. You're mad at Steve. Steve's mad at you for finding out. Steve's mad at Darry for telling Soda. Steve's definitely mad at Sandy. I think he's even mad at Soda for moping around over her. Plus he gets mad a Two-Bit every time he tries to joke around and make everybody happy and nobody seems to want to be happy right now. It sorta seems like the only person Steve's not mad at right now is me, and I got to tell you, that just feels pretty weird too."
Evie got a slight grin at that. The kid was right. And Steve not being mad at him was a definite change. "I know. I'm sorry I screwed everything up. It's all my fault."
"No it's not. It was a good thing you found out. Otherwise he'd never know. And he's better off knowing."
"I hope so. I just wish Steve would get off everybody's back."
"Darry said it's just because he didn't want to see Soda get hurt by her again."
"I know, and he's right. Nobody wanted to see Soda get hurt by her, but I really thought he needed to know." She sighed.
"He did."
"Has he talked to you guys about it at all?"
"No, not really. I wish he would. I wish he'd do something."
"Well, maybe getting away from here with you guys will help. Are you still going camping?"
"I asked Darry that last night. He said that he promised me the three of us would go camping when school was out and that's what we're going to do. Just the three of us. Plus he said the same thing as you, maybe getting away from here would help Soda."
"Good. Well, you've only got two weeks of school left. Then we're all done."
"Yup!" He grinned. "What's that?" He reached down and pulled out a large envelope that was partially under a stack of papers. He recognized the logo on the return address as the Tulsa Community College.
"Um, nothing." She started to pull it away, but he pulled it out of her reach and opened it.
"Dear Miss Ellison, We are happy to inform you that you have been accepted into the fall semester of Tulsa Community College. Evie that's great! I didn't even know you were going to apply."
"Yeah, well, getting in is one thing, going is another."
"What do you mean?" Pony sat down at the table.
"Okay, you have to promise not to tell anybody." Pony nodded. "Okay, well you know," she shrugged, "I'm graduating in two weeks. It doesn't look like Steve's in any great rush to marry me or anything and I don't know what else to do with my life. Besides, I kinda like this accounting stuff."
"That's great! Congratulations. But why didn't you tell anybody?"
"Cause it probably won't happen." She said somewhat sourly.
"Why not?"
"Well, let's just say my father isn't thrilled with the idea of 'wasting his money' as he calls it. He suggested I just go get a job at the grocery store or something."
"I'm sorry Evie."
"Thanks kiddo." She could tell he was sorry for her. "It'll be okay. Something will work out."
They sat there for a few more minutes while she finished cleaning up. "What time are Steve and Soda coming home?"
"I don't know. Steve said he was going to work late tonight. That way he would be done early tomorrow. I guess he wants to go out. Or maybe take Soda out. I don't know." She sighed.
"Oh." He nodded. He watched her get up and take the cake out of the oven. The smell of warm chocolate cake started to permeate the room. Pony breathed it in deeply as he swallowed his last bite of apple. "You know, since Steve moved in over the garage, you're here a lot."
"Sorry." She let out a small laugh.
"Oh, no, I didn't mean it like that!" Pony started to blush.
"I know, I was just teasing you."
"No, I meant, well I meant that yeah, you're here a lot, but it's kinda nice having you here. It's nice having somebody here once in awhile when I come home from school. I mean me and Johnny used to come and hang out and all, but it wasn't the same as this."
Evie just looked at him for a second. She felt so bad for him. "You miss your mom don't you?"
His eyes went to the table. "Yeah. Sometimes a lot. Like when I come home and nobody's here. I miss my dad too. Everything would be so much different of they were still alive."
"I know."
"No you don't." He shook his head. "I used to be really mad at them for dying. Then I started to get used to it and everything. I was still mad, more at that they were dead, and less that it was their fault. Then Johnny and Dally and everything happened. And I got mad at them all over again."
"What do you mean?" She softly asked him. Sometimes she forgot the poor kid was only going on sixteen in the middle of the summer.
"Well, if my mom and dad hadn't died, then Darry would have gone to college and me and him wouldn't have been fighting all the time and gotten into it that night and then all that stuff wouldn't have happened in the park. And then Johnny and Dally wouldn't have died." He turned his head away and tried to wipe away the tears that had formed in his eyes before she saw. "And just everything would be different."
Evie knew he was crying, but didn't let on she knew. "Yeah, I guess it would, but you can't be mad at them. None of them. It wasn't their fault. Especially your parents."
"I know. I mean I really do. But sometimes, it just feels better to be able to blame someone. You know?"
Evie shook her head. She did. That was part of what was going on with Steve. He needed to blame someone for Soda being so upset. One of those someone's was her at the moment. And all she could do was hope he'd get over it.