The Outsiders © S.E. Hinton. This story is non-profit.
All notes/disclaimers in Chapter 1.





Not Today
Chapter 9: The Taming

As promised, I called Jules before I left for work the next morning. I woke her up.

"I am sore after all," she told me, her voice sounding like she hadn't even bothered to pull her head out from under her pillow. "Imagine that."

"Imagine that," I said in return. My brothers were rough housing around me and I really wanted to get off the phone as soon as possible if I didn't want to catch too much heat from them about how late I was the night before. I wasn't sure if Soda had even told Pony how late I'd been, but he raised an eyebrow at me and took a large swallow of my coffee (then made a face and spit it out in the sink) so I knew he was pretty tired.

"I'm playing hooky today," Jules said on the other end of the line. "No chance you are, too?"

I shook my head. "No." I said it firmly, as much to convince myself as her.

She laughed like she'd expected that. "Imagine that," she returned dryly. "Well, I have an observation at the hospital tonight so I'll just talk to you later this week."

Sodapop threw Ponyboy over his shoulder and Pony landed with a thud on the couch. "I'll let you go," I heard Jules say, and I know she was laughing at the noise. I woulda been laughing too if I was still in bed in my nice, quiet apartment where no one lived but me.

"Bye," I said grumpily before hanging up the phone. I immediately turned on Soda. "You plannin' on payin' the hospital bills if you break your little brother's back?" I asked him.

Soda blinked at me, then looked at Pony who was still sprawled out on the couch, lighting up a smoke. "He don't look broken to me," Soda said plainly. Without waiting for me to respond, he clapped me on the shoulder just as Steve walked into the house. "Good timing," he told his friend. "Hey Darry, Steve and I met these girls at the DX the other day -- "

"Twins!" Steve yelled from the kitchen.

" -- and we were gonna take them out tonight. If that's okay?"

He raised his eyebrows at me, as if I ever say no to him. Golly, even Pony could attest to the fact that I let Soda pretty much do what he wanted as long as he stayed outta jail. "Yeah, it's okay," I said. I appreciated being asked anyway. "Not too late, though."

Soda nodded dutifully and mock-saluted as Steve walked up next to him, holding a large piece of bread with some butter folded into it. "Sure thing," Soda said. Then I saw his eyes twinkling with mischief and I knew somethin' was coming. "Darry got in after 12:30 this morning," he announced to everyone in the room.

I saw Steve's mouth turn into a little 'o' and he whistled like this was some information that really meant something. Pony jumped up from the couch, surprised and amused for other reasons. "Hey!" he protested.

I put my finger up. "I'm twenty, you're fourteen," I said quickly, then turned on Soda and caught him in a loose headlock. "Thanks a lot little buddy," I said, messing up his carefully combed and greased hair. "Now I gotta spend my morning defending myself to my kid brothers and their no-good friends!"

Soda wriggled out of my headlock and all three pounced on me. Even with all three of them, it took a good twenty seconds for them to wrestle me to the ground. No one was hitting very hard, but it only took a swift kick to the spot on my back that had been bruised by Jules' foot and I called uncle.

Steve and Soda jumped up. "I don't think Darry's ever called uncle in his life!" Steve announced gleefully. I just lay where I was, glaring at them. Pony was next to me, panting. He really needed to cut out those cigarettes if he wanted to even qualify for track next year.

"He's just sore cause his girlfriend beat him up," Soda muttered, smoothing his hair down before pushing his DX cap over the whole thing and pulling it low on his forehead.

Steve nodded and followed Soda to the door. "Right, I forgot," I heard him say as Soda swung the screen door open and stepped out onto the porch. Before the door banged closed I heard Soda call over his shoulder, "I'll be home before midnight, Darry!"

Pony turned his head to look at me and I had to grin at him. "I saw The Taming of the Shrew is playing down at that old theater downtown," I said suddenly. "You wanna go after I get off work tonight?"

I could tell Pony was surprised. Maybe surprised was an understatement. Maybe if he hadn't already been lying down, you coulda pushed him over with the shock of it. I don't like movies, see. I just think they're a waste of time. But me and Pony had been getting on real well lately, and I knew he'd enjoy it. I wasn't even sure if he'd seen it; it'd been out for a couple of months, but that old theater downtown was always deserted and they showed older movies and let you in for half price.

Pony sat up and fished around for the cigarette he'd ground out before jumping on me. He glanced at it, at me, and then threw it back in the ashtray. "You hate movies," he said, leaning up against the couch with his knees bent and pulled in front of him. He was wearing a pair of Soda's old jeans, I could tell by the grease stains on the knees. Pretty soon he was gonna get too tall to inherit Soda's jeans.

I shrugged and pulled myself up next to him. "I read the play in high school," I said, as if it explained anything. Sure, I'd probably be bored stiff, but I didn't need to tell him that. Doing something with him that he'd like was the whole point. I was trying to understand him better.

"Did Jules tell you to take me?" Pony asked suddenly.

"What?" That really surprised me. Why would Jules tell me to take Pony to the movies?

Pony shrugged. He didn't seem sorry he said it. "I was talking to her about some stuff the other day, about how you and me fight all the time?" I musta looked at him sharply because his eyes got wide and he shook his head real quickly. "I was apologizing for the night she came over and we fought in front of her," he said. "You know how she comes out with all her theories about stuff. Well, she said that maybe we didn't do enough stuff together; just you and me. I mean, we do stuff, like play football and stuff we know we both like, but she thought that maybe I should do something you like and you should do something I like -- "

He suddenly cut himself off and reclaimed that cigarette from the ashtray. I didn't say anything as he struggled to light it. It's real hard to re-light a stubbed smoke. When he finally got it, he inhaled sharply and exhaled slowly.

"I just don't know if I could read the paper and worry about the bills and yell all day long, though," Pony continued. He was smiling at me. "Since we all know that's what you like doing."

Smart aleck. I pointed a finger at him. "I'm giving you a three count head start," I threatened playfully. "But you better get up now and run."

He hesitated only a second and then did just that. I jumped up and chased him out onto the porch, down the street and toward the park. I finally caught up around the grove of trees where Dally was killed and we both stopped. Pony leaned over and clutched his knees, breathing hard. His cigarette was still lit and hanging out of his mouth. I plucked it from between his lips, threw it on the ground and stepped on it.

"Cut the smoking down to a pack a day, and I won't skin ya for saying that," I said, patting him on the back.

Pony stood up and nodded. We started walking back toward the house, and neither one of us said a word about Dallas. We don't, none of us guys do when we come to that spot in the park, but we always stop and think for a moment, and I suppose we always will. You can't just whoop and holler your way to the park anymore, you gotta stop in that spot and remember ol' Dal.

Back at the truck, I waited while Pony got his book bag from inside the house.

"So you'll really take me to that movie?" he asked as he climbed into the passenger seat.

I looked over at him. "Yeah. Sure kiddo. Come on by the job site around five thirty, okay?"

From the corner of my eye, I caught Pony's smile as we headed down the street toward the school.


Both our stomachs were growling by the time we stepped back onto the street after the movie. It was close to nine o'clock. I don't buy the food in the movie theater because if it's not a rip off (which it is, even at the cheap movies), it's old and stale and not that good. Pony had grumbled a little about starving him, and I grumbled back at how boring and pointless movies were, and then we watched in silence and I think he really enjoyed himself.

I didn't, but that wasn't the point.

We started walking toward a diner that's about a block up from the theater. Pony, of course, didn't have a jacket, so I gave him my flannel to keep him from complaining the whole way there. It wasn't all that cold, but after the heat of the day we sure felt the difference. We coulda taken the truck to the Dingo or someplace, but I'd gotten a spot at a broken meter and even Pony agreed that we couldn't pass that up.

"Jules didn't tell me to take you to the movies," I said suddenly as we walked.

Pony looked at me. I think he didn't know what to say. He said, "Okay."

I understood his confusion. I mean, we just don't do stuff like this, me and Pony. I don't have time, or I don't have the money, and quite honestly, I don't want to. But it seemed a shame; I mean, yeah, sometimes it seems like he's gonna be a kid forever and I'm always gonna be busting my back to make ends meet, but he's gonna be a sophomore in high school next year, and if Pony is anything like me or Soda, he'll start dating girls and never be home after that.

Somewhere along the line when I wasn't looking, maybe it was Jules, maybe it was the whole ordeal with Johnny and Dally, maybe it was both, but I started looking at Pony differently. He wasn't just my burden, he was my kid brother and we had a lot more in common than both of us would ever admit.

It was warm in the diner and I was glad for it. We sat down and ordered hamburgers and cokes from a waitress named Alice who smiled at us like we were her long lost grandson's. She called me 'handsome' and Pony thought it was funny. She called him 'sugar' which he didn't think was so funny.

Pony and I don't talk much, you know, and I think that's sort of the problem. When Soda's around, he talks enough for the both of us, so it's easy for us to go into our respective corners and shut up. This was sorta a test for me; be alone with Ponyboy and see what he has to say to me. Turns out, he doesn't have much to say. It didn't surprise me, but at least now I knew it wasn't just cause he couldn't get a word in edgewise around Soda. We sat there and ate our food in virtual silence, but I didn't get the impression that he was the least bit uncomfortable, and neither was I. Sometimes it takes a little change in your relationship with someone to realize it was probably okay the way it was. Sure, I shouldn't holler at Pony so much and he should listen better and use his head more, but when it came right down to it, neither one of us was gonna turn into Sodapop all of a sudden. I supposed that's why we had Sodapop to begin with. Nobody could be Soda but Soda.

It's easy for me to talk about school. Track. Sports. That's what we have in common.

"How's school going?"

Pony shrugged. "Okay."

"Any more problems in math?"

"Nope."

"Are there cute girls in that class?"

"Not really."

"How's track?"

"Fine."

Well, he is a teenager after all.

I paid the bill and I think we both felt a lot better -- fuller, anyways -- as we walked back to the truck. The wind had picked up and there was a chill every time it blew. I told him he was a knucklehead for forgetting a jacket. He muttered, "I know, I know."

When we were back in the truck, I felt Pony looking at me for a long time. I tried not to snap "What?!" at him, and just minded my own business starting up the ignition and turning into the road.

Finally he said, "How come you didn't make plans with Jules tonight?"

I almost just opened up my mouth and said, "She had something to do tonight," which woulda been the truth but I didn't want to make him feel like I was only taking him out because she was busy. I thought about giving him monosyllabic answers like he'd treated me to during my questions about school, but I ain't that immature. Most of the time. I just shrugged. "I ain't gonna see her every night."

Pony had taken his eyes off me, and when I glanced at him, he was looking out the passenger window. I could only see half his face in the darkness of the car.

"Are you guys like, a couple now?"

I wasn't sure how to answer that. Things weren't as cut and dried as they were back when I was in high school. It wasn't like I was gonna ask her to wear my ring. You just didn't do that once you got to a certain age, and I felt like I was at that age. No way was I gonna tell Pony we'd slept together, how irresponsible could I get? I know he's been in on bull sessions the boys have had about various girls, but I just ain't into that kind of talk. I guess there's an age you get too old for that, too.

"I don't know," I said, and it was the closest thing to the truth I could think of.

Pony's eyes were back on me. He sure can be like Sodapop when he wants to. Persistent. Like a fly that keeps buzzin' around your ear and won't leave you alone no matter how many times you swat it.

"You like her, right?"

"Yeah. Of course I do."

I think I sounded defensive, and maybe Pony picked up on it because he didn't say anything else for the rest of the way home. I almost apologized a bunch of times, but kept biting my tongue to stop myself. Don't ask me why, I don't know. Sorry doesn't come outta my mouth that easy.

When we pulled up to the house, the porch light wasn't on and I almost scolded Pony for not putting it on before he came down to meet me at the work site. I bit my tongue on that one, too. No sense ruin a perfectly good evening with a fight that would be so predictable I could script it myself. Jeez, I really was going soft. Now I was avoiding fights with Pony? And Soda wasn't even around.

Maybe he could read my mind, because as we got out of the car he slipped the flannel off and handed it to me. "I walked to the site directly from the DX so I wasn't home to turn on the light."

I just nodded and hmmm'd. I took the shirt from him and veered off to get the mail out of the box before following him through the front gate and onto the porch. He stayed outside and lit up a cigarette.

"Pony," I said warningly.

He shrugged but kept smoking it. "This is the last of my pack. You said one pack a day."

I shook my head and walked past him into the house, flipping on lights as I went. I only let him smoke without much of a fight because it was the one thing I felt like I really couldn't control him doing. Plus, all of his friends smoked, and he never asked me for more than the carton that I bought for him every two weeks. I knew he was smoking more than that, which meant he was bumming them off of Two-Bit who had never paid for a box of cigarettes in his life, but I tried not to think about that.

I did up the dishes from breakfast and had settled into my armchair with the paper by the time Pony came in. "Are you readin' the paper or worryin' about the bills?" he asked, wiggling his eyebrows at me.

I folded the paper in half. "I'll be doin' my third favorite thing, yelling, real soon if you don't stop runnin' your mouth," I threatened, but we shared a grin as he plopped down on the sofa and flipped on the TV.

I tried to go back to the paper but I wasn't really reading it. I tried to look at what Pony had on the television but I wasn't really interested. "Did you do your homework?" I asked.

Bonding or not, I'm still the guardian around here.

"At the DX," Pony said absently.

I looked around the house. On the couch next to him, on the floor at his feet, on one of the dining room chairs, on the table. "And your backpack is…?"

I knew the answer before Pony said it. I saw him panic, his eyes follow the same path mine had, and then he went slightly pale. "At the DX," he said without looking at me.

No wonder I had spent the last year yelling my guts out at this kid. It was like the hair on the back of my neck stood up and I immediately started thinking about how this kid needed a good whoopin' to get his act together and was he ever gonna start thinking about anything?! It was real hard not to yell. I stood up, and realized my fists were clenching and my breath was coming real fast. If I hadn't been yelling for the last year, I mighta had a heart attack by now.

The clock said it wasn't yet ten. If we hurried, we could make it to the DX before Mr. Johnson closed it up. "Let's go," I said, and my voice sounded a hell of a lot more controlled than I felt.

Pony rushed past me and scrambled out of the house. I bit my lip real hard and grabbed his jacket off the back of the couch, resisting the urge to wrap it around his neck and squeeze real hard. I just threw it at him as I jumped in the truck and sped off in the direction of the DX.

We didn't talk on the way there. I pulled into the parking lot while Mr. Johnson was locking the doors, and Pony jumped out and talked to him. I watched as they went inside to get it, again trying to talk myself out of letting him have it on the way home. Had Jules really gotten to me that much? Was I that different that I wasn't gonna yell at Pony for this boneheaded move? Even Soda would admit it was just dumb, dumb, dumb.

When Pony got back into the truck, clutching the backpack to his chest, he said, "I'm sorry, Darry." It was real quiet and I almost barked at him to repeat it real loudly so everyone in the next county could hear. Instead, I just gripped the steering wheel so tight my knuckles turned white. I tried to think about how Soda'd react. He'd say something like, "That was a boneheaded move, Pon," and ruffle him on the head as they got into the car and drove to the DX. He'd turn on the radio while they were driving, and some song would come on that distracted him from the whole purpose of the outing, and he'd spend the rest of the time singing along at the top of his lungs. No matter how much control over my anger I got, I could never just forget it. I envied Sodapop then.

We were back at the house before I realized, and I still hadn't yelled. Oh, I had everything in my head in the order in which I wanted to say it, and I wanted to say it in the loudest voice possible so he'd know I meant business, but for some reason I didn't. I was real sore, and real tired and I kinda just wanted to go to bed.

"Ain't you got anything to say?" Pony finally asked, looking at me as I turned off the ignition. His hand was on the door handle and I thought, if that's so you can run outta here real quick so I don't slaughter you, good plan.

"I'm disappointed," I finally said and I barely recognized the voice as mine. It was dad's. That was the harshest he ever got with us. Mom could yell somethin' awful, but dad sorta just shook his head and said "I'm disappointed," and it made you feel ten times worse.

Pony looked down at his lap. "You're not gonna yell at me?"

"I want to," I said honestly, and I thought I saw a flicker of a smile at the corner of Pony's lips. If it was there, he covered it up real fast, which was smart. "I wanna yell so loud your eardrums hurt for a week."

Maybe it was my honesty, or the fact that I still wasn't yelling, but Pony musta got braver because he looked up at me and cocked a half-grin. "Jules is gettin' to you."

"What?"

"Jules. Everything is different, and it's her. You can say it's not but we know it is. Her whole attitude is changing your whole attitude. It's not a bad thing, it's a good thing, and I'm real, real sorry I forgot my backpack."

He said it all in a rush, especially the apology at the end because I thought, oh no you don't change the subject back to Jules to try to distract me. I didn't know what to say when he was finished. No way, not me, Darrel Curtis is not going soft over a woman?! That's somethin' Two-Bit or Steve would say, but not me. Not Soda and Pony either, come to think of it. I sorta wanted to tell Pony it wasn't only Jules; that maybe I liked his and my new relationship and how we were getting along a whole lot better and I was scared to ruin that. I shoulda said that. If I was bein' honest and all, why couldn't I be completely honest?

I just slugged him on the shoulder. "Start usin' your head, kid, and we won't have these kinds of problems at all."

TBC…

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Reviews for Chapter 9:

First off, note to everybody. Just so no one's shocked as we wind this thing up, it is in the Romance/Angst categories. Um, so, you know, could be some angst coming up. Don't say I didn't warn you. ((wink))

Also a note about last chapter, so I don't have to repeat it a dozen times in the review responses, we will see Darry's reaction more to what happened with Jules in the next chapter. This is sorta some Darry/Pony bonding filler. I guess. Enjoy anyway.

Thanks to everyone who gave me their opinion/feedback. It means the world to me.

miz jif - Despite your misgivings, I am so glad you were able to connect with the chapter anyway. I think Darry's struggling with some new opportunities and how to balance them with his old life.

Langley - First of all, that might be the best piece of feedback I've ever seen. Thank you for your thoughts, both praise and concrit, and the explanation behind everything you said. I hope I've answered your question about the brother-bonding in this chapter; and don't worry, Soda's turn is coming up.

Arantxa - Thank you so much. I'm glad you liked it.

Makado Felton - Ah, there's a fine line between rushing a story and dragging it out. I may have one or two extra chapters going in, but I'm almost done with what I wanted to accomplish here. Hey, you can always go back and read it again!

Jamie - Thank you for the support and yes, I think they were sort of caught in a moment.

Raggedy Anne - Never read that book but I'll have to check it out! I hope you walking away in a daze was a good thing…

Jess - Thanks for reading and putting in your .02! It makes me feel good that you care about what's to come…but the pressure! Oh the pressure!

Robot In Disguise - I was thinking that same thing (about the age of people here) and I figured I could get my point across without actually spelling it out for everyone. Thanks for the feedback!

Alejandra - I'm glad you took a shot and read the story. It's icing on the cake that you enjoyed it so much! Thanks for chiming in!

JPSquire - Duly noted, and your opinion is always of value to me! I'm sorry that you thought it was too fast, and yes, I agree that it would have been better if they didn't have to "get caught up in the moment" but I'm in a catch-22 here with keeping the story a certain length while keeping things moving forward. It's tough, because I don't want to bore people with date after date after date while they wait an acceptable amount of time before becoming intimate, but then I ran the risk of people being disappointed that it was too fast. Oh well, I hope you'll stick with it in the end.

Tessie - Get Dirty Dancing out of your mind! ((wink))

Bandit-Gurl42 - I try to avoid sappy as much as possible. Thanks!