Chapter 6

The weather, it seems, went from bone-crunching cold to fry-an-egg-on-the-sidewalk hot in a matter of weeks. Darry wonders whatever happened to spring and if Tulsa will ever see one again. He and Soda are on the front porch, sharing a Pepsi and talking because it's too warm inside to do anything but laze around and complain. It's Saturday night and Soda's grounded for missing (and subsequently flunking) a quiz in history because he and Steve were hanging around watching the girls volleyball team warm up. Since Melissa doesn't seem to want to hang around with him any more than she has to, Darry stuck around the house with Soda to keep him company. Everybody else is out. Even his mom and dad went to a movie.

Darry's pretty depressed that he's not only losing hand after hand of Texas Hold 'Em to Sodapop who ain't even cheating for once, but that he's also answering question after question about Melissa and doesn't have anything new to say. Finally, Darry throws his cards down and folds his hands behind his head, leaning back precariously in the rickety old lawn furniture that sits on their front porch. He glares at Sodapop, who is gleefully raking together the small pile of coins they've been betting with. Soda looks up and shrugs.

"Ain't my fault you're distracted, Daddy-O."

Soda's taken to calling him Daddy-O, which Darry only stands because it's Sodapop doing it. He wouldn't take it from anyone else, and Soda's learned quickly not to do it in front of his mom or dad because it results in awkward silence that can last for as long as a whole day. Don't remind anyone of my big mistake, Darry thinks bitterly. God forbid we actually have to realize it's happening and deal with it accordingly.

Darry knows his parents don't mean to avoid the situation entirely. He knows they're still getting used to the idea, and that there isn't a whole lot that can be done anyway until he graduates high school. Still, it gets under his skin a little bit that sometimes it seems like they're pretending it'll just go away all together. Far as Darry knows, that's pretty much impossible.

Every couple of days, though, his mom asks how Melissa is and if her morning sickness has abated at all. Darry always has the same answer, unfortunately, which is, "She's hanging in there," and "No, she still seems pretty sick," but at least his mom asks. Darry hasn't told anyone about the distance that's grown between him and Melissa except Soda. It now seems like it's not just the baby hanging between them, but everything different about them that didn't seem like such a big deal in the beginning. The distance has grown into a chasm that Darry isn't sure he's going to be able to cross when the time comes to put a ring on Melissa's finger. He's sort of afraid she'll say she doesn't want to marry him. He's afraid, but he sure as hell wouldn't be surprised. It makes him feel physically ill just thinking about it.

"...see you after all."

Darry shakes his head, snapping himself out of his reverie. He looks at Soda. "Huh?"

The grin that spreads across Soda's face is wide and infectious. His eyes are focused somewhere beyond Darry's left shoulder, out onto the street. Darry tips the chair forward with a dull thud onto the concrete porch and turns to look in the direction Soda is. A black GTO has pulled up alongside the curb and is idling in near silence.

"I said it looks like your girl wants to see you after all."

Darry turns back only fractionally to his younger brother before looking at the car again. Melissa is clearly visible inside, and she's talking to the driver, who Darry can't see but is pretty sure is Kimberly. The car is Kimberly's older brother's; Darry knows for sure because he'd admired the detailed cream leather interior the one time he'd ridden inside of it.

Soda's started to clean up the cards and money from the cardboard box they were using for a table between them, and Darry pushes himself out of his chair, going to stand againt the porch railing. Soda flops on the old couch that sits adjacent to the door. Sometimes, they find a passed out Two-Bit on that couch if he can't quite find his way home after a particularly wild party. Darry idly wonders how many times that couch has been thrown up on.

Finally, Melissa exits the car and waves to the person driving, standing a moment on the sidewalk after the car is out of sight. When she turns toward the house, Darry smiles and she smiles back. She looks good, Darry thinks, better than he's seen her in weeks. She's wearing a light blue dress with a matching sweater over the top, although Darry thinks it's much too hot for a sweater no matter how nice it looks with a dress. She still looks thin and tired, but Darry supposes that after she stops throwing up several times a day she might start looking less drawn. He's hoping, anyway. She ascends the steps, keeping her eyes on Darry. From behind, he hears Soda.

"Hey Melly."

She looks past Darry. "Hi Soda." She cocks her head. "How come you're not out tonight?"

Darry doesn't have to look to know there's a deep frown creasing his brother's face. "I'm grounded," is all he says, and Darry notices a bitter twinge to his voice. Being grounded doesn't bother Soda so much except that it rarely happens since Soda's pretty good at charming his way out of any punishment, and tonight happened to be a night when all of his friends were taking advantage of the good weather to go car hopping at the Ribbon.

Darry puts his hand on Melissa's back. He's surprised to see her, but he ain't gonna knock a gift horse in the mouth. He doesn't even ask what she's doing there. He just wants to talk to her without arguing for once. He leads her inside, but holds his hand out to keep the screen door from slamming shut.

"C'mon inside, Soda," he says.

Soda throws a half-grin Darry's way. "Too hot," he says amiably. "Sides, I know you wanna talk to her, so go." He waves his hand. "Talk."

Soda's real good at knowing when to be around and when to make himself scarce. Darry steps back outside and ruffles his brother's hair, before following Melissa into the house.

She's taken off her sweater and draped it over the arm of the couch. If his mom gets home and sees it there, Darry'll catch a lecture about not respecting what was requested in the family meeting. See, you could ask someone all day long to turn off the bathroom light after they're done using it, and they'll ignore you seven ways from Sunday. But if you mention it in a family meeting, it's gospel. Sometimes Darry wonders why his mother doesn't type up minutes of the meetings so everyone can keep track of what they're supposed to be doing. He takes the sweater off the couch and hangs it on the seldom-used coat rack instead. If Melissa notices, she doesn't say anything. Her hands are clasped in front of her and she's staring at the television, even though it's not on.

"Mel?"

She looks up. Smiles. Darry relaxes a little. He can't remember when he was at the awkward stage with Melissa. It was real different, becoming such good friends with her before they started dating. There wasn't really an awkward stage at all.

"I miss you," she says suddenly.

It surprises Darry, but floods him with warmth just the same. He walks over to her and takes her into his arms; hugs her like he hasn't seen her in weeks. It feels like he really hasn't. Not like this, anyway. Not without the underlying panic he's started to expect to see in her eyes every time he looks at her. She doesn't have that look tonight. She just looks exhausted.

Distantly, he hears Soda's voice filtering through the still air. He's yelling to someone -- down the street maybe -- and that someone yells back. Darry thinks it's probably hoods lurking about like the Shepards. Or maybe Steve is back from the Ribbon. He puts his head down near Melissa's neck. She smells like fruit. Apples, maybe. Darry's not so good with the shampoos that smell like stuff. Apples, though. It's definitely apples.

"Come on," he says, and pulls out of the embrace but leaves their hands entwined. He leads her to his room, and once they're inside, he shuts the door.

Darry's not a neat freak by any means, but his room is generally neater than his brothers. He used to share with Soda when Pony was little, and only a year ago did his mom finally move Soda into Pony's room so Darry could have his own. Ever since then, his room is definitely neater. Soda's a slob. Darry doesn't have to pick up every single thing and put it in its place, but he likes his bed to be clear and his clothes to at least be hung up. Melissa's seen his room before, but she always likes to look around it anyway.

There's a lot to look at; even Darry has to admit that. It takes a while to get through all the trophies and ribbons and framed newspaper articles about his sport successes. Aside from football, Darry plays baseball pretty well too. When he was a freshman and sophomore, he played both. It was only when he became captain of the football team when he was a junior that he didn't have time to do baseball anymore. It was too bad, too, because Darry was pretty good at baseball.

Melissa smiles and shakes her head. "Show off," she mutters.

Darry catches her around the waist from behind. She likes to tease him about all of his awards. "You're just jealous," he says back. It's playful banter that's not new to them and it makes Darry feel like things just might get back to normal after all. He tries to be cautiously optimistic, but he really just wants to kiss her and tell her he loves her and get it over with. He wants to make everything okay again. He tells himself not to force it.



It's so nice to be back in Darry's arms again, Melissa thinks. She knows she's spent the last few weeks pushing him away, but the further away he got, the more she started realizing she wanted him closer. Like it used to be. Of course, things are different now. She didn't used to be pregnant and now she is and sure, things are gonna change.

She sorta hopes things can change around her and Darry instead of about them.

Melissa came over to the Curtis house tonight on a leap of faith that not only he'd be home, but he'd want to see her. She hasn't exactly been the perfect girlfriend to him lately. Melissa's honestly getting sick of being sad all the time, and feeling desperate all the time. She wants the solidness that Darry gives her. She wants to feel like she's holding on to something that's not going to crumble through her fingers at any second. That's how Darry feels to her. So she turns in his arms and buries her face into his chest.

There was a motivation for coming. That motivation is in the form of a little blue pamphlet stuffed in her purse. It's the kind of pamphlet that they have displayed in the nurse's office at school. The pamphlets are a teen health series and say things like, "Babies Having Babies! How YOU can prevent teenage pregnancy!" and things like that.

This particular pamphlet of course doesn't say that. Too late, Melissa thinks bitterly. This particular pamphlet was not picked up in the nurse's office but was in the big envelope Dr. Hamilton's nurse had handed her mother. This particular pamphlet, folded twice and stuffed in the bottom of her purse, says, "The Adoption Option: What You Should Know."

Melissa knows Darry isn't even considering adoption. She doesn't know because they've talked about it, she knows because she knows him. But somehow, Melissa thinks that maybe if she just shows him the pamphlet, it might make him understand that this isn't something horrible. Having a baby at sixteen and not being able to afford to feed it, well, that's horrible, Melissa thinks. Giving it to a family who is financially responsible (and who have one hundred percent guaranteed already graduated high school), and who actually want it...that's definitely not horrible. Darry is a logical person. He'd see that, wouldn't he?

Melissa doesn't know, but she's scared to ask. She's gone though the conversation a million times in her mind. She's rehearsed it with her mother. God, her mother. That's a totally different story. Her mother is treating the entire thing as a "temporary setback" -- she actually used those words -- and once the baby is given away, life will go back to normal.

"When Darry's at A&M," Melissa's mother told her, "He'll realize he made the right decision."

She talks like the decision's already been made, and Melissa is sort of afraid to tell her mother otherwise. Her mother is the sort of person that makes things the way she wants them to. When Melissa was younger, she went through a phase where she thought her mother was a wtich. Not because she was mean or anything, but because things always turned out perfectly for her. Her mother could be planning a garden party, and it could storm all week, and Melissa's mother would never fret about the weather. She'd just keep on with the planning, and come Saturday morning, the sun would be shining brightly, and all that rain would have made the whole yard green and sparkly. Her mother would clap her hands together and say, "Just as I ordered it." Melissa honestly used to think her mother "ordered" the weather to change, the same way she "ordered" the ((appetizer here)) and ((appetizer here)).

Melissa keeps her face pressed into the place on Darry's chest that she's very familiar with. On the left side, before the swell of his muscles, just above his heart, is a small, crescent-shaped scar that Darry got when he was nine. He and Soda spotted a tree house at the stables where Soda used to ride horses, and they climbed up without checking to see if it was safe or sturdy enough to hold them. It had been abandoned for years, so of course they crashed through the floor boards and fell ten feet to the ground. On the way down, a branch clipped Darry in that spot, ripped through his shirt and gashed his chest. When Melissa fit her head under Darry's chin and pressed her cheek against his chest, she knew the scar was just under her ear. She didn't know why, but she liked knowing that.

"Darry, I'm scared, you know?" she says.

"Yeah, I know."

Darry's voice is deep and gruff, and his hold hasn't loosened on her in the slightest. He brings a hand up and smoothes it down the back of her hair. It's quiet for a long time, and for a while Melissa can only hear the steady thump of Darry's heart. Eventually, she hears the screen door slam as somebody (probably Soda) comes into the house, and then the canned laughter of the television.

"I don't really think I want to do this," Melissa says.

It's the closest she gets to mentioning the pamphlet in her purse. Darry pushes her back a little, holding her shoulders and looking into her eyes. He has amazing blue eyes that Melissa really never tires of looking at. Most girls don't, she supposes. She's never met anyone who can change their whole face, their entire expression and demeanor and the way people interpret them, just by their eyes. But Darry's that way. When he's mad or trying to concentrate, his eyes get real light and hard. He looks that way when he plays football. Most of the pictures of him in the paper come along with headlines like 'Stone Cold Curtis' and junk like that. People who don't know Darry, that's what they see. He's real intimidating with those eyes and everything. But his eyes can be real warm, too; if he's happy they get bright and they darken a little. If he's being really serious or turned-on, they can get almost stormy, and Melissa likes to think the stormy-eyes are just for her.

His eyes are blue-gray now. Stormy, but not in a good way. He looks upset.

"Wanting to and having to are two different things," he says sternly. It's a typical Darry-quote. Darry's very compartmentalized in the way he thinks. He doesn't complain much, which is why people like him. He just sort of barrels through life. These are the things I have to do. These are the things I want to do. He'll do them both with vigor. It's just his way. Melissa figures there are worse things. Hell, she knows a lot of people who spend their whole lives trying to just do the 'want to' list and not bothering with the 'have to' list. It's just not a realistic way to live, and everybody figures that out eventually.

Still, Melissa isn't ready to just approach this baby as something she has to do. She's still in the frame of mind that maybe she can find a way around it. The pamphlet talking about "The Adoption Option" is sitting right there in her purse. All she has to do is turn around and grab it. Hold it out to him. Let him read it. Take it from there.

She doesn't. It frightens her and she can't figure out why. If someone were to ask her which she'd be more afraid of: handing Darry the adoption pamphlet or going home and telling her mother the adoption thing wasn't happening, she'd say her mother, hands down. Still, she stays where she is in Darry's arms. She nods at him in place of commenting on his life lesson of wanting to and having to, and he pulls her back to him. He says something into her hair about getting through this. He kisses her on the top of the head. She feels safe and cocooned in Darry's arms and she doesn't show him the pamphlet.

She tells herself there's always tomorrow. She knows she's lying, but she pretends anyway.

TBC...



Thanks to all reviewers!

Lady B. Padfoot - It's a wonderful song, and perfect for this story (so far). I'd never seen/heard it before. I'll have to try to download it. Thanks for posting the lyrics, I enjoyed reading them!