"Lori, come help me back here." Lisa called to her daughter from the storage room.

As Lori left, Dallas took her place behind the counter. No one was around, so he buried himself in the newspaper. So far he hadn't seen anything about his robbery or about the fire. But he knew he couldn't let his guard down, he had to keep alert.

"Yo, Dallas." Looking up, Dal saw Cliff outside the store, tapping on the glass. Dal glanced around to make sure the two girls were still in the storeroom then headed out the door.

"What do you want?" he asked as they walked a few steps to get out of sight of the store. They turned into an alleyway, and there Nathan and the two other members, Dal couldn't remember their names, were waiting.

Nathan answered the question. "We're going to go hunting up some more trouble tonight. Wanna come along?"

"Naw, man I can't."

"Why not?" Nathan asked impatiently.

Dal sighed. "Look I already told you guys, I have to stay low. I can't go running off getting into trouble."

"You did the night of the rodeo."

"Yeah, and I got my head chewed off."

Nathan shook his head. "I knew it. I thought you might still be tough since you came with us the night of the rodeo, but you are going soft. You gotta get out of that place, man, their corrupting you."

Dallas raised an eyebrow. "Corrupting?"

"Yeah, they're making you all goody-goody. You can't do anything."

"Look, I'm about to get out of here. Once I'm back home I can do whatever I want. But right now I'm trying to stay out of prison."

Nathan brushed the comments aside. "Face it Winston. You're becoming a soc."

Dallas lunged at him. Caught off guard, Nathan was flung against the wall. Dallas punched him in the stomach. Nathan hit back. Cliff and the other two leaned against the wall, a couple of smiles as they watched the fight progress. A few minutes later, Dallas was on top of Nathan with Nate's blade in his hand. Dal drew the knife down to Nathan's neck and hissed, "This seem like a soc to you?"

Nathan's glare never wavered. "You're still pretty bad," he admitted, still with the spark in his eyes. "But you ain't the baddest hood anymore."

"I ain't a soc," Dallas spit out.

Nathan just shrugged.

"I'm not," he growled again.

"Maybe, maybe not."

xxxxx

"Come on! Keep it down!"

"I'm trying!"

"Well try harder!"

"I am trying harder!" Carly's voice rang through the house. Brian looked up from his newspaper.

"Should you go stop that?"

Lisa gave him a gentle swat on the head as she passed by. "You could just as easily go yourself, you know."

Brian wagged his head and mouthed silently to the air, imitating his wife.

"What's that? I didn't catch it."

He quickly buried himself in the newspaper. "Nothing, dear." She just rolled her eyes.

Lisa flounced into the hall. "Okay you've been at that long enough you two," she sang out to the duo leaning over the mirror.

"We would have been done earlier, but your stupid little girl can't get this simple thing," Dal remarked exasperatedly.

"Hey! I'm not stupid!" Carly cried, but she didn't bother turning around. She stared intently at the mirror, trying to raise her one eyebrow. Dallas bent down and placed both hands on her left eyebrow.

"Okay, now lift the right one." Carly groaned in concentration. "Come on we almost got it," Dal cried, pushing the left brow down as it tried to rise along with the right. After a couple of minutes, the right brow was up, and with Dal's help, the left one was down.

"Yahoo!" Carly giggled. "We did it!"

"Finally." Dal sighed, then he slapped her on the back. "Did good, kid," he remarked. Carly giggled even harder.

An amused Lisa glided into her daughter's room. "How you going Lori?"

Dallas called after her, "Tell that girl she's been in there for over three hours. You'd think she was getting ready for her wedding."

Lori, sitting at her own dressing table heard the comment and shouted back through the open door, "Dallas Winston if you want to look beautiful you've got to spend time on it."

The door closed behind Lisa, so they didn't hear Dallas's reply. Lori turned back to finishing up her makeup. "You do look beautiful honey," Mrs. Mathews murmured as she gave her daughter a from-behind hug.

"Like you, Mom."

Lisa smiled. "Well of course. You don't think God would waste all these beautiful looks on just me, do you?"

The younger Mathews glanced through the mirror at her mother. "'Pride goeth before a fall,' Mother."

"Honey, God gave me these killer looks. I am simply letting others become aware of God's wonderful work." Lisa loftily stated.

"Mother!" the twenty-one-year-old stared in shock at her mother's uncharacteristic statements.

"I'm teasing you, Lori. Now, come on, we've got to hurry up." The two ladies bent down and finished putting on Lori's makeup for the special night.

xxxx

"Lori, Lisa, he's here," Brian hollered as he went to answer the door.

"We'll be there in a minute!"

Brian opened the door. "Trey, come on in and sit down. She'll be out in a minute."

"Thank you, sir." A young man entered and nervously went and sat down on the couch, barely touching the edge of the seat.

"How are you Trey?" Brian asked.

"Fi-fine, sir, j-just fine." The young man stumbled a little over his words.

"Trey, relax, we aren't going to bite you," Jason commented kindly, sitting on the other couch with Dallas right next to him. Dallas was lounging back, intently studying the man before him.

"Right we aren't going to bite you," Brian sat in his chair with Carly on the floor, in effect making a circle all the family on one half, and Trey on the other half of the circle.

"However, we will expect Lori home by 11:00."

"Yes sir," Trey quickly volunteered.

A few minutes of polite conversation then Brian excused himself to go find out exactly what was keeping the two women. Dallas glanced down and a gleaming object caught his eye. He swiftly pulled Two-Bit's blade out of Jason's pocket. As slow and as obvious as possible, Dal flicked open the blade. He played with it for a few seconds, pushing his hand against the tip to feel its sharpness. After a while he looked up and met Trey's eyes.

"11:00," he repeated conversationally.

Wide-eyed, Trey silently nodded. Jason coughed loudly, his hand conveniently covering his mouth.

"Okay I'm ready," Lori's voice filtered into the living room. Dallas closed the blade and put it into his pocket. He took his cue from the others and stood. He turned to see Lori enter the room.

And barely constrained his jaw from dropping. With a perfect fitting blue jean skirt, low heels, and a light green collared shirt that set off her green eyes brilliantly, Lori was the spitting image of perfection. Dallas hadn't seen her in anything except sweats and old clothes as she worked in the store. And her brown hair had always been in a ponytail. Now it was down, meticulously curled mahogany locks reaching just past her shoulders.

"Lori you are gorgeous," Trey, no trace of nervousness now in his voice, strolled over.

"Thanks," she blushed. "You ready to go?" At Trey's nod, they both headed out the door, Lori calling her goodbyes over her shoulder.

"My little girl's all grown up." Lisa laughed, though still with a little moisture in her eyes.

"Aww, wait until she graduates college, then that's the time to cry," Brian patted his wife on the shoulder.

"Well, now that Lori's gone can you teach me some more tricks Dallas?" Carly eagerly asked, tired of watching her sister.

"Not tonight."

"How 'bout tomorrow?" Before Dal could respond she continued excitedly, "and the next day and the next and the next. I want to learn all of your tricks!"

Brian knelt down beside Carly, but not before giving his wife an I-told-you-so look. "Carly, Dallas is going to go home in a couple of days. He doesn't have time to teach you all these tricks."

"Going home?"

"Yes, he has his own family."

"I guess." Carly grudgingly mumbled. "But you'll come back to visit us won't you?" She gazed at the hood, her sweet expression able to melt even the most hardened of hearts.

"Maybe," Dal said. Carly raised her hands in triumph as she bounded to her room. So what? It was just to get her off his back. If he had said the truth he would never have heard the end of it.

"I told you, Mother," Brian whispered to Lisa. "Carly's growing too attached to Dallas."

"She'll get over it."

"I hope so."

xxxx

"Dallas Winston, just who do you think you are?" Lori stormed into his bedroom. Dal was up, reading a book he had actually gotten interested in. He glanced at the nightstand where the clock read 11:30.

"I think the better question is why are you home so late?"

"Don't change the subject. Did you or did you not threaten Trey?"

"Trey?" He couldn't place the name.

Lori rolled her eyes. "My date tonight, Trey. You threatened him to have me home at 11:00!"

"And a lot of good it did too. Man, threats just aren't what they used to be."

"So you admit you threatened him."

Dally held up his hands. "Whoa, I never ever threatened him." Lori snorted. "I didn't. I merely said 11:00."

"With a knife in your hands."

"Hey, it's not my fault if he thought that the knife was meant for him."

"That's bogus, Dallas." But she was calming down, he could tell. "From now on, you stay away from my dates. If you threaten him again..." Lori let the sentence hang. "Now, what I want to know is where did you get that knife?"

"Knife?" Play dumb.

"You just admitted you had a knife."

"Oh, yeah." Darn it. New plan. "Lady, I come from Tulsa. I need a knife to protect myself sometimes. I don't ever use it." Hardly.

"Well just the same, please don't get it out in our house. I hate knives. Thank you," she spun on her heel and flounced out the door.

"Hey! Just a second. How come you weren't in at 11:00 like your dad wanted?"

Lori smiled. "You think you're so smart, don't you? Well, for your information, the movie started late, there was an accident on the road, plus some kids were stirring up trouble somewhere and the police had to go get them. We all had to stop and wait for them to go by. Dad understands. Nice try, though."

"Did the fuz- did the police catch those kids?"

"Not that I know of."

"What were the kids doing?"

Lori shrugged. She left without another word.

Looks like I was smarter than I thought. I can imagine Darry's face if he heard that I was caught hanging with some hoods after he warned me not too. Good thing I wasn't caught after the rodeo either. But that was only one time. And I'm almost out of here. With these happy thoughts, Dallas threw the incident out of his mind and went back to his reading. He was nearly home.

Hey! I know this one's short, and it probably doesn't have that much action going on, but was a necessary chapter. It's the last little hurdle before some things start happening. I know this was up pretty late, but we're getting our bathroom redone so I spent the majority of my time tearing down wallpaper and hammering out tile. By the way, busting tile is pretty fun! You need to try it. And then of course my usual writing time was interrupted by the vice-presidential debate. But there wasn't a debate tonight so I had time.

By the way, is anybody else ready for Christmas? I am, I don't know for some reason it just feels like Christmas. The weather here is really nice, it's been raining and we had a really cool summer. Hopefully we'll get some snow this year. Especially since Christmas is at my house this year.

Anyway, on with reviews.

ER Monkey, Burner of Cookies- Well, how are we doing? I kind of doubt you have a day off today, this is kind of a weird day to have off, but who knows. The weather could still be pretty bad down there.

Jessie13- I'm sure you do a lot better job with keeping the cussing at a minimum than a lot of stories I've seen. And I'm not saying that having cussing automatically makes a story bad, I just think the story is good with or without it. I know some great books that have cussing in it, and I enjoy them, so it can go either way, just not over the top.

MissLKid- Yeah, either way you go, you end up having to do something annoying. Either school now or school later. Thanks for the review!

Joker is Poker with a J- Yep, Dallas is pretty forceful. He can make people say sorry when he wants them too. Well, Johnny had a horrible life, and Dallas was close to Johnny so it makes sense that he would remember that stuff. Glad you liked it!

Tensleep- I was nominated? Wow! I didn't know until you said something? I wonder who nominated me? But thanks for the vote of confidence. I'm glad you think it's subtle, I didn't want it to be too obvious nor too discreet. Thanks again for telling me that!

CinderBrat- Ya logged in! Yahoo! Sorry, I just guessed on what a 2x4 was. It sounded pipish, but you're probably right. I'll go back and fix it, when I want to, right now I'm too lazy. You love cocker spaniels!?!? I own a cocker spaniel! Yes, they are adorable. I'll send you some pictures of mine if I can find some. My pictures are scattered all over the place.

Beth (Lady B. Padfoot)- Okay, some more Lori in this chapter, but it was still a short chapter. Sorry about that. I think the next one will be longer. Hey, we don't even know if the gang is going to show up at all. Hope you had fun with your friends!

Malara- Aww, darn it! Stupid computer, I love long reviews. But I'm happy you liked the chapter that much to write a long review (even if I never got to see it cries) Have a nice day! That makes me smile every time I write that too!

nighttime writer- Well, it would make for a good story...but on the other hand that would be cruel....but on the other hand how many hoods stay friends with greasers and socs....but on the other hand it is possible to stay friends....but on the other hand it's so tempting.....but on the flip side (vice-presidential debate joke- Edwards said 'on the flip side' when the Republicans are accusing them of always flip-flopping. Sorry, I do that sometimes) Anyway, but on the flip side, I really can't say. Thanks for the review!

Lintucuiel- You're right. Two words always work. Elvish? What's that? Thanks for the review!

steves-girl- Don't worry about it. Thanks for the review. Glad you think it was good. Hey you reviewed twice! Double thank you!

the guest- Cool name. Sounds very self-assured. I am the guest. Well thank you. That is very sweet of you to say that. Peace to you too! And thanks again!

CiCi- I can't wait either!

Okay, well sorry if this chapter wasn't that great, it's not my favorite anyway, but I hope to be able to work on the next chapter this weekend, so maybe you will get an update sooner.

Oh, I found out from Tensleep that I'm nominated for Best Dally in the Wrong Side of the Tracks awards. Thank you to whoever did that! I would like to know so I can thank you properly, but if you want to remain anonymous that's fine too! But everybody cross your fingers!

All right let's review! 128 so far! Keep 'em coming! Have a stupendous day!