Author's Note: I'm not sure where this one came from, but those are the ones I like best – just pops into your head, and you go from there. So that's what happened several weeks ago, and here's the first chapter. Hope you enjoy!

Disclaimer: S.E. Hinton owns The Outsiders, I'm just having fun and making no money off of this.

Chapter 1 Surprise Meeting

Ponyboy's POV

As I stepped out into the bright sunlight for my trek across campus I found myself wishing I could just go to a movie. Man, those were the days. Go to school, go home, do whatever you wanted until dinnertime…of course, there was always the concern over getting mugged by the rich kids, but other than that I hadn't realized how easy life had been for me.

Ever since I'd started college last year, there was no time for anything but work – classes, papers to write, homework to finish, work study to help pay for school, and tutoring on top of it all because even the scholarship and the work study program weren't quite enough to cover the whole tuition plus books. Now I know what Darry feels like. Well, almost. At least I'm moving forward relatively quickly, where he's been at the same job for six years with just a couple of promotions. No wonder he never went to movies. Work all the time, and you start to lose focus on the things that actually give you pleasure.

I glanced down at my paper again to make sure I was headed for the right building. Last year I worked at the café in the student center twenty hours a week, first washing dishes, then doing some of the cooking by the end of second semester. It wasn't bad, but I'm not sure I'll ever feel the same again about making a sandwich. When you do it fifty times a day you just want to go home and eat pretzels out of the bag. This year they had me working in one of the administrative offices, the one that deals with registration. I don't really care what I do, as long as it pays the bills.

"Curtis!"

I turned around. "Hey, Jerome." One of my buddies from last year came jogging toward me. He flashed me a bright white smile. We had several of the same classes last year; he wants to be a journalist. Already he's having problems, though – he joined the school newspaper last year and has been getting the smallest assignments they can dig up, and it's not because he's the new guy. It's because he's black.

"Did you come looking for me to wave those grades in my face again?" I quipped.

"Now, Ponyboy, you don't hold grudges, do you? A little friendly competition never hurt nobody's motivation."

I smiled. Jerome is probably the smartest guy I've ever met, and I don't just mean book smart. He knows everything that's going on in the world at all times – political, financial, and current events. Not only that, but he understands most of it. "I guess I can give you a run for your money this year. Didn't want to be a showoff last year."

Jerome slapped me on the back when he got up to me and looked down from his towering six-foot four position above me. I wasn't small any more, but at five-nine I wasn't exactly a giant next to him. "Yeah, you keep thinkin' that, little guy. Believe whatever you need to help you get by." He laughed again, a deep hearty laugh. "So where you going in such a hurry, boy? Got a big date?"

I shook my head. "Work study. They got me workin' in an office this year."

"Well, maybe you'll be having that big date by the end of the week, all them ladies working in the offices."

"Yeah, that's just what I want – one of those pleasant ladies from registration asking me to go to her knitting club with her." Jerome and I had both had to stand in the registration lines last year when classes were either too full or cancelled, trying to re-schedule ourselves. Let's just say some of the women on the other side of the counter were rather firm when it came to having the right signatures in the proper places by the correct professors, and they weren't above letting you know that you were an idiot and a waste of time if you had it wrong.

"Well, looks like you get off here," Jerome observed as we approached the steps of the registration building. I ascended the stairs. "Good luck, man. You're gonna need it!" he called up after me. I glared down at Jerome, and could still hear his laughter as I stepped into the building and the door closed behind me.

My footsteps echoed in the empty hall as I made my way to the stairs and up to room 205. I entered the room and closed the door behind me. The woman behind the counter glanced up at me. "We don't open until tomorrow. Come back then with your schedule, add or drop slips signed by the…"

"I'm not here for registration," I explained. "I'm here for work study."

She didn't respond at first, just finished up what she was typing. "Very well then," she finally acknowledged. "I'm not sure why they sent us a man this year, but as long as you can keep up with the work it won't be a problem."

I was a little irked at her suggestion that I was inferior based on my gender alone, and that I wouldn't be able to 'keep up' with the work as well as…well, as well as she could.

The woman hefted her large frame out of the chair and headed toward the doorway behind her without a word. Just before walking through the door she turned back to look at me. "Are you coming?" she asked in a bored tone, indicating the part of the counter that lifted to allow someone to get to the other side. I lifted the counter and followed her. "My name is Maude Baxter. You can call me Mrs. Baxter. And you name is?"

"Ponyboy Curtis," I told her, wondering if I should tell her she could call me Mr. Curtis. Apparently I didn't need to.

"Well, Mr. Curtis," she said, "you will be working in the file room with Miss Wilcox. We are reorganizing the filing system in order to have all student information placed on the mainframe by next year. Right in here…" Mrs. Baxter led me into a room full of filing cabinets, files, boxes, and papers; the table set up in the middle of the room was piled so high I almost didn't see the woman on the other side. "Miss Wilcox, your work study student is here." She turned to me. "I'll leave you here now." She looked me up and down for a moment, gave a disgusted little sigh, and went back toward the front desk.

"Oh, good," came a voice from behind all the stacked files. The first thing I felt when she stood up was a sense of relief that someone who didn't look much older than me would be training me. My second thought was of Jerome's comment about getting a date; she was cute, at least at first glance, wearing a stylish short dress with green and orange stripes and a matching headband keeping her shortish blonde hair out of her face. She looked up at me, extending her hand as she crossed the room. She froze just before she got to me, arm still extended, and did something like a double-take, mouth half open with whatever she had planned to say.

"Hi," I said uncertainly, reaching out to shake her hand.

"Ponyboy?" she breathed.

It took me a minute of staring at her for it to click, but once I could picture her hair a little longer, a different type of clothes, and there were those blue eyes… "Sandy?"

She smiled. "Wow. Yeah. I'm sorry, come all the way in."

I can only describe it as an awkward moment. You don't really expect to ever run into your brother's ex-girlfriend who's supposed to be living hundreds of miles away, much less find out that you're working for her for the year. I stepped away from the doorway and further into the room.

"Gosh," Sandy said, shoving a box out of the way with her foot and leading me to the table. "This is odd, huh?"

"Yeah," I agreed. I had always thought I would be able to glare at her if I ever saw her again, and maybe make a point of implying how cruel she had been to my brother. But she was being so nice, I had to keep reminding myself what she had done. Soda was long over it by now, but I had seen firsthand the pain she had caused, and it still bugged me. I guess when something bad happens to someone you love it can be harder to get over than when it happens to you.

"So, uh…you're in college! That's great, Ponyboy. Soda always said you should have a chance to…" She stopped mid-sentence, apparently having made herself even more uncomfortable. "Are you…what are you majoring in?"

"Well, I'm still undecided, but I'm leaning toward English."

"Wow, that's great." She gave me a genuine smile, and I had to work to tone down the one I returned.

It seemed like I should say something, rather than just answering her questions. "So…when did you come back from Florida?" As soon as I said it I wished I hadn't. You could cut the tension in the room with a knife. But Sandy forged onward, determined to make this all seem normal and not at all awkward.

"Well, I stayed down there for four years. In the evenings I worked at a restaurant near my grandparents' place, waiting tables, and took some classes at a local business school during the day. I got my Associate's degree, and decided to come back home when I found out about the job here last year."

So there it was, the last five years of Sandy's life summarized in thirty seconds. She had only left out one detail, and I wasn't sure if, much less how, I should ask her about it. I guess she knew what I was thinking, though.

"I lost the baby," she explained. "I was almost seven months along, and developed an infection. I had her too early. She lived for a few days, but…" Sandy got a far-away look for an instant, and I was glad I hadn't brought it up. As bitter as I had felt about her all those years, I felt bad that she had lost the baby. I had always pictured her married to someone else, staying at home taking care of her little brat…this just wasn't what I had expected. She was unmarried. She had a degree. She was working for a living. And her baby had died. I wondered if the father knew.

"I'm sorry," I told her sincerely.

"Yeah, well…" Sandy gave me one of those smiles that you come up with when there isn't really something to smile about, but you want the person you're talking about to not feel bad. "It was a long time ago." She sighed and re-stacked some of the papers on the table, clearly trying to come up with the words to her next question, which I had known all along was coming at some point. "So, um…how's your brother? How's Soda?" She almost couldn't say his name, and I wondered at how she could leave him so easily and on such bad terms, yet still seem emotional about him five years later.

"He's good," I said, trying not to smile before I made my next comment. This is better than telling people my name for the first time. "He's a cop."

Sandy looked up at me with a blank expression, like I had just told her a joke and she didn't get the punch line. "No, really…what's he doing these days?"

I grinned at her. "I'm not kidding. He's a cop – uniform, badge, gun, the whole works."

She smiled and shook her head. "A cop? Soda? It's just so…"

"Ironic?" I suggested. "Yeah, I know, it seemed so at first. He's good, though, and there aren't too many kids on our side of town who give him a hard time. He goes easy on them for the little stuff, and he's real good at talking people down at the domestic dispute calls. Soda got some programs started for kids, too, to keep them off the streets and doing productive things. They love him." I was proud of my brother, and not ashamed to let people know it.

"That's great. But…don't you need a high school diploma to go to the police academy?"

"He got it," I said. "Went at nights for his GED."

"Huh. What brought on that kind of career choice?"

I imagined Sandy was still picturing Soda in his greasy DX shirt, getting away with anything illegal that he could, as long as it was fun. I looked out the window. "Steve got shot."

Sandy's face fell. "What? Oh, no…"

"It's okay, he's alright. But things were getting bad. It was over something stupid. Steve was just looking to just fight the guy, but he pulled out a gun and shot him, point blank. Soda was with him. Steve almost died." I nearly shuddered, remembering all the blood on my brother's clothes, and his hardening expression as we sat in the hospital waiting to hear how Steve was doing. "That was when Soda decided he needed to be able to do more than just pound on people in street fights. The guy that shot Steve was high on heroine, pot, you name it. But he got off on a technicality."

Sandy shook her head. "Well, good for Soda. I feel safer knowing he's out there protecting me." Her face turned bright red as soon as she'd said it, and she quickly started picking through one of the boxes on the table. "Well, we'd better get started on all this. God knows it'll take most of the year to sort out!"

>>>>

By the end of the day we hadn't made a dent in all the work, but things were a lot less awkward. In fact, I had almost forgotten I was even working with someone who, for five years, I'd thought I hated.

"Looks like that's it for the day. You'll be in for the afternoon tomorrow?"

I held Sandy's sweater as she slid her arms in. "Yeah, from one until five."

"Good. Well, say…" I waited for her to say, 'say hi to Soda', which I honestly wasn't sure I could agree to, but she caught herself and continued, "I mean, I'll see you tomorrow. It's good seeing you, Ponyboy."

"Yeah, you too. See you tomorrow." We went out the front door together, and she went off to the employee parking lot while I headed back across campus to get the bus home. I still hadn't decided whether or not I should tell Soda I was working with her. But how could I not? I hadn't just bumped into her. I would be working with her all year.

Sandy's POV

It was almost a relief to get away from Ponyboy after six hours. Not that I hadn't enjoyed talking to him, and he was as sweet as ever, as much as he probably hated me. He and Soda were always so close. But he looked so much like Sodapop it almost hurt, and I had to keep stopping myself from staring at him, looking for the similarities and picturing Soda in my mind.

Suddenly the sound of quick footsteps behind me set my heart racing, and I quickened my own pace in an action of controlled panic. I could see my car, but it seemed so far away. I glanced around, but nobody was nearby.

"Miss!" I cringed at the male voice and almost ran.

"Hey! Miss!" Against my better judgment, I turned around. A young man was hurrying toward me; most girls would have seen a nice looking guy, a prospect, a potential mate. I saw the enemy, and I hated that that was the way it was. He waved something in the air. "You dropped this."

I breathed a sigh of relief, but kept my guard up. "Thank you," I said, taking the paper from him that had slipped out of my notebook.

"Sure. Have a nice day." He turned around and walked back the way he had come. I continued on to my car, unlocked it with shaking hands, slid into the driver's side, pulled the door closed behind me, lost my internal battle, and broke down crying.

Will I ever be normal again?