Chapter 8

I got to the hospital well before visiting hours but I marched right up to the desk anyway and asked where Johnny's room was. The lady looked at me skeptically.

"He's in the ICU. Are you a relative?"

"I'm his sister," I lied immediately.

"Do you have any ID?"

"Of course not. I don't drive yet. I might have a library card." I pretended to search through my pockets and she waved me off.

"Never mind. Room 554. Fifth floor, take a left off the elevator."

I stopped at the gift shop and bought a newspaper. There they were, my brother and my boyfriend and the toughest hood I knew, and me – me! – on the front page, with our pictures and everything. I looked horrible. I tucked it under my arm and headed for the elevator.

Johnny was sleeping, or unconscious, or maybe he just had his eyes closed. He was bare-chested and his arms were bandaged to his elbows. He looked awfully pale.

I pulled up a chair next to him and he opened his eyes. "Hey, baby, where you been?" he said hoarsely.

I leaned over and kissed him. "They wouldn't let me stay last night." I unfolded the paper and said, "We're famous."

"We are?"

His voice was so weak. I had to take a deep breath and wait a minute before reading the articles aloud. There were two, one an account of the fire and one about Bob Sheldon and what had happened that night in the park. Then, as Johnny drifted off to sleep, I turned the page and read a story about us, me and my brothers, how Mom and Dad had died and Darry was working his head off to keep us together, how Soda left school to help and what good students Pony and I were. It talked about Pony's running track and Darry's being the football team captain when he'd been at school. At the very end, it said there was a juvenile court hearing for Pony and Johnny and me in a couple of weeks, and that after how hard we'd worked to stay together, we shouldn't be separated now.

Separated? Like, foster homes and orphanages?

Johnny made a little squeak. I went to him right away. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, just … I can't feel so much. I busted my back."

"Yeah, they told us last night." I smoothed his hair back from his face.

"You … you oughta go, Cinny. You'll be pushing me … pushing me in my wheelchair," he said, struggling to get the words out. "You .. you don't want a paralyzed guy."

"Johnny, you hush," I said, sharper than I meant to. "Your heart's not paralyzed. Besides, I love you."

He smiled.

"I love you, too," I said, trying not to cry. "I didn't get a chance to tell you yesterday, but I love you, too."

I sat there into the afternoon. Johnny mostly slept, but I was content to sit by his bed and stroke his hair and whisper comfort to him. Tim Shepard poked his head in, on his way to see Dallas, and came over to give me a quick, rough hug, telling me he was glad I was all right. Tim's not nearly as scary as Curly is.

Ponyboy and Two-Bit came in a little after three. Two-Bit came over to me right away and hugged me before turning to Johnny. Pony was making a scolding face at me, probably mad about my going out the window.

I wasn't in the mood to fight with him. I left them with Johnny and went to stretch my legs. When I came back, Ponyboy was heading out of the room.

"Y'all leaving?"

"Goin' to see if the gift shop has Gone with the Wind," he answered. "Come with me. Two-Bit's with Johnny. Though he may go into a coma if Two-Bit don't stop cracking his bad jokes."

We walked along for a minute and Pony said, "You should've just gone out the front door. Actually, you probably should have gotten up. There was interesting news in our house this morning."

"I saw the paper."

"Did you see about the court hearing?"

"Yeah."

"Darry says the cops talked to him about it last night," Pony said. He shuffled his feet nervously. "And Sandy's gone."

I stopped and pulled him to face me. "What?" I had forgotten all about Sandy and her letter. "She went to Florida?"

"Yeah. She was gone last weekend, Soda said."

"The baby's not his, Pony," I said quietly.

"Yeah, he said – but you knew? How'd you know?"

I filled him in quickly, my stomach twisted with guilt. Us and Sandy in the same week. I was never going to misbehave or disobey Darry again, ever. And what if that hearing didn't go well? What would happen if Pony and I were sent away? And Soda … damn, Soda wasn't even seventeen yet. Soda would go, too. Soda was cheerful and sweet and gentle, but I didn't know if he'd survive without his family.

When we got back to Johnny's room, Two-Bit was coming out, his face pale. Johnny's mother was in the hall, arguing with the nurse. I hadn't seen her in a long time, and she was thinner and more ragged looking than I remembered. She looked like a wisp of a thing, but I'd seen her take swings at Johnny that left bruises for days.

"What do you mean he won't see me?" she demanded shrilly. "I'm his mother!" Her eyes narrowed as she spotted the three of us. "You let in those … those hoodlums – and you won't let in his own mother?"

Her gaze fell on me and she pointed a bony finger in my direction. "You. You're that little slut he ran away with, ain't you?"

I went cold. Two-Bit stepped in front of me and for a minute I thought he was going to take a swing at her. He didn't, but even though she was both a woman and Johnny's mother, he cussed her out good.

Ponyboy handed the book to the nurse. "We'll go," he said. "Could you please give this to Johnny?"

She nodded, then turned her attention back to Mrs. Cade. We high-tailed it out of there.

"C'mon," Two-Bit said, one hand comfortingly on my shoulder. "We'll go see Dally, then get you two home. Your brothers'll be home in a couple of hours, huh? And tonight's a big night."

Yeah. I needed to talk to Soda. I needed to tell him I was sorry.

I let Two-Bit walk a little bit ahead of us and pulled Pony closer to me. "Hey," I said hesitantly, "I'm not, you know that, right?"

"Not what?"

"Not … not what Mrs. Cade said," I stammered. "We didn't – I mean …"

"I know," Pony said quietly.

"But if I'd know this was going to happen, I might have," I said to my feet.

Pony turned my face so I'd have to look at him, like he was the older one. "Cinny," he said gently, "even if you had, that wouldn't make you what she said."

Dally was ornery and sullen, partly from being in the hospital and partly from being worried for Johnny. We didn't stay long, but before we left, he made Two-Bit hand over his prized switchblade.

As we passed by the lot on the way home, Cherry Valance was sitting there in her little Corvette. Pony and Two-Bit stopped to talk to her but I kept going. She'd seemed okay, but when you came right down to it, she was still a Soc, and my boyfriend had killed hers. If the situation was switched around, I sure wouldn't want to talk to her. Still, I knew we were probably a lot alike, in more of the ways that mattered than those that didn't, and I didn't like thinking about it.

I beat Pony home by ten minutes or so. I ducked past the kitchen where Darry was making dinner so I wouldn't have to hear him fuss at me about walking alone.

The door to Pony and Soda's room was closed, which was fairly unusual. No doors in our house were ever closed, unless someone was in the bathroom or getting dressed. I tapped on it with one fingernail. "Soda? You decent?"

"Decent enough," he answered, and I pushed the door open. He was in his jeans, sitting on the edge of the bed, pulling on a pair of socks. I sat next to him and he smiled and threw one arm around me. "If you ever scare me like that again, Cinnamon Marie, I swear to God I'll skin you," he said.

I grinned. He would not. "I won't."

"Good girl."

I took a deep breath. "Ponyboy told me about Sandy."

His jaw tightened and he stood up abruptly, hunting for a clean shirt. The boys always got all spruced up to fight. "That's all right."

"Want to tell me what happened?"

"No, not really," he said flatly. I laid back on the bed and waited. Pony's pillow smelled faintly of smoke. In a minute, he started talking, just like I thought he would. "I went over there on Sunday, but she was gone. I told her parents I wanted to marry her, take care of her – and her daddy threw me out. Her mother felt bad and gave me her address at her grandmother's house. I'm writin' her. We'll figure it out, me and her. It's not her daddy's business anyway. And Darry said he'd do what he could to help."

"You told him?"

"I kind of had to – we were all lookin' all over for you two, and I was heading out to Sandy's. He didn't quite take too kindly to that."

I suddenly realized something. He hadn't gone to Sandy's first thing Saturday, like he'd planned. "Oh, Soda, I'm sorry," I said miserably. "I really am. If we hadn't gotten into that mess, you'd have been at her house on Saturday. Her parents saw the papers, too, didn't they? About that Soc being killed?"

"It don't matter. Her plane left at five o'clock. Saturday morning." Soda sighed. "They wasn't takin' any chances."

"I'm still sorry, Soda."

He grinned crookedly at me. "It's all gonna be okay, Cinnamon. We're going to whip those Socs and get the neighborhood back. Sandy'll be back. Johnny'll be better. So what if he can't walk? We'll carry him. We'll build ramps. Everything's gonna be fine."

I smiled at him. I wanted so badly to believe him.

"You love Johnnycake, huh?" he said knowingly. When I nodded, he sighed. "There ain't nothing like it, being in love. It's the best and the worst thing, all together."

He was right, but I hadn't had enough of the best yet.