Chapter 12

Ponyboy, none too eager to be asking Darry for his signature, took off down to the Dingo with Two-Bit. I came into the house and was rolling up my sleeves to do the breakfast dishes when I saw Darry at the sink, rinsing the last of the soap from them. I glanced down the hall, but all seemed quiet.

"Is Soda home yet?" I asked.

Darry sighed. "Cinny, why can't you talk to me?" he asked quietly.

I was so startled I gave him a completely honest answer. "Because you holler all the time," I said. "You don't really listen. You just shout."

He stared at me, equally startled. "That's what you think?"

"Darry, that's what I know," I said. He opened his mouth and I held up one hand to stop him. "For instance – I know I should have done those dishes this morning. I didn't, because Soda was running late for work, so I ironed his shirt, and that made me not have enough time. So here I am to do them, because it was my turn, but you've already done them and you're fixing to holler at me that I have a bad attitude and I'm sloppy. The only reason I left them is so I wouldn't be late for school because I know you don't want us to be tardy. But you'll be yelling and I'll never tell you that."

"Cinnamon –"

"And if I tell you about Mrs. Mayron, you'll just get all mad and want to go down to school and embarrass me to death, and that won't solve the problem, but I don't know what to do and Pony didn't either and that's why I want to know where Soda is," I finished in a rush.

Darry sat down at the table and folded his hands. He looked for all the world like a little boy who'd just been scolded. "If I promise not to shout and not to go to the school and let you tell your whole story, will you tell me?" he asked.

I considered that. "Do you promise not to call?"

"No. But I promise not to call unless you can't fix it yourself."

That was fair. "Okay," I said, and told him the whole thing, starting with the day she wouldn't sit at the table with me. Darry's face got really red but he kept his promise and didn't say a word, and when I was done, he took a deep breath and told me something I could try. It was kind of nice, sitting there with him. Soda came in a little while later, hollering for the mail, like he always does, and we helped him make dinner. Pony came home and set the table without being asked. It was almost like it used to be.

But it didn't last. As we sat down to eat, Ponyboy, figuring he could use me and Soda as buffers, handed Darry the note from his teacher.

Darry read it and stared at Ponyboy for a long time without saying anything, while Pony fidgeted and played with his potatoes. Soda stared out the back window. I looked at my plate and waited for the explosion, which was quiet, but an explosion nonetheless.

"I don't know what you think you're doing, Ponyboy, but it's going to stop," Darry said finally. "From now on, you're going to come straight home from school and sit here and study, if I have stand over you. You are not getting grades like this." When Pony didn't respond, Darry raised his voice. "Do you hear me?"

"I don't know what the sweat is about my schoolwork," Ponyboy retorted. "I'm going to have to drop out and get a job anyway. Look at Soda – he dropped out and he's doing fine."

"You are not dropping out, and neither is your sister," Darry said through clenched teeth. Somehow, when he was angry, I went from "Cinny-spice" to "your sister," just Pony and Soda's sister, like Darry was divorcing me or something. "We could put you through college, both of you, I hope, but you have to try. You're living in a vacuum, Pony, and you're going to have to cut it out. You don't stop living just because you lose someone. I thought you knew that by now."

I put down my fork and stood up.

"Where do you think you're going?" Darry demanded.

"Away from this," I said, "and if Ponyboy had the sense of a gnat, he'd come with me. You'll never learn."

"Watch your tone, Cinnamon, or --"

"Or what?" I challenged him. "You'll smack me? Yell at me some more? What? You're not the boss, and you're sure not Dad, so quit tryin' to act like him."

Darry's lips got tight. "Anytime you don't like how I'm running things, there's the door," he said.

"You missed your chance," I shot back. "You should have told that judge that, instead of actin' like you were all worried we'd end up in an orphanage. The only reason you didn't is because of Sodapop."

Soda slammed his hand down on the table. All the dishes rattled. We stared at him.

"Stop it," he hissed. "Shut up. All three of you. Just shut the hell up." He stood up and grabbed his jacket off the back of the chair and bolted out the door. An envelope flew out of his pocket and I leaned down and picked it up. When I saw what it was, I wanted to cry.

"It's a letter to Sandy," I said, laying it on the table. "Return to sender. She didn't even open it."

"That was a bad week," Darry said. Pony and I just looked at him. "The two of you and Sandy, in the same week. He cried himself to sleep every night and I couldn't do anything about it."

"He'll be back," I said. "He just needs to cool off."

"No." Darry stood up. "That's what we thought about you two. Let's go find him."

We went to the lot first, then to the Dingo, and then Pony spotted him sitting on a bench in the corner of the park. When Soda realized we saw him, he took off running, but Pony sprinted after him and tackled him to the ground. Darry and I caught up seconds later.

"You should have gone out for football instead of track," Soda said when he caught his breath.

"Where were you going?" Pony asked.

"I don't know. Away. I can't stand it when y'all fight." Soda shuddered. "It's like being in the middle of a tug-of-war."

Pony's mouth fell open. I had never thought of that – when I was fighting with Darry, I was fighting with Soda, too.

"I mean, it'd be easier, I guess, if I could take sides, but I can't. I can see all the sides." He looked at us earnestly. "Ponyboy, Cinnamon – I'm telling you the truth. Darry could have put us all in foster homes and gone back to school. But he didn't. He's given up his whole life so we don't have to be with strangers. And I think we have to appreciate that – not make him the king, but gosh, think about that. I dropped out of school because I'm dumb. You two aren't. I like working at the DX – y'all would never be happy doing that. That's my job. Your job is school. But Darry … " he sighed deeply. "Darry, man, you gotta quit hollering at them for every little thing that goes wrong. You're making them afraid of you, don't you see that? Hell, you're starting to scare me a little. Ponyboy feels things differently from you. And good glory, Cinnamon's a girl, none of us are going to really understand her."

A small smile crept across my face.

"And she's not going to come home pregnant," Soda said bluntly. "I know you're worried about that. She's smarter than that, ain't you, Cinny-spice?"

"Yeah," I said, looking not at him but at Darry. "I am. I don't want babies now."

"You two, you need to listen," Soda continued. "You got to think about what we're telling you, about studying but about coming home at a decent hour and being careful. You think Darry's being mean but he's trying to do what Mom and Dad would have wanted. And if I was in charge of you I'd be telling you the same thing." Tears welled in his eyes. "It's bad enough to have to listen to it, but then y'all try to get me to take sides against each other … no. You can't make me do that. It ain't fair. And none of you see that."

I'd made my brother cry. I'd let him feel alone. I felt sick and ashamed. Pony and Darry looked like I felt.

"We're all we've got left," Soda said, trying to keep his voice steady. "If we don't have each other we don't have anything. We ought to be able to stick together through anything. If we can't – you end up like Dallas. And I don't mean dead, I mean the way he was before."

He was right. I remember thinking that -- how do you live without love? How would I live without my brothers?

"Please," Soda begged huskily. "Please, don't fight anymore."

There was a long, silent moment. Then Darry scooted over the few feet that separated them and put his hands on Soda's shoulders. "Sure, little buddy," he said. "We're not going to fight anymore."

Soda pulled Darry into a bear hug, sniffling. Darry hugged him back, then looked over at Pony. "Okay?"

Pony nodded. "Okay."

He looked at me. "I promise to try," I said. I don't think I had ever meant any promise more in my life.

Darry nodded solemnly. "I promise, too."

We walked home together, all in a row, in our order – Darry, then Soda, then me, then Pony. Soda was right about everything, except one: he wasn't dumb. He'd figured out why we fussed at each other, and he was the only one who could explain it. He wasn't dumb at all.

We reheated dinner and afterward, Pony made a call to his English teacher then settled down to write some theme he'd been assigned. I did all my homework except, of course, Geometry. I looked into the kitchen to see Darry at the table, with a pile of bills and his checkbook and a worried face, and I decided Geometry was not going to get the best of me. I was going to learn it, if I had to bully every teacher at the school into helping me.