Disclaimer: The characters from the book The Outsiders are not mine; they belong to S. E. Hinton.

I had intended it to be a one-shot, but the story does seem to want to keep going. I may actually end up multichaptering, but the plot bunnies need to be nice to me. So thanks go to all reviewers, and on with the story...

Gina Kavanagh had made her report to the police, and the medical technicians from the ambulance had carefully taken Darry's body away for the pro forma autopsy, although everybody agreed that simple old age had finally overtaken the man.

She had first met the man when he had been placing advertisements asking for a once-a-month cleaner, and she'd answered the ad, as she'd done housecleaning before for people, and her neat-freak nature made her work stand out. She cleaned part-time while she worked to put herself through school, and at the age of 25, was close to graduating.

Darrel Curtis had paid reasonably well for her work, and she had made an extra effort to make sure his house was as clean as could be. Because of this, he'd asked her to be the regular cleaner and to consider the once-a-month arrangement to be in place indefinitely until further notice.

So over time, she had gotten to know Darry somewhat, although their conversations were never too long and she never came by socially. She dimly remembered having seen his brother once, the man named Ponyboy. Or Pony, as Darry had called him. But Ponyboy had been dead for five years, and she recalled no firm details.

On impulse, Gina went back into the house, and found a framed photograph of seven young people, all grinning for the camera, surrounded by brown grass. The colors were a bit faded; photographs back then didn't hold their colors well. She didn't want to take it out of the frame lest she expose the picture to further oxidation, but finally she decided she needed to see what was written on the back of the picture; people often did that in the old days to remind themselves of where and when the picture had been taken.

The writing on the back read, simply, "The Lot, July 1966." Holy smokes, that picture's over fifty years old!

Gina quickly replaced the picture in the frame, and decided to take it with her, along with the envelope and paper. The fact that Darry had left her a rather thick stack of papers, and stressed its importance in his written note, suggested that what remained of his extended family would not appreciate the picture or the papers as he felt she would.

Darry had once mentioned that there had been a grassy, abandoned lot a block away from the house, which had been kept the same way, in the same condition, for many years. But the lot itself had long since been replaced by a mini-mall of stores for the people who lived in the surrounding area. Even many of the houses had been torn down and replaced, so that Darry's house looked very old-fashioned. The now-gone lot must have been the lot mentioned on the back of the picture.

Gina wondered why those seven people, one of who seemed to resemble Darry, although it was hard to tell, were important enough to merit keeping a picture on a desk for so many years.

- - -

Gina had gone home, fixed herself a coffee, and slumped heavily on her couch. She lived in the basement of her parents' place while she finished school, and although she had a lot of privacy, it would still be a relief when she got her own place sooner or later.

She'd started reading the yellowed pages, and got so absorbed that the passage of time, as it had for Darry, became meaningless. She became lost in a misty past suddenly made so clear. She felt the highs and lows as the first of many turbulent times assaulted the gang of seven, and felt a keen sense of loss as Dallas and Johnny died futilely, paying far too early for whatever sins they'd committed.

Afterwards, wiping her eyes and returning to the present, from Ponyboy's descriptions, she was able to start matching names to faces in the picture. She then realized why it had been so important; it was one of the only links Darry had to people he'd been so close to, so long ago.

The dangerous white-blond Dallas stared defiantly into the camera, while Johnny, telltale scar present on his face, stood somewhat in front of him, almost as a child bird stays under the wing of the mother. He stared pensively, as though he were nervous about something. Darry, the tallest one, so impossibly young, stood to Dally's right (the left in the picture), arms crossed, grinning slightly. Sodapop stood to Darry's right, and Ponyboy to Sodapop's right. Both wore broad grins, and Sodapop was waving goofily. Steve, swirled greased hair and all, was crouched in front of Sodapop, smiling slightly, and Two-Bit was sprawled at the feet of the Curtises, leaning on one elbow almost negligently, grinning and waving.

It was irritating and also saddening to realize she'd never know who had taken the picture. If she'd had to guess, her best bet would have been Sandy, Sodapop's then-girlfriend.

She knew right then and there she was going to Darry's funeral, appropriate or not. She'd gotten an insight into the man that few others had, and all of them had been gone for years. At first, she remembered, she'd called him "Mister Curtis".

After about a year of this, he had said, "Gina?"

"Yes?"

"Call me Darry, please."

"But…that wouldn't be proper, Mr. Curt—"

"I'm pulling rank on you; I'm older, wiser, and therefore I insist. Call me Darry."

"Okay… Darry."

He'd worn a rare smile, as though something had finally amused him.

At the time, she'd simply wanted to humor him. Now, Gina realized that the old man had few personal connections with the world around him, and it had been a wish for one last individual in the world to address him, not as an elder or superior, but as an equal, someone who had entered the inner greaser domain.

The world had changed so much since the 1960s, but the one thing Gina knew was still a constant was that teenagers still had a hard time figuring out where they stood in the world. Adults had found their place, for better or worse, and it was that anchor that let them weather the storms of life even as they grew more personally conservative in their outlook, more resistant to change and new things.

And teenagers still fought in schools and outside of them over things only dimly understood by adults who'd lost their connection with their own youth. Maybe the story Ponyboy wrote still held relevance (she could still see the "A" grade scrawled on the front, and a "Congratulations, Ponyboy!" next to it. She wondered if the "Mr. Syme" mentioned in the story had relented and given Ponyboy a better grade than the C he said he would give if Ponyboy turned in anything at all. She hoped so, but alas, she'd never know). Maybe it could still help teenagers find their grounding, and see all the different ways people dealt with hardships in their lives.

And how some of them could break and fall by the way, while others, more resilient, or perhaps less fragile, became stronger as the years went by and gained their permanence. Dallas Winston had shattered when the one anchor, such as it was, in his life had gone because of a twist of fate. Ponyboy Curtis had nearly fallen into the same trap of hardening so much that an impact too swift for him to resist would shatter him.

Yet Ponyboy had endured. And clearly, Darry had as well. Maybe the story, if she could get it published anywhere, would save someone's life...