Warning: Contains sensitive subject matter.
Disclaimer: S.E. Hinton owns The Outsiders
Soda's POV
"Hey Soda, hand me that…hang on…never mind, don't need it." Steve gave a push and a pull, and something clanked into place.
"Good thing you're here today, man. One of the kids bailed for a family vacation, and I got rid of the other one last week."
"You givin' them vacation pay?" Steve asked, peering at me over the hood.
"I didn't say nothin' 'bout paying him, did I?" I asked, throwing him a grin.
"What'd you toss the other one for?"
I sighed. "He was overcharging customers, writing up the bill with the right amount, then acting like he'd forgotten something so they paid the rest in cash. Guess it worked sometimes, and he pocketed when it did." The only reason I had found out was because Darry's fiancé had brought her car in, and the kid pulled it with her without realizing who she was.
"Kids these days," Steve muttered.
"You're tellin' me," I answered, feeling like I was sixty. I could almost see me and Steve sitting around on rocking chairs, watching the high school kids walk home from school and ducking the rocks they threw at us when we started on about the good ol' days. It made me laugh.
"What's so funny?"
I shook my head. "Nothing. Never mind."
Steve grabbed a towel off the tool chest and wiped the loose grease from his hands. "You feel like heading over to the fair tomorrow? Or are you and Melanie doin' something?"
I shook my head again. "We ain't doing nothing. Had another fight last night." I gave an extra twist to the bolt I was tightening, feeling a little of my frustration transfer from my living flesh to the mechanics of the machine. It felt good, like punching a wall or throwing a ball through a window. Not a good kind of good, but good all the same.
"Fight about what?" Steve only looked mildly interested. He didn't know Melanie too well, which meant he didn't have a real good feel for what things were like between us.
"Hell if I know," I answered, wondering if Steve could tell I was lying. If he could, he didn't question me. I don't know why I didn't want to tell him, other than to say it didn't feel right for him to know. Maybe I just had some inkling that I was to blame, or maybe I didn't want to hear anyone say that it was something we would never get past. When one of you wants kids and the other one doesn't, well, there's not a whole lot of leeway for compromise. You can't go halfway on a kid.
"How're the babies doing?" Steve asked, like he was reading my mind.
"Good. Better every day. Jon's going home tomorrow, as long as there aren't any setbacks. Gina still needs to gain a little more weight before they'll let her out of the hospital." The twins had been born early, which apparently wasn't uncommon. Jon had had some breathing problems at first, but bounced right back, and the only thing keeping them from going home was that they had to be five pounds to leave the hospital.
"How're Pony and Melissa handling things? I was over at the hospital last week, but, you know, I didn't want to get in the way."
"They're okay. Anxious for the babies to come home. Pony drops Melissa off every day before work, sometimes Lin with her." There was another whole dimension added. Sweet little Linleigh was giving them problems on top of the babies. It wasn't like they hadn't expected it to happen at some time, I mean, the girl came to them with bucketloads of problems, but it kind of all hit at the same time.
"Man," Steve mused, staring out the window at the cloudy sky, "I can't even remember when Fizz was a baby, you know? I mean, I remember, but I don't." He gave a little laugh.
"Yeah," I agreed, though I really had no idea what he meant. That was when it occurred to me for the first time that, kind of out of nowhere, my best friend and my little brother had more in common with each other than either of them had with me. It was a sobering thought, and I was surprised at the pang of jealousy that went through me, but I was having one of those days when you can all of a sudden see your life like you're an outsider looking in. Things that I never thought about were clear as day. I tried to shake it off and blame it on the fight I'd had with Mel.
"Look, buddy, I need to run. You okay finishing this stuff up?"
I waved him off. "Go, be with your little one. I'm good. Hey man, thanks for the help." Steve slapped my outstretched hand on his way out the door. Thunder rumbled in the distance.
It was a while later that I heard footsteps, saw the legs standing next to the car I was under. Two pairs – a woman, and a little kid. I rolled out and grabbed a rag to wipe my hands. "Be with ya' in a sec!" I called from my spot on the floor.
"Take your time," drawled a voice that sounded vaguely familiar.
My leg stiffened and throbbed just before another roll of thunder sounded in the distance. "What can I do for ya'll?" I asked, pushing myself to standing and pulling my cap down over my head.
The woman grinned at me and shifted a baby onto her other hip. "Hey, Soda. Long time no see."
It took me a second. "Oh, hey. How've you been?" I didn't care, really; it was just one of those things you say.
Vic's POV
"So Jamie tells Karen, you don't yap yap yap yap…"
"Lin, will you pick up the pace a little? It's thundering."
It won't rain," she responded, launching right back into her monologue. She'd been yapping my ear off since we'd left the house to go to Darry's, which was how I'd drifted off on other things and gotten off the bus a stop too late. "I hope you're happy now," I had snapped, but Lin had just paused for a second, then started talking again as soon as we started walking. I wished I could find the switch on her that would shut her up for five seconds. There were just days when she couldn't seem to stop talking. That gave me an idea. I reached over and ran my fingers quickly around her side and across her stomach.
Lin screamed and folded herself in half. "Vic! What are you doing?"
"Looking for the switch, the battery compartment…I don't know. There at least must be a volume knob somewhere that I can turn all the way down."
"Don't be mean," she griped, trying to hide her grin and pretend she really was insulted.
I shook my head, and Lin started talking again, so I thought about anything else that came to mind – the movie I'd seen last week, the new car Tom's family had gotten, the rug in my bedroom, the broken clock on the streetlamp, the chewed-up gum stuck to the sidewalk, the lint in my pocket…
"Stop!" I shouted, halting so abruptly that Lin walked into my elbow. Apparently some part of my brain had been listening to Linleigh's chatter. "What did you just say?" I demanded.
Lin looked at me like I was nuts. "Karen went with her mom to-"
"Before that."
"Uh…Jennifer and Melissa were waiting for-"
"No, after that!"
Lin thought back. "Michael and Corey were planning on having this kissing party in Michael's basement when his parents were-"
"That's it!" I shouted, and Lin jumped and backed a step away from me. Smart girl. "You do NOT get involved in that kind of garbage. You hear me?"
"It's just-"
"You hear me?" I repeated. "You're ten years old."
"I'm eleven," she countered.
"Whatever, it's the same thing. Ten, eleven – too young!" Lin had recently been showing a disturbingly keen interest in boys. "And you'd better not go behind my back, because you know what I'll do to you if I find out." I was hoping she did know, and that it was scary enough to keep a leash on her, because I really didn't have any idea what I would do to her.
"You're so lame," she told me, though by her tone I knew she was taking me seriously. She listened to me better than to Pony because her little friends all thought I was cool, so I took full advantage. Personally, I thought Pony should be paying me for keeping her under control. It was like a full time job. The girl was like a living train wreck, and I didn't envy the poor sap who was trying to get in her head and untangle everything.
I went to a therapist, too, but we mostly played cards while he tried to drag information out of me.
Linleigh, though – I was all of a sudden constantly after her to quit giving Pony and Melissa a hard time. She would go from flighty-happy to moody to screaming angry to crying her eyes out, all in one afternoon. I did what I could for her and let her talk to me, but I didn't get half of what she told me, and she either didn't know how to make it clearer or didn't want to. I could deal with most of it; the only thing that freaked me out was when she started retreating to her black hole, when she stopped talking and laughing and responding to almost anything. It was almost impossible to get any response out of her at all. I'd finally started to recognize when it was happening, and the only thing I had come up with to slingshot her out of it before it got too bad was to get a hold of her and tickle her until she got mad at me. Mad, I could deal with. I could undo mad. But that place she went to, it scared the hell out of me.
We were walking again, and I was starting to wonder why Lin hadn't started talking again when I realized she had stopped a few steps earlier. Her gaze was fixed on something up ahead, she didn't even hear me say her name, and by the look on her face, that captured prey look, I knew she had locked into eye contact with someone. Her face was white, her lip was trembling, and there was sweat running down her forehead.
I turned to see a couple of guys just ahead of us, one leaning on a lamppost, the other standing in the middle of the sidewalk. The one leaning on the post was staring at my sister, and a slow smile crept across his face.
He took a step toward us, and before I realized what was happening Linleigh darted straight into the road. I thought it was lucky a bus or something wasn't coming, because she would have been crushed, but later on it occurred to me that maybe that was what she was hoping for. She ran blindly, right into the street, because getting hit by a bus was better than being caught by him.
Lin made it past his grab and kept running up the road, toward Darry's, and the guy didn't even see me coming until I'd run full boar into him and we both went tumbling into the empty street.
"Get her!" he called to his buddy, who had been standing there kind of dumb-like.
We grappled for a minute before he overtook me and dragged me down the street quite a ways, to an alley, and I kept praying for a cop car, but of course there's never one around when you need it.
I'm no weakling, but I couldn't get away from this guy. He had a death-grip on me, and nothing that I did broke me free. I got manhandled into an alley, back behind a building, past a dumpster, and into a little nook that got left when the other building had gotten added on to. Before I even knew what was happening, the guy pulled my jeans open and plunged his hand down the front of my pants.
I struggled, but he wrapped his hand around me and squeezed just enough that I froze. He gave me a wicked smile that sent shivers down my spine. My first instinct was to yell for help, which I almost did.
"Make a sound, and I'll squash them like a grape," he warned me, and I clamped my mouth shut. I squirmed with revulsion as he moved a probing finger around, and it hit me all at once that I knew exactly which boyfriend this was. I finally got what Linleigh had been telling me about him, and my head reeled. He hurt me. He hurt me. He tied me up, he held me down, he hurt me.
Standing there with his violating hand all over me, I finally got it.
Soda's POV
She smiled more widely. I hadn't seen Sylvia since, well…a long time. "I been good. You know, married, kids…" she trailed off.
"Yeah, I see. What can I do for you?"
"Well, remember that night we had together?" She put her hand on the little kid's shoulder. "This one here's yours, thought you might want to meet him."
For an instant my heart skipped a beat; I have no idea why, we had never been together. She had tried, after Sandy left and Dally died and I was tired and vulnerable. But I hadn't gone stupid.
Sylvia laughed. "Wow, you're jumpy."
I gave her a good-natured smile, though I hadn't found her joke at all funny. "So what's the problem with your car?" I asked.
"Oh, this old junker. Making all sorts of noises, and now's stalling at red lights. Darn near got me killed the other day! Course, I only drive on the weekends. Charlie uses it for work durin' the week, so I wait to do the shoppin' on Saturday morning." Sylvia rattled on and on about her life as I followed her over to the 'chipped-up old rust-bucket god-damned piece-of-shit', or something of that nature. I don't remember exactly, her kid was whining about something and she'd given him a good slap upside the head. "I told you, we ain't going there yet! Just let me finish here!" She looked up and gave me a sweet smile, probably the one her kids had given up on trying to elicit from her. "Should I wait?" I couldn't help but notice her tone was almost pleading.
I popped the hood up and took a look. "This could take a while, so I wouldn't wait if I were you. Need a ride anywhere?"
Sylvia sighed and looked disappointed. "Nah, my girlfriend lives just around the corner. You know, over on Baker Terrace? Anyway, we'll just walk over there."
"You'd better hurry," I advised, "before the rain starts."
She laughed and came closer to me, brushed up against my leg with her short little skirt. It looked like she had tried to erase a few years with makeup, and I wondered that she didn't realize how many it actually added on. "Soda, you're as cute as ever. It's been thunderin' for days, and it's still as dry as a bone. It ain't gonna rain."
I smiled, a genuine smile, feeling kind of sorry for her without knowing why. "Yeah, it is. I got a feelin' in my leg."
She laughed, a little high-pitched flirty laugh that had carried her right through high school to where she stood in front of me. "Oh, Soda. Alright, I'll keep an eye out for the rain. Jesus, Matty, stop tuggin' on Mommy's leg like that, I'm talkin'!" Sylvia gave another apologetic smile. "I seen you're goin' with someone these days."
So that was it. "Yeah, that's right," I answered, feeling no particular need to elaborate.
"That girl I seen you with downtown week before last?" she asked in all innocence.
"Well, then, Sylvia," I said, "didn't know I had me a spy." I gave her a grin to let her know I wasn't offended, though truth be told I found it a little disconcerting. "Yeah, that's her."
Sylvia looked thoughtful. "Huh. A little chunky, eh?" She laughed. "You know I'm just kidding," she prattled on, though I knew she wasn't. Mel was always making comments about losing some weight, but I never took it seriously. I thought she looked great. Evidently women really are vicious to each other. I vaguely recalled Sandy's words – "There's a reason they call us bitches, Soda. Snarling bitches, can't be happy with ourselves unless everyone else is just a little more miserable." She wasn't like that, but she saw it in the girls around her. I'd never heard Sandy say a bad word about anyone.
"I'm sure she's one of them nice girls," Sylvia continued. "She'll figure out soon enough she can't tame a bad boy like Sodapop Curtis." Sylvia notched her hair over her ear and switched the baby back to the other hip. I was bristling, and not trying to hide it. "Well, go ahead and see what's up with the car. My number's in the glove compartment," she added pointedly before turning to shuffle toward the sidewalk, small child in tow. "Bye!"
I waved, but didn't trust myself to say anything after her. I got the car into the garage.
It took me the rest of the afternoon to fix the car and fix my head on top of it. I couldn't stop thinking about Sylvia, and all the girls I knew who were like her – used to be a real looker, then became a real catch, then turned into the biggest fish in the lake that everyone wants a turn at hooking. Then after a while she's just the stinking rotten thing that nobody wants to catch, but it keeps getting snagged on your line like a dirty old boot. Those girls, they lost themselves somewhere along the way, and kept looking in the best way they knew how, but it just kept getting them more lost. Then one day they made it across the finish line, ring on one finger, baby dangling on their side, looking like they're too old and acting too young.
But it wasn't till then that they realized it wasn't a race at all, it was just a walk through the woods – a one-way, steady hike through the woods on a sweet autumn day. And they didn't even know it until they got to the end and didn't feel like they'd won shit. But even that wasn't the part that got me.
It was that instead of going from there, looking ahead, enjoying the rest of the walk, they spent the next forty years walking backwards, trying to see what they'd missed and wishing they could go back. Their whole lives, backing into trees and tripping over rocks and sometimes bumping into someone they once knew, never really hearing what their kids were asking them and not paying attention to the guy who was walking backwards right next to them.
Did it make any difference what you won? Did it make any difference if you had kids? If you had money? If you had anything? Or was it better to put aside the things you thought were supposed to happen and give in to what you really loved, even if it was different than what you thought you would love, as long as you were walking the right direction with a smile on your face?
I don't know where it all came from, but like I said, it was one of those days where you see your life like someone else would see it. Maybe I was spending too much time with Ponyboy. Or maybe he'd spent too much time with me. I laughed out loud to no one.
And I thought of Melanie. I remembered what she'd said the night before – "I may never want kids. I love what I do, Soda, I've got a career. If you can't deal with that, then maybe…maybe we shouldn't be together." I knew it wasn't what she wanted, to break up with me, and it wasn't what I wanted, either. I wasn't even sure why I wanted kids. It was just what I'd always expected, I guess. I might never even meet someone like her again to have kids with. And what would I feel like if she asked me to give up my business and everything I loved to stay at home with a couple of kids? She hadn't asked me that, she'd just looked at me like it hurt to think about, which it did.
I thought back to all of the little things we'd done together since we had met; all of the things that had become tradition, almost, like part of your daily routine, like making coffee for two in the morning and picking up pizza on Thursday if it was raining and cuddling up on the couch on Monday night to watch the Movie of the Week and pretending in front of her parents that we weren't pretty much living in one place even though we each had an apartment. It was the recognition of a slight look, a subtle gesture, that told how well we understood each other and how little the rest of the world knew about us.
Which did I love more, the idea of having kids, or the prospect of spending my life with a person who I loved to be with? The answer was so glaringly obvious I wondered why it hadn't walked up and slapped me in the back of the head the night before. I'd never felt for anyone the way I felt for Melanie, I realized. And I had never told her that. She knew there had been other girls, but didn't really know how she stacked up. Had no idea that, against everything I ever would have thought, she was the one who came out at the top in every aspect.
The wrench clanked into the toolbox, and I sauntered into the office and closed the door. As the first few raindrops pattered on the windows, I picked up the phone and dialed. She answered on the third ring. "Mel? We need to talk."
There was a pause. "No, Soda, I don't think so. I don't think we need to talk. Okay?"
Something in my chest clenched. I had to tell her that I understood. "Mel, listen-"
"Soda," she cut in. "Please. It will be there forever, you know it will. One of us will always have some resentment for the other, no matter which way it works out. It isn't fair for either of us."
"But…" I wasn't even sure how to finish.
"I'm sorry, Soda. I really wanted…I'm sorry." I could hear the tears in her voice.
"It's okay," I assured her. "I get it. I'll see you around."
We hung up. I leaned back in my chair as the heavy raindrops pelted the dust from the hot asphalt. We needed that rain. The ground was dry, the plants were dying, and the world was looking bleak and brown.
Vic's POV
I barely noticed it had started raining, when suddenly it was coming down in heavy sheets, washing pieces of trash past us that had spilled out of the dumpster. I tried to focus as they floated toward the sewer grate, wishing I could follow along.
He had undone his pants with one hand and was pressed against me, a strong hand still wrapped around me way too tightly, and I prayed to God and Allah and Moses – was he a god? – and anyone else I could think of that someone would find us there. My one motivation wasn't even for myself. I had to get away from him, I couldn't let him kill me, because then nobody might ever know what had happened to Linleigh. I had to get away so I could tell Pony.
"I like them young like you," he breathed.
"Yeah, no kiddin', you goddamned son-of-a-bitch sick bastard," I spat. I wanted him dead, I could picture myself sinking a knife straight through his sick pathetic heart that had no right to be beating on this earth.
"I know you like it, boy. How about right there? A little farther-"
He was jerked away from me so fast you would have thought someone had roped him. I stumbled forward and was caught by strong hands that stood me upright. Four tough looking guys – the kind you normally wouldn't want to meet up with in an alley, come to think of it – were standing there gaping back and forth from me to him. They were tough and mean and cold and hard, scary dudes who beat people with chains and would leave you drowning in your own blood if you looked at them crosseyed. And right then, to me, with my jeans falling down and the guy they were holding struggling to get away, they looked just like four angels straight from heaven.
"He was after my little sister."
That was all it took for me to say. They might have been dumb hoods, but not a one of them had needed to ask what I was talking about or how young could my little sister be if I was just a kid myself.
While the rain poured down around us, I stood there and watched the whole thing. They didn't go near his head until they'd broken some ribs, stamped his hands to a pulp, kicked him nearly to the point of castration – and they didn't stop until he was a crumpled mess in a heap in a puddle, left to decay in his own sins while the rain washed his blood down the sewer.
One of the four guys tapped me in the chest – well, it was more than a tap, more like a slug – and pulled me by the arm. "Let's get the hell out of here, stupid kid," he said, and I managed to get my jeans up and buttoned as he dragged me out of the alley. The rain slowed down and had almost stopped by the time we ran headlong into Darry around a corner. Anyone who didn't know him might have missed the relief that washed over him when he saw me.
"Vic! You okay? I found the guy in the alley-"
I nodded.
"You're Ponyboy's kid?" the one who'd pulled me from the alley asked. "Want us to go finish that bastard off?"
I almost said go for it, but Darry gave him a sharp look. "Don't be stupid, Curly. You wanna' get caught the second time around?" He looked at me before giving the scary angels a grateful half-smile. "Thanks."
Curly nodded. "I'll tell Tim you said hey."
"Yeah, you do that for me. Tell him his brother's a good kid while you're at it."
Curly grinned. "Hell, he wouldn't believe that one in a million years."
My brain finally kicked in again. "Where's Lin?"
"Back at the house. She wasn't making much sense, but enough to let us know that-"
I took off at a run and missed whatever he said next. I must have gone through that door like a bullet, because Jenn nearly jumped off the couch. She looked down at Linleigh, who was curled up on the couch hugging her knees, and gave me a concerned shrug.
I sat down on the couch, clothes still dripping wet and clinging to me, and put my hand on her arm. She was already there, already in the black hole, and she looked up at me like she didn't know me. I unwrapped her arms, moved her legs out of the way, and pulled her tightly against me. "I get it, Linleigh," I whispered in her ear. "I get it."
She gave a deep sigh, and I wondered – had I just pulled her a little bit out of the hole, or had I sunk a little way into it with her?
