Chapter 4

PONYBOY'S POV

"It's all my fault...it's all my fault." I murmured as I stared down at the lifeless form of my sister Amy.

"It's not your fault, Pony." Soda reassured me, as he had done many times that day. He put a comforting arm around my shoulder. I pushed it away.

"Yes, Soda, it is my fault. I knew she was sick...I didn't do anything! I shoulda convinced her to stay home! Or at least gone with her! I should've told you and Darry that she was sick, then maybe you could've stopped her from going to the park. Goddamnit, I know Amy doesn't think straight when she's well, much less when she's sick! She should've been carrying a blade. She was totally defenseless and helpless! Shit, I bet those Socs thought they'd found the perfect person to jump: A tiny little greaser girl who's crippled and unarmed. They probably thought she was even younger than she is, since she's always been small for her age. She was the perfect target."

"Even if she was carrying a blade, she wouldn't have used it." Soda pointed out quietly, in the dazed, toneless voice that he had been talking in ever since Two-Bit found Amy in the park. "She wouldn't hurt a living thing. She's soft. Like you, Pony. No wonder you two are twins. Neither one of you could hurt someone on purpose. Even if she wasn't quite so soft, even if she tried to use the blade...she wouldn't have done anything major to those Socs. Her aim's bad." That was true. The CP affected all muscles of Amy's body, including her motor skills and eye-hand coordination. I remembered when we were little kids, how Dad would take us all out into the backyard and play baseball with us, with Mom watching. Dad would always pitch gently and straight to Amy, but she would always swing at the wrong time and strike out. I would always get a home run. Sometimes Amy would even start to cry because she knew she was bad at sports, and always would be. I hoped with all my heart that Amy would live to strike out again.

We didn't know how bad she was, yet, only that she was in pretty bad shape. Soda and I were sitting in plastic hospital chairs. You know the kinds that are so hard that you think they were originally rocks, just painted that hideous orange color. A third orange chair stood next to Soda's chair, empty. That was Darry's chair. Darry was talking to the doctors now. It was the first time any one of us had left Amy's bedside all day.

The door creaked open and Darry walked in. He had the staggering walk of a drunken guy, but he wasn't drunk. He was just dazed, and upset. Soda and I waited expectantly as he crossed the room and sat back down in that hard plastic chair. After what seemed like hours, he finally spoke.

"Well, she was almost drowned by those Socs, but that's not the problem. The drowning doesn't seem to have had any lasting brain damage." Well, that was good news. But then why wasn't Darry happier?

"Well then, that's good, ain't it?" Soda asked tentatively. Then what Darry had said sunk in: But that's not the problem. That meant there was a problem.

"The problem is, she was laying there on the concrete for hours, with wet hair, and wet clothes-and she was sick to begin with. The docs think that what she had from the start was just a touch of the flu, but lying there wet like that turned it into pneumonia. She's real sick, guys." There was silence for a moment as the impact of Darry's words hit us.

"Will...will she live?" Soda's voice was barely above a whisper. Darry's eyes were serious.

"I'm not gonna lie to you. The docs said it could go either way at the moment. She might live-or she might not." Now there was a longer silence. This time the silence was heavy with the realization that Amy might not live to see her fifteenth birthday. She might not even get close. Then Sodapop spoke again.

"What are the words you think of when you think of Amy?" Trust Soda to say something random at a time like this. But it got us thinking.

"Sweet...quiet...musical." Darry said slowly. Musical was definitely a good one. Amy was very musical. She loved to sing, and had a great voice. When she sang, it made chills go down my back. Singing was really the only thing that Amy could do well. I had track. Amy had chorus. She had been hoping for a solo in her chorus's Spring Concert. If she got one, would she live to sing it?

"Laughter..." I started. Amy loved to laugh, and her laugh was contagious. When she laughed, her green eyes sparkled, and it was like the whole world laughed with her.

"Innocent...tough...sensitive...brave." I continued, and my voice broke. Against my will, my eyes swam with tears and the hospital floor grew blurry. The tears dripped down my face. Some landed on Amy's unmoving body. I looked from Darry to Soda and both of them were crying too. Even Darry, who I had thought never cried. All of a sudden, through the tears, I got a strong feeling. Amy was going to wake up. And she was going to wake up soon.

"I have the weirdest feeling...but I think Amy's gonna wake up soon." My words took all of us by surprise, even me, and I had known they were coming. Soda wiped the tears away with the back of his hand and said nothing. Darry, however, stared at me, tears still shining on his handsome face.

"You sure, Ponyboy?" The feeling grew stronger. I nodded, sure of myself now.

"Yeah. I'm sure. Amy's gonna wake up." This time it was Soda who spoke next.

"I don't know, Pony..."

"I'm sure of it. She's gonna wake up." And I was sure of it. At that moment, there was nothing that I believed more strongly then that my twin sister was going to wake up.

"How do you know?" Darry challenged. I looked him straight in the eye.

"I don't know how I know. But I know. Amy is going to wake up." At that moment there was a slight stirring from the bed.

"Glory Hallelujah, Pony, you're right! She's waking up!" All three of us looked down. Amy's eyelids fluttered, and then opened to reveal frightened green eyes.

"Ponyboy..." she whispered, looking right at me. My heart almost broke. She looked so helpless, lying there like that.

"Shh, Ames. Don't try and talk. You've got a tube in your throat helping you breathe." Darry took charge, as usual.

"So...scared. Damn Socs." she whispered hoarsely. My nervous stomach quieted a little bit. If she was damning the Socs, it was the same old Amy.

"How...long?" was the next thing she said. Soda stroked her brownish blonde hair, which pooled around her thin, pale face on the pillow.

"How long have you been unconscious? 'Bout a day now, hon. We were so worried about you. We thought we were going to lose you, too." Soda didn't have to explain what that meant. Amy knew that he was talking about Mom and Dad.

Amy smiled and tried to say something else, but only a few sentences had tired her out. She sank back into the pillows and held up one hand, thumb out, with the two middle fingers down and the two end fingers up. It was the sign for I love you. Me and Amy had taken a sign-language course at the Y a few years back, 'round the same time Darry took that aerobics class. I had never really used sign language, but Amy practiced her signing every once in awhile, just in case she ever needed it. Amy's hand dropped back down to the bed, and a soft sigh was heard as she closed her eyes and sank back down into unconsciousness.

I went back to school the next day. I didn't want to, but Darry made me go. "I don't want you moping around all day while me and Soda are at work. You need something to take your mind off things." I didn't argue. Maybe I did need something to take my mind off things. Amy had been drifting in and out of consciousness ever since she first had woken up the night before.

All day in school, whispers of other kids followed me. They pointed at me "Isn't that the girl with the crippled sister?" they said. "Isn't she really sick now? Gosh, I'm sorry." But I knew the truth. They weren't really sorry at all.

Nobody had ever liked Amy, maybe 'cause she was crippled. Amy was a good student, real smart. She got A's in everything, especially English. English was her favorite subject. She loved to write poetry-and I loved to read it. People felt sorry for her, but stayed away from her because they were afraid that if they got too close, they would be crippled, too. They made fun of her too, whether it was to her face or behind her back didn't matter. The taunts hurt her all the same. In grade school, Amy had had a few friends, but they were all gone now, sucked up in the popular crowd. They were the ones that now routinely made fun of her. Thank god Amy had me. I don't know what she would have done if she didn't have me. Nobody cared about Amy except me and Darry and Soda and the gang. Nobody ever wanted to be Amy Curtis's friend. They never knew how much it would have meant to her if even one person was able to see past her disability and into the true Amy.

My teachers made sympathetic noises and told me that they were very sorry about my sister, but they didn't care either. To them, Amy Curtis was a nuisance, a good student, but often absent because of her medical problems. A nice girl, but kept to herself. That was true, at any rate. Amy only talked, really talked, when she was at home, with me and the rest of the gang. Those teachers didn't know that Amy kept to herself because she was scared that if she tried to reach out to someone, they would only be nice to her because they felt bad for her. That had happened once or twice, and Amy was always afraid of it happening again.

The only teacher that really seemed to care was Mr. McIverson, the chorus teacher. Chorus always had been Amy's favorite class. She even had a little crush on Mr. McIverson. He loved her as much as she loved him. Mr. McIverson pulled me away from the rest of the class and asked me in a low voice how Amy was doing.

"Not good. She's been slipping in and out of consciousness since last night. The...the docs think she might not live." I answered, trying hard to keep my voice steady. Mr. McIverson looked genuinely concerned.

"She was my favorite student." he murmured, more to himself than to me. "I was going to give her that solo she wanted so badly. She wasn't the only one who had the voice for the part, but she was the only one that seemed right for the part, you know? I don't want anyone else to sing that solo. If Amy can't have it...nobody can have it." Then he played a loud chord on the piano and hollered for everyone to be quiet. I headed back to my seat as the room grew silent.

"Listen up!" he announced, now sounding more like a teacher and less like just a concerned adult. "You know that solo I was planning on having?" There were a few muttered yesses from the kids around me, but most kids just waited to hear the next part.

"I have decided on a lady to sing the part." The room grew tense and completely silent. Everybody waited expectantly to hear the name of the soloist, each hoping wildly that it would be her.

"She is in the hospital with a serious case of pneumonia right now, but if she returns to school in time for the Spring Concert, the part will be sung by Miss Amy Curtis. As of now, I will not choose a replacement soloist to sing the part if she does not return." There were shouts and hisses of outrage. Every girl in the ladies section had been hoping for that solo. Now it was going to be sung by a crippled girl who might not even come back in time to sing the part.

"Teacher's pet!" one of the Soc girls hollered. Then she turned to look at me. She was pudgy, with fat sort of spilling over on her thighs. Her nose was big and kind of squashed in. She had small watery blue eyes that glared at me as she spoke.

"Listen, kid." she said. "I hate your sister. Got it? She's a good-for-nothing cripple that should've been thrown in a girls home a long time ago. She doesn't deserve that part. I should've gotten that part. The only reason she got that solo was because McIverson feels sorry for her, being sick and crippled and all. I hate her, and you can tell that whiney little greaser I said that." Then she spat at me, and it didn't make me feel so hot, if you know what I mean. A few seats down, Cherry Valance was glaring so fiercely at the girl's turned back that I swore I could see the fire in her eyes. Cherry caught me after class.

"Ponyboy...I'm so sorry about Amy. Really, I am." I don't know if it was the pleading tone of her voice, or the tears in her eyes that got me, but somehow I knew she was sincerely sorry. I was about to be nice to her, admit to her how scared out of my mind I was. But then I remembered that night at the movies, and how she had told me to not take it personally if she didn't say hi to me at school. She was a Soc. I was a greaser. We were from two completely different worlds.

"Why don't you just admit it?" I said nastily, turning to face her. "You wanted the solo just as much as the fat girl did. You don't care about my sister at all. You're just like all the other kids. You just feel sorry for Amy. Well, I'm sorry, but neither Amy nor I need your pity! Go back to where you belong-Soc." That remark really hurt Cherry, and I could tell. For a minute I wished I could take it back, but then the memory of that night at the movies surfaced in my brain again, and I wasn't sorry about what I said at all. Cherry ran down the hall, her long red hair flowing out behind her. I ran blindly in the other direction, not particularly caring about where I was going, or that I had a class I was going to be late for. I just ran and ran and ran. Finally the bell rang and the hallways cleared out. I stopped and leaned against a group of lockers. I didn't realized I was crying until my hand brushed my cheek and came away wet. I cried for a long time, just letting it all out.

And across the hall, Cherry Valance was crying, too.

A/N: Wow. That was the longest chapter I've ever written, fanfiction or otherwise. It was just over four pages. In case you're confused about the time, it takes place a few months after the beginning of the Outsiders, where they meet Cherry and Marcia. That movie night happened, but nothing else in the book has happened. So, after all that work I put into this chapter, please review!