Chapter 5
Still Ponyboy's POV
Amy was still drifting in and out of consciousness. It was now Wednesday. Amy had been jumped on Sunday. The three of us were home, somewhere we rarely were nowadays. We were either at school or work, or else at the hospital visiting Amy. We stayed long after visiting hours were over and came long before they began, but the nurses and doctors let it go. They could tell how close the four of us were. The whole gang knew about Amy and her prognosis, and they joined us at the hospital whenever they could. Soda was taking it real rough. I had never realized just how much he loved Amy. Thank god he had Steve. Every day at work, Soda told me, Steve would stay right close to him, to be support whenever Soda needed him. Every day the first words out of Steve's mouth when Sodapop arrived at work would be "How's the kid?" It bugged me a little that he thought of Amy and me as kids, but it touched me that he cared that much about us. The rest of the gang was taking it pretty hard, too. Two-Bit wasn't cracking jokes nearly as much as he usually did, and he was drinking so much beer that I was afraid that he was going to destroy his liver and kill himself before Amy got out of the hospital. If she ever got out of the hospital. But none of us quite realized how hard Johnny was taking it.
He appeared at our door one stormy morning, right as we were starting breakfast. Darry was making eggs; I was searching for grape jelly. Soda always loved grape jelly with his eggs. Soda, at this particular moment, had his head in the icebox searching for chocolate cake. All of a sudden the door swung open and there stood Johnny, with thunder and lightning cracking behind him, a rain-soaked T-shirt, and tears rolling down his face. We didn't notice that he was crying at first; we thought it was just the rain dripping down his cheeks. But then Darry took a closer look at him.
"Johnnycake, what's wrong, buddy?" he asked in some alarm, since Johnny never bawled like that. He was used to getting roughed up; his parents beat him up almost on a daily basis. Johnny had learned to live with it over the years. It also wasn't unusual for Johnny to show up at our door in the early morning. Lots of times he couldn't take the beatings anymore, and ran away to our house. And we always had a place for him. But he never cried. The only time I had seen him cry was a few months ago, when he had gotten jumped and pretty badly beaten up. Other than that, Johnny never cried. Soda stuck his head out of the icebox and hurried over to Johnny's side, leaving the icebox open and putting an arm around Johnny's shaking shoulders.
"It's OK." Soda urged softly. "It's ok; you can tell us what happened." Johnny finally got ahold of himself and pulled out a kitchen chair to sit on. He took a long, shuddering breath and glanced from one worried face to the other. But before he could say anything, Darry deserted his place at the stove and hurried to get a dry shirt for Johnny.
"Golly, Johnny, you're soaked. Here, let me get you some dry clothes. Glory, if you're in that wet T-shirt any longer, you'll catch your death of pneumonia-" Darry stopped suddenly as he realized what he had said. Pneumonia made us all think of Amy, helpless and ill, lying limply in a hospital bed. Pneumonia made us think of how she might...die. Johnny started sobbing harder.
"It's about...Amy. I didn't realize just how sick she was until Two-Bit told me. Golly, I don't want her to die. She's the prettiest, smartest, nicest girl I've ever known, and there'll never be another girl like her. I...I love her." Soda nearly choked on his Pepsi, and Darry slapped him on the back. We all stood there in shocked silence for a few minutes after that, partly shocked because Johnny had actually said something, which is more than I could say for the usual Johnny Cade, and partly because of what he had said. Johnny just sat there with the tears flowing down his already wet face, looking more like a lost puppy than ever.
"You...you love her?" Soda gasped out, still choking a little. Johnny merely nodded, looking down at his feet and the wet kitchen floor.
"I've had a crush on her for awhile...but I was too scared to say anything. But I really admire Amy, you know? Being crippled and all and still turning out into an amazing girl. She's the most amazing girl I've ever met." More silence followed this admission. I just don't think we quite believed that quiet, beaten Johnny had a crush on loud, exuberant, talkative Amy.
"Well." Sodapop said finally, and for once he didn't have anything else to add except "Well.". We all just stood there, watching Johnny, who had finally stopped bawling and was wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. Darry started for the door again, having suddenly remembered that Johnny was sitting in damp clothes.
"Let me get you some dry clothes, Johnny. You can borrow some of Ponyboy's clothes." he said, trying to break the awkward silence. Soda looked distinctly uncomfortable and followed Darry out the door.
"Uh, let me help you with that, Darry..." Once they were both out the door, I took a seat next to Johnny, who looked at me with frightened, helpless eyes.
"Ponyboy, there's something I want you to know, something I didn't want to say when Darry and Sodapop were in the room. You know when I was jumped a couple months back, and they beat me up real bad?" Johnny waited for my affirmative nod before he continued. "Sodapop wasn't the first one to reach me after I got jumped. Amy was." I shook my head in confusion.
"No. No, Johnny, I was there, remember? Soda was the first one to reach you, I know he was. Amy wasn't there. Well, she was, but she didn't come 'till later, remember?"
"No, Pony. She came first." Johnny sounded so sure of himself that I searched back in my memory to that terrifying day.
FLASHBACK:
Johnny was lying helpless and bleeding. His t-shirt was stained with blood, and his face was paler than I'd ever seen him. Darry saw the whole thing from our porch. Amy was inside, stretched out on the couch, reading a book and resting her legs. She got really bad leg cramps sometimes, 'cause her muscles were so tight. There wasn't really much she could do for them, 'cept take an aspirin and rest for awhile. She didn't really mind that much this time, since she had just gotten a new book from the library and wanted to read it.
"Johnny's hurt. I think he got jumped." Darry said sharply, half-turning to look at Amy. She didn't act shocked or surprised, or even worried. She barely lifted her book.
"I know." she said quietly. But Darry didn't hear her. He was already leaping off the porch and running to help us help Johnny.
END FLASHBACK
I shook my head again. "I still don't think..." But Johnny cut me off.
"No, Pony. She reached me first."
FLASHBACK (JOHNNY'S POV):
It was ten, maybe fifteen minutes before the rest of the gang reached me. I was lying there, too scared and hurt to move. I watched as the blood dripped silently onto my t-shirt and jeans. I was scared to death, more scared than I had ever been before. I'm used to getting hurt, my parents abuse me all the time. I'm belted every time I turn around. But it was nothing like this. The Socs had beaten me up so bad I was scared I was gonna die, and they had threatened me with nothing like my parents had ever threatened with. They left out nothing. "We're going to kill you." they had said. "We'll be back for more. You'll see. We're gonna come back for you." I lay there in the cold, shaking and shivering and trying not to bawl. And then I saw Amy. She was running towards me, in that limping, tripping way she runs and walks. Her longish blonde-brown hair swirled around her face as she walked, and I could almost see a halo over her head as she came closer. At that moment, she seemed like my angel, my savior, come to rescue me, like in those old fairy tales. Except in the old fairy tales it's always the girl that needs the rescuing, a damsel in distress. Amy slowed down as she reached me, walking slowly as to not to slip on my blood smeared across the concrete.
"Amy..." I gasped out, absolutely sure that she had come to rescue me, fix me up, save me. "Help me..." Amy knelt down as she reached my side. I was sure she was going to help me, make everything all right. But then she looked right into my eyes, and I knew I was wrong. She wasn't going to rescue me. But why? That was something I couldn't figure out. Her green eyes were desperate, pleading, sad, and there was something I couldn't identify. Her eyes were liquid, and a few tears escaped and rolled down her cheeks as she shook her head.
"Johnny...no...please forgive me." she whispered, letting her tears drop to the ground. I propped myself up on my elbow.
"Forgive you...for what?" I whispered questioningly. Amy didn't answer, only sniffled and wiped the tears off her face with the back of her hand.
"I'm so sorry, Johnny..." she whispered. I was about to ask her what that meant, demand a straight answer from her. But all of a sudden there was the sound of running footfalls.
"Oh no, here come Ponyboy, and Soda and Steve!" she said frantically. She got up, her hands slipping a little on the slick blood. Then, she bent down and kissed me, a soft, gentle kiss on the cheek. Then she took off running, running towards the afternoon sun. She grew smaller and smaller until finally she disappeared into the cool blue sky. The little strength I had disappeared and I lay back down and waited for the gang to come rescue me instead.
END FLASHBACK
PONYBOY'S POV
"But why didn't she go for help? And why was she saying that she was sorry about something? What could she have had to be sorry about?" I asked desperately, in complete puzzlement. Johnny shook his head, just as confused as I was.
"I don't know, Ponyboy." he said slowly. "I just don't know." And we sat there, lost in thought, wondering, until Darry and Sodapop came back with the dry clothes. I didn't know much, but one thing was for sure: My twin sister had a secret. And I was going to find out what it was.
Those were the things I was thinking about a few hours later, when I visited Amy at the hospital. I was still reeling from Johnny's news about Amy.
"No." I whispered softly, leaning over to push a stray strand of hair behind Amy's ear. Her gold earrings caught the sunlight coming in from the window, and I realized for the first time that Amy actually was very pretty, although she always tried to deny it.
"I'm a fourteen year old freak, and you can play connect the dots with the pimples on my forehead." she would always say. Amy always had a great sense of humor, eve when she was trying to be serious. I could actually see why Johnny would like her. She was everything a boy might want, except for her health problems, she was perfect.
She was unconscious; like she was most times we came to the hospital. Every once in awhile she'd wake up, and ask for one of us, usually me or Sodapop, but she never stayed awake for long. She would always pass out again before we left.
"No." I whispered again. I hoped Amy could hear me. The doctors had said that even people in comas responded to human voice and contact from people they knew. So, Darry, me and Soda had all been talking to her the entire time she was in the hospital. "You can't have a secret, can you, Ames? Not Amy, my sweet, loveable little sister." Amy always hated it when I called her my little sister. She would put her hands on her hips and go "I was only born a few minutes after you. Get over it." Amy never had secrets. So why did she have to start now?
"You can't have a secret. You don't have secrets. You tell me all your secrets, right, Ames? You're a horrible secret-keeper." That, at any rate, was true. Amy had always been talkative, so when she was told a secret, she tended to blurt it out to "people she could trust". Sometimes, though, those people she thought she could trust weren't so trustworthy, and she ended up breaking a friendship because she had told someone's secret, and it had ended up spreading all over the school. That had happened more than once. I had hoped that Amy had learned her lesson about keeping secrets, and telling them. Apparently, she had. This was the one time when I needed her to tell me her secret, and she was unconscious. She seemed to have learned a little too well.
"Hey, Ponyboy." A soft voice broke into my thoughts. I looked over to the doorway, and there stood Cherry Valance, red hair tumbling softly down her back.
"What are you doing here?" I asked coldly. My words came out a little harsher than I meant them to. Cherry looked back at me just as coldly.
"I came to see Amy. What did you think?" I blushed hotly. Of course she was here to see Amy. This was, after all, Amy's hospital room. Cherry pulled over one of those plastic hospital chairs, and I winced at the squeaking sound it made as she dragged it across the floor.
"So...how is she?" Cherry asked quietly, trying to ease the tension between us after what had happened yesterday. I merely shrugged. Finally Cherry couldn't take it anymore.
"Ponyboy, what do you want me to say?" she burst out in a voice full of emotion. "That I'm sorry about what I said to you that day at the movies? That I'm sorry for being a Soc?" Her voice cracked and she started crying again, just like she had yesterday. I stared at her for a few minutes.
"No." I finally said, trying to work out my own emotions. "No. I just want you to notice me. To change this stupid cycle of being separated, classified as Greaser and Soc. I want things to change. Everything. I wish I could turn back time, make it so we hung out, make it so Amy never got sick, or that I stopped her from going to the park that night. I just want things to change."
"I want things to change, too, Ponyboy." Cherry said softly. "I want to make people realize that us Socs aren't all bad, that we're good kids who sometimes make stupid decisions. That we're not all snotty rich kids, that we're actually nice sometimes. I want to break the stereotypes." We sat there in silence until Cherry had to leave. We just sat there, staring into space, wanting things to change for the better. A Soc and a greaser, breaking the stereotypes together.
A/N: Well that was slightly longer than the last chapter, even. I'm breaking chapter length records all over the place. R&R!