When I was around 13, Soda confessed to me that he thought I was the only one out of us who would "make it out". This was right after mom and dad died. I told him that saying I would "make it out" made it sound like I was escaping prison. Tulsa wasn't a prison and I liked it there just fine. I wouldn't leave if I wanted to.
My desire to stay put faded as time went on. After Johnny and Dally died, I started thinking that maybe leaving wouldn't be so bad. For college, at least. I could go to someplace in Texas and come back after four years with new experiences and a clean slate. Besides, I wasn't about to up and leave my brothers, or Two-Bit, or even Steve.
I was at peace with this plan until sophomore year. It started with a letter addressed to Soda from the United States Army and ended with a knock on the door seven months later. After that, we barely saw Two-Bit around anymore, and Steve overdosed a month after he returned.
My junior and senior years of high school were hell on earth. I was beginning to realize that Soda had been right, and maybe I should have left when I still had the chance.
Unfortunately, I was sort of stuck between a rock and a hard place. I couldn't go anywhere, really, because there was Darry. I would have taken him with me, but he had a ball and chain locked around his ankle. Even if I grabbed him and ran we never would have made it past the guards.
When I graduated high school, Darry dug out the ancient camera and sat in the front row, taking photos with flash. All the parents in the vicinity gave him dirty looks. It was the most depressing display I have ever personally witnessed. When it was my turn to receive my diploma, I smiled big for him and gave the thumbs up.
We spent that summer in a tent in the woods. Darry said he wanted something to remember me by before I left for college - I had been accepted at Columbia with a partial track scholarship and a healthy amount of financial aid. They way my brother behaved, you would have thought I had six months to live. On my eighteenth birthday he gave me stationary to write to him with, and a fountain pen with P.M.C. engraved on the side. It reminded me of the way a grandmother might give a going-away present to her grandson. It was touching.
When it was time to move in, we made a road trip out of it. Neither one of us had ever been very far East, and it had been years since we had seen the ocean. What should have been a 24 hour drive took us almost 3 days. Darry took the stupid camera with him and took photos of the exit signs on the highway.
My roommate hadn't shown up yet. Darry and I unloaded the car and recreated my living space on a twin sized bed and a single wooden desk. I didn't even have any posters or anything, and i felt oddly stupid about it. All the dorms I had passed had posters on the walls.
Darry left later that afternoon. Seven became one.
I sat out the twin and stared out the window, at New York City. I must have been seven stories high. If I thought Tulsa was a city, it was nothing compared to this. Dally was from here. I wondered if he had ever strolled past my residency hall. I could just picture him smashing some kids teeth against the bricks around the entrance.
I laid down and stared up at the ceiling, at the designs in the plaster. When Soda and I shared a bed we used to stare at the ceiling and make shapes out of the designs. There was a high heel in the far corner of our old bedroom.
This was a different ceiling. The mattress was harder, not as worn out. The street outside was darkening, and it dawned on me that I still had to change out of my jeans and brush my teeth. I had a lit class at 8 am tomorrow.
I wondered if this was what Soda meant when he talked about making it.
Long authors note:
Hi, everyone. I have not used this account regularly since I was 13 years old in the seventh grade. I am now a senior in high school who really does not have time to pound out 700 words for something that isn't due in my AP lit class by 8 am tomorrow morning. I am actually taking two English classes this year - AP Lit and English IV Honors. Last year I took AP Lang and English III Honors. Needless to say I write a lot, and have become accustomed to doing it very quickly. This is why I am not concerned about the fact that I will need to compose an entire essay on Albert Camus' "The Stranger" during my 25 minute study hall tomorrow morning.
Anyways I came in from my run today and I sat at the kitchen counter with some tortilla chips when I remembered being 13 and religiously typing up Wild Ride on my school computer. If you have read it, I'm sorry. If you haven't, think Weekend at Bernies, except I wasn't actually trying to make it funny. And then I got all intellectual and deep and reflective (which is dangerous). I thought of how disillusioned I became as I actually entered my teen years. Friends I had been attached at the hip with since 3rd grade suddenly became strangers and people I used to actively avoid became my closest friends, to whom I told ALL MY DARKEST SECRETS, before we abandoned one another for some reason or another. At the end of my junior year I felt as if I had outgrown high school altogether and the thought of leaving to go far, far away to college became my light at the end of the tunnel. Now I'm dragging myself through my senior year and escaping my reality on the weekends to tour colleges and imagine myself waking up in the dorms, in my new life.
This was all fine and dandy until my psychologist pointed out that just because I was moving to a different environment didn't mean I would be leaving my brain behind. Like, you literally cannot outrun your problems. Because they're attached to you. This happened about 2 days ago so I'm trying to sort out what the hell I'm supposed to do with this piece of information. However I hope you enjoy the little study that it regurgitated itself into:)