Thanks for all of your insights and reviews- your feedback is like fuel to my fire :)
Just a hint that there is an important time jump halfway through this piece to be on the look out for, as it is the only thing that marks significant change in the plot and the character's behavior!
Chapter 5: The Spiral
Tulsa, November 1969
I haven't dreamed about either of them since right after the accident. In a dream, you're too vulnerable to see that it's just that, a dream. I often found myself dismissing reality as fiction, and believing their nightly visits as truth, believing that they weren't really gone. At first, the dreams came in waves, every time a cold night rolled around, for an entire year. Then, when the disappointment and devastation of each reminder when I'd wake up, I got real good at catching myself from falling for the trick, and they eventually stopped all together.
Until tonight, that is.
But this one's different.
This one's based in truth, a real memory. Dad and I stand shoulder to shoulder on top of Emerald Mountain, looking down past the greenery of the landscape and the purple mountains in the distance. I can't be older than seventeen, based on the way my sleeves are rolled over my shoulders and the amount of grease I thought appropriate for my hair. The younger two would've been too small and rowdy to keep up with us on this trip so it's just me and Dad. I wouldn't have it any other way.
Something about his hand on my shoulder always makes me feel like a man, invincible and worthy. That shoulder has been cold from the absence of those hands a long time now, so the warmth itself brings a nearly forgotten comfort. Time weaves in and out of its correct course, and somehow Dad knows what's coming. About the loss we're about to bear. His loss.
I realize we're on a false summit as he starts to climb the last stretch of the mountain, without me as dark, grey clouds start to circle in around us. I try to go with, but my feet are suddenly stuck in place.
"Don't go." I say, somehow knowing too, though we're years ahead of the accident.
The wind starts to pick up.
He shakes his head, eyes burning with a sadness and a longing I don't think I've ever seen in him before. "I don't want to, Darry, but it isn't my choice. You know what you have to do now, right?"
I nod, though I don't know, all I know is that it makes me think instantly about the younger two who stayed behind.
"I'm so sorry."
And within that same breath, he vanishes in a cloud of smoke, nothing more than a memory all over again, and I'm alone on top of the mountain. The green field is now a faded brown, worn from the heat and too many summers and not enough rain. How could it have faded so quickly? The storm that's brewing continues that tirade against me, lighting begins to fight back too.
I hear my name.
With nowhere to look but down, I glance at the far fall below, and there I see my middle brother, clinging for his life against the rocky edges of the mountain. I drop onto my chest, reaching out a hand for him to take, but we're just far enough away from one another that there's no secure way for him to reach me too. His eyes are wide, fearful, but Soda grew out of being scared of things a long time ago. I look back over my shoulder in hopes of Dad's return but it's all up to me. Even in my dreams, he doesn't come running back. No Dad, no Mom, just me. Somehow I know Pony's off climbing his own mountain right this very minute in the big city, too far away to hear my pleas in time.
"Grab my hand." I beg him, but I can sense in his hesitancy that he's reconsidering. "Soda!"
"I don't want you to fall too." he says in quiet but firm resignation, brows crinkling inwards. I think on what he means by that for only a second before I bring my self a little closer to the edge of the mountain to bridge the gap between us. He shakes his head again, looking down at the fall beneath him, one that stretches far beyond what the eyes can see, into the unknown, into the unretrievable. I strain further, the muscles in my arm pulsing from the tug in determination.
I've almost got hold of him myself, I'd do anything to get just an inch closer to him.
Then everything around us is enveloped into the same puff of smoke that stole Dad away, and I hear Soda scream.
I cough.
I can't stop coughing.
It's then that I wake up, sitting upright under my crumpled sheets that are wet from sweat.
Smoke collects into my room from beneath the crack in the bottom of my bedroom door.
I'm out of my bed in a second as I realize what's happening, bounding for Soda's room as the house is certainly on its way to being completely engulfed. His bed is empty, thank God. I reach the kitchen only to find the frying pan over a steady flame on the stove, smoke exhaling from some sorry grilled cheese that's now been ignited completely. Nothing but the sandwich is on fire. Not yet, at least. A few moments later and the stove surely would've exploded.
All it takes is a little bit of water from the sink to extinguish Soda's go to snack, and I start to wave the kitchen towel around to disperse some of the smoke.
I hear coughing from the couch, and when I turn to look, Soda's flat on his back, legs sprawled out in no kind of order and the lock of his elbow over his eyes, motionless and sedated except for his lazy inhales. He doesn't even wake up. On the coffee table next to him are those fucking needles.
By the morning when he returns from his ecstacy, he doesn't remember a thing about that forgotten grilled cheese.
Tulsa, March 1976
"Betcha can't beat me 'cross the yard." Junior's already in racing position and off in a dead sprint before I even agree to the challenge. With some of my best acting chops, I strut across the front lawn a few paces behind him, pretending like the kid's devilishly faster than I am. And truly, he is pretty fast. The kid's got some Pony in him for sure.
He reaches his self-proclaimed finish line several feet ahead of me, singing his elation with genuine surprise on his face. "Ha!" He points at me directly as I feign heavy breathing like he's worn me out real good.
Jackie calls from the porch where she's reading a picture book to herself. "You don't seriously think you're faster than Uncle Soda, do you?"
His look back at me from her is one of earth-shattering heartbreak, but I've seen that look on Pony's face when we were kids enough to know exactly how to deflect that kind of disappointment.
"She's just jealous of you cause I'm fastern' her." And as soon as she's about to protest all the harm I've done to her honor with proof that there's no way her little brother or her ancient uncle is faster than her, she catches my disguised wink to play along, and shrugs back at him before catapulting out of her seat.
"Daddy's home!"
When I turn, I see Darry's squad car pulling up against the sidewalk just as Debbie pulls the station wagon into the driveway. Somehow the timing with those two is always spot on. Like clockwork.
Jackie races to the driver's side of the cop car, pulling at the handle and jumping up and down as Darry works to open the door without hitting her with it in all her excitement. Jackie has always been a Daddy's Girl.
Junior hangs back with me in the yard with a laid back air at his parent's arrivals.
Debbie works to get Maddie out of her carseat, and the little lady is a dead weight asleep in her mother's arms, mouth open and drooling like she's braved a real battle today.
"How she doing?" I ask, feeling a little more certain that having a little girl of my own won't be half as scary as I initially thought when I reach for her little shoes on her little feet. I've always wanted a son, but only because that's all I've ever known. Little girls seems so much more fragile than little boys.
Debbie's smiles could tame a storm, and they often do. "She's fine. Just a little bug, but we're all good. Got some antibiotics so she'll sleep it off sooner or later."
"I'm fastern' Uncle Soda." Junior blurts out with a deadpan look on his face, begging to be taken seriously. Darry appears from behind, and while I nod enthusiastically at Debbie at Junior's triumph, I try and meet Darry's eyes too, but he refuses, looking directly at Junior and not once back up at me.
Debbie ruffles Junior's hair with her free hand. "Thanks for watching them. It's so hard for him to sit still for a minute, and the doctor's office was packed today. We waited almost an hour and a half before we could get in."
"Happy to do it. It's some good practice for me before the baby and all"
Darry gives Debbie a quick kiss on the lips, always their signature greeting since they started dating way back when. But Darry still won't look at me, even as talks to me, his eyes are still aimed straight past.
"Where's Grace?" He asks, faking pleasant.
I point towards the house, "She was out here for a while, then went inside for a rest. Afternoons sort of tire her out now."
"Boy do I understand that." Debbie says with a laugh, starting to lead us towards the house. "You give that woman whatever she wants these last few months, and I mean whatever she wants."
"Soda, can I show you something on the squad car? It's been acting real strange lately, could use a mechanic's eye." He and I both know well that police vehicles are taken into the city and aren't treated by anyone but government elected mechanics. And I don't work for the government anymore, never again. Debbie must know it too because she glares back at Darry for a few seconds before she rolls her eyes at him and starts to head up the steps of the porch, snapping her fingers at Junior and Jackie to follow.
"Quit acting like you're so subtle, Darry. Gracie and I got some gossiping to do ourselves, so don't bother coming back in thinking you're gracing us with your presence. You can sleep out here all night for all I care." I smile because Debbie can get that out of anyone in any moment. She and Darry certainly do have a lot in common in the way they communicate, but clearly it works for them both, they'll take sass from one another, but not from anyone else. But my smile disappears as soon as she does, when I find myself alone with him.
Now he's suddenly found the courage to look at me, and it appears he's not here to make amends. I'm well acquainted with Darry's expression, and this one is all defeat and not hate like the night at the hospital.
"So what's the issue?" I make my way towards the car, playing along with stupid hopefulness that maybe a quick diagnosis really is all he's asking for.
He shakes his head in a way that pisses me off, like he thinks he's Dad or something. Like he's disappointed.
I miss my brother. The two of us have been regressing a bit, and I feel like he's trying to be a parent again. We'd had so many good years of comradery, I thought we'd proven we could withstand any test that was thrown our way, but here we are, Darry shaking his head at me, and me with my hands in my pockets. Just like old times.
"We gonna do this again?" I prod in a glare since my pride has a voice of it's own.
"You still using?" Somehow I'm surprised at how quickly he goes there, holding nothing back, though that's not uncharacteristically Darry.
"No, Dar, I found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and the leprechaun granted me my one wish to be free of all this temptation and so here I am, cleansed of all that is unholy, just like that." I clap my hands together like I've washed them clean.
He shakes his head at me again.
"Look, I know you're here because Deb called you for a favor, and I appreciate you coming out so quickly to watch the kids." He grinds his top teeth over his bottom lip, choosing his words carefully. "Soda you ain't allowed in my house until you get this under control."
And the grenade explodes. Words will never hurt, yeah right. He may as well have dumped a truck load of sticks and stones at me if he was trying to minimize the damage.
"What's that supposed to mean?" The three of us are masters of stubborn staring contests, but Darry is the reigning champion.
"Means I don't want my kids around you when you've got your hands in the gravy." He crosses his arms over his chest, firm in his position.
"Gravy?" I scoff, "Since when're you a man of metaphors? How do you even know where I've got my hands?"
"Oh, I know." And my stomach shrivels into itself as I think on what that could possibly mean.
"You spying on me, Dar?"
"You going to tell me about how you been upping your dosage, or do I need to tell you that you don't look to be gettin' any better."
"You know I ain't been using nothing but Vicodin then…" The resentment in my voice does a poor job of masking the panic that's beginning to rise within me as I try and figure how the hell he knows about my growing tolerance.
"It started with pills last time, and remember where you found yourself?" Darry is the only one who really saw me down there, and it's a burden the both of us carry. "Remember the grilled cheese?"
That fucking grilled cheese. How could I forget? Doesn't matter that I don't even remember putting the bread on the pan, who could ever forget the fact that they almost burned down the house with their brother in there too?
"I can't let that happen with my kids inside." He declares with a sensitive solidity, but all the sound around us is beginning to muffle, like there's cotton in my ears, or time has slowed way down or something. I understand what he's saying, analogies and all. He's not going to be around for this round of the fight. And I don't even blame him, not one bit when I think about how I almost let the family home go up in flames, and now I can't imagine all this with his three kids around, too.
But I need him now. Debbie, Junior, Jackie, Maddie I need them all, but they don't need me. Not when I'm like this. "I don't want you around the family until you get on a better track. It's a safety concern."
My pathetic plea sounds off like a firecracker underwater. "We ain't even gonna talk more about this?"
"There's nothing more to talk about."
I close my eyes in a devastated surrender, something I've been mastering lately. Where madness used to bubble up, now only lies shame, and grief. I've driven away the only person who truly knows how to see this thing through with me.
Just as I open my mouth up, searching for something, anything to say in response to that, he does what I least expected him to do, and pulls me in for a hug. His grip is tight, steady, safe.
"I love you, Soda. You gotta know that. I ain't got no other kind of best friend than you." He says, his muffled voice tickling my ear, and the hair on my neck stands as I wonder what it might mean that he's felt the need to say all that. "I'll come by to see you in a couple of days, alright?"
The porch door swings open and when I turn to look, Grace steps out with a hand on her belly, always mid-waddle these days. Darry releases me almost instantly, ending the hug that was too quick for me to return, and his absence leaves me feeling all kinds of cold and naked.
I've lost my strongest warrior. My sergeant. My comrade. My do or die.
"Don't bother coming by, Darry. I'd hate to inconvenience you." My bitter, falter pride speaks up again even when I know full all I want is for him to keep checking in, because he's always given me strength. But I can be real stubborn sometimes.
He stops to give me a chance to take it all back, and when I don't, he turns to an oblivious Grace.
I don't even hear the words they exchange to one another, the small talk they share, but it sounds like it's weather related. My body goes numb. Looks like I didn't the drugs to do that for me after all. Pretty soon, Grace tugs on my arm, leading me to the car with Darry on her other side, and Debbie and the kids waving from the porch.
"G'bye Uncle Soda! G'bye Auntie Gracie!" Jackie and Junior belts from the porch, and I force a smile and wave back, fighting every urge I have to wrap them all up in my arms and take them with me. But I can't. Darry's right. I've become a safety concern.
Before I really know what's happening, I'm buckled in the driver's seat with Grace next to me and Darry leaning in the window.
"Drive safely." He says as warmly as he can muster after all of that, but I know him too well not to see he's just as close to collapsing as I am. "Call if you need anything, alright? Otherwise I'll see you two in a couple of days."
Tulsa, May 1976
"What about you, Ponyboy?" Her voice cuts like tinted glass so suddenly that the screeching halt on my speech has me needing some time to reroute the direction of our conversation.
"I'm sorry, what?" I say, finally snapping out of whatever tangent I was on.
"I came out with you tonight to get to know more about you, not your brothers and this shit storm." She crunches down on her breadstick and raises a suspect eyebrow that's locked and loaded for the kill.
My face flushes a bit as I realize she's just about done with her salad and first glass of wine while mine sit completely untouched. How long have I been at it?
"Sorry, Valerie, I just… I guess I just don't usually get to talk about it with someone who's got an outsider's perspective." Her face remains still, so I down half of my ice water despite the knife-like sting as the cold his my empty stomach just so that I don't have to return the gaze. "So, is your sister still in Jersey, or does she travel all over like yourself?"
She shakes her head. "Your brothers shouldn't be expecting you to carry so much weight around. That's a heavy load. And aren't you the youngest?"
"Being the youngest doesn't mean anything anymore, I'm an adult." I say, realizing quickly that it's only something an insecure youngest sibling would say. "I thought you wanted to talk about something else." But my hand shoots back up with a pointed finger to continue my position on defending the last-born since I guess I can't help it. "Once you get past eighteen, being the youngest ain't nothing but a title. I'm twenty-four."
"Quit saying words like 'ain't' and pretending you're just like everybody else here." She aims the breadstick at me unapologetically, her fourth one, no less, and I get sort of hot with defense with her next advice. "You should bail. Tell them you've got your own life and dreams and aspirations, and they're weighting you down, holding you to an unrealistic expectation that'll swallow you whole if you try to meet it. Artists like us have to follow our passions no matter the roadblocks, and there will always be many. It's what we're made to do. And you're certainly not meant to stay in Tulsa, Oklahoma. You're a talented writer, Pony, don't let that go to waste." She rips into the dough relentlessly as if it were my own sorry carcass.
I shake my head, "Nah. You don't get it."
She laughs at me and I instantly feel patronized, a common thing for me lately. "Ponyboy, I've been sitting here for the last hour listening to you drag on and on about your brothers. One of them doesn't have the sense of a billy goat to just buck up and deal with those demons once and for all. It's cowardly to allow his past to destroy the future of his family. And your other brother? He's so spineless it's actually a good thing he's got a stick so far up his ass. I mean, what kind of code is he following? For him to abandon you both and elect you in charge of picking up all pieces… well that's just selfish. Sounds to me like you've got two brothers who are real good at dumping all their shit onto you and you're just letting it happen like you think you deserve it or something. So tell me, what is it that don't I get?"
And the writer is at a loss for words.
She hands me the other half of the breadstick in our silence and takes back to her glass of wine to wait for that dumb look I've surely got on my face to clear itself and say something useful.
She's got it all wrong. Soda's never been a coward. Not even way back when we thought there was a monster living in the coat closet and I wouldn't even go to that part of the hallway. Soda in all of his five years charged right in with a broomstick and Mom's strainer over his head for armor, only to find it was just the rattle of one of the floor vents, begging for repair.
And Darry? You don't get anymore selfless than him. A silent soldier. A wounded warrior, master of sacrifice. Stepping back from Soda and his addiction arguably his biggest sacrifice yet. Right now, all he wants to be is right there with Soda like he's done before, but he's selfless enough to know his primary place is with his wife and kids and the two can't mix.
Still, we've all been acting a little out of sorts lately.
"Well?" Valerie probes again. "I say you bail, what says you?"
The second half of my water goes down easier than the first. "I shouldn't've dumped all that on you, I'm sorry." She simply nods. "I'm not used to picking up the pieces, my brothers have always been the ones to do that for me. Hell, I've hardly ever had to bend over. So, it's a new job for me to be the guy you call when you need something, and I guess I'm just not so sure I'm as good at it as they are. Still, I wouldn't dream of leaving them now. Not when things are as messed up as they are." Not when Soda's sleeping on a couch instead of in his own bed, not when baby Marley is due in the next month, not when Darry hates himself for the decision he's got to stand by, not while the two of them aren't even speaking to each other.
She leans back in her chair, a hard, thoughtful stare lasering back at me. "Listen, Ponyboy. From what I can gather from the very little you've left unexposed, you've got some big pieces to pick up. This isn't any small task. You been doing this on your own, what? Two months? You're exhausted. You do what you can for your brothers like any good brother, but you don't lose sight of yourself in the process. And if it all falls to shit, you pick yourself back up and remember that you did what you could, and you move on."
She still doesn't get it, but there are very few who have any comprehension of the kind sacrifices Soda and Darry have made for me. Maybe in any other normal family she'd be right that bailing is the answer, self-preservation the most important goal in a cruel world, but the three of us have never been normal.
"Tell me about your sister in Jersey." I try and deflect, leaning in and smiling, because despite all she doesn't understand, I feel like she might given time. And I like her, I have since she introduced herself as the 'administrative office bitch' in the mail room at the paper my first day.
"Nah. I'm tired of talking and listening." She waves down the waiter for the check, even though we haven't ordered the main course. "I like you Ponyboy. What's say we go back to my place for some fun. You could use the night off."
cont.
I can't sleep.
And it's not the baby this time. No, she seems to be sleeping soundly tonight, and I envy her for it. You'd think the two of us would be in sync by now but I guess not.
I don't remember the last time I stayed up past eleven o'clock, so the 1:45am flashing in my face acts as both a milestone and a reminder for why I can't sleep.
Oh, that's right... I hate myself.
All night I've been going back and forth between justifying myself and hating myself for what I did. It was just some kissing and a little bit of change. It wasn't sex. No, even if that was the end goal, I was the one who called it off.
Partially because so very little feels sexy when you're eight months along and I didn't want to break the guy's parts.
But mostly because reality came crashing back down on me when when he started to reach those greedy fingers up my maternity skirt and I quit pretending like it was okay for anyone but my husband to go there. That's when I reminded myself that 'like' wasn't even apart of the equation with this guy. I'm just mad. At Soda. I wanted to make him hurt as badly as he's been hurting me lately. Do the cheated ever cheat? Nope. And that's how I was going to get back at him. I wanted to choose somebody over him the way he chooses drugs over me and remind him he's expendable, too, and that it hurts to feel like you're somebody's sloppy seconds.
Resentment's grip is tight, especially when you don't even know it's got hold of you. I didn't know I could be that petty.
I'm mad at Soda because I love him. I'm certainly not in love with Roger DuPonte, and Roger DuPonte isn't in love with me. Roger DuPonte just doesn't want to admit he's bored of the life he lives. That's really how we found ourselves together in his apartment this afternoon. Like moths to a flame right before they burn to a crisp.
I'm not impulsive like this. But I've been feeling a little out of sorts lately.
I hate us. The kind of hate that only stems from that stupidly blinding love that seems to have only ever gotten me into trouble. Poetic, maybe, but poetry is the last thing I need right now.
I hate that I'd stoop this low. I hate the fact that there's nobody else I'll love the way that I love Sodapop Curtis. Why did I have to be someone with a soul mate? Why couldn't I have gone for a regular Joe Shmoe? Someone who was boring and predictable and I didn't have to worry about taking me down in flames with him. Why can't I just pick up and move on to somebody else without looking back like everybody seems to be doing these days?
Two months now he's been sleeping on that couch. Ever since Darry ratted him out about his usage habits and he lied right to my face saying that Darry was lying to me. It was right then that I stopped trusting his word all together. I thought after a week of 'separation' things would start to work themselves out, or at least start to. That he'd quit, and choose me over the pills and his side of the bed wouldn't be so cold at night like it is now.
That was two months ago and now we're getting ready to welcome baby Marley into a mess that's only getting messier.
And now, some of that mess is mine, too.
Sometimes I get so mad I can't sleep. Sometimes I get so mad at not being able to sleep that then I really can't sleep because I'm mad. It's infuriating.
At 1:47, I throw in the towel and sit up in my bed. By 1:48 I finally make it to an upright position. My heart is pulseless, compressed between two two-by-fours of two different kinds of grief, grief over what I've done to him and grief over what he's doing to me.
The hunted becomes the hunter. I guess I never figured that would be a thing. Seems like it would be fair, and maybe it is a little bit, but when you love someone unconditionally, there's nothing they can do to you that can make you really want to see them hurt.
I push myself to my feet, which takes another solid minute with all this extra weight and being so damn waterlogged all the time.
Tentatively, I make my way to the door frame to check on him on that couch. A nightly ritual for me since the living room has become his bedroom. It feels different this time, knowing what I've done today. It's a search for a compromise and not an expected standard.
I'm surprised when he's not asleep this time around.
He's there in the living room, on the couch, leaning forward with his elbow on his knees and tuffs of hair in his fists. I don't recognize him at first, which is strange since it wouldn't be anyone else. In front of him sits that pill bottle, making a constant mockery of our marriage. Just like Roger DuPonte now does too.
Yet, seeing him like that seems to have completely shifted my focus away from myself and onto him.
"Baby?" I ask, my voice piercing the thick silence and uneasiness in the room. It feels like a lie on my tongue after today.
He jerks his head my way at the sound, immediately straightening himself up and smoothing out the hair he's disheveled in his tension.
"Something wrong?" He asks in concern, beginning to stand to meet me, but I hold out a stopping hand.
"I'm fine, I was just... checking on you. I didn't think you'd be awake." He nods reflexively to acknowledge my words but I don't know if he's actually heard them because he stays silent. He's a little shifty and distant tonight, I wonder if he's trying to hide something from me. "Is everything okay?" My voice stones up. Maybe if we both have some guilt to share, mine won't seem so horribly out of place.
He nods, but fails to look me in the eye. I wish he'd remember that while he can pull off a lie to just about anyone, he's never, ever been able to fool me. I approach him, because as much as his bad acting might give him away, it is in his eyes that I can see all. Even in the darkness of the living room, those brown irises tell me whatever truths he tries to hide. They're stifled, broken, uneasy. Where I was initially worried tonight might be one of the nights he sought an escape within that bottle, I now see it's just the opposite. It's just him tonight, no enhancers or numbness, it's just my Soda. And that concerns me more, because he looks like he's weathered some sort of tropical storm just now.
"Just couldn't sleep."
"What's on your mind?" I ask, taking one of his hands, surprised at its clamminess. He looks away, which can only mean one thing. "You thinking about Parson?" His sigh catches in his throat.
I only know what little he's told me, and what Darry has helped me put together all those years ago when we were in the thick of it about what happened overseas. Neither of us have the full story, and Ponyboy has none of it, for his own good we've decided.
"Pony's safe." Sometimes it means more for him to hear someone else say it out loud than the constant reassurance he's got going on in his head.
He nods again, "I know."
But I grab his cheeks forcefully so he'll look me in the eyes and know I mean it. "Neither of them will ever be sent off like Parson was, like you were."
His exhale is only partially therapeutic, but at least he's watching me.
"You want to talk?"
There isn't happiness in his smile, but surrender. I wish he'd just let me in, that used to be our thing. "I want you to get some sleep."
"Soda, I have to tell you something." I begin, the rush of confidence that tonight is our night of truths and groundbreaking instantly vanishing when he turns his attention back to the coffee table and that pill bottle.
"Yeah?"
Regaining lost momentum is never easy, and I'm only at the bottom of this hill. "Nevermind." I rest my head on his shoulder. Even though I'm the one who kicked him out of our room, I ask, "Can I sleep out here with you?" Without looking he pulls me in closer and kisses the top of my head. I snuggle into his chest preparing for the sleepless night we're about to endure, feeling miles apart even in our close embrace.
Author's Note:
S.E. Hinton is a successful writer who owns the Outsiders. I am a preschool photographer who owns a bamboo plant. Therefore, I am not S.E. Hinton and do not own the Outsiders.
Thank you for reading, I know it might not be much fun to read at this point when things are looking so grim, so I EXTRA appreciate it. This too shall pass.
Also, I'm super influenced by music, and always feel a little guilty about not crediting songs that impact my writing. So... 'Ungodly Hour' by The Fray really helped me write that last scene with Grace and Soda.
Here's a reminder to take one day at a time and give yourself some credit today! :)