SE Hinton owns the Outsiders.
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Five-
When he wasn't seeing Hazel, or a girl named Christine, or a girl named Lyla, Two-Bit was seeing a girl named Kathy whose brother- Kevin- was Tim Shepard's level of tough, but only about half as smart. Kevin Mitchell had seen Two-Bit around Buck's with Hazel more than once, but never seemed to put two and two together. This time he was standing on the front steps of Buck's, nursing a bottle of beer, and watching Two-Bit get out of Hazel's car at three-thirty in the afternoon. Two-Bit thought about telling Hazel to drive around for a minute, and then decided against it.
"You coming out tonight?" He asked her.
"Don't know," she said. Her mind seemed to be somewhere else.
"Well, I'll call you then."
"Yeah," she said. She shook off whatever the thought was and smiled at him. He liked her smile. She always smiled like she was up to no-good.
"Thanks, baby," he told her. "For letting me use the car."
Hazel just shrugged.
Two-Bit looked again at Kevin standing on the front steps. Now Kevin was looking directly at him. Two-Bit imagined that he had a big red X on his chest, and that Kevin was most likely going to sink his fist into it. He told Hazel "catch you later" and steeled himself for that blow.
"Nice car, Mathews," Kevin said as Two-Bit neared the steps. "Who's the broad?"
"My cousin," Two-Bit said. "From Brumly."
"You got cousins in Brumly?"
"Just the one."
Kevin looked at Two-Bit like he didn't quite trust him, but didn't have any kind of a follow-up to confirm his suspicions. Two-Bit clapped him on the back and bounced into the bar. Toward the back, through the haze of cigarette smoke, he could see Kathy Mitchell sitting at a table with a couple of other girls. She looked up at him and smiled.
This must be it, Tim figured- the source of the bad feeling he'd had all day. Should've been one helluva day. He was out of Mac. He should've been headed to Buck's for a celebratory beer, headed up to Caney with Hazel, headed back in time to finished getting tanked at Buck's. Instead, he sat inside his car outside of his mother's house, still waiting for Curly.
Not that being late wasn't out of the realm of possibility for Curly. He had a way of getting distracted, but this was too long. Curly was the "Call me late, but don't call me late for dinner" type, and it was creeping up on dinner time. By now, Tim figured, it was even possible that the news of his return had gotten to Curly. Not that he cared or anything, but Tim had figured on Curly coming in a hurry to greet him.
In the time that he'd spent waiting, Tim had even gone inside the house. His step-father had grunted something about "you found yourself a ride", and his mother had asked if he was staying.
"Going to catch a shower," Tim told her. "Did Curly go to school today?"
"No one called and said he didn't," his mother replied.
Tim had snatched a piece of toast from the table and headed upstairs to the room he and his brother shared. He took his shower, put on fresh clothes, and shaved. On his way downstairs again, he stopped at Angela's room.
The door was closed and he could hear music playing inside. Tim rapped on the door with his knuckles.
"Angel," he called. "Where does Curly hang out after school these days?"
"I don't know. I don't hang out with him."
"Notice anyone new in his life of late?"
"Like a girl? Who'd go out with him?"
"Sound logic," Tim mumbled and continued on his way.
It was almost five o'clock now. He figured maybe he'd drive around a little big, take the long way to Buck's, and maybe he'd spot Curly. Maybe he'd stop by Billy Simon's place and have that conversation.
Billy's car was not parked in front of the house when Tim drove by. He didn't stop. He didn't like Eleanor and wanted to avoid any kind of conversation with her. In her own way, she struck him as being just as manipulative and evil as her husband- possibly more so. Everything Eleanor did was couched in some kind of Christian rhetoric. Tim wasn't believing it for a second.
He drove by the high school, one or two pool halls, and Bennie's. No sign of Curly. Any other given day, he would've started planning the beat-down he was going to administer when he caught up to his little brother, but today there was just that feeling that something wasn't right. But when was anything ever really right with Curly?
He turned his attention to Hazel and the smell of shampoo in her hair, and turned his car towards Buck's.
She had changed her clothes and left her hair down. That was the second thing he noticed when he met Hazel in the parking lot at Buck's. The first thing was that she was waiting in the parking lot.
"Two-Bit in there?" Tim asked through the open window of his car.
"Yeah, and I didn't feel like a cat fight. He's with one of the others," she paused, a little amused with herself for calling them that. "I started to go in, but then some dude on the steps asked me if I was Two-Bit's cousin."
"What'd you tell him?"
"That Two-Bit was my father."
Tim smirked.
"That ought to stir up some trouble," he said.
"Not for me, man," Hazel replied. "I'm going to be in Kansas."
Tim jerked his head towards the passenger door of the car.
"This is true," he said.
She settled in and Tim peeled out of the parking lot, enjoying the spray of gravel his tires kicked up. He lit a cigarette and fiddled with the radio.
"Did you manage to find any other women to talk to?" Hazel asked. "So I'm not the only one in six months?"
"Just my sister."
"Is that why I'm here, then? To be your first woman in six months?"
Not knowing how she'd react if he just said 'yes', Tim told her: "Baby, you can be whatever you want."
Hazel laughed at that.
"Can I be President of the United States? Can I command the Army? That's a helluva line when you know I can't even open a bank account without my old man's permission."
"Do you really want to be President, though? I mean, somebody shot the last one."
"That's an ugly thing to say," she chided him, and the conversation died.
The road to Caney stretched out ahead of them in one straight line. There were probably five trees between Tulsa and the first town they'd reach- Ramona. At some point, before they got there, Hazel must've gotten to feeling bad about arguing with him because she turned and lay down on her back with her head in his lap. Tim took her hand and toyed with her fingers between his. Neither one of them said a word, which was fine by Tim, until he saw the Ramona on the horizon.
"I'm going to make a phone call," he told her. He pulled the car in beside a pay phone outside of a gas station. Hazel sat up, which made Tim kind of regret his decision, and let him out of the car.
Tim slipped his dimes into the pay phone and asked the operator for his mother's number. His step-father answered. It seemed that this crap luck was going to follow him all day.
"Where's Curly?" Tim asked.
Jerome responded as Angela had: "How the hell should I know?"
"He hasn't been home?"
"I ain't seen him."
Tim hung up the phone. He turned his head and squinted up and down the road, as if he expected to see his brother come up from a ditch or out from behind a billboard. When neither happened, he got back in the car.
"What's the matter?" Hazel asked.
"Nothing," he told her.
"You want to go back?"
"Last fuckin' thing I want."
She raised an eyebrow at him.
"But should we go back?"
Tim shook his head. He draped his arm across the back of the seat and curled a lock of her hair around his fingers. Then he put the car back in drive and continued on their way to Caney.