SE Hinton owns the Outsiders.

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Seven-

If he really thought about, Two-Bit had to admit that he didn't know much more about Hazel then where she lived, and that she didn't live with her dad and her brother because one was in the pen and the other was working his way back to it. He had always assumed she was the same age as him, but now he couldn't remember ever asking or being told. He didn't know where she was from- not from Tulsa, or how she got to Tulsa or why she stayed. She had a mother- but didn't everybody? She said her dad had taken off and her mom had replaced him with tent revival meetings.

Two-Bit concluded that he really knew more about Hazel's mom then he did about Hazel. That Hazel had a whole other life that didn't include him hadn't bothered him before, but somehow it was bothering him now that her life seemed to include Tim Shepard.

"You ain't sayin' anything," Curly piped up from next to him in the front seat.

"Neither are you," Two-Bit said. "Some might say it'd take an act of God to make that happen."

"Who were the other messengers?"

"Dunno. Two guys Billy sent down to McAlester that looked like they blended in with the rodeo."

"Were they there to deliver a message or were they there to kill him?"

"Kill him, I'd guess. When I started talking to them, I guess they figured they were made and gave up."

Curly sighed.

"Tim has a gun, but I took it out of his car. It's in my locker."

"What the hell did you do that for?"

"Couldn't rightly tell you now. I guess I just wanted to shoot some cans with it, and then I forgot it when I was sneaking out of detention. Sure wish I had it now."

Two-Bit shook his head.

"I don't. If Billy didn't shoot at you, there's no reason to be shooting back."

"You said he sent someone to shoot my brother."

"Yeah, and your brother will take care of it."

"No, he won't. Not now because his gun's in my locker."

Jesus Christ, Two-Bit thought to himself. He asked Curly:

"What exactly was the message that Billy said to send to Tim?"

Curly squirmed.

"It was weird," he said.

"Weird how?"

"Weird like he touched me...like held my face in his hands, but kind of gentle. He rubbed my cheek. He said to tell Tim he could take good care of me and Angela in his absence. He said Tim had better show or the next one of us he was going to put to work was Angel. Gave me the creeps."

It gave Two-Bit the creeps too. He'd always figured the Shepards for being maybe a step or two down on the evolutionary ladder from himself. They were a different kind of criminal. They had guns, first of all. They didn't just steal things like Two-Bit did, and they sold the things they stole. They had an operation going that seemed complicated from the outside looking in, and yet it never seemed to get them anywhere. Maybe it never got them anywhere because the money they made was going to someone else.

"Maybe we shouldn't be looking for Tim," Two-Bit said. "Maybe we should be looking for your sister. Just check in. Tell her to stay put."

Curly smirked.

"Good luck. The only one she listens to is Tim, and barely. We'd about have to kidnap her, and keep her hogtied in the trunk."

"Then maybe that's what we'll do. Christ, man, I got a little sister. I think maybe I could put a bullet in Billy for implying doing to her what he did with yours."

"But the gun's in my locker," Curly reminded him.

"Yeah, you keep saying that. I've broken into Will Rogers before. I betcha I can break into Central. Hell, maybe I'll make a tour of it and break into Sacred Heart while I'm at it."

Hazel thought that Tim was driving too fast, but she didn't say so until he blew right through Ramona without slowing down.

"You might want to consider the terms of your parole," she suggested.

"How's that?" Tim remembered that he hadn't checked in with his parole officer yet. He'd forgotten all about that in the chaos of the day.

"What happens if you get pulled over?"

"I get a ticket, same as anyone."

"There's nothing in this car that would give them cause to haul you in if they searched it?"

"Can't search it without a warrant."

"They can if you're on parole."

She was right, and Tim knew it. Still, it wasn't like some lone HP out roaming the prairie was going to know who he was and whether he was on parole or not.

"Only way they'd know is if you told 'em, sis," he said. He glanced over at Hazel.

"Does that strike you as something I would do? How do you know they wouldn't have cause to hold me too?"

Tim grinned.

"Do they?" He asked.

"In Tulsa," she told him. "But, out here, they wouldn't know that unless you told them."

And so they were even. Tim took the hint and slowed down some. It was getting dark, and he could see the light pollution from the north side of Tulsa up ahead.

He asked Hazel, "Anything in that purse of yours that your conscience would like to tell me about?"

"No weapons, if that's what you mean."

"That might have actually been useful. What else then? A little grass? A little coke? Not enough to make it worth sending you to trial, but enough that they might hold you overnight if they were to pull us over and search us?"

"Something like that," Hazel said.

"So which is it?" Tim asked. "Or is it both?"

"Both."

"And you weren't going to share?"

"You ain't the type. I've heard about you. Dope is the one illegal thing the Shepard gang doesn't have its fingers in."

"Just smack. I got no problem with any of the rest. That it, then? Minor misdemeanor amounts of coke and weed? What's your warrant for?"

"I stole something."

"Something bigger than a bread basket?" Tim asked, grinning a little. "Is it felony level?"

"I don't think so," Hazel said. "Not unless it's some kind of priceless antique that I wasn't aware of. And I stole it from Eleanor Simon, so the charges may have been dropped by now, although I tend to think not. Billy would've told Eleanor to drop the charges to keep any scrutiny off of him, but if that ship had already sailed and the cops know about Billy, then they might have kept the warrant open as an excuse to grab me sometime and question me about him."

"And you never thought of sharing any of this with me earlier?"

"Like between when you had your tongue in my mouth and when you had your hand up my skirt?"

"No, like before then. Like maybe earlier this afternoon when you told about the work you did for Billy."

Hazel shook her head. Of course she had thought about it, but she didn't tell because it made her sound stupid. She knew what she was in the machine of the Tulsa underworld: she was a woman, she was small, and she had no one to speak of except her mother who may or may not have cut her loose by now because she'd strayed from the flock. She was alone, which made her expendable. Her only power came from holding her cards close to her chest.

She'd stolen a ring off of Eleanor's dressing table to send a message, but she'd done it out of anger, and acting out of emotion always had consequences. Eleanor's reaction to the client's pushing Hazel around had been quite different from Billy's. In fact, Eleanor had chastised Billy for being protective. She'd suggested that Hazel might be more useful to them if she could be persuaded to go further with the clients.

Hazel had heard all of this from the Simon's bedroom where she was applying make-up to the bruises on her neck where the client had grabbed her by the throat and held her against the wall. Hazel had looked down at the dressing table, and there was the ring. Billy had bought the ring for Eleanor just that past week with money they all knew Hazel had made for them. In a fit of anger, Hazel took it. She knew Eleanor would know. What she didn't expect was that Eleanor would go to the police. Either the ring held greater sentimental value for Eleanor than Hazel had anticipated, or it was worth more than she thought.

Or Eleanor was playing her own game, one that Hazel had not seen coming.

She tended, in retrospect, to think it was the latter.