SE Hinton owns The Outsiders.

A/N: drug use to go along with the usually adult language.

Dropdown

Nine-

Hazel hurried up Utica to Independence, which was exactly the way she should have been heading, assuming either Tim or Two-Bit had eyes on her. A block down Independence Avenue, she ducked into a church parking lot. She went around to the back of the church and sat on the steps, in the dark and out of sight.

She opened her purse and sifted through the contents with her fingers. She kept her coke in a small, plastic vile that had once held pencil led. She popped the cap off of it, tapped a line out on the back of her hand and inhaled. Right away, she wished she had gone for the weed. She snapped the cap back on the vile, dropped it in her purse, and drummed her fingers on the wooden step.

She knew better than to believe that she could return the ring to Eleanor Simon and all would be forgiven. She'd taken it a step too far for that. Eleanor and Billy were kind of people you never turned your back on, but they expected to be able to trust everyone in their employ. The more she thought about it, the more her interactions with Eleanor worried her- how Nellie looked at her, little digs she made about Hazel being too scrawny or too dark. She had made herself an enemy to Nellie long before she stole the ring, she was sure of it.

Or maybe it was the coke playing tricks on her.

She'd liked the stuff once. It kept her on her toes at the track, and when she was trying to dodge Two-Bit or whoever she was trying to dodge to be with Two-Bit. If she wasn't moving, though, it just made her mind race. She heard every sound. She felt like a mouse in a cage.

She heard the footsteps too late for her to run. They had turned the corner around the back of the church and slowed up when the owner saw her. Hazel rubbed her nose out of habit and peeked around the bannister.

"Didn't take you for the prayin' kind," Tim said.

"Yeah, you got that right."

"Unless you were praying to the white powder gods. You got any of that left?"

Hazel nodded. She opened her purse again, found the vile, and handed it to Tim.

"Where's the gun?" She asked him.

"Take it easy. I can bump up and still handle a gun."

"So you have it."

Tim tapped out a short line on the back of his hand and snorted it.

"Don't worry about it," he said, and then. "I guess you ain't in the frame of mind to not be worried, ain't you?"

"Tim, where's your brother?"

"He's cool. I left him with some friends. They're good babysitters. You got yours worried silly, little girl."

Hazel shrugged.

"I told Two-Bit to go home. Told him he wasn't in this yet, so he might as well not be."

"And then you took off on him, to his dismay."

She nodded.

Tim stretched his arms above him and cracked his neck. Then he sat down next to Hazel. He handed her back her vile of coke.

"Next time I ask, don't give it to me," he told her. "Christ, I'm a lightweight now. From being locked up, I guess."

"Yeah, so are you really that addled or are you avoiding my question?"

Tim reached behind him and produced the gun from his belt. Hazel shifted away from it. Tim took that as a good sign, he figured, that she was still afraid of something.

"Is it loaded?"

He flipped the cylinder open and showed her.

"How long since you fired it?"

Tim grinned and stretched his legs out in front of him. He closed the cylinder and put the gun back in his pants.

"I've never fired it," he told her.

"Bullshit."

"Not at all. Never had to. Held it to a few guy's faces, but I never did fire it."

"How do you know…? What if it jams or something?"

"I've cleaned it," Tim said and shrugged. "I'm not completely irresponsible."

Hazel had to smile at that. Then she sighed and told him:

"I don't have a plan. I think I'm just up a creek. Nellie never did like me. Thought Billy'd taken a shine to me, I think. I think she's trying to get him sent up, too. Doesn't like the way he's running things anymore. Either way, they don't know that we know each other. I was thinking maybe I should just disappear."

"And where would you be doing that?"

"Well, if I told you…"

"Don't trust me?"

"Don't trust anybody. It's beginning to look like I can't trust myself."

Tim leaned back against the stairs. He propped his elbow up behind her and laid his hand on her back. He half-expected her to shake him off, but she leaned into his arm and looked down at him.

"Jesus," she said. "Half a day ago, I didn't know you. Now we're ruining one another's lives."

"My sister says I have that effect on women."

"What'd Two-Bit say? He met you at the park, right?"

"Said you bailed out, told him to go home, but that you were headed to meet me. When you didn't show, I figured you couldn't be far. I told him you'd dogged us and to take my little brother to our friend's house- mutual friends of me and Two-Bit's."

"Do you have a plan?"

"If I did, it just went skipping merrily out of my head. Shit, talk about fairy dust. I'm sure it involved the gun and probably my triumphant return to Mac in pretty short order."

"I don't want you to do that," Hazel said.

"What if I don't care?"

"You take good care of your brother and sister. You should be here with them."

"What- so you're going to do it? You ever hold a gun before, sis? Because you don't strike me as being all that familiar with them."

"Maybe there's another way," Hazel told him. "I still have the ring. What if I put it back, but put it back in a different place...like a place where Billy'd find it and think Nellie had made the whole thing up? Maybe they'd take each other out, you know? Dog eat dog."

Tim smiled. He pulled her face down closer to his.

"You're one evil, little woman, you know? God, I think I like you. You scare the hell out of me, and the only other woman who does that is my mom."

He kissed her and she kissed him back. He paused for a moment to look at her face. She wasn't any older than him and Two-Bit, he guessed, but she'd lived more on Tim's side of the law. An eighteen/ nineteen year old girl with cocaine in her purse had maybe turned some tricks. Another girl probably gave it to her the first time to loosen her up, and then she got to where she always just felt better if she had some on her. Maybe she'd been turned out of the house. Maybe she'd taken off from the father and the brothers. She knew how to take care of herself, though, and she didn't expect anyone else to step in and do it.

"Where are you from?" He asked her.

"What difference does it make?"

"Don't make any difference. I'm making conversation."

"Funny- I thought you were making time. I'm not sure we have time for either."

Tim drove Hazel to the Simon's house. He wouldn't give her the gun. She'd never held one before, so she was probably a terrible shot, he told her. Truth was he didn't trust her not to just shoot Billy if she saw him.

It was a church night. Eleanor ought to be gone, which left only Billy to contend with. Tim said he'd keep an eye out for Billy.

It was where to leave the ring that kept them stuck sitting in the car, bickering back and forth, stopping now and then to kiss, and then arguing some more. It was decided, by Hazel, that she would leave the ring in the chest freezer in the garage. Eleanor for certain came and went getting things from the freezer, but Billy kept his fish there, too, after he'd cleaned them. Tim agreed it was a good place- Hazel wouldn't have to go into the actual house. She'd just have to get into the garage.

"I'm gonna walk with you to the end of the block," he told her, "then I'm going to head up the alley behind the house. If I see him moving in the kitchen window, I'll stop him."

"Stop him how?"

"I'll throw something at the window. He'll come out in the yard to have a look. If you hear the door, you take off out the front. I ain't going to shoot him."

"Leave the gun here. Leave it in the car."

Tim shook his head.

Hazel sighed in frustration. She tried, in a last desperate, attempt to make him trust her just a little:

"I'm from Texas," she told him. "West Texas, almost New Mexico. Little squirrely town you've never heard of."

"Try me."

"Adrian."

"You're right. Never heard of it."

"I really don't want to go back there," Hazel said. "So let's do this right."