Lucy Bennet again felt especially odd on October 26, 1963; the day she turned sixteen years old.
Though Sadie and Jane had insisted on throwing her a birthday party, Lucy pitched enough of a fit so that they dropped the idea altogether. She said it was because birthdays were a bizarre thing to celebrate ("Why commemorate another day that brings you closer to death?" she'd asked, which scared the living hell out of Jane.), but the truth was that she knew if they all got together at Sadie's house, then she would probably have to see Dallas Winston. And if she had to see Dallas Winston, it meant she also had to see his girl, Sylvia something.
Of course, Lucy was nowhere near jealous of Sylvia something, nor was there anything particularly wrong with her. She was a tough broad. One time, Lucy could have sworn she saw her open a bottle of beer using only her teeth. No one believed her, but Lucy maintained it. She knew what she saw. What she hated was the way Dally acted whenever he was with Sylvia something. If she thought he was beastly before she came around, he was certainly a beast now that they were together. It seemed like every time Lucy saw them together, he made a point of ramming his tongue down his girl's throat. What was his goal, anyhow? Did he want to make her sick? Did he want to remind her that the only girls with any sexual prospects were tall and slim, like Sadie and Jane? Every move that Dallas Winston made was, in her view, made to torture her. A small part of her even enjoyed it, though she hadn't given language to that part yet.
After weeks of pestering, Lucy finally agreed to spend the evening of her sixteenth birthday in a booth with Sadie and Jane down at Jay's. As soon as they got comfortable, that annoying "Two Faces Have I" song playing in the background, disaster struck. Dallas Winston walked right through that door with his arm draped around Sylvia something's waist. She was looking toward a guy at the counter; he was looking toward the girls' booth in the back. Lucy's heart dropped into her stomach.
"I don't believe it," she muttered. "Of all the gin joints …"
Sadie chuckled under her breath, and Jane let out a, "Huh?" Jane hadn't seen too many movies then – at least, she hadn't seen too many movies that didn't star Frankie and Annette.
Her eyes followed the couple as Sylvia something went up to the counter to flirt with the boy behind it, and Dally walked right over to the girls' booth in the back of the restaurant. Lucy pretended not to see him. That was what her grandfather back East told her to do if she ever found herself face-to-face with a bear: Play dead. Pretend not to see him. She figured that also applied to no-count hoods who were always out for blood, no matter how he had to get it.
"Whaddya know?" he laughed, his eyes fixed on Lucy, almost as though Sadie and Jane weren't there at all. Out of her periphery, Lucy noticed them trying to stifle their own giggles, which she'd have their heads for later. In that moment, the only thing that mattered was finding a way to castrate Dallas Winston with her wit.
"I know plenty of things," Lucy said. "I'm not so sure you do."
"What makes you say that?"
"Well, to begin, I'm quite certain you're supposed to be in my World History class, and you're never there. So, those are things you don't know."
"School don't count for shit. You ain't gotta sit in a tiny desk and pretend to listen to some old lady to learn that some fuckin' guy named 'Raphael' painted somethin' called The School of Athens."
Lucy furrowed her brow, mostly to conceal the fact that she was impressed. She thought back to a week earlier, when she'd sat on the Curtises' couch with Ponyboy, showing him an art-history textbook that her father got her for free at the university. Dally had been in the living room, too – for the first time in what felt like forever, he wasn't with Sylvia something. Lucy had stopped on The School of Athens to talk about it for quite some time, as it was one of her favorite Italian Renaissance paintings. How could she have ever imagined that Dallas Winston was listening? What use did he have to listen?
"You can be impressed," Dally said, right off her look. "I ain't gonna tell anyone."
"I'd never be impressed with you," Lucy said. "I wouldn't even be impressed with you if you learned to speak fluent Latin."
"Guess I better start readin' Latin, then."
Lucy didn't have a comeback, but she got away with it. Dallas Winston began to laugh to himself (and at her, but less so). He smirked at her and said, "You're still real strange, ain't you?"
She would have protested if she thought it would be of any use. There was just no winning against a beast like Dallas Winston. Even if she was clever and tough as hell, he was strong and scary. Since it would betray every fiber of her existence, Lucy knew she could never vocalize how scary she really found Dallas Winston. He had a look about him that said he didn't care whether he lived or died, and that was enough to terrify even the toughest of girls. For a moment, she thought she might care whether Dallas Winston lived or died, but she shut those thoughts off. They did her no good. All she needed to do was hate him.
Dally grabbed Lucy's glass of Coca-Cola from the table and lifted it above his head, angling it so that it nearly dropped on Lucy.
"You're gonna be wearin' this in about five seconds," he said. "And there ain't nothin' you can do to stop me."
"I wouldn't do that if I were you."
"Why? You think you can take me?"
"I …"
"I'd love to see you try. Really. I think we might even come to a draw or somethin'. I don't know. You're pretty fuckin' tough."
"What makes you say that?"
"Ya look at me like ya wanna rip my guts out. That's cool."
Lucy almost blushed. It wasn't that she was receiving a compliment from Dallas Winston, whose eyes she'd recently admitted, to the secret pages of her diary, were wonderful to look at. It was simply an honor to know she was the kind of girl who could eviscerate him if she wanted to.
"You're saying you want to be ripped apart?" Lucy asked.
"I'm saying I wouldn't mind if it was you doin' the rippin'."
She looked up at him and almost smiled. To her chagrin, he was smiling. But Lucy knew better than that. She thought back to her biology textbook and how animals that showed their teeth were always the first ones to get killed. She wouldn't make herself prey like that. After all, she wasn't the Beast (She couldn't be.). She wasn't Beauty, either, but Dallas Winston didn't need to know that.
"You're real strange," he said.
There were those words again. It had been about a year since the last time he spoke them (not like she was keeping track, and not like she thought back to that moment from last November every other day), and even now, they still stung. And why had he felt compelled to say the same thing twice in one night? She swung her whole body around in the booth, narrowed her eyes at him, and prepared to eviscerate – just like he was begging her to do.
"At least I'm not violent," she said.
"If you think you ain't violent, you got another thing comin', honey."
"I'm not violent."
"If you ain't violent, why're you geared up for a fight?"
She glanced down at her body, suddenly feeling how stiff and angry she was. Her palms had turned into fists; just like the judge told her they couldn't anymore back when she was thirteen. She prayed that Dallas Winston would never find out about the aggravated assault. If he did, it would only give him more ammunition to call her strange. It would only further remind her that he was the Beast – worse than the Beast.
Was she a Beast, too?
She couldn't be – not after the way her mother sobbed in court (as though anyone would touch a thirteen-year-old white girl) and the way her father shook his head, somewhere in between embarrassment and ironic pride. She'd never told anyone about that day in the cafeteria back when she lived in Ohio, and she wasn't planning on it, either. Lucy much preferred her reputation as the smartest of her friends. She didn't want to add most violent to the list, too. After all, she was older now. She'd read Thoreau on civil disobedience, and it sounded like it got you a lot further than punching somebody into mindless submission, like Dallas Winston. It was more mature to restrain oneself, she thought. Sixteen was practically an adult, she (at sixteen) believed. She reached for the book she'd brought with her that night (Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera, as she went through a pulp phase during her tenth-grade year) and started reading in order to curb the violent impulsivity that pulsed through her.
"If I am the phantom, it is because man's hatred has made me so. If I am to be saved it is because your love redeems me."
She had to fight another roll of her eyes. She wondered if that was how Dallas Winston had landed Sylvia something – trying to convince her that he wasn't a bad guy, just a guy that society had done badly by. Lucy hoped not, since that would be the biggest load of bull she ever heard. Jackasses chose to be jackasses; no-count hoods chose to be no-count hoods. From her point of view, Dallas Winston had gladly chosen to be both. There was no man under the monster – no tortured soul to be saved, nothing that a woman could ever truly love. He was Beast. He was phantom. He was no good.
Even after all that time, Dallas Winston still hadn't gone away. He hadn't returned Lucy's drink, either. He still stood there, glass hovering over Lucy's head, snickering at the sight of her with her book.
"You're real strange," he said for the third time that night. "What kinda broad tries to fight me then reads a fuckin' book instead?"
"The kind of broad you really don't want to mess with," Lucy spat, not looking up from her pages. "And don't call me a broad."
"I'll call you whatever I wanna call you."
"Fine, but then it has to be a two-way street. I'll call you whatever I want to call you."
"What're you gonna call me?"
Lucy didn't love the way that Dallas Winston was looking at her. It was almost the way he looked at Sylvia something, but not quite. There was something behind his eyes that Lucy couldn't quite narrate. He almost looked happy to be there with her, though Lucy knew that wasn't possible. Dallas Winston wasn't the kind of guy who was ever happy, at least not for more than a few seconds, and he certainly wouldn't find those few seconds when he was with her. She was all the bookish parts of Beauty without any of the pretty.
Why do I even care? Lucy thought. She kept reading.
After a few seconds, Dally must have recognized that Lucy wasn't going to dignify his question with a response, so he let out one last chuckle and put the glass of Coca-Cola back down in front of her. She looked at the glass and then up at him, quizzically.
"What?" she asked. "I thought I was going to be wearing that, and there wasn't anything I could do to stop you."
"There wasn't," Dally said. "I'm the only one who can stop me, so I did. Changed my mind. People can do that, ya know."
"So, if someone changes his mind and decides maybe, hey, he won't be such a hood anymore …"
"That's askin' a little much. Whadda you think?"
Lucy shook her head, finding that she was still suppressing a smile. As much as she really hated Dallas Winston, she had to admit that she loved the rush that came from sparring with him. He was just so easy to fight.
"What made you change your mind?" she asked.
"Dunno. Got bored. You just sit here and read. 'S boring."
"Reading doesn't have to be boring."
"That's exactly the kinda thing a nerd would say. You a nerd?"
Lucy withdrew. Yes, of course she was a nerd. She wore "Certainly Red" lipstick, had a silver tongue, and could pack a hell of a punch when she wanted, but she was, at her very core, a nerd. That lady who wrote "Beauty and the Beast" must have been out of her mind when she wrote that anybody could fall in love with a girl like Lucy. Not like she cared.
Dally was chuckling again. It was somewhere in between jackass and … and something else. Lucy had her suspicions about what it could be, but all of her suspicions felt unnatural.
"Thought so," he said.
Lucy rolled her eyes and turned back to her book. But then …
"Mighta changed my mind 'cause it's your birthday."
Startled, Lucy looked up from her book and tried to ask Dally another question, but he was gone. He was at the counter, probing the back of Sylvia something's throat with his tongue, almost like he knew Lucy was watching. She turned to Sadie and Jane who were slowly letting go of their giggles.
"Not that I don't hate him," Lucy said, "but how did he know it was my birthday? I never said anything."
Sadie and Jane were too busy giggling to really answer, and Lucy rolled her eyes. She was so tired of giggling, mostly because she felt like she didn't have anything worth giggling about.
"What?"
"He didn't dump that Coke over your head," Jane said, exchanging another giggle with Sadie.
"Yes, Jane, I can see that."
"He'd do a lot worse to somebody else," Sadie said. "He'd do a lot worse to anybody else."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
But Sadie and Jane didn't say anything. They just kept giggling. Meanwhile, Lucy was left feeling nothing but odd – odd that she was sixteen, odd that Dallas Winston hadn't poured that Coke over her head (or worse), and odd that she wanted him to come back and spar with her a little more.
But why did she want that? She might not have been Beauty, but he was surely the Beast. She knew better than to let him near her again. Didn't she?
Judging by the odd feeling coursing through her entire body, she knew she had better stay away.
Hinton owns The Outsiders. The song, "Two Faces Have I" is by Lou Christie, who sings in a Valli-esque falsetto. It's exactly the kind of bubblegum pop that I love without embarrassment, but I certainly do not own it. Lucy reads a passage from The Phantom of the Opera, which is (as a novel, anyway) in the public domain.