Lucy Bennet was sure she would never feel odder than she did in July 1964, on an otherwise average day when she was exceptionally hot.

She lay flat on her back in Sadie's living room, parallel to her best friend, sweltering as they listened to their records in the middle of the floor. During "It Hurts to Be in Love," Darry came in from outside and frowned.

"Do ya have to do that in middle of the living room?" he asked. He'd just gotten back from work and wasn't itching to find two zonked-out teenage girls moving in on his space.

"What're you askin' us not to do?" Sadie asked, not even lifting her head from the ground. "Breathe? Sweat? Live? I'm pretty sure we gotta do all of those things."

"Well, could ya maybe do 'em in your room?"

"You want me to go to the back of the house, where it's even hotter? Sounds like you wanna kill me."

"I've wanted to kill you since the minute you were born."

"But not the day, since that'd mean you'd have to kill Soda, too?"

"Now you're gettin' it."

Sadie and Darry shared a laugh, and he took a seat on the couch, anyway, not particularly bothered to have his sister and her best friend on the ground below him. There were so many people rotating in and out of that house that it didn't really make a difference where Sadie decided to park her ass. Lucy smiled to herself when she thought about Sadie's relationships with her brothers. She loved them all and for all different reasons, and they loved her. No matter where Sadie went, she was never alone. As an only child, Lucy would never know the feeling. When she went home at night, she didn't have anybody to talk to except her parents, and they were … well, they were her parents. She knew from watching Sadie and her brothers that there was something powerful in having a sibling … in not being alone, in not being odd-numbered. In fact, when she thought on it, she was the one only child she knew, except for maybe Dallas Winston (She'd heard him allude to somebody named V, but she didn't know who that was.). The more she thought about being an only child, the more her heart sank. It was just another way she was the odd one out. It was just another way she'd never quite fit in.

"What book did ya bring with you today, Lucy?" Sadie asked, still not moving, not even to make eye contact with her best friend.

"Huh?"

"What book did ya bring? You always bring a book wherever you go like the world's gonna explode if ya don't. What on your list for today?"

"Oh. Um, I'm reading Jekyll and Hyde."

"But we read that for school already."

"I know. I liked it a lot, so I thought I'd go for it again. I kind of like the idea of a guy thinking he can be two different people, but knowing deep down that's not possible. You're just … I don't know, you're just one person. I liked reading about that, so I wanted to read it again."

Sadie snorted in amusement. Lucy almost asked her what she was going to say, but she didn't need to. She could have predicted it, anyway.

"You really are odd," Sadie said. "Ain't you?"

"What makes you say that?"

"I don't know anybody else who'd reread somethin' they read for school in the middle of July when nobody's lookin'. I think even Pony gets scarred by books he reads for school."

From the couch, Darry let out a short laugh. Lucy would have looked up at him, but she was fading away from heat exhaustion. She was sure of it.

"You're tellin' me," he said. "Kid tells me how much he hated Heart of Darkness at least once a day since he read it."

"Well, nobody blames him for that," Lucy said. "It speaks for itself. 'The horror, the horror.'"

"You really are odd," she said. "I don't know anybody else who sits around quotin' classic literature like it's nothing."

"Am I supposed to be embarrassed by that?"

"No. You're just … you're my book girl. That's all."

Lucy swallowed hard. She was afraid of that. As much as she loved being smart, she didn't want anybody to know her as the book girl. She wanted to be Lucy – a girl who liked books and liked to work things out with her wit but who could tangle with the best of them if she needed to (or wanted to). She wanted, as she read in The Bell Jar when she was fifteen, to be everything. Lucy wanted to be everything and knew it was impossible, so it made her feel like nothing. She touched her hand to her (sweaty) stomach and cursed it for not being flat enough. She felt the same way about her stupid hips and her stupid breasts. Hadn't they heard? Her body went out of fashion years ago. Everyday, she wished she looked more like Sadie or more like Jane – trim and tall and perfect. She saw the way Johnny Cade looked at (or tried not to look at) Sadie when they were outside. Even Soda stole a few glances at Jane here and there, despite his going steady with somebody else. As far as Lucy could see, nobody stole glances at her. She was certain nobody saw her as more than Sadie's odd best friend with all the books.

"I'm telling you, Sadie," Lucy finally said. "I'm too hot. I'm so hot that I've been lying here, wondering if there's any way I can cut myself out of my own skin."

"If you're gonna do that, could ya maybe not do it on our carpet?" Darry asked. "Dad would make me clean up the blood for sure."

"You'd just get Pony to do it," Sadie pointed out.

"You're right. I would."

They shared another laugh, and Lucy's heart ached for a second. She wanted a team member –to not be an odd number anymore. The Curtises had spent the past two years making her feel nothing but loved and welcomed in the last place she ever thought she'd feel loved or welcomed, but she always went back to her parents at the end of the night. Though she adored her parents (even her hysterical mother), it wasn't the same. It never would be. Even with her own parents, she would always be the third – always odd.

"I'm not getting any cooler," Lucy said.

"Maybe that's got somethin' to do with all the books you read," Darry joked.

"Shut up, Darry," Sadie said. "Why're you even still here?"

"Dunno. Kinda fun watchin' you two girls act like … two girls."

Perhaps bizarrely, both Lucy and Sadie knew exactly what he meant. If you had to just sit and watch a pair of girl best friends be themselves, they were the ones you'd pick. They loved each other and knew each other almost as well as a pair of sisters … though, of course, they weren't sisters. Sisters had each other's eyes and noses and never left each other's sides. Even when they were apart, they could never really be apart. Lucy closed her eyes to avoid the stinging of tears behind them. She wasn't sure why she felt like she could cry in the middle of the Curtis living room, especially over something she thought about and considered time and again. She decided to blame it on the heat. The heat could make people hysterical like that, she figured. Finally, she took a deep breath and let it out slowly, wishing for something. She wasn't sure what it was, exactly, but she knew it was something.

"I'd get up and get myself a glass of water, but that'd mean moving," Lucy complained. "And it's too hot to move. Please tell me you know it's too hot to move."

"It is hot," Darry said. "But if you ain't movin', that's your problem, not the sun's."

"You're closer to standing up. Why don't you get me a glass of water?"

"Naw."

"Why not? Aren't I a guest in your house?"

"It's my folks' house, and either way, answer's no. Ya stay here often enough that it's kinda like your house, too. Don't ya think?"

Except I'm the odd one out, she thought. I always have to leave at the end of the night. I always end up by myself.

"Fine," Lucy said, more playful than anything else. "I guess I'll just lie here, dying of thirst. That sounds like a good plan, don't you think?"

"Don't die," Sadie said. "If you die, that means I'm gonna have to put on a black dress in the middle of summer and give you a eulogy in a stuffy church. And then they're gonna have to throw a funeral for me."

"I don't think you 'throw' a funeral. I think you 'throw' weddings, but I don't think you 'throw' funerals."

"Well, here's hopin' I don't have to figure that out for a long time."

A few seconds later, Mrs. Curtis came through the living room from the backyard, chuckling a little to herself when she saw Sadie and Lucy lying on the floor, desperate and lazy.

"Is this what's in fashion these days, girls?" she asked.

"Mom, have you never met me?" Sadie asked. "I've never done anything that's in fashion."

"There's my Sadie Lou." She looked down at Lucy and smirked. "And there's my Lucy."

"Hi, Mrs. Curtis," Lucy said.

"Somethin' tells me this was all your idea."

"Might have been. Hey, can you get me a glass of water before I drop dead?"

After spending a lot of days and nights at the Curtis house, especially in the summer, Lucy felt comfortable asking Sadie's mom for help. But Mrs. Curtis laughed out loud.

"Get your own, Lucy," she said, though it was good-natured. "Family gets their own water."

Lucy sighed again.

"Harsh," she laughed. "But I get it."

"Thank you, honey."

She was about to get up, but Sadie asked her another question.

"What's that thing about Jekyll and Hyde that ya pointed out in class this year?" she asked. "You know, that thing you did with the names."

Thankful that Sadie couldn't see it, Lucy smirked. It was one of the smarter things she'd said in class that year, and it pissed everyone, including the honors teacher, right off. Lucy had felt a little guilty about the whispers and the eye rolls, but it was all she had. She wasn't Beauty, and with the temper she was constantly trying to suppress, she was afraid she might turn into the Beast. School was the only way she could hide her face and her rage. School was the only thing she felt like she was good at – the only thing that made her worthwhile.

"Hyde is obvious," she said, her voice smooth and professorial, like she picked up from listening to her father's lectures. "He's hiding the murderous facets of his personality. But the proof is in the pudding – in this case, the name Henry Jekyll was born with. J-E-K-Y-L-L. The French for I is Je, and kill … 'I kill.'"

Sadie let out a long, slow laugh.

"You're gonna be a professor someday, ain't you?" Sadie asked.

"I hope so," Lucy said. "Of course, I'm pretty sure I'm about thirty minutes away from dropping dead, so …"

Before she could finish her thought, either sincerely or sarcastically, she felt something nudge her in the crook of her neck. It wasn't a kick, but it was enough to get her to notice. She jumped up, offended … and even more offended when she saw Dallas Winston standing over her.

"What do you think you're doing?" she snapped. "You work with horses, and you think you can just touch me with your boot?"

"I think I can touch you with a lot of things, honey," he said. "You just say the word."

Lucy folded her arms across her chest in defiance. It would have been cute if she weren't such a pain in the ass. Then again, she was cute because she was a pain in the ass, so Dally wasn't really sure what to think.

"What are you doing here, anyway?" Lucy asked.

"Shuttin' you up."

Dally nodded toward something in his right hand. Lucy's eyes followed his gaze and noticed that he had a glass of water – for her. She wrinkled her nose and stared at it.

"How long have you been here?" Lucy asked.

"Long enough to want you to shut up," Dally said. "You gonna drink it or just stare at it?"

"How do I know you didn't poison it?"

"'Cause that'd be a weak way of killin' somebody."

Lucy had to conceal a smile. She agreed, but she wasn't going to tell him that. She didn't want him to think they were ever on the same wavelength.

"'Pound at thy powder,'" she remembered a poem from her anthology. "'I am not in haste.'"

"What are you talkin' about?"

"What's it to you?"

They were quiet for a little while. Lucy thought she could hear Sadie snickering softly under her breath. Dally lowered his eyes to the floor for a moment, almost embarrassed (Beasts were never embarrassed.), before he looked up at her with feigned annoyance in his eyes.

"Well, take it, already," he snapped. "You're no good to me dead."

"You're no good to me living."

"Now, now, now. That's a little harsh, don't ya think?"

"Are you familiar with the concept of irony?"

"I'm familiar with lots of things."

He eyed Lucy's body up and down with that familiar glint in his eye.

"Well, maybe not as many things as I'd like."

Lucy rolled her eyes and tried to hide her body. Dallas Winston was the only boy in the world who ever looked at her like he wanted to touch her (like he wanted her to touch him right back), so she figured it must have been some kind of sick joke. She didn't look a thing like Sylvia something, and if she was his type, then there was no way he'd really try to go after somebody who looked like Lucy. She was too short and, by comparison to the other girls in town, too fat. And though Lucy knew she wasn't (not exactly), it was hard not to see it that way when she stood in the middle of Jane and Sadie, slim girls who stood four and five inches higher than she did, respectively. It was hard to feel like she fit in (or that anyone could find her attractive) when she was the only one of her kind. She felt more like a clown than a girl, and she knew that must have been how Dallas Winston saw her, too.

But what did she care if the Beast thought she was Beauty?

He handed her the glass without another word, and in that one, swift motion, when she brushed his hand with hers, she felt odder than ever. Her skin turned hot and cold at the same time, tingling around her fingers, in her chest … everywhere. Lucy could feel herself turning bright red, and she wished that she wasn't so pale. Was this touch lingering long than it should have? Her heart was beating faster than she thought it should, and she wanted it to shut up. Why wasn't it shutting up? Why did she continue to feel so odd?

She pulled her hand away and shook it out, as though to forget the memory of the way his hand felt against hers. It was better to forget it. It wasn't like it would ever happen again … nor was it like she wanted it to. Dallas Winston was a no-count hood, and the only thing he could do was bring out the Beast in Lucy Bennet – the Beast she'd been working for years to silence and suppress.

Finally, Dally grumbled an awkward, "You're welcome," and that was the end of it. Well, it was the end of it for him. Lucy carefully sat back down on the floor, one leg crossed over the other, glass pressed to her lips without sipping. She was hot (sweltering, really), but she had a feeling that the water couldn't fix it anymore. This was different. Even though she heard Sadie and Darry bickering about what to watch on the television, they sounded so far away to Lucy … like they were in a tunnel or something. She couldn't stop thinking about how odd it was that Dallas Winston had bothered to get her the glass of water she'd been begging for. She couldn't stop thinking about how odd it was that she felt anything when they touched hands … how odd it was that she felt so much. When he brushed her hand, she almost felt like Beauty. It didn't help that he looked at her like a Beast … like if he ever wanted her it would only be a joke … something he could hold over her head and laugh about with the other boys (except for Soda, who wouldn't stand to talk about Lucy that way). She hated him. She hated him for nudging her in the neck with his boot, and she hated him for getting her a glass of water out of nowhere, as if he was a decent guy or something. He wasn't. He was Jekyll, and she was …

"Stop lookin' at me," Dally said. "You're real strange. You know that?"

Lucy didn't respond. She sat down on the floor, and he went back outside for a smoke without so much as a snide remark on his way out.

As she sat on the floor, one leg crossed over the other, she moved awkwardly against the carpet. She was hotter now, and no matter how cold that glass was, it couldn't help. She'd never felt it before, and though it was pleasing, she wasn't sure she wanted to feel it again … not about him. Not about the Beast.

So, then, why wasn't it going away?

Hinton owns The Outsiders. Lucy quotes Robert Browning's poem, "The Laboratory," which is in the public domain (and is great).