So, in this vignette, there is a (still rather implicit) sex scene between two consenting adults. Just letting you know it's there. It's all very coded and shaded, but it's there.

Lucy Bennet felt her oddest on October 26, 1965. It was the night of her eighteenth birthday, and after a month of intense and near-constant bantering with Dallas Winston (which, in retrospect, had been going on since the second they met three years earlier) she had finally come to grips with the fact that she was attracted to him. She was standing in the middle of his room, moments after punching Buck Merril in the gut to run past him at the front door, and she knew exactly what she was doing there. So did he. It was time to give the Beast his second back.

What was she doing? She'd punched guys before, and she was clever as the devil. But this … this was entirely out of her league, and she was the one who initiated it. She was the one who told him to lock the door, but what was she thinking? It had only been a matter of days since she'd realized she didn't hate the absolute piss out of him, and it had been hours since she realized he was into her, too. This was more than just odd. She was an idiot.

In that moment, Lucy was sure there was no one in the world dumber than she was. She was eighteen years old – a virgin who'd never even been kissed – and she thought she could have all of her firsts with him? Dally might have liked Lucy, but she was quite sure she would survive even one night with him. But she didn't show it. She planted her feet firmly on the ground and waited for him to direct her, which was something she thought she'd never think.

He walked toward the radio and turned it on, not quite drowning out the sound of country music downstairs, but providing a sufficient distraction nevertheless. Then, careful not to brush up against her, he locked the door, exactly as she'd instructed him to moments earlier. Lucy watched him as he moved, realizing for the first time that he was almost graceful. She wouldn't tell him that, of course, but it was something of a truth. She bit her lip to avoid another smile. Smiling too much, as they both agreed, was for the weak, and they were strong.

That song about "The Birds and the Bees" was finishing up on the radio, and Lucy had to snort at the coincidence. Unfortunately, the snort was loud enough that Dally heard it, and when he did, he smirked at her like he had something to say.

"What?" Lucy asked, off his look.

"Nothin'," Dally said. "You're just … you're real strange, Bennet."

"You've said that for years."

"It's been true for that long."

"But what do you mean?"

"Look, you come in here, you gimme those 'Take me' eyes, and then you wanna stand here an' talk about you bein' strange? It's gotta be one or the other, Bennet, and from where I'm standin', it better be the first one."

Lucy didn't say anything. She was too busy slowly and quietly exhaling, trying to erase that odd feeling in her body. Who did she think she was? She wasn't the kind of girl who had sex with Dallas Winston. She wasn't the kind of girl who had sex at all. That was her claim to fame – make everybody think she was more interested in books and her education than in boys, so they wouldn't know she thought she was too odd (oddly persuaded and oddly shaped) for love. But this was not love. This was a momentary thing that she was dumb enough to ask for (and would regret in the morning, likely). Dally saw the look on her face, sighed loudly, and relented. She might have been odd, but she was pretty enough to always get her way. That was part of why he must have …

"You wanna know what makes you real strange?" Dally asked.

"I've wanted to know for years," Lucy said.

"It's 'cause you're too many things all at the same time. You're smarter than anybody I ever met, and you walk around knowin' it. Thought smart people were supposed to be quiet. You've read every book in the world, but you ain't a quiet reader. You're loud with your books. You get pissed when ya hear about rumbles, but you're always the first one to make a fist. You don't make any fuckin' sense."

Dally bristled. Lucy knew why. She'd never heard him say that much at one time, and it sounded … well, it sounded odd. But it was a good kind of odd … the kind of odd that made her want to coil herself around him and then climb him like a tree. After all, who knew how great his wit could measure?

"Can't I be everything at the same time?" Lucy asked.

Dally nodded.

"Y'already are.

"Is that a problem?"

This time, he shook his head.

"Naw. It's cool."

From Dallas Winston, this was a love letter. Lucy bit her tongue to keep from grinning, though she wanted to. She'd never felt so much like Beauty in all her life.

"Then come here, would you?" she asked. She knew she was assertive (especially for a girl), but Dallas Winston's bedroom was the last place she ever expected to use her assertiveness. She blushed and prayed that the floorboards would give out underneath her.

Dally stepped closer to Lucy again, wrapping his arms around her waist. This time, it was her turn to bristle. No one had ever touched her around her waist before, and it occurred to her that he'd probably realize that she was too fat. Her eyes nearly popped out of her head. When he noticed, he cocked his brow at her.

"What's the matter with you?"

"Me?"

"Naw, the other broad I'm tryin' to make out with. Of course you."

Lucy shook her head, trying to forget her nerves and her self-loathing as he loosened his grip around her a little bit.

"Look, I ain't stupid," Dally said. "I know you ain't done this before. And I know you ain't used to bein' the one who knows less than the other person in the room."

Again, Lucy said nothing. She was still shocked that he seemed to understand her as well as he did (and even more shocked that he could put any words to it).

"Just let me take the lead on this one, Bennet," he said. "I won't do anything ya don't like."

"How can I be sure of that?"

"Well, I'm pretty fuckin' good at this, and you don't get to be pretty fuckin' good without payin' attention to the pretty girls you're …"

"I get it."

Her voice told him to shut up, but her eyes said something different. Her eyes, he noticed, were asking him if he really thought she was pretty. It almost made him laugh, but he knew she didn't want to hear that. He couldn't imagine that there was a world where Lucy Bennet didn't know that she was pretty, but apparently, that was the one he was living in. He pulled her closer around her waist, kissed her (her first kiss, as he'd learn some time later), and smirked at her when their lips broke apart.

"You're real pretty," he was growling now. "Prettiest girl I ever brought up here."

"And the oddest," Lucy added.

"Prob'ly."

"What kind of girl spends her whole life reading books and talking shit about boys, then, when she finally decides she wants to screw around, she picks the boy who's least likely to call afterward, least likely to remember her name, and least likely to ever want her more than once?"

"You forgot that I'm most likely to go to jail."

"I figured it was implied."

Dally pushed Lucy's hair behind her ear (Without knowing it, Lucy had put her hair in front of her face like a curtain so Dally didn't have to look directly at her.) and kissed her again. She found that although it wasn't as difficult to kiss as she'd imagined (worried, really, was the more accurate term), she still couldn't shake the odd feeling pulsing throughout her body. Clenching and unclenching her thighs didn't help, either … not anymore. The blood was thrumming everywhere, and though she knew it was nothing short of odd, she kissed him back twice as hard as he'd kissed her. When they broke apart again, noses still pressed together, he laughed. It was neither sweet nor sinister. Lucy knew the word, but she was too flustered to think it.

"You know, you might be more 'n just strange," he said. "You might be crazy."

Lucy laughed, too – neither sinister nor sweet. She knew she was crazy and strange, strange and crazy. Anyone sane person would have run out of that room. No sane person would have abandoned her own birthday party to enter that room in the first place. But Lucy never made sense. She was a bundle of contradictions (smart yet foolish, kind yet arrogant, responsible yet impulsive), and she'd spent so much of her young life trying to make sure she was all one way – all one kind of person. But that wasn't any fun. It was fun, she thought, to be everything. It was fun to be odd, even if odd often evolved into reckless, like she was that night. If it meant finally satisfying the oddness in the pit of her stomach, then she didn't care if it was reckless. She just needed to know what it would be like, even if she never did it again.

She became suddenly cognizant of the radio as she nodded at him to take off her shirt. Someone on a higher plane must have been looking down on her and Dally and having a laugh, as Lucy Bennet and conquest didn't seem to pair well. Why else would they have had such a soundtrack?

"I don't even know how to love you / just the way you want me to / But I'm ready / to learn / Yes, I'm ready / to learn …"

Lucy almost wanted to snort, but she didn't want to drive Dally away. His lips on her neck gave her a new odd feeling – one that she liked quite a lot and wanted to keep chasing down. She pulled his face closer to her on pure instinct and pure impulse, impatient for more. When he laughed at her (not cruelly, but … there was that word she was too flustered to think of again), she almost felt beautiful. She almost felt like she was Beauty, after all.

If she'd had a clearer head, she probably would have asked him to keep her shirt on. In the moment, it didn't seem to matter much, and he didn't seem to think that she was too pudgy or pasty. Maybe it was all in her head. Even if it wasn't, maybe the body was always secondary to the wit. Lucy didn't know if she really believed that, even as this boy she monstrously wanted kept kissing her like he'd been wanting to for a while. She didn't believe it, and yet, it was happening. She was feeling it. It was so … odd.

She lay on her back, playing a game of peek-a-boo with the ceiling, and finally understood what all the songs meant when they said love me. If this was what love felt like, she didn't blame Jane for wanting so badly to find it. This was a brand-new odd feeling that couldn't compete with what she'd felt the first time they brushed hands or the first time they kissed. It settled like a soft flame, yet it spread and grew with each passing motion. Suddenly, this wasn't odd at all. Lucy had always thought of Dallas Winston as the Beast, but that had always been about his temperament – his violence and his boorish speech. In that moment, she knew she was right. He was the Beast, but this was surely the untold epilogue, in which Beauty discovers she's got a bit more of a Beast in her than she bargained for.

As Lucy caught her breath, Dally looked at her with that same gleam in his eye, and for a moment, the oddness subsided. For a moment, the oddness subsided, and she felt beautiful. But when she, motivated by some kind of insanity or a death wish (Nobody handled Dallas Winston like that.), grabbed a hold of his face and asked him to love her one more time, she knew what was odd about her. She knew why Dally could stand to be around her for more than ten seconds at a time, and she knew why she'd always been so (if not secretly) drawn to him.

Later, she wondered if one day, he'd be around for her to tell him about it.

Hinton owns The Outsiders. The soundtrack to Lucy's birthday here is "Yes, I'm Ready" by Barbara Mason, which I don't own. Again, I am as subtle as a train wreck.