Two-Bit Mathews walked into the Curtis home early the next morning to pick Ponyboy up for school. He wasn't completely startled to see Johnny asleep on the couch since a lot of the gang, including himself, was known to crash at the Curtis place once in a while. Then he remembered that Audrey was in town and he wondered where she was sleeping. He quietly walked into the kitchen and saw her asleep on her arms at the table. He smiled gently, and went to shake Johnny awake.

Of course, Two-Bit's idea of shaking someone awake was jumping into the air and landing sitting on their side yelling, "Wakey-wakey!" This efficiently awoke the entire household, especially when Johnny added his pained yells to Two-Bit's excited wake-up call.

Eventually, Johnny wrestled Two-Bit off him and Darrel ran out the door to work having slept in too late for breakfast.

"Are you coming to school today?" Pony asked Audrey.

"Yes. Keith, can I get a ride too?"

"Yeah, you'll have to sit on someone's lap though."

"I'll sit in the bed of the truck," said Johnny quickly. Audrey was about to protest, but then she saw that Johnny looked pretty excited about the prospect. She closed her mouth and smiled to herself.

They piled into the truck and set out, the wind whipping at their hair through the open windows. Johnny occasionally whooped happily when Keith would turn a corner so fast the car tipped a little.

"Audrey, why do you insist on calling me Keith? Only my mom calls me that."

"Oh, if you don't like it I can call you Two-Bit. I'm just so used to Keith now."

"Nah, I like it when you call me Keith. If anyone else but you or my mom tried it, I'd probably have to belt 'em, but you've got some kinda charm, kid."

Audrey blushed silently and Keith grinned brashly.

They reached the school leaving record-breaking tire marks where Two-Bit had braked so fast trying to park the truck in time. They got out laughing hysterically Audrey included. She finally looked happy after a long time. Ponyboy noticed the color was back in her face and her eyes were alight with pleasure.

"Woo, I haven't had that much fun in a long time," she declared. Two-Bit picked her up and slung her around so she was in his arms like a bride. Pony looked away, wanting to hurry into the school. He could already feel the tension between the two of them, the kind that was between Sandy and Sodapop. He didn't really want to be around for that.

Two-Bit set Audrey down outside of the office, where she hurried inside to turn in her paperwork. She walked into her first-period class two minutes before the bell rang. The only seat was directly in the middle in the front row. Her happiness from that morning was quickly evaporating with all of her nerves rushing over her like a tidal wave. Her hands were shaking again, so she put them beneath the desk and then stared at the floor until class began.

The classes weren't exactly hard, because Audrey was pretty smart. She noticed she was in class with a lot of Socs and wondered why. Ponyboy told her at lunch that there were the advanced placement classes and they were both in those and then there were regular classes. Most of the greasers in town were in the regular classes, but he had made it into the AP ones.

"It'll be nice to have someone else in the family who understands working hard at school."

"Doesn't Darrel understand that? I would have pictured him riding you pretty hard to do well."

"Oh yeah, well he does. But Soda dropped out and the rest of the gang doesn't really understand why I want good grades so bad. They think I just do it to get Darry off my back."

"Hmm. I think it's an excellent way to get out of a bad neighborhood. With the right grades you can get into college with a full-ride."

"Yeah? Really? You think someone would give a full-ride to a no account greaser?"

Audrey laughed. "I would hardly call you a no-account greaser, Ponyboy."

Smiling along with her, he said, "You think they'll really give a full-ride to a kid with the name Ponyboy?"

They were teasing and bantering the lunch hour away until an unwelcome guest appeared.

He was tall and he had dark hair and darker eyes. Audrey recognized him at once as one of the boys that had attacked her and Pony the other day. Her cousin recognized him too and the friendly atmosphere disappeared like magic. Suddenly the lunchroom felt very cold.

"Hey greaser. Why don't you get up and let me and this nice lady have a chat, hm?"

He looked like he was going to have a smart retort, but Audrey turned to him quickly and whispered, "Go ahead, Ponyboy. I'll be all right."

He didn't want to, but Audrey got him to leave. The last thing she needed was to be the cause of her cousin getting in a fight at school.

"I don't think we've been properly introduced."

"I think we were introduced quite well when you were attacking me and my cousin."

"Attacking? We just wanted to get to know you."

"Thanks, but when I meet someone new I don't usually give them bruises like these." She rolled up her long sleeves so that the deep purple marks left there by the Socs that had grabbed her arms showed. She hadn't even shown these marks to Darrel, afraid that he would make too big a deal out of them. She rolled her sleeves back down, satisfied to see a truly contrite look on his face.

"I'm real sorry. You know, I didn't even wanna get out of that car."

"So why did you?"

"I don't know." This came out in a whisper. "I really am sorry. As long as you don't tell anyone else I am, anyway."

"I believe you. But please, next time? Just leave us alone."

He got up and left. Ponyboy sat beside her looking at her worriedly. "I'm fine. He wasn't bothering me or anything."