Not—Part 3

Ponyboy's POV

Adopted. The word had two meanings in my life. It meant my parents had chosen me, raised me even though I wasn't even their son. But it also meant that somebody, somewhere, hadn't wanted me, just needed to get rid of me. I could've ended up anywhere, I realized, I should be glad that I got the home I did, with parents and two older brothers to take care of me.

But I wasn't. I wasn't glad or thankful at all. The numbness was wearing off, and anger was taking its place. The cold, hard truth was I had been lied to. And not about anything small either, this was a lie about who I was, my whole life. How could they not tell me?

Soda. I should talk to Soda. Somewhere deep inside me that voice was nagging me, telling me to calm down and think things through before doing anything stupid. Use your head. Just like Darry always used to tell me. Maybe that was what made me snap, the thought of doing something Darry had drilled into my mind, when all the time he was hiding that secret from me. Whatever it was, I wanted to make Soda feel guilty. So I left the papers on his pillow for him to find. I wasn't going to talk to him. I was going to let them wonder where I was and tell each other, "We should have told him." Those would probably be Soda's exact words. I knew him so well…or I thought I had. We weren't even brothers. I was as related to him as Steve was. The thought made me sick. No wonder Steve had hated me tagging along as Soda's kid brother. He'd probably known the whole time that I wasn't a brother at all, just an annoying kid.

Something Johnny had told me once was now coming to mind. "Your family sure is funny." When I asked what he meant, he just said, "I meant, well, Soda kinda looks like your mother did, but he acts just exactly like your father. And Darry is the spittin' image of your father, but he ain't wild and laughing all the time like he was. He acts like your mother. And you don't act like either one." What had he really meant? That my "family" was funny because they never told me who I really was? Or had Johnny never known either?

I dropped the stack of papers on my middle brother's pillow. Even I couldn't think of him as not my brother when I looked at the bed we shared, still messy and unmade. And then I ran.

Soda's POV

"What the—" there was no curse suitable for what I was reading. I threw down the pieces of paper and hollered, "Ponyboy! Ponyboy!" But like I knew I wouldn't, I didn't get an answer.

Adopted? Impossible. Everybody talked about how much we looked alike. We had the same hair, almost, and our noses or something. Everyone compared us. But I looked more like Dad. How could Ponyboy not be my brother? I shook off the thought immediately. He was still my brother. No frickin' piece of paper was going to tell me he wasn't. But did he think the same?

I leaned against the wall behind the bed and strained my memory, trying to recall when Pony was born, the first time I met my brother, when he came home from the hospital. It was hard. I couldn't remember much that far back, and what I could was foggy and vague. I could see, faintly, an image of my mom holding Ponyboy down low so I could look at him. I touched his pink little cheek…Dad's voice was saying, "This is your brother, Ponyboy" …Darry was getting a turn to hold him…Ponyboy a few weeks later, crying in the room we shared even then…I let him play with my toy horses…but I couldn't for the life of me remember when my mom was pregnant.

Could that be because she never was pregnant? Because Ponyboy was really adopted, like the pages here said?

My heart kept arguing where my mind gave up. I didn't want to believe it, I didn't want to know. I wanted to go on, blissfully ignorant of what these papers said. I'm sure he did too.

He had to be angry, I reasoned. He must've run off somewhere. Maybe the lot? Or the park? Did he go see a movie? How could I explain to him all of this, when I could hardly believe it myself?

I went to Darry's room, put the papers on his pillow, and then I ran to find my little brother.

Darry's POV

Papers, one after the other, screaming the words at me off the pages, you lied! He knows you lied! This is all your fault!

When had Ponyboy found these and put them here for me to find? Or had Soda found out, and put them here as a warning that if I didn't say something soon, he would tell Pony instead? My mind was swimming as I commanded myself to stop panicking and use my head.

Use my head. If I'd done that a long time ago we wouldn't be in this situation. All those years of telling him to think once in a while and I never did a thing right. If I had really thought about it, I wouldn't have even let Mom and Dad keep it a secret. Now it was all too late.

Too late, too late, too late, the papers taunted me. Soda and Pony were both gone, but together or separately? How much did each of them know? For fourteen and a half years I was the only one who knew, because I was too old to simply forget, like Sodapop. No, I knew.

"Darry?" Mom said from their bedroom. I went in and sat next to her on the bed.

"Yeah, Mama?" I still called her Mama then, when I was six.

"Ponyboy is adopted. You know that, right?" she asked, and Dad watched me carefully. A six-year-old only knew what he was told. All I knew was that I now had two brothers to watch out for. Only one of them, they'd said, was really not my parents' baby, but still my little brother.

"Uh-huh," I answered, bouncing a little on the bed. "Pony got brung to the hospital and you brought him home to play with me an' Soda."

"Exactly," Dad said. "And he's always going to live here, just like Sodapop. But Darry, we don't want you to tell anybody that Ponyboy is adopted."

"How come?" I wanted to know. Why couldn't I brag that my family had a new baby that wasn't even ours? "Is being adopted bad?"

"No, of course not," Mom said quickly, patting my hand to reassure me. "But we want you to be like his real brother. You treat him exactly the way you do with Soda."

"'Kay," I agreed, naturally. When you're six, your parents know everything and you just agree. "So I teach him to play football? 'Cause Soda's not very good, ya know." They laughed, and then I asked curiously, "Can I tell him? Does Soda know Pony is, uh, adopted?" Big word back then.

"No, Darry," Dad said seriously. "That's the other thing. You can't even tell Pepsi-Cola."

I was confused now. "How come?" I asked again. "Isn't he gonna be like Pony's real brother too? Is Baby Pony gonna know we adopted him? Why can't he know the secret too?"

"Of course Sodapop and Ponyboy will be real brothers too," Mom hurried to inform me. "But he's still too little to understand. And he won't be able to keep it a secret yet. But you can."

I was proud to keep such a big secret. I didn't ask any more questions, just promised not to tell…

They never answered me. They never told me why Ponyboy couldn't know he was adopted. Now Soda, who had also been kept in the dark, and I, were stuck with the harsh reality.

Our brother would never trust us again. And we had no idea where he was.

Did I get everybody's thoughts basically right, you think? Thanks for all the lovely reviews I've been getting so far, you guys are the best!