Not—Part 11

Sodapop's POV

I was bored. I know, I know—how could you call a night where you find out your younger brother is adopted, run away, stow away on a train and end up in the middle of nowhere, boring? Well, I tend to get restless easily when I'm just sitting around. Like I was on the bench at that train station in…wherever we were. The girl still wasn't being any friendlier towards us. And I couldn't for the life of me figure out why.

"Soda?" Ponyboy said quietly.

"Yeah?"

"I wish we'd brought a deck of cards to play poker or something."

I grinned. "Guess you forgot some essentials when you were running away," I teased him. Come to think of it, he hadn't brought anything with him. What had he been planning on doing for the rest of his running away career? We were both tired, and sick of waiting for somebody to show up. Someone had to have gotten our message by then, so where were they? Sure, the directions weren't exactly specific, but if they just followed the train tracks they'd wind up here eventually, wouldn't they?

"Hey, I'm supposed to leave on that school camping trip tomorrow, aren't I?" Pony remembered, yawning suddenly. You know that thing where someone around you yawns and then all of a sudden you have to yawn too? Well, that's what I got.

My jaw cracked, I yawned so widely. "Ow. Oh yeah. Steve told me about that. Trying to bring all the students 'closer together in a community', right?"

"Something like that," Pony agreed with a small smile. I knew what he was thinking. Fat chance. There was no way a camping trip would fix anything. When it snowed in July, the class would all get along. And I was pretty sure it wasn't supposed to be cold this summer.

I wondered how my brother was really feeling. He had to know that sooner or later, Darry would come to take us home, and we would all have to sit down for a long talk about everything. There would probably be some yelling, a lot of confusion, and even more anger. After everything we'd gone through before, this might be one of the toughest things to work through. It was one thing going through a loss, it was quite another to explain someone being lied to about who they are. I'm not trying to say one is harder to deal with than the other, I'm just saying how they're different types of problems.

"How long are you two planning on sitting there?" the girl asked finally, looking annoyed. "I want to go home soon. I'm already late as it is."

"Yeah well, we don't exactly have some other place to go, if you didn't notice," I snapped back. I wasn't in the greatest mood to begin with, and this girl was driving me up the wall. I'd just about had it up to here when…

"Sodapop!" someone called from the doorway, and we felt a burst of chilly night air enter the station. Pony and I both looked up, startled, to see Steve making his way over to us.

"Steve?" I asked, confused. "What are you doing here? Did Darry bring you?"

"Yeah, he's parking the truck properly, but I jumped out while we pulled up," Steve replied, shooting me a smile. I knew he was glad to see me. Shoot, I knew he was even glad to see that Ponyboy was okay, even if he didn't like him.

"Aw, kid, why'd you have to scare everybody like that?" he complained.

Ponyboy paled. At first I thought he was just mad at Steve for asking. Then I looked past them both, to the doorway. And there was Darry, looking mad as anything.

Ponyboy's POV

Look away. Don't look at him. Focus on the wall behind him. Concentrate on anything but his face. Don't think about what to say. Just try not to look at him.

Darry was finally here, and it was time for the grand explanation. He looked angry. What did he have to be angry about? I was the one who'd been lied to my whole life. I was the one who had no idea anymore who I really was. And sure, I'd run away. But who could blame me?

I knew he wasn't really as mad as he looked. It was a mask, his way of hiding the other emotions that would've played across his face if he let them. That was the way it'd always been with Darry. Anger was easier for him to portray than fear.

"Why did you leave without telling anyone, Ponyboy Curtis?" he demanded, marching over to us. I had to look up. In a way, I was glad Steve was there, and the girl too. The only other time he'd been this mad he'd hit me. I doubted he would do something like that in a train station. "And why didn't you call me once you found him, Sodapop?"

"Don't blame me, blame the phone people for not inventing the emergency phone," Soda mumbled, shooting me a quick wink. His way of trying to lighten the mood, I guess.

"I don't care about the phone people!" Darry exclaimed. "Do you know how worried I was? I had Steve and Two-Bit out there running all over town to look for you!"

Well, at least there were people who would look for us if we ever really disappeared. Sort of nice to know.

"Sorry, Dar," Soda said softly. "I tried to get ahold of you as soon as I could." For a moment, Darry looked satisfied, then he turned to me.

"Let's go, Ponyboy. We're gonna get home and then we're going to have a nice, long talk. Hey, thanks for putting up with these two," he said to the girl behind the counter.

"No problem," she said cheerfully, but I saw her eyes flick over his muscular frame and settle somewhere around his flat stomach. Well, there was a girl out there who preferred muscles to Soda's good looks. Imagine that.

Out to the truck we went. Steve hopped in the back, Darry took the wheel and I started to go in back with Steve, but Darry said sharply, "Shotgun, Ponyboy."

"Aw, Dar, I wanted to ride shotgun. I called it already!" Soda complained. He knew better than to smart off with Darry when he was in a mood like this. I think he was just doing it to save me from having to be next to Darry this soon.

"You called it? When?" Steve questioned, looking like he'd rather walk than have me in back with him.

"In the train with Ponyboy, smartass," Sodapop informed him with a grin. "And don't bother to ask Pony if it's true, 'cause he was asleep anyway." To Soda, this obviously sounded like a foolproof argument. Darry sighed.

"Fine. Sit where you want to, Ponyboy," he said, and I scrambled to the back, ignoring Steve's "welcoming" scowl. That drive was one of the most awkward of my life. The only other one that could compare would be the time Two-Bit forgot to give me a ride home from school and I had to have my math teacher drive me home and see our neighbourhood, with the occasional under-her-breath comment.

Steve muttered something to Soda and headed for Two-Bit's house once we got back to our place. Soda and I sat on the sofa and prepared for one heck of a lecture.

You know what I've realized? I am the biggest procrastinator ever in my writing. I mean, I just stall and put off writing about the big stuff—like the actual confrontation in this story—for so long. So I apologize. But…hurray! A faster update! Let's celebrate by reviewing, okay? Lol. By the way, I really don't know where the name of this chapter came from. If you have a better suggestion, let me know.