Not—Part 15

Darry's POV

BOOM! I pounded a nail into the shingle, slamming it onto the roof with much more force than was necessary. You really messed things up again, Darry…

BAM! No wonder Ponyboy won't talk to you. First day after they get home, you run off to work right away. You know you could've stayed home. Your brothers needed you, and what did you do? Hide from facing them like a little kid.

BANG! You're supposed to be the adult in that house. And you can't even talk to your brothers. What kind of guardian do you think you are?

I slammed my fist onto the roof, not even caring about how it would hurt. All the anger I'd been holding back—at myself, not at my brothers—was flooding in as I worked on the rooftop. I'd already probably pulled a muscle hauling two bundles up at a time, but I didn't care. This was all my fault anyway.

Why did you leave me here to deal with this all alone, Mom and Dad?

If they'd been here, everything would be different. I was the one getting all the heat for this now, but if I was really honest with myself, I knew I wasn't really the one to blame. Sure, I should've told them, but it hadn't been my idea to hide it in the first place. Why hadn't they told him before they died?

Did you really think that he could go his whole life, never finding out?

Worked for fourteen years, I was forced to remember. If only there hadn't been that stupid school trip, if only I'd gotten out his birth certificate myself, if only I hadn't let him go on the camping trip in the first place. And I wondered, did Sodapop blame me for everything too? We hadn't had a chance to talk yet either. I suddenly remembered that I had two brothers, not just one. Ponyboy wasn't the only one going through a nightmare these two days. Soda had to be feeling it all too—he had way too much energy as it was, where would all these new emotions be going for him? He felt things sharply when it came to Pony and I, perhaps even more than we knew we were feeling them ourselves. He was forced to recognize both sides of everything, being in the middle. And I knew that had to be hard for him. All of Ponyboy's and my anger, frustration, hurt, and everything else washed over onto Soda, and he had to handle all of that and still try to pull us together. I didn't how he managed it all the time. Soon—maybe even before I got a chance to talk to Ponyboy—I had to sit down and talk to Sodapop. See where he stood on all of this. And then, finally, we could all sit down together—maybe even with Steve and Two-Bit around—and figure out where we all were now, and where we could go from here.

And then we could work on becoming a family again.

Ponyboy's POV

I was in my room, brooding if you want to know the truth. I couldn't shake that comment of Two-Bit's—"I bet you're glad to find out you're not related to a pansy like Sodapop"—and I was kicking myself for not talking to Darry when we had the chance. And Soda seemed flat out exhausted. He hadn't come to bed last night—had he been up all night? All I could do was stare at a picture on the bulletin board above my desk. It was taken just a month before my parents died, on a hot summer day when we were all together in the lot, where Dad was trying to teach some of the guys some football moves. Darry was helping out, and somehow everyone had managed to get off of their various jobs for the afternoon.

Mom had pulled out her camera and stopped the football drills for a moment, instructing everyone where to stand, and to smile-will-you-for-gosh-sakes-boys! Dad had stood beside her, trying to make us laugh by some pretty weird faces he could make. Mom had put Soda, Darry and I in the middle, of course wanting to see some brotherly closeness between the three of us, with our friends around us. Soda had his arm slung over my shoulders, grinning while looking at me, slightly to the side. His hair was at its lightest blond. Darry was holding the football, and trying to look tough and smile at the same time. It didn't really work, but he looked genuinely happy. Not worried like he did all the time now. Beside Soda was Steve, of course, barely cracking a smile, but looking a bit like he wanted to be anywhere but in front of a camera. Hair greased to the max, naturally. Two-Bit was on the edge beside Steve, grinning like a Cheshire cat. He had an eyebrow cocked, and seemed to be mouthing something to Dallas, who was on the other end of the group. Beside Darry was Johnny. He didn't have a scar yet, but he still looked nervous, even smiling at my parents. There was a bruise on his face, courtesy of his father, and he was wearing a jeans jacket even in the heat. He appeared, to anyone viewing the photo, happy but anxious. That was who Johnny had been back then. Dally was the only one not smiling at least a little, but he wasn't scowling either. He was just looking straight into the camera lens, like he was saying, "This is it. You want Dallas? This is what you get." His eyes didn't look as cold as usual, because Dally really did admire my mother. She was the only one he wanted to make proud sometimes. I remembered their banter just before she took the photo.

"Won't you smile, Dallas Winston?" Mom coaxed, gesturing for Two-Bit to move in a little closer to the rest of us.

"I'm not gonna smile, Mrs. Curtis," Dally insisted firmly. "The rest of them will, but I…" he stopped. It was like he wasn't sure how to explain it, so he didn't try.

"But Dallas, you're with your friends, playing football, you haven't been in trouble with the police in a while, and it's summer. What is there not to be happy about?" Mom asked. Dallas just looked at her silently. His eyes could communicate volumes when he wanted them to, and as my thirteen-year-old self watched, both my mother and I understood what he meant without speaking.

"Okay, Dally," Mom agreed. "You don't have to smile." She looked into the lens and a moment later snapped the picture. When she looked up again, she was the one smiling.

"I think it's going to be a lovely picture, boys…"

And now when I looked at it, it was a good photo. Not because we all looked that great, but because I could look at it at a time like this, and feel okay again. A little sad, but better than before.

Then I heard my brother's panicky voice.

"Ponyboy!"

How is it that just one word can make you freeze and feel the blood drain out of your face? I could just tell by the way he said it—anxious and alarmed—that it was not something good. That I wasn't going to like whatever he'd found.

So I scrambled up off the bed and into the living room where Soda sat, clutching a small piece of paper, the open strongbox beside him. My heart stopped when I saw that box, where all this had started. Where I never wanted to go into again.

"What's wrong?" I finally managed to choke out. He looked up at me and gestured to the piece of paper. I sat down beside him on the couch and looked at it quickly.

Birth Certificate: Baby Boy Lawrence. Mother: Katherine Lawrence. Father: . Date of Birth: August 13, 1950.

And that was where I stopped reading. Because I knew exactly whose birth certificate this was.

Mine.

Okay…it's almost my birthday, so this update is my present to you! And I would've had it up sooner, but I wrote it on a computer not connected to the Internet, so I had to figure out how to get it onto a different computer, find a disk, etc. So that's my story of why it wasn't up a couple days earlier. But I hope you liked it anyway.