Author's Note: I'm sorry that this story is starting off kind of slow, but I promise that it'll pick up in the next chapter. :) I hope you're enjoying so far as I don't really post any of my Fanfictions online, so this is the first one I've ever published. Enjoy this chapter and have a lovely day! :)

~Shelby

Chapter 2

That night, my mind was full of thoughts. I was an idiot for assuming Soda and I went to the same school. And I only assumed his age and looks could lie, so he could've been in college for all I knew. I also thought about my father and how disappointed he would've been with the house. It was in the dirty part of town. The wallpaper in every room was peeling, the windows were dirty, the lawn was messy and dead and the front door didn't lock, but I had to live with what I had. Dad would've made it his life goal to fix the house and make it beautiful, but Doug was too lazy and didn't give a damn about his surroundings, so I knew he wouldn't make the effort to make the house decent looking. I couldn't fall asleep with all the thoughts racing in my mind, so I was extremely angry when my mother came to my room to get me up.

"Arie, it's time to get up. You have a big day ahead of you!" she was always so energetic in the morning and I couldn't even sit up without laying in bed for at least 10 minutes. I grunted, signalling that I was awake. She left my room, but not before opening my blinds, sending the sun directly into my face. Annoyed, I pulled myself up out of bed and aimlessly grabbed a dress from my closet. I was very picky with my dresses, so when I grabbed a dress without even looking, I knew I was going to have a rough day. It ended up being a plain light blue one, practically the same style as my yellow one. The school wasn't too far away, so I ended up just walking to school. I was nervous as hell when I climbed the stairs to the school. I was having trouble actually getting up the stairs, people kept pushing in front of me. It was like I wasn't even there. There were a lot of steps leading up to the front doors, so when I was two steps away from the top, I was relieved, until a boy bumped into me, making me lose my footing. Thankfully, I fell forward and I was able to brace myself.

"What the hell!?" I exclaimed, jerking my head to look at him. He looked younger than me. He had slicked back brown, almost red hair, and greenish-grey eyes. He was red as a beet, fumbling to pick up my books.

"I-uh-I-" he stuttered. I sighed, picking myself up and dusting off the front of my dress.

"It's fine." I said, helping him with my books.

"I should've watched where I was goin'."

"No, it's fine." I reiterated. "Can you tell me where room 258 is?" I asked him as we entered the school.

"It's right beside the girl's bathroom." he told me. I thanked him and made my way to room 258. The first class I had was English. I was in A-classes and all the kids in my class were the rich, snobbish kids. I thought my English was nice until he made me introduce myself to the class. I hated the feeling of people staring at me and having 30 sets of eyes on me wasn't exactly a day at the beach.

"I'm Arie." I said, trying to sound as confident as possible. "Arie Hughes. I'm from Saginaw, Michigan." My face was burning as I nodded to the class. My introduction did absolutely nothing. By lunch I still hadn't talked to anyone except the boy who knocked me over, so my first instinct was to find him. It didn't take me long to find him, I found him in the back parking lot, but I was intimidated as hell when I did. It was him that was scary, it was the boys he was with, all except one of them. There was this short guy standing behind him, constantly checking over his shoulder. He was real tan with big, black eyes. He had black hair to match that fell over his forehead, almost covering his eyes. The guy beside him had light brown hair and long sideburns. The last guy was taller than the rest of them, with black hair and a hard look to him. All five of them wore their hair slicked back, well, except for the tan kid, but he did have noticeable grease in his hair. They were all smoking, too. I stood there, too nervous to approach them and thankfully the guy who bumped into me noticed I was just kind of staring at them, so he jogged up to me.

"Hey. Why are you here?" he asked.

"I, uh, I just thought that maybe I could hang with you. I'm Arie, by the way."

"I'm Ponyboy." he told me.

"Ponyboy?" I asked. Surely that couldn't have been his real name.

"That's my name. I even got a brother named Sodapop."

"Oh!" I got excited at his name. "I met him at the gas station! Does he go here?" Ponyboy looked away.

"He's a dropout."

"Oh." That explained why I hadn't seen him around. I was extremely disappointed.

"Hey, Ponyboy! What's the deal? She hard to get?" the one with the sideburns shouted.

"You wanna meet the boys?" he asked. I shrugged.

"Might as well." I needed friends and even though I wasn't exactly happy with what the one just said, I'd get over it. We made our way back to the others. "This is Arie." I was glad that Ponyboy introduced me. It was hard doing it in front of 30 respectable looking kids, I think if I had done it in front of three tough looking guys, I'd die. "Arie, that's Two-Bit, Steve and Johnny." Two-Bit was the one with sideburns, Steve was the mean looking one and Johnny was the short one.

"Where do you live?" Two-Bit asked, squinting.

"In the East end, kind of by Tiber street. I don't remember the street name."

"No way." Steve said, throwing his cigarette on the ground.

"So you're one of us?" Two-Bit asked.

"I don't know what that means, but sure."

"He means that you're a greaser. Not a Soc." Ponyboy said. By the names, I could tell that Socs were upper class folk and greasers were lower class folk.

"It's not the most flattering of names, but I guess so." Before we could continue the conversation, the bell rang. "Well, I'll talk to you guys later."

"You should come by the house sometime." Ponyboy suggested. Jackpot. Not only was I making friend surprisingly easy, but I got invited to Ponyboy's house and the best thing about it was that Soda would be there, hopefully.

"Yeah, sure." I said, smiling at the thought of being in the same house as Soda. Now that I'm reliving this, I'm now realizing how crazy about him I was. I didn't even know anything about him except that he was handsome. I guess I was a fangirl, I thought of him like Beatlemaniacs thought about the Beatles. By the end of the day, I was feeling quite good. My spirits were high and I couldn't wait to get home and tell my mother about my day, but when I saw the police lights and heard the sirens as I got closer to my home, I deflated and started running as fast as I could to the house.