19. How it Ended
Pony stared out her bedroom window at their front yard, keeping an eye out for Darry's truck. It had been her first day back at school, and she knew he'd still be worried even after working all day, and she knew that what she was going to tell him would probably worry him more.
That morning, he'd even asked if she was sure she wanted to go back, or if she needed another couple of days at home. She'd already spent a whole week sitting around at home trying not to go crazy or drive Soda nuts. It hadn't been all bad…Johnny had come over and they'd read through most of the Hobbit, and that had been fun. Steve and Dally had both come by too, bringing decks of cards to play with Soda and they'd let her play too, bringing her snack cakes and chocolate bars and bottles of Pepsi. Steve had even brought Evie once, and the older girl had hugged her as careful as she could, looking on the verge of tears. Susie had come over a lot too, the two of them sitting together on her bed and drawing or talking about school while Keith had hung out with Sodapop in the other room.
When none of their friends had been there, Soda had spent plenty of time in her room, keeping her entertained. She was supposed to stay in bed, but he'd let her come into the living room a couple of times to watch TV when she got so sick of reading she couldn't stand it. She knew he'd liked having a couple of days off work, especially since when Darry got home, he'd go out with the guys, but she also knew that they couldn't afford for him to take too much time off, so as soon as Monday had come around and she'd spent a full week in bed, which was the amount of time the doctor had recommended, she'd insisted that she was ready to go back. As much as Darry hadn't wanted her to, he also knew that she could fall behind if she didn't go back, even if Susie did bring her all her work.
She'd kept up with her homework while she'd been out, since Darry had finally relented and let her do it. It had kept her somewhat distracted from the pain she felt every time she moved, especially for the first couple of days after she'd gotten home. There had been times when it had been real bad, and once Soda had caught her gritting her teeth, face hidden in the pillow and trying to keep quiet when she'd moved too fast. He'd looked so scared that she'd thought he might just call an ambulance.
"I'm fine," she'd insisted before he could even ask, but he hadn't accepted that for a second.
"What happened? What's wrong?" He'd demanded, gripping her shoulder, like that would help.
"Sat up too fast…I was trying to catch my pencil." She'd pointed to her pencil, which had rolled halfway across the room.
"Next time just let it fall and ask me to get it, Pone," he'd scolded, grabbing the pencil and giving her a once over. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," she'd assured him again, trying to smile, but he'd hovered the rest of the day. And she was pretty sure he'd told Darry too, because they'd both kept a closer eye on her than usual that evening.
Darry had driven her to school that morning, insisting it was fine and that he had plenty of time, and she'd felt his eyes boring into her when his eyes were supposed to be on the road. "You crash this truck, we'll both be in the hospital again," she'd warned, and he'd shaken his head.
"You don't have to go back today if you don't feel up for it, you know? Soda don't have to stay with you…but you could stay home today."
"I'm fine, Darry. I want to go back."
She'd known that people would be talking, and that she'd probably find herself at the center of everybody's gossip for a while, but she still wanted to go back…wanted to return to some kind of normal. Besides, she'd thought, if she had to lay in that bed for one more day, she might just go crazy.
"If you want to go home, just let your teacher know, alright? Two-Bit can give you a ride home. Or Steve."
She'd had no intention of going home early, but she hadn't said that. Instead, she'd assured him that of course she would tell a teacher if she was feeling bad (kind of a lie, but she liked to think that if she was really in a lot of pain, she would) and that she'd be careful. That last part had been totally true, at least. She had no intention of going back to the hospital for a very long time.
When he'd pulled up to her school, he'd turned to her, looking as serious as she'd ever seen him. "Do not walk home, you hear? Two-Bit will give you a ride. Or Steve. I don't care who you ride with, just do not walk home."
"So…if Randy asks…"
He'd given her a look and she'd grinned. "Greasers only, got it."
Darry had shaken his head, but she'd caught the smile he'd been trying to hide. "Go on. Be careful, alright?"
"I will. Thanks, Darry."
She had, as it turned out, made it through the entire day, turning in her homework to each teacher as soon as she got to class and assuring the nicer ones who bothered to ask that yes, she was feeling much better. There had been plenty of gossip all about her, but most of the girls who'd approached her had been friendly, asking if she really was okay or how she was feeling. Most of the girls on the track team had stopped by her locker at some point in the day, telling her they hoped she felt better soon and asking when she was allowed to run again.
"If I know my brother, it's going to be a while," she'd joked when Jess, one of the senior girls on the team, had asked.
"Your big brother's Darry Curtis, right? The quarterback?"
"Yeah."
"My sister went to school with him. Said he got a scholarship." The rest had gone unsaid.
Still, Pony had nodded, not as bothered as she would have been before. "Yeah, wasn't enough though. He was saving up for college when our parents died."
"That's awful. He's real strict, ain't he?" All the girls on the team knew that Pony wasn't supposed to walk home alone, and that she always had to get permission to go out with them.
Pony had shrugged. "Yeah, kind of. He ain't bad though."
Jess had given her kind of a sheepish grin. "My big sister always thought he was real cute."
She'd had to laugh at the thought of anyone calling her oldest brother 'cute' but she guessed he was handsome, even if Soda was the one with the movie star face. Maybe, she thought, he'd be in a better mood more often if he got a girlfriend. "She ought to ask him out. She's still in town, ain't she? Works at that nice restaurant across town?"
Jess had laughed then, kind of incredulous. "Yeah, that's her. He ain't got a girl?"
"Nope. Not for a long time."
And, considering that her good deed for her brother that day, she'd headed to lunch. Keith and Susie both had been waiting for her a few feet away, and Keith had grinned at her, throwing a careful arm around her shoulder. "Are you trying to set your brother up?"
"Just figured a girl might cheer him up."
He'd laughed aloud, Susie grinning too. "Yeah, I bet it would."
They'd all sat together at lunch, Evie and Susie on either side of her. Evie had even asked if they wanted to meet early the next morning to show them some tricks with her makeup. "Or you two could come over this weekend. My parents wouldn't mind."
Pony had promised to ask Darry, and was just wondering how likely he was to let her out of the house, even if it was to go to a friend's house who he absolutely knew existed, when Randy had approached her.
Now Pony watched her brother pull the truck into his usual spot out in front of the house, feeling less nervous than she'd thought she would. In front of her, the piece of paper she'd copied her English assignment down on, sat untouched. It was her last piece of homework, and her math worksheet was sitting beside her, ready for Darry to look over when he got the chance. The English assignment wasn't due until the end of the week, but she'd wanted to get a head start, paranoid about keeping her grades up.
She might not want to get away from her brother anymore, but she still needed a good scholarship. She was close to the top of her class, though, and it wasn't a hard paper, so she was sure she would ace it. All she had to do was write a theme about an important event in her own life.
At the end of the day, both Keith and Steve had waited for her and Susie by the front doors. "Pick one of us kid, but Superman will skin all three of us if you walk home," Steve had told her.
"You got anymore Pepsi?"
"What? No."
"Chocolate?"
"What am I kid, your dealer?" Steve had asked, rolling his eyes, and she'd grinned.
"Then I'll ride with Keith."
Keith had elbowed him before throwing one arm around Susie and the other around her. "Told you she'd pick me."
She was pulled out of the memory when Darry knocked on her open door, peering in her room and giving her a worried look, letting her know he must have been standing there for a little while. She always had gotten lost in her own thoughts more often than not, and she knew that bugged him, but now she knew why. He was scared of her not paying attention…of getting hurt. Because he loved her.
Not because he hated her.
It was strange how easy it was to get along with Darry all of a sudden, and she knew that it wasn't just because he was being easier on her than he used to. He still checked her homework every night and she knew he'd still have all those same rules for her and that she'd get annoyed with him plenty of times before she was old enough to be off on her own. But now she knew that he didn't hate her…that he didn't regret taking her in. That he loved her. So much. More than anything. Her and Soda were the most important people in the world to him. So she could act more like Soda and feel bad for him when he got real stressed and let his irritation roll off her because she knew he didn't mean it the way she'd feared he did for so long.
"Hey, Pony. How was school? You feeling alright?"
"School was fine." She hesitated. A couple of weeks ago, she wouldn't have even considered bringing this up to Darry…but he'd been right. She had to lie to the cops. And she could lie to everyone else too, if she needed to. But she didn't have to lie to her brothers. "Randy was there. He made me late for math."
His eyes widened and he stepped into the room, hesitating before sitting on her bed. Heart to hearts weren't really their thing…the two of them hadn't had any kind of serious conversation in so long, at least before all this had happened, that she couldn't even remember the last time she'd confided in him. But she wanted to. She wanted things to be okay between them, and that meant telling him things. Because even if he couldn't fix all of it, he still wanted to know. "Why? What did he want?"
He could obviously tell just by looking at her that she wasn't hurt, but she couldn't blame him for being nervous. She hadn't seen him until after lunch, and none of the guys had been around. Susie neither. She'd been glad. The last thing she'd wanted to get involved in was another fight. Darry's hair might just go gray if she got suspended from school after all this. "Nothing much. He just wanted to talk."
"What about?"
She stared down at her assignment for a second. It was harder than she'd thought to talk to him, but she wanted to try. So she told him.
Randy had been looking back and forth when he'd approached her, scanning the halls like he was making sure her brothers' friends weren't around. They hadn't…even Susie hadn't been anywhere close. Not that she'd been scared of him or anything. She'd doubted that he'd do anything to her in the hallway where anyone could see, no matter how much he might hate her. But he hadn't seemed to hate her. He'd seemed kind of sad, actually.
"Hey, kid."
"Hi." She'd scanned the halls too, looking around like she might find the reason he was talking to her.
"Heard you guys won the rumble."
"I wasn't there…heard you weren't either."
He'd shaken his head. "It doesn't matter, you know? Whoever wins…it don't make any difference."
She'd shrugged, knowing he wasn't wrong. "What else can we do?" she'd asked instead, wishing he could give her an answer. He couldn't though…he was just as trapped as the rest of them, even if he did have money.
The bell had rang, leaving the two of them alone in the hallway, and Pony had kept expecting a teacher to come around and tell them to get to class, but the hallway had been silent apart from the muffled voices of teachers in their rooms behind closed doors.
"You were telling the truth, weren't you," he'd asked her all of a sudden. "When you were talking about Bob…what you said he did."
Pony had felt her whole body go cold and had fought to just stare at him…to keep her expression blank. "What are you talking about?"
He'd just snorted, turning to stare down the empty hall. "I'm just sick of this, you know? Sick and tired. Bob …he was a good guy. The best buddy I ever had. A good fighter and tuff and everything, but he was a real person too, you dig?"
She'd just stared at him.
"Then…that night, he said something about seeing a girl off on her own and…Cherry and Marcia were pissed at us and we…we were just having a good time. Drinking and…just…I never thought he'd do something like that. He was a good guy. He loved Cherry, even when she got pissed at him for drinking too much, and his parents…they spoiled him rotten. Never told him no, not for anything. I think that's what was wrong with him, you know? They'd do anything for him. Nobody would ever lay down the law and just tell him no, no matter how bad he wanted them to."
Randy had looked close to crying but Pony had just felt cold inside. She'd told him 'no.' She'd told him to stop. She'd slapped him right in the face and he still hadn't stopped. Did it matter that he'd been a good guy sometimes? Should she care that he'd been a good friend? That people missed him?
"I knew…soon as you said it…it all made sense. Allen…he wasn't there that night. I never told him…never told anyone."
Pony had wanted to ask what Bob had said…why he'd wanted to come after her. Why he'd left his buddies behind to hurt her. And as she recounted the story to Darry, she could see him itching to get off the bed and hold her…or maybe he wanted to track Randy down and give him the beating he'd been hoping to give him at the rumble. But she hadn't asked. She'd just given the best poker face she had. "I just didn't want him to shoot Dally. I never thought he'd shoot a girl."
"That's what I told the cops," Randy had told her after a second, making her heart leap into her throat. "Told them you never had nothing to do with it. That I saw you at the concessions with Winston that night. Neither of you could have killed Bob. You weren't nowhere near him." He'd hesitated. "I never said anything to them about Bob seeing a girl…didn't want it getting around that he was cheating on Cherry. I didn't think he would. I thought he was just having some fun…blowing off steam, you now? Even now…it's like…I can't believe he'd do something like that."
Pony had felt her lips trembling and she'd forced her eyes to the floor, not wanting him to see her upset. She hadn't let herself ask why he'd lie for her…hadn't wanted to admit to anything, even if he was claiming to be covering for her.
"I was going to come to your house when they let you out of the hospital but I didn't think your brothers would let me talk to you."
She'd said, "probably not," which was maybe the biggest understatement of the century.
"I guess I can't blame them. I never should have let Allen go after a girl. Jesus, kid, I never thought he'd hurt you. He was real torn up after Bob, just like the rest of us. And I know people think I'm a coward for not going to the rumble…my buddies sure do. Hell, I don't know what to do anymore."
"Maybe you ought to find some better friends," she'd suggested, voice dry.
He'd cracked a smile then. "Yeah. Maybe you're right. Who wants to be friends with a soc, though? You get a little money and the whole world hates you."
She'd shrugged. "I think you guys just hate the whole world."
He'd swallowed hard, dropping his gaze for a moment. When he'd finally met her eyes, his had been so full of pain it had hurt to see. "I know it ain't worth nothing, but I'm sorry about what he did. Bob, I mean. And Allen. Hell, all of us. All of it."
Pony had nodded, not sure how to respond. It wasn't okay. And him apologizing for Allen only after the hall was empty and none of his buddies were around wasn't exactly brave. But she'd guessed it counted for something.
"And I ain't gonna tell. Not ever. So you don't have to worry about that."
He'd left then, before she could even respond. He hadn't gone to class either. Instead, he'd walked all the way to the end of the hall and out the door of the school.
"Do you think he was telling the truth?" she asked Darry, and even though there was no way he could know, she was still comforted when he nodded.
"Yeah. I think he might be. If he'd have wanted to rat you out, he'd have done it by now." He hesitated, reaching out and putting a hand on her shoulder. "You okay?"
"Does it matter?" she asked suddenly, meeting his eyes head on for the first time since he'd come in her room. She used to think his eyes were cold, like ice. But when she looked at him now, she could almost see their dad. His eyes were soft, and he looked worried, but worried wasn't mad. "What Randy said…that Bob was a good friend. Does that matter?"
She needed to know. Did it matter if someone was a good person sometimes if they did something awful? If the last thing they ever did was to hurt someone?
Darry looked young, all of a sudden, and she remembered that he was only twenty. He didn't know everything. And maybe, she thought, their parents hadn't known everything either. Maybe everyone was really just doing the best they could, no matter how old they got. "Not to me," he told her after a moment, squeezing her shoulder.
"I don't think it does to me either," she admitted, and he did get up then, wrapping his arms around her and pressing his lips to her hair just like their dad used to. Before, him being nice to her had hurt almost as bad as when they'd fought, because she'd been so afraid that it wouldn't last. Now she just leaned on him, gripping his shirt in her fist.
It wasn't the closest they'd ever get to talking about what Bob had done. She'd talk more about it one night after a nightmare, to him and Soda too. She'd tell them how terrified she'd been, and how afraid that they'd hate her…the words would spill out of her and she wouldn't be able to stop them. And afterwards, they would both hold her for so long they all fell asleep again, the three of them crowded on her bed under the pink comforter her mom had helped her pick out. But not just yet.
When he pulled away, brushing her hair back, he must have been able to see that she didn't want to talk about it anymore, and she was glad when he didn't push it. "What do you want for dinner?"
"I was gonna make tacos."
"I'll get it. You done with your homework?"
"All but English. I've got to write a paper." She held up the assignment. "I guess I know one thing I could write about," she joked. The last few weeks certainly had certainly been an 'important event.' Maybe the most important thing that had ever happened to her, other than her parents dying.
Darry stared down at the assignment for a moment, eyes widening as he read it and put together what she meant, then shook his head. "Don't you dare."
She laughed aloud at that. Thanks to the pain medicine she was on, it barely hurt. "I wasn't gonna."
"Yeah. You better not." He grinned, a sight that wasn't quite so rare anymore. She wondered if Jess's sister would ask him out and she hoped he'd say yes if she did. He really did deserve to have some fun. "When I read that, it better be about your first trip to the zoo, you hear me?"
She grinned. "Sure. I'll write all about how you were too scared to ride the camel."
He rolled his eyes, the grin getting bigger even as he tried to fight it. "Those things bite, you know."
"Even I rode the camel."
"They spit, too."
"I was only six."
He chuckled, patting her shoulder before he left her to it. "Do your homework."
Pony stared at the paper for a long time before the idea finally came to her. She had no intention of writing the truth about the events of the last few weeks, but she wasn't going to write about the zoo either. Instead, she thought, she'd tell the truth about her brothers, and about their family. She'd tell the truth about the gang, who everyone saw as tough, mean greasers, but who, to her, were like older brothers. They might complain about her and tease her and even hurt her feelings sometimes, but they'd always protect her, no matter what.
Hadn't they proven that?
It was risky, and Darry might make her write the whole thing over, but she couldn't help herself as she put pen to paper.
"The whole thing started because of a fight with Susie Matthews, who has been my best friend since we sat together in church, back before we started first grade…"
She would tell the truth about her family and about her friends. She'd tell the truth about how much her brother loved her, and how slow she'd been to realize it. She'd tell the truth about how Susie was the best friend she ever could have asked for. And as for the rest, she'd tell the same story she'd been telling everyone else. After all, she always had been a good liar.
The End
A huge thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed this story. I knew it was a bit of a risk to write a genderbent Outsiders story, but as soon as the idea came to me, I just couldn't let it go. I hope you enjoyed the story, because I had a wonderful time writing it!