Darry always told him to use his head, retrace his steps. Thinking with his head, for normal things hasn't ever been Ponyboy's strong suit. They've always known that, he's always been trying to do it and hasn't ever been very good at it.
Problems that Ponyboy could solve tended to be emotional. He couldn't always understand the logic of a math problem, but an emotional one, he could do it, break it down with his head. As he thinks about Dallas, about Dallas haunting him, he begins to wonder if Dallas coming back to him wasn't a logical problem so much as it was an emotional one.
Though he doesn't need to go back to school for the last few days, he goes back one more time. He doesn't check out books, he sneaks them out, the dimestore novels, the thick books about ghosts that he'd dismissed out of hand weeks before. They still weren't academic; they felt silly even between his fingers as he reads them on and off as the snow begins to pile outside, and he spends more time at home rather than hanging out with anyone else.
Whenever he's asked, he tells them that he's working on an assignment. He hates that he's still lying, that he has to still do this.
The rest of him, however, is determined. He needs to untangle this, needs to find a way, any way to get Dallas back.
He picks at it, at the memories. Dallas dying. The morgue. The funeral. The burial. Two years of nothing. The kids, and then…
Ponyboy takes a drag from the Kools he has, always circling everything after. He'd been distracted, wrapped up in Dallas since he'd come back, since that first little scare. Everything that had happened since he'd first shown up felt entirely unreal in it's recollection.
Still, he pries. Pulls at the threads, from the ouija board the kids had to when he'd been sick, feeling that unique, slick cold on and in him.
Buying a ouija board was simply not in the picture. From the money to even finding one was impossible, especially if he were only to use it once. It was a toy, as far as he thought, and not one worth trying to steal or spend money on. Nothing he considered with it felt legitimate or worth the risk. If it was real, it would make sense that Johnny would have come back, too.
Johnny had been in pain. Johnny had been the one who seemed more desperate to live out of the two of them, despite his letter.
It had to be something else for Dallas.
After awhile, it seems like he's running in circles, simply hurting himself or too distracted by other things. He puts the books down and decides that he can turn his attention to other things for the moment, even if those other things aren't that pleasant either, as Christmas begins to creep closer and closer.
It's hard to celebrate Christmas. It used to be his favorite time of the year, able to invite Johnny inside for longer stretches than usual, able to have a bit of Christmas tree when they could, exchanging simple presents. Three years on and there wasn't much expectation between them except that they'd all be home together, no arguments between any of them, and any greaser who wanted to come in, could come in.
This year at least there wasn't a reason to have an argument, at least on Ponyboy's end. Everything for college had already been sent off, his grades were fine, and as far as he could make it, things had been quiet. Ever since Soda had run off, they'd been trying to work on things for the better, trying to make sure that they could work things out.
Had it been perfect? Not necessarily. There had been a huge argument in the previous spring when he'd been messing up in class or two, enough that Ponyboy had been the one to leave the house again, had gone running into the night like he had years before — only there wasn't Darry hitting him that had done it.
That time, Darry had run after him, and it had been hard, really hard to let everything out again.
And it hadn't happened since.
About the only thing that Ponyboy could hope for in the coming days was that he could appear normal. He could feel normal, the way he had before Dallas had come back. He could pretend to be that Ponyboy again, if only for a little while.
Or, he could try.
Even with Dallas unable to be at the edge of his sight again, even without the feeling of cold seeping in him, Ponyboy feels as if there is a piece of Dallas with him. A piece of him, still there that he's desperately trying to grasp onto, to try and tug Dallas back to him at any cost, for any reason.
The only evidence, beside his own memory are dreams. Before Dallas, the night terrors had come and gone; with Dallas, it had been a mixture of dreams and memories. Now, he was lucky if he had a dream at all, and what he had, he could only remember in spurts of color and sound, some of them glimpses of memories some of them without sense. Sometimes, they were of that apartment in New York that he knew belonged to Dallas' mother; sometimes, they were of the night Dallas died whether it was Ponyboy seeing his body hit the ground, of Dallas reaching out to him with his name on his lips or of Dallas, looking up at Ponyboy's frozen, anguished face.
The world hadn't seemed real then. It hadn't seemed true, Johnny dying hadn't seemed real in the moment, still hadn't landed in him correctly yet Dallas' had. It had fallen into him, thudded in with cold reality that Johnny's death hadn't done yet.
The dreams, Dallas' haunting all seem to tip the world back on it's head: Johnny's death real, Dallas' own the piece of unreality, tearing at the seams. The one that occurs Christmas morning almost feels more of the same unreality: he's back in Dallas' shoes now. He's gripping the phone, dialing as best he can. There's blood still on his mouth, his reflection distorted, awful.
Johnny's dead. Dallas accepted Johnny was dead, and he hated it. His mouth is mumbling out the words to Darry, the sound of the cops starting to grow. There's a racing thought to take Two-Bit's switchblade with him, but as the sirens grow louder, as Darry gives confirmation over the line he hangs it up. The switchblade stays there, leaning against the booth, and Dallas takes off.
He has to make it. He has to make it to the house.
His feet strike the pavement, hard, the sound loud. One after the other, his breath in his ears, his heart pounding louder and louder as if it understood it was on a time limit.
Ponyboy feels his heart beating with his as he runs into night. Can feel his anguish, his rage, can feel Dallas' thoughts come in inelegant circles of emotion, each turn making it worse, each thought rattling furiously in his mind. What was going to happen next? Was he going to see Darry lose his brothers? Was he going to see Steve's father finally kick him out for good or kill him? Two-Bit never crawling out of a drink? Was he going to have to watch Ponyboy end up like Johnny one day, too kind, too compassionate for his own good, die like that? One moment, where he wasn't there, and he'd be like Johnny, dying with a broken back over kids who didn't even deserve it?
No. No, no, no.
He raises the gun, as determined as he was now as he was a ten years old, being put in jail for the first time in his life. He wants to die before he wants to see that happen. He doesn't want to see Ponyboy dead like that, doesn't want to live in a world where it could happen.
Explosions near his stomach. His chest. Blood, spilling out on his front, coming from his mouth. Satisfaction blooms in his face. His body falling, falling.
Looking up. The last thing he sees is Ponyboy's anguished bruised face.
He reaches up toward him, reaches, begging-
The sound of a door slamming knocks him clear out of the dream. He's gasping for breath against a cold pillow, and the sound of Soda walking around the house replaces the sound of gunfire. His hand curls around his abdomen, seeking blood and only coming up with fabric. Sweat pours down his face, his heart keeps pounding and pounding. Ponyboy shakes, waits for his brother to leave. Once the door shuts again, he's alone.
He buries his face into his pillow and screams and screams and screams. Screams out the anger, the frustration, the loneliness. Screams until he realizes that he's crying, and he doesn't want to cry anymore.