I went to the movies alone, like I said I would. It was some movie with Brad Pitt and I found myself wishing I looked like him. Even my thoughts were running in the same patterns as the book. It was weird, beyond weird. I didn't care what Jake said, I was right.
I started walking home, thinking a car would start to follow me and any moment I'd get jumped just like Ponyboy did in the novel, just like that. It would happen because my life wasn't my life at all, just a version of a story that's already been told. Nothing was what it seemed to be.
Jake wouldn't know, and I knew why. The movie, movies always leave out shit, and I guess he just didn't see the same similarities that I did. As I was thinking this I saw the fancy car slow down, following me. I got quiet inside of myself, knowing what was coming. Tragedy was barreling down on me. There was no escape.
The rich kids hopped out of their car and I let them surround me. There was no way to stop them. I tried to be like a zen guy, you know, here but not here. I blinked at them, barely struggled as they grabbed my arms and twisted them behind my back and punched me. I remembered when Jake got beat up and how he looked so…bad. I thought of that just like Ponyboy thought about Johnny getting beat up.
And then I was rescued, just like Ponyboy was rescued. Seth and Shawn and Derek chased them off, and beyond them I saw Jake and Diane and Tim, and Diane rushed over to me, shaking me and asking me if I was okay.
"Yeah," I sat on the curb and took a swig of the soda that Jake offered to me, and after everyone asked how I was and finally took off and I was left alone with Jake.
"See?" I said, rubbing my arms where I was punched.
"See what?" he said, kicking at some pebbles that were near his feet.
"See, it happened just like in the book. I've started the events now, I've started the series of events that will lead to the destruction of us all," I looked down, the ground blurring beneath my tears. Jake was shaking his head, his dark hair falling in front of his eyes.
"That didn't happen in the movie," he said.
"So what! The movie doesn't matter! It happened in the book!" I was practically screaming at him, and he was starting to look more than worried.
"Paul, you need to get a grip,"
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The next night was not a school night and who should come over but Derek, wanting to go see a movie at the drive in way out in the boonies two towns over. There would be no stopping it, I knew that. No stopping it. I said that me and Jake would go.
So we went, and on our way there Derek's piece of shit car broke down, and I was freaking out, sputtering about being at the drive in without a car. Derek looked at me sharply from beneath his sheath of white blond hair.
"So, we can just sit in the seats up front," he said, and I sighed.
So there we were, and the pretty cheerleader from school, Cheryl Vincent, was there with her dark haired friend Michelle.
"Watch this," Derek said, and started saying obscene and beyond dirty things to the girls, making Jake and me blush, but of course he would do that because he was Dallas, and that was what Dallas did in the book.