A/N : Reviewer cookie time! YAY!
NaiveLove: Thanks so much. I'm glad you liked that scene. Cookies for you!
Die an Outsider: Well, here's the next to last chapter...I think. Dally is a hard character to write for. I enjoy doing "fill-in-the-blank" scenes though, because he has such a hard character to pinpoint. It's difficult to look at him and say, "So THAT'S why he does XYZ in such-and-such a way." Cookies for you!
I'mmaBeatYouWithaCrowbar: XD "It's like, Knock, knock, answer the door. Oh, who is it? It's Rick, Mrs. Jones. Can Tom come out to play? Why, yes! Yes, he can most certainly come out to play—WHAT ARE YOU THINKING? YOU'RE ON FUCKING FIRE, YOU DUMBASS!" I can imagine him saying that. Though it'd be kinda OOC. Thanks for all your reviews. Cookies for you!
Free cookies to all reviewers! Now let's get going...shall we?
They've left me in here for days, kid. I can't take it anymore. I'm like a wild animal. I have to get outta here before they trap me for good.
The last nurse comes in. I glare at her. She glares back at me, jerking the needle in a little bit rougher than usual, but I don't fucking care. My arm feels like I've been sleeping on it for days. It's dead weight.
Fuck. I wish I hadn't said the word dead. Freaks me right out. They say I'm having panic attacks now.
What the hell is that? That's for insane motherfuckers. What do they know? It feels like the fucking walls come down, or all of a sudden I could just drop dead, go out, vanish into thin air, all gone. The world just zooms out a million miles into outer space. It's like...I'm going insane and I can't do a damn thing about it. Losing my freakin' mind just staring at the walls.
There is a hell, kid. It's called being stuck in a hospital.
All these needles are making a fucking pin cushion outta my arm. And the machines won't stop buzzing. Can't fucking sleep. Last night, I stayed up. There's no end to that sentence. That's it. No I stayed up drinking until three in the morning bullshit; no. I stayed up. Which means there ain't no rest for the wicked. Couldn't go to fucking sleep with these damn nurses who kept coming in and out. I swear, they're all the same bitch, just with different fucking faces—
"Go AWAY!" I scream.
"Dally," says Two-Bit.
Shit.
I still don't turn around.
"Blade," I say.
Two-Bit's a good man. He just flicks it out and hands it over, no shit ensuing. He loves that blade more than his own sister—and he once split his buddy's head open for hitting on her in the parking lot.
Ponyboy and Two-Bit stand beside my bed and talk about the rumble, the bad blood, the Socs—the whole thing makes my blood boil over. I don't care what you did. It's their fucking fault and they deserve whatever they get.
I turn Two-Bit's blade over. It's black—just like yours.
Black.
Blacker than your eyes.
Blacker than these walls at night.
Blacker than your pupils when you don't stop beating someone who's begging.
Blacker than hot blood.
I flick Two-Bit's blade open and closed. Right now, it's the only thing that keeps me from going off the edge. I think I understand you now, kid. It's clean—makes no noise, no mess. People bleed; blades don't. People hurt; blades just cut. That's all they know how to do. I'm like that. I know something's gonna happen. I'll do it. It's rising in my fucking blood.
The blade opens and snaps shut: open or closed, Grease or Soc, life or death, sane or no sane. It's a choice for me. Here or there? Now or later?
But, then again, I've never really had a choice...you didn't either.
Them and us, kid. I've got to decide. I've got to fight. There's no question about that. But with all the allegiance and backstabbing, all what the bullshit really comes down to is, will I fight for people like them, with people like them, against people like them...or people like you and me?
Like I said, there's no choice—there's only a matter of time.
It's only a matter of time.
They won't let me leave...and I don't know if I'm gonna kill somebody here or there, or now or later. I don't know if I'm gonna snap and stab a greaser walking down the street. I don't know if I'm gonna be righteous grease and rightly lop off a bloodthirsty Soc's head.
At two in the morning I finally close Two-Bit's blade and tuck it under my head. The orderlies don't even notice it there when I wake up from insomnia.
There's nothing I can choose; it will happen.
It's only a matter of time.
I wasn't having a good time when I first got to Tulsa. The first thing I did was got so smashed I almost couldn't see—I swiped a keg from a store. Of course, for our favorite fourteen-year-old hero Dally the Dumbass, the keg I swiped just happened to belong to a guy with a tattoo of a flaming Celtic cross on his chest.
I looked up.
The guy smiled at me.
"You like that?" he said.
"Motherfucker," I greeted him, and with that left the keg still hanging in the air.
My first day in Oklahoma, I somehow managed to get five Hell's Angels riding on my ass.
Yeah.
Good times.
I had dropped it because it was too hard to carry and run my drunk ass off at the same time. Looking back, it didn't really matter either way—either way I was sufficiently sloshed.
That was when I decided to cut across the kid's yard and jump his back fence.
The fence was way too high to jump—I don't know what the hell I was thinking, but it don't take a goddamn long-distance runner to figure out that a five foot six kid can't tackle twelve feet of solid wood leaping from a yard away—and I kicked in my own knee scrambling over. I crashed backwards into the yard because my jacket pulled me back. I didn't realize it got caught on the hurdle over. Nor did I realize I could have just taken said jacket off and jump again. That must have been some wicked liquid I had.
It was going to rain any minute. I thought I'd get sober up once I got good and wet.
I just ripped my sleeve free when something dark blotted out the sun.
"Turn around, hood."
There was an old guy standing there with a '62 Beretta 20-gauge shotgun slung over his shoulder. Even before he raised it I could see he wasn't a real good aim: his grip kept shaking too much. His bluff, I thought. He's smashed to bits.
Shit, I thought, realizing I wasn't exactly Sandra Dee either. If you're drunk and the guy who's holdin' a 20-gauge to your head is just as smashed, does that make you even more dead or about the same?
I heard a twig snap and saw someone creep out from behind him. When my gaze shifted, he waved his hands away from him—he didn't want me giving him away. I didn't know how a little guy like that was gonna take down two hundred pounds of ugly, plus a Beretta 20-gauge, but, figuring I had nothing to lose—what with five Hell's Angels on me anyway—I nearly got my head blasted in half as a little kid with black hair came out from behind the old man and smashed a half-empty bottle over his head.
The bottle exploded, along with half a pint of Jack Daniel's. The old man went down hard in a puff of yellow whiskey. He didn't even bleed. Just went flat-fuck down.
"God damn," I said.
"I'm sorry, Dad," the kid whispered. "I spilled it."
He started picking up the pieces of glass lying around his dad while I stared at him.
"Well? What are you waiting for? Go!" he said.
"Why'd you do that?" I said.
"I don't know," he said. Looking down at the old man, he winced."I—I never done that before. Oh, God, he's gonna kill me when he wakes up!"
"Not my problem," I said, and started to turn away.
"Wait!"
"First you tell me to run, now you want me to wait?"
The kid almost rammed into my back when I stopped.
"Don't follow me," I said, "you little fucker."
Then he looked at me.
I swear, he just looked at me. Nothing else.
"Don't you look at me like that," I said.
"Like what?"
"Like that."
"I don't see anything," he said, looking behind him.
"That's because it's your own face, you dumbshi..." I cut that thought short when he looked at me again. "Uh...forget it. Just forget it. You can't see it."
"Okay," he said."What's your name, anyway?"
I said nothing.
"Mister. What's your name?"
I hate being called Mister, so I grunted: "Dallas."
"Hi. I'm Johnny," the kid said, then added, "you sure gotta funny accent."
"So do you," I said in a most cheerful tone.
"Well, I live here. We all talk like this. Even Ponyboy and his two brothers down the street, they're real tuff and they talk just like—"
I snorted right then. Ponyboy?
"Great. Okies with hippie names," I muttered, flicking out my lighter. "Fuckin' whoop-de-doo."
"It's his real name," he protested. "He says it says so on his birth certificate. I just call him Pony, though, 'cause he doesn't like it when people say his full name. And his brother Sodapop, their dad named him a kinda weird name too. We call him Soda. The only one a' them that don't have a weird name is Darry, but he's the oldest, so their dad musta not have thought of a name for him."
My head throbbed and I had only one suggestion...The Shut the Fuck Up Kid.
"And then there's Two-Bit, who lives around the corner there. His real name is Keith, but we call him Two-Bit. He's super funny. And then there's Steve, Soda's buddy. They work at the gas station on the weekends. And then there's me. I'm the youngest except for Pony. They like to call me Johnnycake."
"Yeah," I said. "Well, that's a mighty fine story, but I—"
"You gotta nickname?"
"I go by the alias Mr. Clean," I said.
"Really?"
I almost smacked myself in the face: "No, not really! Ever hear of sarcasm?"
"What's sarcasm?" he said.
"Oh, good Lord. Forget it."
"Wait! Don't go, Dallas, I didn't mean to—where're you from?"
"First of all, it's Dally—"
"Okay."
"—and I'm from New York." I stopped. "Well, I was. Whatever. Fuck, it don't matter anyway...I'm stuck here and there's nothing to do in this dump."
"You got family here?"
"No." At least, I didn't think so.
"How'd you get here?"
"Got busted by the fuzz one day," I said. "Went fucking AWOL on the dumb pigs. Hitchhiked till I got tired...I was gonna go to some hicktown in north California where my cousin lives. Stopped halfway, I guess, 'cause I heard I had another cousin here. Shit," I said, then put out my light on the sidewalk, "he's probably not even real, the motherfucker."
"You probably needed a break from all that runnin'," he said.
What a weird-ass kid. I had been arrested over twenty times, was drunk off my rocker and a fugitive from the law...and he wasn't fazed a bit. Complete overhead pass.
"Who knows?" I said.
"If your cousin here ain't real, why don't you just go live with your other cousin?" he said.
"I would but I can't get any more rides. It's the face," I said. "I got that criminal look on me. People think I'll cut them up with a spoon as soon as I get in their car. "
"Wait—can a spoon really cut someone up?"
"How should I know?"
"You just busted my fence," he said, as if I was stupid. "By yourself."
"So?"
"So..." He looked at the great big drunken heap lying on the ground."So...I need someone like you to help me with him."
I squinted. "Help you?"
"You know...keep him away from me," he said.
"You've got to be kidding me."
"No, I—"
"I ain't no goddamn bodyguard, kid," I said. "Screw off."
"Look...can you just help me? Just this once—I won't ask you to do it again. Please?"
"So now you're in trouble with your old man? Congratulations," I said. "You have fucked yourself just like every other little kid on the face of the Earth. Now leave me alone."
He stood there, shaking.
"But I'm too small for 'im," he said, his voice breaking. Jesus Christ, talk about dramatic."When he wakes up he beats me with whatever's lying around. Most of the time it's a board or somethin' like that. Please, Dally—I was good all day, but I'm really in for it now—I gotta get away before he catches me, so maybe if you could—just for a minute—wait, don't go, please—he's waking up!"
A rustling. Then,"Boy. Get over here."
He didn't even bother to turn around.
"Boy. You have no time," said the old man.
"Dad—"
"Now. And you call me sir. Got it?"
"Yes," the kid said. "Sir."
The old man got up and walked in front of him. The kid was as frozen as ice.
"Were you running around with that kid?" he said.
"No."
"No what?"
"No, sir," the kid said. "I was talking to him."
"Talking, eh?" he said. "What'd he say?"
"He's—"
"Did he tell you to clip this over your old man's head? Don't you shake your head at me. Are you gonna run away, just like you always do? Whadd'ya gonna do, son? The cops'll cap your ass dead before you ever make it down the street. Don't you know you can kill someone by hitting them on the back of the head like that?"
The kid shook his head.
"'Course you didn't. You don't know nothing. Think I heard you sayin' something about running away before I woke up." He nodded towards me. "Then you tried to get that hood over there to finish the job."
"Dad, I didn't want to—"
"You didn't want to what? You didn't want to get another whippin' today? Were you thinking you coulda killed me? Killed your good old dad just for the hell of it? No one ever told you t' respect your elders?"
"No! I'm telling you, I didn't do it."
"So he did it, then," he said. "He's the one whose brains I should make look like a Pollock painting right now."
He aimed at me and my hand went inside my pocket for my heater; but then the kid stepped right in front of the old man.
"No, Dad! I...I did it."
The old man looked down.
"I mean, I didn't mean to do it," the kid said, "but you were—"
"Look, you little bastard." He shifted his arm and broke open the barrel to show the kid the chamber, then lifted it back and snapped it shut. "I got one fuckin' shot left in his thing."
"Dad," he said. "Don't."
"Who's it gonna be: you or him?"
A small "don't" is all that ran through my ears.
I whipped out my heater. I couldn't think. All I could think of was...heat. That's why they call 'em heaters...no thoughts. No feelings. Just you and the heat.
I fired off a shot, aiming at his chest but ended up clipping his shoulder. It was enough. He fell in a great huge heap, and a split second later I heard a scream from a woman standing in the doorway.
"Mom!" the kid screamed.
She stared at him, mouth gaping; and he stepped back as if he was the one who'd been shot.
Flickers of doors slammed open. Lights all along the side of the neighborhood woke up to the sound of the shot. People began buzzing in the air like flies.
I took him and ran.
There were four bullets left in the chamber. I tore the covering off with my teeth. I cussed as I accidentally bit my tongue and jammed in another clip with red fingers.
"Jesus," I said. "You weren't kidding about him."
The kid hung his head down low. He couldn't have been much younger than me. He looked young though, being so small. His eyes were black and half-closed. He was breathing hard; I think I saw his forehead glisten somewhere beneath his dark hair.
"Mom," he said."Don't cry, Mom."
"Kid—"
He stood up from the tree stump he'd been sitting on.
"Don't call me kid!" he screamed. "Leave me alone!"
"If you'll just listen to me—"
"You hurt Dad. I hurt Dad. Mom was crying. If I go home now, they'll kill me...that's what they wanted all along. But if it makes 'em happy, I guess I'll go home then. So you just get away from me, Dally from New York, you hear? Let me go home."
"What makes you think you're going back home?"
"He's my Dad...I hit him on the head to stun him a little. I did it 'cause I didn't want him to hurt you...but you should have just left me there," he said."You don't even like me. Why'd you do it?"
I almost ripped out a chunk of my hair.
"Jesus Christ!" I screamed. "That spineless wino you call your 'dad' was gonna kill you with a fucking 20-gauge! You're his son! Do you even know how many fucked-up things I've—I mean, you're just a fucking little kid! What if I just let you—"
He lifted his head—his face was flat, his cheeks were dry and white, but his eyes were black and shining. He wasn't a proud kid; he just couldn't get rid of it. No—he couldn't drop it, get rid of it, do something to let it go, just close his eyes and let it out; he kept them locked in tight and never once blinked.
That was why I...
I had been looking at my own face.
"Is that all I am," said Johnny, "just a little kid?"
I said nothing.
"I don't care," he said finally, and sat down on the ground with his head in his lap.
Right then there was a flash of blue flying over our heads. It came out of nowhere and it was way too close. I'd seen lightning strike skyscrapers before, but I only ever remember jumping at this one; this lightning came straight from the sky and struck down a barn. No one—no Greaser, no Soc, not even the oldest of 'em—was ever sure whose barn that was. It wasn't far from the edge of the West Side, on the two-way street where East and West get divided by the Adams intersection, built on a little plot of land they had there right before they got all the new development housing.
The barn collapsed on itself.
I jumped but the ki...Johnny...didn't budge. Didn't wince. Didn't make a sound. Didn't even look up. It was the weirdest thing I'd ever seen. He looked like he would blow up but he didn't. He just sat there, perfectly still in the mud, staring at the grass.
I watched him sit down...well, he didn't sit so much as sink. It looked like he fell into some quicksand, he just kept sinking lower and lower. I almost thought he was trying to bury himself.
He didn't say anything, just sat there staring at the ground.
I looked up.
It had finally started to rain.
When I walk into your room, I feel like there's nothing in there but you, broken and tired. You're asleep, like you're supposed to be when you're not hearing me scream.
You wake up and I don't even hear you. Your eyes pop open.
"Gone with the Wind," you say.
I set the book down.
"Who got you this?" I say.
"Two-Bit. That's the book Pony was readin' to me at the church."
I nod.
"...I heard you the other day," you say. "You must have been scared."
Usually I'd pop someone in the mouth for telling me I was scared. But it's true.
"Yeah," I say. "I was scared."
I sit down in the chair beside you.
It shuffles on the floor as I drag it over.
"I'm not gonna die if you breathe on me, Dally," you say.
I fold my arms and pretend to look out the window.
"Hey," you whisper. "Can I tell you something?"
I shrug.
"That church," you say. "In Windrixville—it was real pretty out there. I wish you'da seen it. All silver mist in the morning, nothing but quiet. Where there's no greasers, no Socs, just people. People, Dally."
"Bunch of rednecks, more like it," I mutter.
"We can try to say we're somethin' we are or we aren't, but it doesn't matter because all we are is just people."
I say nothing.
"Dally."
"Yeah."
"You think Mom—?"
"No."
"But maybe she—?"
"No, Johnnycake. You know that."
"I was just hoping—"
"I know. But you know too. We can't do anything about it."
"You mean you can't," you say.
"Johnny."
"I didn't want her to, but she did it anyway. I told the nurse not to let her in but she still came in, Dally."
Your voice grows smaller with every word. "She came in and told me all about how I was good for nothing...how much better off she and the ol' man will be now."
"Fuck them," I say. Fuck them both.
"But they're my mom and dad, Dally," you say. "That's the thing. They're supposed to love me, and care about me, like how Pony got his brothers after their mom and dad's accident...They're not dead like they are. I mean, I go in that house at night and no one's there. Mom and Dad are sitting in the house, but they're not really there, y'know? And I start to thinkin' maybe I'm not really there too.
"I don't know what's wrong. I walk in, walk out, and nobody notices. It's like being stuck in the Twilight Zone or somethin'. They're wax statues. They come to life only to give me a beating. Well, Dad does, anyway...but what Mom did...it was the first time she even noticed me in months. Geez, Dally—what kind of kid makes his mom forget about him for months on end?
"Mom was supposed to be here for me. But I saw the nurses look at me as they came in with her, and their eyes were real flat...and I realized something.
"All this time, Dally, all this time, it wasn't them.
"It was me. It was me...I...I just never wanted to believe it.
"And as she's going on and on, I'm sitting here thinking, just thinking...Mom, after all these years, you and Dad...you're still my mom, and he's still my old man...just tell me, Mom, let me know...what the hell did I do wrong?"
You swear. You swear for the first time.
I hang my head.
God.
"Johnny," I say.
"Dally," you say. "When she left, I'm just sitting here thinking—thinking—"
You can't finish the sentence.
"No, Johnny. It isn't true. Don't you dare fucking say it is."
You look up at me, looking tired. Too tired, I think.
"—thinking—"
"Don't you...don't you," is all I can say, shaking my head. "Don't you...goddammit."
"—thinking maybe I should have done it after all."
"How can you say that?" I say. "How the hell can you say that?"
You look up at me. You try to smile but you can't do it right.
"Dally...there's been something I..." You blink. "I..."
"You what?"
"Nothing," you say. "Forget it. It's... it's dumb."
You turn away to stare out the window, where, outside, the sun is setting. Orange bars poke through the window blinds and land right on your bed. It must be warm where you are. You're falling asleep, but there's something you want to be awake to say to me. Just say it. I don't care. Just tell me. You can't hide yourself completely; from here your eyes are shining, filled with those black tears again. Don't, kid. Don't. It doesn't matter anymore. Just let it out.
There's something I want to say too, so I guess I understand. I don't know how to say it. It's hard in my throat and I feel like I'm choking on myself.
Then you sigh.
"They're having the...the rumble tonight," you murmur, staring at the window blinds. "I want to see Pony."
"Pony?"
"I want...to see Ponyboy," you say. "Before..."
"Johnny—"
"Dally...can you...please...just go get Pony."
You close your eyes.
The rumble already began, kid. I don't even realize it until it's almost over. That doesn't matter—where in the hell is Ponyboy?
All the pretty little Socs are getting all their pretty little clothes dirty, the fucking little candy-asses. I'd show them how a real motherfucker fights, but I have far more important things to do.
I finally find him and crack some fuckers' skulls on the way there.
"It's Johnny," I say to Pony, dragging him to the car.
To be continued.
A/N: Dally seems a little emo to me today...O.o Dost thou agree'st?