Chapter 6

I was frantic that night. Not only because that was my first night of night school but it was the first time I had to leave Davanee. Soda was holding Davanee while I ran around the house like a madman.

"Let me give you her bedtime routine. It's bath, in the sink not the tub that is, bottle. The powder is in the pantry all you have to do is add water and heat it up. And it's ok if she doesn't finish it. Then put her in her crib with her Minnie mouse blanket and pink teddy but make sure the teddy is laying down next to her. Lay her on her back, not her stomach. Don't forget to sing the teddy bear song. She won't fall asleep until you do."

"Is that all?" asked Soda.

"I think so" I said, putting my shoes on.

"What am I suppose to do if she starts crying?"

"Rock her. She likes that. Play with her too. She likes the little butterfly with the mirror that makes the crinkly noise. And whatever you do, do not give her any chocolate milk. It'll make her sick. She's not old enough to have real food yet."

"And no leaving her alone, right?"

"Now what do you think?"

"No leaving her alone." I double checked my watch. I was going to be late if I didn't get going soon.

"I gotta go. Bye, sweetie. You be a good girl for Uncle Soda. Daddy will be home soon" I said. Before I ran out the door, I gave her a kiss goodbye. I could hear her screaming all the way from the sidewalk. 'Soda's gonna have his hands full tonight' I thought to myself. I don't think he had ever been left to baby sit by himself.

SODA'S POV

I could tell right from the beginning that this was not going to be easy. She screamed for the next twenty minutes or so. I tried rocking her and that seemed to help a little bit but she didn't calm down completely. After an hour of trying everything to get her to stop crying, she finally did.

Before I gave her a bath, I let her play with her toys for a little while. She liked looking at herself in the mirror and the sound that her music box made. I bought her a little ballerina music box that played the nutcracker march from the play The Nutcracker. I know it was June but I thought she would like it.

After we where done with playing with every toy in the house, it was bath time. She cried the first couple of minutes but calmed down once she got use to the soap and water. Once the bath was done, I gave her a bottle. As Pony predicted, she didn't finish it.

I laid her down in her crib (on her back, bear laying down) and sang that stupid song to her. Mom never sang to us when we where little so I don't know why Pony did. The rest of the night was pretty quite except for the whole gang coming over. They tried to be quite but it's almost impossible to keep a bunch of teenage guys quite.

PONY'S POV

I arrived at the school on time. It looked weird at night. Most of the rooms where dark except for the front office and the rooms they where using for night school.

I walked into the front office, not really sure of where I was suppose to be.

"Here for night school?" asked the lady at the front desk. I had seen her around school before. She was short and her shoulder length hair was grey. Her skin was wrinkly and she wore glasses that where about five inches thick. She looked to be about fifty or so. She also looked like she had better things to do then to baby sit a bunch of kids.

I shook my head yes.

"Room A212. It's upstairs." She didn't even look up at me when she answered.

I walked out of the office and upstairs. The school was quite at night. Usually the hallways where loud and crowded. Not this time. There where a few people there, teachers and staff mostly, but the school was still a little on the eerie side.

When I got to the room, I saw that there where about 20 students, half of which where Socs. I walked in and took a seat at one of the tables in the back. Almost everybody's head turned when I walked in, but that was normal because every students head turns when someone walks in the classroom. It's an awkward feeling but I was use to it by then.

I was getting my books organized when Cherry Valance walked in. I was bit shocked to see her there. Night school was normally for kids who couldn't go to school in the day for one reason or another. To my surprise, she took the seat next to me.

"Hey" she said, "I haven't seen you around lately."

"I've been busy."

"Oh. So why are you here? I thought you where a good student?" That was another reason why kids came here. This served as summer school too.

"I thought everybody knows why I'm here" I replied. I honestly thought everybody in Tulsa knew why I was there.

"Oh, yeah. I heard about that. How you holdin' up?"

"Pretty good" I replied, "so why are you here?"

"My mom suggested that I take summer classes. She said that it looks good on a college application. So basically, I'm here against my will."

"Aren't we all?"

"Yeah but my mom just sprung this on me this morning. It was just kinda like 'Good morning. How did you sleep? Oh by the way, you start night school tonight."

"I know exactly how you feel."

"Oh really how?"

I looked around and noticed about half of the class was looking at us and listening in on our conversation.

"I'll tell you later" I said. Before she could say anything in return, Mr. Symes came in and the class started.

School didn't get over until midnight. Cherry was nice enough to drive me home. It wasn't a good idea to be walking alone in my neighborhood late at night.

I said thanks to Cherry for driving me home and made my way up the walk.

"How'd it go?" asked Soda, who was the only one who was still up.

"Fine. How'd everything go here?"

"Fine. She screamed for like, 20 minutes after you left but after that things seemed to settle down."

"Any problem with getting her to sleep?"

"Nope. None that I can think of."

"Good. Where is everybody?"

"Ummm…..Darry went to bed. Everybody else was over here earlier. Steve and Johnny said they'd probably be back later."

"Nothing out of the usual?"

"Nope, so what happened at school?"

"Nothing really. It's just like normal school except it's dark out and you don't switch classes. There where a bunch of Socs in the class."

"How many?"

"10 maybe. Cherry Valance was there. She sat next to me in the back row and we talked a little before class started."

"What did you talk about?" asked Soda, going into the kitchen.

"Just stuff. Stuff like we where both there and you know, stuff like that" I said, sitting on the counter.

"What did you say?"

"The truth. I figured everybody else knew already so it'd be ok if she knew."

"And why was she there?" asked Soda.

"Parents made her go."

"Typical. Listen, I think I'm gonna go to bed. You comin'?"

"No. She'll be up in an hour so there' s really not point in trying to sleep."

"See ya in the morning" said Soda.

"Night" I said. I hopped off the counter and flipped on the TV. The news was on but I didn't really watch it.

Around one or so, Davanee started crying. I gave her a bottle and everything but she didn't seem to be calming down.

"What's the matter, sweetie?" I asked. I felt her forehead, hoping that it was cool. But sure enough it was hot. I got the thermometer out. It read 102. I started panicking. I had never had a sick kid before and I myself hardly ever gets sick.

"Darry, Darry" I said, shaking him to wake him up.

"What?" he asked in a groggy voice, "what's wrong?"

"Davanee's sick. We gotta take her to the doctor."

Without saying a word, Darry got up and got dressed. I didn't bother changing Davanee. It was ok for her to go in her pajamas. Actually, it was cute for her to go in her pajamas.

Even though the speed limit was 50, Darry was doing 70 the whole way to the hospital. This was the first time Davanee had a fever and we didn't know if it was serious or not. When we got to the hospital, the receptionist told us to fill out a bunch of forms and to wait for a doctor. I wanted to scream 'my child is sick and you tell me to fill out papers!' but I didn't because I was too tired.

About an hour later, a doctor came and got us. This was new doctor.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"I'm Dr. Phoenix. Your Ponyboy right?"

I nodded my head yes.

"And the baby must be Davanee?"

"Yeah." An idiot could figure that one out.

"Let's see what's goin' on here" said Dr. Phoenix, setting Davanee on the table that you sit on when you go to the doctors office. The doctor shined a light in her mouth and then in her ears. He wrote something down on his clipboard and said, "it's just an ear infection. It normally goes away within 3 or 4 days. In the mean time, I'm going prescribe some antibiotics for her. These antibiotics are for babies only so they wouldn't work on you. What you do is you give it to her by using an eye dropper. The right amount should be printed on the bottle but if it's not I would suggest ½ a teaspoon. I think that should be all" said Dr. Phoenix, writing the prescription. All I could think was 'that's it? That's all you can do? What kind of a doctor are you anyways?' but then again, it was only an ear infection. It wasn't like it was cancer or anything.

Dr. Phoenix handed me the prescription and after we left the hospital, we went to the local pharmacy that was open 24 hrs. I stayed in the car with Davanee while Darry dropped the prescription off. It wasn't good for a sick baby to be out this late, so I thought it would be good to keep her in the car and let her sleep a little.

In about 20 minutes, we where home, putting Davanee back to bed for a couple of hours. It was 3 am by the time we got back.

"When did they say we could pick up the medicine?" I asked.

"8 o'clock. Soda will have to drive you because I've gotta be at work by then. I'm gonna try to get some sleep. You should do the same." I nodded, too tired to give a real response.

Darry was about half way to his room when I said, "hey Dar."

"Yeah?"

"Thanks for coming with me. I'm sorry you had to lose so much sleep."
"It's ok" said Darry. We left the conversation at that. Darry went back to bed, while I collapsed on the couch. I found it very hard to sleep that night knowing that Davanee was sick. I vaguely wondered if this was how Mom and Dad felt when Darry first got sick. I wondered if they had stayed up all night, worrying about him. I'm sure they probably did. They always stayed up with me whenever I was sick and couldn't sleep. Thinking of mom and dad brought tears to my eyes. If Mom where there with me and Davanee, she would know what to do. I had no idea what I was doing. I felt like someone had put a blind fold over my eyes, spun me around a bunch of times, and pointed me in some direction.

I laid down on the couch and closed my eyes. I could see the inside of the house when it was daytime. Soda was sitting at the kitchen table, doing homework, Darry was away at college, and I was sitting in Darry's chair feed Davanee, with Mom watching over my shoulder so she could be quick to correct me if I was doing something wrong.

Dad would be coming home from work at any moment, then we would eat dinner and we'd be happy and laugh at some joke Dad had just told us. Things would be perfect. Part of me wished that dream would come true but I knew it would never come true. How could it? Mom and Dad where buried in the ground in St. Rose Cemetery. Remembering that they where dead brought me back to the scene of the accident.

The car had broken down on the train tracks. They'd tried to get out but it was too late. The two collided and the car got the worst of it. I remember there being thousands of people running around, taking pictures, pulling the bodies from the car. Someone asked me if I wanted to see them before they took them away but I couldn't bring myself to look at them. At the time, Darry told me that they didn't feel any pain and that they had gone peacefully, but as time went on and as I got older, I slowly realized that there is no way you can't feel anything when your in an accident like that.

It was raining the day of the funeral. I kept trying to tell myself that they weren't dead and that they're bodies weren't really lying in those caskets but when I got home that day, reality hit me. And it hit me hard, kinda like how it hit me when Davanee got sick. I cried all that night and all the next day, about my parents that is.

I was awoken by the sound of Davanee's crying. I hadn't realized that I had fallen asleep. The first thing I did was feel Davanee's forehead. She still felt warm. I took her out of her crib and rocked her, singing to her softly the whole time. I felt bad because there wasn't much I could do about her fever then. We didn't have the medicine and we wouldn't till sometime after 8 o'clock. It was only 5. Once Davanee was done crying, I took her out to the kitchen. To my surprise, I saw Soda cooking breakfast.

"What are you doing up so early? You don't have to go to work until later today" I said, sitting down at the kitchen table.

"Couldn't sleep. You sleep at all last night?"

"No. Darry and I where at the hospital with Davanee last night. She has an ear infection. She's been asleep most of the night until just a couple of minutes ago. We didn't get in until 3 this morning."

"Oh, you want me to make you some coffee?"

"Could you?" I asked.

"Yeah, sure."

I had never wanted coffee so badly before.

"What are you doing today?" I asked.

"Nothing in the morning but I'm workin' in the afternoon. I dunno if I can baby sit Davanee tonight."

"That's ok. I think I'm gonna stay home anyways. I don't wanna leave her alone when she's sick."

"I think Darry'll understand that. You need the rest anyways. You look terrible" said Soda, placing a cup of coffee in front of me. I made a funny face because the coffee tasted terrible. Then, for the first time, Davanee laughed. It took me a minute to register the sound. Everything stopped when I heard her laugh and no matter how terrible a night I had the night before, I laughed and smiled too.