Nothing was going anywhere. I thought how it was so much easier to have some hope a few years ago. My parents were alive. I was smart, I knew it. I'd go to college, Darry would go to college, we'd become successful. Things weren't so bad, I didn't think, not back then. But now, after my parents died and Darry works all the time like a dog and college isn't assured, not anymore. I didn't know how the world was then, how it's easy to get things when you have things, and when you're down, it's easy to stay down. It would be easy for me to quit school and work like Soda did.
It's not like that all the time, I'm not like that all the time. Sometimes I think things will be okay. Things will work out. It's just, all I seem to see sometimes is the negative. I can go a whole day and not see anything good.
Take this one Saturday. Darry was sitting at the kitchen table when I woke up and I saw his eyes, how tired and weary he looked, sipping coffee. He had to go into one of his jobs early that day, and he was just resigned to it.
"Hey, Darry," I said, thinking how uncomfortable I was around him, my own brother. But he was so serious all the time and so tired the other half of the time, and he'd become like my mother and father but in a way that was…half annoying and half sad. He nagged at me and I got it, I knew he wanted things to be okay for me, but it was still hard to hear all the time. It was like I couldn't just be a kid anymore.
So I was just watching T.V. after he left and Soda got up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Soda's just about the only one who doesn't pull out all the negativity that's inside of me. Him and Two-bit, I guess. They both joke and laugh and make things just a little more bearable. But Steve showed up with the scowl on his face and he was all pissed off at his father, and you could read all of it in his narrowed eyes and soft bitter voice. And I thought about all our parents, how our parents were dead, and Steve's old man was such a bastard, and how Two-bit's old man just took off, and Dally's parents I had no idea about but judging by how Dal turned out they were probably pieces of work, and of course Johnny's parents. Then that gets me to thinking about the socs and how perfect everything was for them, with their perfect supportive parents who were all doctors and lawyers and presidents of banks. God, between the seven of us, what did our parents do? Steve's dad was an auto mechanic who gambled and drank away most of his paycheck. Two-bit's mom worked at some sleazy bar where she had to wear that short leopard print dress that barely covered her butt.
Soda and Steve took off for their jobs, and I just still sat there watching T.V. The T.V. bored me, everything bored me, I was only 14 years old and already so bored and disillusioned. I smoked cigarette after cigarette just for something to do.
Johnny came over, just like I expected him to. He didn't knock, no one ever did. He just quietly opened the door and slipped in, sat on the arm of the couch, the collar of his jean jacket flipped up, that black hair in his eyes.
"Hey, Johnny," I said, watching him light up a cigarette. He seemed okay today, which meant that he hadn't had any run-ins with his old man. But there was this quietness and sadness about him that was always there.
From the corner of my eye I watched him. His eyes were so large and dark, almost black like his hair. Everything about him was perfect, the angle of his nose and the fullness of his lips and the way his nails were all bitten down and ragged, that nervous habit of his. I wanted to kiss Johnny, but that would never happen. It would flat out never happen. This desire was a secret and would stay a secret. It wasn't acceptable and there was a reason for that, it was wrong. I knew that. But I also knew I couldn't change how I felt. So I hung out with him because he was my buddy, and I never gave him any clue as to how I really felt. Johnny was generally calm and non-violent, but he might punch me square in the jaw if he knew about the things I wanted to do to him.
I grabbed a pepsi from the fridge just to be doing something and to not have to face him for a second. I felt my ears start to burn as I thought of going over to him and titling his head up to mine, kissing him, feeling his tongue in my mouth.
"Johnny, you want a pepsi?" I said, and without turning to look at me he said yeah. He was watching sports on T.V., football recaps from the games on Friday night, both college and professional. I grabbed a pepsi for him, too, and headed back to the living room to watch the sports with him.