Chapter 3

"But I just wanted to be part of the family," I sniffled quietly. Ponyboy looked annoyed. So far, everybody else had accepted me as the youngest Curtis sibling. I even had a bedroom and a closet full of clothes (that I found kind of hideous, if you want the truth). But they were reacting to me like I was a little kid who was in the way. Everybody had their own thing going on so that nobody was paying any attention to me. "Can't you at least have somebody notice me?"

Ponyboy sighed. "Look, I'm not actually controlling anyone. I'm just letting them be themselves by keeping you from changing them. It's not up to me how they see you."

I gaped at him, horrified. "But I'm supposed to be part of the gang!"

I must have really looked like a wreck, because Ponyboy's voice took on a more gentle tone, and he seemed to choose his words carefully. "Well, it kind of seems like, you know, the gang sort of, well . . . I think you're just our little sister to them. You know? I don't think they really see you as part of the gang, per se."

I wanted to throw up. "But why?"

He blinked at me. "Well, you're . . . a girl. And you're, what, thirteen? Barely? You probably still play with Barbie dolls, right?"

Again, I was horrified. How did he know that? "I do not!" I snapped.

"Well, whatever. Look, I'm not sure what you want me to say to you. All I can offer is, get some sleep, and maybe you'll have things worked out better tomorrow." He must have been starting to feel sorry for me. Darry had had me make dinner, and then he got annoyed and gave me a talking to about money and our lack of it when I burned the chicken and served crunchy baked potatoes. I had been in tears pretty much the whole evening, since we had gotten back from the encounter with the hot rich guys. I should have just made myself Bob's sister. They probably had a cook and a maid.

Ponyboy glanced at the door. "Look, I need to go finish my homework before Darry comes checking on it. You gonna be okay?"

I sniffed. Sure, now he was being all nice, now that he'd gotten my story all messed up. "I'm fine," I whispered shakily.

"Good." I watched him wander out of the room and close the door behind him. If it had gone my way, he would have hugged me and told me I could sleep in his and Soda's room so I wouldn't be scared. That, I thought indignantly, would have made a much better ending to the chapter.

Thinking about the Socs as I rubbed my bruised arm, I leaned back onto the lumpy mattress and stared out the window at the streetlight. Some people walked past outside talking in loud rough voices. A shiver ran through me. Where was sensitive Soda when I needed him? I pulled the covers over my head and spent the next two hours falling asleep.

#

Darry gave me an expectant look. "What is it?" His eyes were boring into me, and all I could do was stare at his face and notice things I hadn't picked up on the day before: his nose was straight and even, and his features were sharp and well-defined. His eyes, while kind of bluish-greenish, didn't look cold to me at all. They looked decisive, and smart, and confident, and maybe a little tired, but not cold. "Sarah?"

I took a breath. "Um . . . I was just thinking, can I . . . is it alright if I go to the movies with Ponyboy tonight? I mean, if I stay with -"

"No," he cut in. "I already said no. Why are you asking me again?" Now his eyes were looking a tad impatient, and the word irritated was also coming to mind. He picked up a hand weight and curled it up to his shoulder.

"No problem," I said quickly. "I mean, sorry. I'll just stay here. Yep. I'm sure I'll find plenty to do, here. Maybe a game of Scrabble, or some Monopoly, or I'll re-categorize my MP3 stuff . . . ."

Having given me his answer, Darry was ignoring me and had already moved on to a conversation with Soda, who was across the room pulling his shirt on.

"Sarah?" Soda was looking at me with concern. Finally! Apparently I had phased out for a second.

"Yes?"

"Could you quit staring at me like that? It's kind of creepy."

"Oh." I nodded. "Okay."

Soda raised his eyebrows and waited.

"I'll just go in my room. And play with my Barbies," I muttered under my breath.

I ran into Ponyboy on the way to my room. "Hi," I greeted grumpily.

"Hey." He started to walk past me, but then turned. "So, how's it going?" The hint of a smile was pulling at the corners of his mouth.

I won't give him the satisfaction, I thought. "Going? Oh, great! It's going great!" I smiled hugely. "Exactly according to plan!"

Ponyboy gave a knowing grin. "Yeah. Okay. Well, good luck with that."

"And where exactly are you going?" I huffed.

He shrugged. "Out. It doesn't matter. Nothing happens again until tonight, so I have some free time. See ya' later." Ponyboy pressed by me, and a few seconds later the front door slammed.

I sighed. "Nice. Very nice." Now what was I supposed to do? I wandered into my bedroom and circled the bed, pausing to kick some cobwebs out of the corner with my shoe before stepping up to the window and holding the curtain aside. There wasn't much more going on outside than there was in my room. I ended up flopping down on the bed with an issue of Seventeen magazine that totally sucked me in for the next hour. I couldn't believe the kinds of things girls went through just to fix their hair – curlers the size of a burrito, hairdryers that wrapped onto your head like a swim cap on steroids, and ozone-eating aerosol hairspray to finish it all off.

"Are you ready?"

I jumped and looked over the magazine to the doorway. "What?"

Steve looked down at his watch, then back at me. "Huh?"

"I said, 'what'?"

He gave his head a little shake. "Are you ready to leave?"

I wasn't sure how to respond. Was I ready? It really sucked, not knowing what was going through everybody else's head. "Uh . . . am I ready?"

I guess Steve got tired of playing games. "Come on, let's go." He dug through his pocket as I trailed him toward the front door. "Here's the money from Darry."

I took the wad of bills from his hand and flipped through it. There was a twenty, a couple of fives, and some ones. "Wow. There's enough here for plenty of . . . uh . . . ."

Steve gave me an odd look. "Groceries."

"Groceries?" I followed him out the front door. "I'm going grocery shopping?" What the heck? For a minute, I forgot I was supposed to know what was going on.

After opening the passenger door for me, Steve circled his car, pulled open the driver's side door, and hopped in behind the wheel. "Just like every other weekend."

"Right," I agreed. "Since Darry's at work."

That comment got me something of an amused look. "Why the heck'd Darry be at work today?"

"No, that's not what I meant. You know, since he's doing . . . ." Steve started the engine as I slid into the passenger seat, "his . . . weekend stuff." It took us about three minutes to get to the grocery store, which was nothing like the Super Shopper Plus I was used to. It was maybe a tenth of the size.

"Could you close the door?" Steve called out.

I looked back. "Oh! Sorry. Hey, wait, Steve? Um . . . am I being picked up like normal? I mean, you know, by . . . ." I waved my hand in a circle.

He nodded. "Soda. I'd imagine so. He's your brother, though, so you'd know better than me." Having supplied me with that immensely useless bit of information, Steve took off.

It took me almost two hours to do the grocery shopping. It just wasn't something I had ever done on my own, and I kept thinking of stuff that would go with things that were already in the cart, so I'd have to backtrack to where the fruit was, or over to the meat, and then I'd realize I had no idea if we had enough toilet paper. You get the idea. It sucked. And then, it took the cashier about twenty minutes to ring everything up. She had to look at the price sticker on every single item and punch it into the cash register. The produce was a pain, because she had to weigh it, type in the weight, and then put in the price. And on top of it all, I ended up having to choose some things to subtract back out again because I didn't have enough money.

I hefted the cart out to the front of the store and checked around the little parking lot for Soda. There were only six cars, so it wasn't too hard to establish that he wasn't there yet. So, I sat down to wait. On the plus side, I figured as I gazed at the ground in front of me, I probably had a little bit of time to collect a few rocks for my Grandpa.

One hour and seven minutes later, Sodapop stood in front of me, smiling down like everything was peachy. "Been waiting long?"

I was aghast. "Almost two hours!" I exaggerated. Seriously, though, I might have been there that long, if the actual shopping hadn't taken so long. "There's milk in here, and raw chicken! And it's, like, ninety-five degrees!" Beads of sweat dribbled down my chest like melted butter. It was gross.

He gave me an indignantly amused smirk. "So how come you didn't call me when you were ready?"

"Call you?"

Soda hefted one of the bags into the trunk before pointing to the payphone. "Yeah, call me. Like you usually do. Forget to bring a dime?"

I straightened my skirt and tried to look casual. "I was getting some sun. It's a nice day." He thinks I'm insane. He's going to just take off with the groceries, leave me here, and let me fend for myself.

"Sarah!"

I jumped.

Soda motioned impatiently from inside the car. "Get in already! Gotta get you home, so you can get started on dinner. I'm starvin'."

#

"But why do I have to do the cooking all the time?" I persisted. We'd been at it since I had walked in the front door.

Darry gave a deep sigh as he pulled groceries from the bags. "You like to cook," he told me. "Good Lord, Sarah, did you buy anything besides chicken, potatoes, and corn?"

"Rice," I said. "I bought rice."

"Yeah, I noticed. Six boxes."

I smiled. "Seventeen cents a box! Can you believe that? Seventeen cents, for a whole box of rice!" Darry shook his head, but not in a good way, and I suddenly realized we'd gotten off track. "Okay," I conceded, "let's just say I like cooking. Do you thing I want to necessarily do it all the time?"

He gave me a tired look. "Sarah, why are you doing this now? It's after five, and I'd like to take a quick nap before my shift tonight. Can we talk about who does what later on? As in, after dinner?"

I pulled two cans of corn out of a bag – seven cents a can! – and nodded. "Sure. After dinner."

After dinner, Ponyboy and Soda both left, so I jumped right back into my conversation with Darry. "So I was thinking that we should all cook sometimes. I don't think it's fair for me to do it all the time."

Darry rubbed the side of his head with his palm. "Sarah, you volunteered to do the cooking. You said you liked it. You wanted practice, remember?"

"Practice?"

He shrugged. "For when you get married."

I gasped. "M . . . Married? I'm only thirteen!"

"Well, sure, you're not getting married next week. But after secretary school -"

"Stop!" I could almost feel the bile rising in my throat. "Secretary school?" Not that there's anything wrong with secretaries. I just didn't want to be one.

Darry got up to put his dishes in the sink, then turned around to look at me like he was gazing upon an alien. An annoying alien. "What in the world is wrong with you? You've been talking about being a secretary since you were eight years old!"

Right. I've got a past that I know nothing about. "But what about college?"

By the look on Darry's face, you'd think I had just set a forty-pound bag of wet concrete across his shoulders. Something like defeated sympathy crossed his eyes. "Honey, I cannot pay for you and Ponyboy both to go to college. You know that. Besides, what would you go to college for?"

"Rockets!" I blurted out. "I'd like to be a rocket scientist." Don't even ask me where that one came from; it had never even entered my mind before that instant.

Darry gave me a skeptical look and turned the faucet on. "Sarah, you failed math last year. You need to be good at math for that kind of stuff."

"Alright, maybe something different then. But how come Ponyboy can go, and not me?"

Apparently that was about the simplest question in the world. "Because he'll be the head of a household," Darry reasoned. "Ponyboy will have to support a family someday. Whereas you . . . ."

"Will get married when I'm nineteen, raise three kids, and get a clock from my husband's place of employment when he retires fifty-some years from now." I was starting to get the picture. I also realized I had just added a whole new dimension of worry to Darry's overbooked schedule. And that was definitely not the way to get on his good side, which was what I needed right then. "You know," I said matter-of-factly, "I think being a secretary will be fun after all. I like to type."

Darry seemed to breathe a little easier.