Chapter 4

"So, what do you do at this job?"

Darry pulled his shirt over his head and smoothed back his damp hair. "The machine shop? We make things."

"Oh." That wasn't vague at all. "What kinds of things?" I was sitting on the edge of the coffee table watching Darry get ready for work while we waited for one of the neighbors, Mrs. Arben, to come and babysit me. Just the thought of being babysat made me want to puke.

Darry pulled out a dining room chair and sat down to pull on his boots. The smell of soap and shampoo wafted over to me. "We make all kinds of things, but mostly metal parts for machinery. Companies place orders, tell us what they need, and we cut and weld and assemble for them."

"Yeah? That's cool. And you'll be back . . . ." I was doing a lot of trailing off and hand waving just to get people to fill in all the blanks for me. They were going to start thinking I was losing my mind or something.

"I'll be done at midnight. They squeezed me in for a half-shift tonight, with all the work going on for the . . . ." Darry took a look at my vacant expression. "Nevermind." He stood up, rolled his shoulders around, and tapped my nose with his finger on his way to the door. "Be good for Mrs. Arben. She likes talking to you."

I stood up. "Have I ever, like, not, been good for Mrs. Arben?"

He peeked out the front curtain before turning back to me. "I would hope not. I'd understand if you weren't, though," he added in a near-mumble.

#

"You're still up? Yoo-hoo. Sarah?" Darry's hand swiped in front of my face.

"Huh?" Had he actually said yoo-hoo? Was that something tough people said?

"I think you should go get in your bed," he suggested.

I sat bolt upright. "No! I mean, no. I'm fine." I looked over at the clock on the wall. It was half past midnight. Apparently I'd fallen asleep on the couch, and Darry had just gotten home from work. Mrs. Arben, The World's Biggest Gossiping Chatterbox, was nowhere in sight. She had spent most of the evening talking on the phone while I played solitaire on the coffee table.

Darry was looking at me like he wanted to say something, but thought it would come out rude or tacky. You know: the look people give you when you have spinach between your teeth, or mascara on your cheek, or . . . or drool running out of your mouth toward your chin. I wiped my sleeve across my mouth and pretended I wasn't about ready to crawl into the cushions. "Um . . . how about a game or something?"

Darry looked like he was about to laugh. He shook his head instead and dropped his wallet and keys on the phone table. "Pick up the playing cards before you leave the room," he told me in a bored warning tone, like he was only saying it because it was his duty.

I took my time gathering up the cards so I could think, and I tossed out some small talk while I was at it to keep me on Darry's good side. "How was work?" I asked, and then shifted my brain from listening mode to thinking mode while he told me something about work.

I figured Ponyboy and Johnny must be getting back from the movies soon, but Ponyboy had never mentioned in the book what time it was when they got to the lot. Figure the movie starts around eight, two movies show, so four hours at most, but if Darry was going crazy by two in the morning it must have been at least an hour after he was expecting Ponyboy, and the stars had noticeably shifted by the time Pony woke up . . . .

"I think I see somebody over in the lot," I said, peering out the front curtains.

Darry stepped out of the kitchen with a glass of milk. "What?"

"The lot," I repeated. "Someone is over there."

"How can you possibly see the lot from here?" Darry asked, coming over to kneel on the couch beside me. "It's not even over that way."

I quickly pretended I had just been rotating my neck around, like when you fall asleep on the couch and get a kink and can hardly move your head to the right without a shooting pain driving through your shoulder. At least I knew they had aspirin in the medicine cabinet. "No, I was talking about over there," I said. "See?" I'm positive that the only thing Darry could see through the front window was our reflections, because that's the only thing I could see, but I had to keep at it if I wanted him to believe me. "Over there. Hey . . . maybe it's Ponyboy and Johnny!" I said in the tone I would have used if I thought I had just spotted Johnny Depp sauntering by.

Darry still looked skeptical and was possibly questioning why I even cared if they were out at the lot in the first place.

"It's really cold out," I went on chattering, "and you know, I'm pretty sure Ponyboy didn't wear his jacket."

Darry shrugged. "He's a big boy. If he's cold and he can't think to come home and get warm, that's his problem."

"Well," I reasoned, "maybe Johnny doesn't want to come. You know how he is about making anyone feel put out," I said, hoping I was right. "Maybe Ponyboy is trying to convince Johnny to come over our house instead of sleeping in the lot," I added, figuring it didn't hurt to make Pony look like he was doing something sensible, thereby moving us even farther from the yell-hit-run scenario.

I could see the wheels turning in Darry's head at that one. "I did hear his parents going at it on my way by," he admitted.

"Great!" I said, maybe a little too excited, so I toned it down some. "I mean, maybe we should go out there and get them. Johnny will listen to you, right? And I'll make some hot chocolate. It'll be fun! Just like when mom was alive," I finished, not really knowing why I said it – but what kid doesn't have memories of mom pouring hot chocolate on a cold day? – and something like a wistful longing crossed Darry's face.

"Yeah," he nodded. "Sure. Let's go see if it's them. It's almost time for Ponyboy to be home anyway."

I slid into my shoes and pulled my jacket on to follow Darry out the front door. "I can't believe you saw them from our front window," Darry marveled again once we were in sight of them, even glancing back to look at his – our – house.

Johnny looked kind of surprised to see us come walking up. Ponyboy shot me an infuriated look.

"Hi!" I greeted. "We thought you might want to come back to the house for some hot chocolate."

"We're just talking here," Ponyboy explained, glancing warily at Darry. "I'll be home soon."

"But it's cold," I insisted.

"It's not that cold," Ponyboy said, teeth chattering.

Johnny was looking between us like he was getting uncomfortable. "It's alright, Pone, we can go back -"

"But we were talking," Pony insisted through clenched teeth.

"You can talk inside," Darry pointed out sensibly. "Let's go."

"But I still have twenty minutes before curfew," Ponyboy said in a last-ditch effort to keep things on track.

Johnny stood up. "You know, some hot chocolate does sound good, man."

I gave Ponyboy a victorious look, and he hauled himself up off the ground to follow a few steps behind us.

Had I won? Had it really been that easy?

#

The four of us filed into the house, where I rushed into the kitchen to make some hot chocolate which, I realized suddenly, I had no idea how to make. They didn't have any of those little packet things with the dehydrated marshmallows in them. All I could find was cocoa powder. Well, chocolate is chocolate, right? I dumped some into a saucepan with some milk and heated it up.

"So how was the movie?" I asked five minutes later, shuffling into the dining room with a teetering tray full of steaming mugs.

Ponyboy gave a disgruntled shrug while Johnny reddened, but gave a slight smile.

"Did anything exciting happen?" I urged. "I mean, did you meet any girls or anything?"

Pony, still not looking at me, rolled his eyes, Darry looked kind of amused, and Johnny gave me a questioning look. But in a nice way. I think. Jeez, he really did look tough. I mean, if I hadn't read the book, I might have thought he was just as likely to mug me as hug me.

"We met a couple girls," Johnny admitted after what I would classify as an awkward pause. "They were –"

"Gah!" Darry sputtered, wiping hot chocolate off his chin with a napkin and then setting the mug down with a repulsed clunk. "Sarah, I think you left something out," he told me.

Ponyboy, looking suddenly interested, leaned forward and took a tentative sip, which resulted in a reaction similar to Darry's, only Ponyboy actually spit some of his drink out in an arching spray. "Didn't you put any sugar in this?" he demanded in a tone that was far too accusing for something as trivial as hot chocolate.

I waved a dismissive hand and turned my attention back to Johnny. "I don't remember. So Johnny, did you –"

"I left something in the lot," Ponyboy cut in.

I glared at him. "No you didn't."

He glared back. "Yes, I did." He turned to Darry, who was shoveling spoonfuls of sugar into his mug in an apparent attempt to rectify my mistake. "Darry, Sarah and I are taking a walk back to the lot to get my cigarettes."

Darry didn't bother looking up. "Don't stay out there. Just get them, get back, and go to bed." He glanced up. "Johnny, go ahead and get a blanket from my room; take the couch."

Ponyboy threw on his jacket, then took me by the arm and nearly dragged me out the front door. "Ow!" I yelped when my ankle twisted off the bottom step. "Slow down!"

His grip on my arm tightened, and I swear he sped up. "You just had to mess everything up," he said as soon as he'd hauled me halfway to the lot.

"What? What's messed up?" He stopped and turned to face me when I yanked my arm out of his grip. "This can be a romance. Why not, right? It doesn't have to be messed up. Or the Socs can jump somebody else, and the rumble can still . . . what?"

Ponyboy was shaking his head, his expression hard. "You just don't get it, do you? It's not even worth telling if it's the same-old same-old. It's just not good enough for a story. And that's what you want, isn't it? A story that's worthy of being told?" He took a step closer to me, and I realized he was kind of taller than I'd realized, and the closeness combined with the expression on his face was intimidating. Forgetting for a second that Ponyboy was sensitive and harmless, I took an almost involuntary step backwards. "It doesn't really matter, though, does it?" he said, leaning in so close I could smell the chocolate on his breath. "It doesn't matter what you think should happen. Because as of right now, Sarah Jean Curtis, you're out of chapters."