"Come on, I wanna beat traffic home," Steve barks at Molly after a glance at his watch. Mostly because once traffic hit, you'd never hear the end of it with how bad it could be. "Specially if you wanna get to that damn race so bad."

"Yeah, yeah. You parked at the department store, right?" Molly runs her fingers through her hair, finishing off the cookie she'd bought. "We can just go through there." She still looks uncomfortable in those fancy, Soc like clothes her mother got for her as they walk. "Maybe I can steal something that doesn't look like my grandma made it."

Steve gives a glare to an actual Soc kid as he falls into step with her as she makes her way out of the main throat of the mall. The Soc backs off, wisely, and Steve wonders for a moment what he'll say to her after all of that, after her insistence he not sound like a nag. He wants to talk more about Soda, but talking about the race doesn't feel right til they got closer to home and talking about how Molly was clearly scratching at her already red wrists...

Race it was.

"You planning on taking any bets?" He goes through the well lit, almost too bright department store, over the carpets. This was a place he'd rather steal from than actually shop at, not like he had the cash. "Or are you gonna worm your way into the driver's seat again?" His fingers twitch, wanting to lift up some of the things on display, wanting to get a need to prove himself as a greaser over and over again.

It'd be easier if Soda were here.

"The second," Molly eyes some of the earrings they have on display. "I could out drive most anyone out here. What about you? You gonna mope or are you gonna help me win? Cause if we win, I'll split the winnings!"

"Them winnings ain't gonna be much," Steve snorts.

"You could use every cent," a new voice rings out, acidic.

Steve whips around, stares. "Ivy?"

Her face doesn't look anything except sour as she considers him. Ivy the street tough who runs a gang is always in acidic green with white or black, always has her hair up in a high ponytail, and looks pretty mysterious. The Ivy who's working at this counter looks like some topsy-turvy bizarro version of herself where her hair is stylish in the Soc girl way, curled at the ends along her shoulders instead of that straight set she usually has. It's not pulled into a ponytail — it's held back with a green headband instead of her usual green ribbon that always made her distinct. The earrings she wears are clearly from the store, as is the ugly white blouse and what he's sure is a skirt.

He knows if he laughs, she'll have zero problem punching him in the face. He still says, "You trying out to replace Cherry Valance?"

Ivy looks livid as she considers him, and Steve gives a vicious smile at her as he nudges Molly. "Look at Ivy, dolled up like —"

"A good looking broad you couldn't catch with flypaper," Molly says smoothly, her voice tinged with annoyance.

Ivy's glare at Steve is much more softened at Molly. "It's good to see you too, Molly. Your cousin, not so much."

"He's not very housebroken," Molly says, Steve ready to wrap a hand around her elbow. "You coming to the race tonight? We're both going to see if we can win the pot."

"I will be. Your cousin might have other plans," those acidic green nails tap on the glass counter in a sharp way that's almost like a snap to get Steve's attention. "His pack is having a meeting tonight, with our leader. Two-Bit told me to give him that message, right from his pack alpha."

"With Ed? What the hell for –"

"I wasn't told," the way Ivy snaps is harsher, a baring of teeth. "Only that you had to show up. Now, are you going to buy anything or are you going to leave?" Her voice takes on that tone that always makes Steve thinks she's more like a Soc girl than a greaser, with the way it's clearly mocking him, as if she knows something he doesn't.

"What time?"

"At the bonfire, like usual," the sneer on her face is more subtle, sharp than Dallas'. "Don't be late — Even Soda will have to be there."

Steve hates the way that he wants to ask her more in that instant, and the only reason he stops is because Molly beats him with, "He'll be there. C'mon, Steve — I need a change."

Molly is clearly warning him, and he hates, hates, how much he wants the bonfire to come already even if it's just to get a snatch of time out of Soda.

The rest of the day, Ponyboy does what he's supposed to do. He doesn't want to think about the extra time Dallas had spent with him in the car until they popped in, cleaned up and ate lunch with Johnny. Thinking about it might get him in trouble, make him squirm in his seat if he remembers how eager Dallas was to reassert the mark. He does, however, want to think about the schoolwork in front of him, about what he has to do to keep his grades up, make sure he can scrape by with a A- this semester if nothing else. He wants to focus on being here, appearing like a good kid.

Except he can't. He can't think about getting an equation correct when he's thinking not about the meeting with Eugene at his office and instead was fixated on the bonfire that night. It was easier to focus on the bonfire than to think about the trial, about what they'd have to get suits for and avoid the newspapers.

He's thinking about what Dallas said to him, about what he'd meant when he looked at him, talked about no matter what. Ponyboy agreed with it, the implication, and hadn't thought about more. That Dallas meant he'd do anything in a way that could break the law, that could simply have them disappearing or...

For a moment, Ponyboy thinks about Jay Mountain, about the blue skies. Thinks about Dallas with him in an intact church, dressed up like a country boy, grousing the whole time.

He grins, thinking about it. As the bell rings for his last period, he hears snatches of words down a hallway, " – seen Steve Randle? At all?"

Shit. Steve didn't know.

And then Ponyboy thinks: would he even show up?

There's a real fear that he might not, one that makes Ponyboy's stomach twist.

Bigger than that is that if Steve doesn't know, how would Soda know?

His pencil taps on his paper. He thinks about their pack, about what they would have to get through. What they have to do, in order to be themselves again, in order to move forward. And what that might mean, what it would take.

He thinks too about Johnny, about him by the fire, watching the stars. What Johnny had said about the countryside, about being past all of that.

It feels as if they'll never truly get past it, as Ponyboy's eyes flit from his paper to see a Soc glaring at him from across the room.

Then the bell rings.

"Nothing on the radio is good down here," Molly grouses, flipping through station after station. The car is all but flying down the highway as Steve white knuckles it, her hair flying about as they go. "Don't you have The Kinks around here? Or The Byrds —"

"There ain't no goddamn way I'm going to that pack meeting," Steve declares, forcing the car to go faster. "Those assholes have spent weeks ignoring me and they think I should come see them now for some little kumbaya bullshit? No way."

Molly fiddles with the station again. "We really should listen to something that isn't that fucking Beatles s—"

"I'm right!" Steve's voice inches up louder. "I'm right, I had every right to call Sandy a slut, I had every right to say it when she's the one who got knocked up —"

The sound in the car jumps so quick and so high that Steve reacts on automatic, forcing the car to the side, skidding on the road. "What the hell, Molly!"

She whips her head around, her eyes blazing. "You know what you are, Steve? You're an asshole and I don't mean it in a good way!" She grips the gearshift as Steve hits the brake, forcing the car to a halt, her teeth flashing. "Do you think I was a slut when I got pregnant last summer?"

The words are stinging, and too late he realizes her eyes are wet with tears. Shit. Shit. "That – that's not the same. You weren't with someone."

"And what if I had been?" Molly bares her teeth, her omega scent turning sour, angry. "What If I had been with someone and the guy raped me? Or what if it was just an accident? Would you be calling me a slut, Steve? Would you have told my boyfriend to his face those names?"

For the first time in a long time, Steve's neck grows hot. He feels trapped with her in that moment but not the same way he feels trapped when his old man just hit him or called him a dumb punk. This is a kind of trapped that makes him feel like she's just shoved him into a small box, and one he probably deserved. "That's not the same. I know you, you're not like her. You've never been —"

"Yes I am, yes I am you jerk!" Tears are streaming down her face now. "You're so concentrated on everything else! I'm like her, I know what it's like to be pregnant like that, and have everyone call you names and hate you and I don't even have my baby."

Instantly, he knows that she shouldn't have said that, that he shouldn't have heard. Her mouth clicks shut, her hands coming to cover her mouth. He reaches out to her, to try and pull her into a hug as she cries silently.

Cars zoom past. Steve feels shame in his stomach.

Her hands come from her mouth, her voice shaking. "They just want to have a friend who they wanna keep and all you do is bitch and moan! So what if she cheated on him, you loser. She's gone, she's probably alone and afraid. And," she rubs at her eyes, her make up running on her face, "You didn't have to rub it in when you could've sucked it up, comforted him and maybe actually dated him. Instead you're just treated her like everyone treats me – god, fuck you Steve!"

Furious, Molly gathers her bag, scrambling out of the car. Stunned, Steve cries out, "Where are you going? We gotta get to Tulsa!" He doesn't want her out on the road like that, covered in tears, shivering, upset.

"I'm going alone! Maybe I'll see you tonight!" She sticks her thumb out, refusing to look at him as she walks down the road. He throws the car into drive, curses when he can't get off the side of the road. "I don't wanna be seen with you."

"Molly —" the tires turn, and he gets out of the grass and dirt. There's no way to swing back, and by the time he manages to even approach the exit, a car has slowed down already. Molly throws him the finger, and then climbs into the car on her own before he can stop her.

They blow right past him in seconds, and Steve is left, banging his hand furiously on the wheel, angry.

The one person he had left on his side. Gone.

He bangs the wheel until his hand hurts, and then he's forced to drive to Tulsa by himself. Molly would do fine as a hitchhiker, and yet...

His teeth grind down. Molly wasn't the same as Sandy. She wasn't.

Soda shouldn't be his problem, wasn't his problem. Except there wasn't any denying the fact that after that fight, things had been worse not better. He'd been ignoring him at work, had been talking to Ivy more, had been not telling him anything at all.

Of everyone, Soda is the one he cared about most. It'd gotten him in trouble more than once – like the time he'd deliberately tricked Ponyboy into a closet for a whole day when Pony was three and Mrs. Curtis had prevented him from seeing Soda for a week. Or when he'd deliberately ask Evie out just to see if it made Soda jealous and she'd slapped him when it was clear he wasn't actually interested in dating her. Or when he'd said what he said.

He was right. Sandy was a slut, a whore, a sloppy, secondhand fuck.

Unwillingly, though, he thinks of Molly's mother and her cold face. Of the phone calls Molly had given where she had begged to get away from her as her belly grew. Of how he'd hear her sobbing herself to sleep at times, well aware of the stares. Of how hollow her voice sounded on the phone when her mother had refused to tell her what kind of baby she had, and how she howled for them in the night.

Being wrong wasn't in the cards for him. Wasn't ever. He couldn't be wrong, only...

Only he finds himself parking at the DX as schools are letting out the last of people, as the sun is starting to move towards evening. He finds himself asking around for Soda, and when he's told Soda hadn't even come in for work...

Steve Randle finally concedes.

He's wrong. He's been wrong.

💖 thanks for reading! i'll see you guys next week!