"Dallas! Wake up! Come on! My mom'll be up here any second!" She shoved Dallas' chest, hard.

"What! Where…where are we?" He asked drowsily; barely awake.

"My house stupid. Now get up; I hafta get to work. I'm gunna be late." She told him, pulling on her uniform. Cherry was a carhop down at the local drive-in restaurant. She tossed him his shirt. It hit him in the face and he woke up a little more. "Take the window to get outside. Don't let them see your car."

"No 'Good morning Dallas'?" He laughed.

She grabbed her rollerskates, slung them over her shoulder, and gave him a proper wake-up call before she walked out her bedroom door. "Good morning. I hope you slept well. Now stay out of trouble. If you need any help, be sure to let me know. Unfortunately the waffle-maker is broken; otherwise I'd fully invite you to go have breakfast with my parents. " She told him like a perfectly hospitable hostess.

"Whatever you say baby." She had already left. Dallas pulled on his shirt, buttoned up his pants and crawled out the window. He sat on her roof, greasing back his hair as part of his morning ritual before jumping down to the ground and walking over to his car. Her parents had probably seen Dallas through the window. Like he had mentioned, he didn't like Cherry's strict unloving parents, so he didn't care if they knew. He had half an inclination to wave at them.

Dallas didn't have a particularly good place to go. Cherry was the only one between the two of them that could hold down a job. So he figured he'd stop by the gas station Sodapop and Steve worked at.

They seemed happy to see him when he pulled into the tiny parking lot.

"Hey, Dally! Hey, where you been man?" Steve asked him as he marched over.

"Hey Steve! Blame Cherry man. She's been keeping me busy."

"Yeah, yeah, where is Cherry? I miss that girl." She was practically a member of the gang herself.

"She's got a job. You know how she is; she wants to go to college and all that."

"Can't understand it myself- Hey Soda, git over here!" Steve yelled over his shoulder.

"Hold on Steve, I'm helping a customer!" Came Soda's voice from behind the gas station.

"Dally's here!"

Sodapop ran over faster than Dallas would have thought possible. And before he knew it, Soda was giving him one of Soda's famous hugs and roughing up his hair.

"Easy pal, it hasn't been that long since I talked to you guys last." Dallas was really pretty happy to see them too though it was the truth. Cherry or not, Dallas was still part of the gang, and he always stayed in touch with the guys.

"What do you got on your face man?" Steve asked him, genuinely confused. Dallas was confused too, and for a second he thought Steve meant the bruise. He really wasn't in the mood to explain why he was over on the South side getting in fights, even if he was usually proud of his battle wounds. He leaned down to look in the side-view mirror of a car that wasn't his.

Cherry had drawn on his face while Dallas was asleep. On the opposite cheek of the bruise, but in the same spot, she had drawn a cherry-bomb in black marker. Her trademark. "That girl must still hate me." Dallas mumbled amusedly.

"Here." Sodapop handed him a rag. Dallas wiped off his face, not caring that the rag had marks of gasoline and engine grease on it.

"Better?" he asked. Now he had a big greasy mark on his cheek, but they nodded anyway. "Alright, great. Hey, what do ya guys say we go find the rest of the gang…" Dallas grabbed a six-pack of beers "…And we bring these?"

"First of all, even friend's don't get to take free beer, secondly, our shift ain't even over until another two hours." Steve reminded Dallas. Dallas still didn't let go of the beers.

"Buzzkill." He countered without wavering. Then he dug some money out of his pocket. "Fill me up with gas and I'll go find 'em myself." As they filled the New Yorker up, Dallas realized something. Something that made his stomach hurt. They'd probably work at a gas station for the rest of their lives. Sodapop was the type of guy that could do that and love it, and Steve would be fine as long as he had Soda, but they didn't have any choice in the matter. This was what Greasers had to live with. "Hey man, take this too. For the beers." Dallas handed them a little additional money. Dallas never paid for his beers, so this astounded both of them.

"Alright, see you 'round buddy." Sodapop told him, mouth still hanging open in shock.

As Dallas drove he was afflicted with a lot of thoughts he wish he didn't have to think about. Dallas was nearly an adult now. He'd like to marry Cherry. But how was that supposed to happen when they had no place to go. Dallas didn't want to grow up. It was fun to be a rebellious teenager in the wrong side of Tulsa, but when you stick around thinking it will always be that way, you just end up a pathetic adult with no purpose. He couldn't handle being a middle-aged man who bags groceries and ends up sobbing out his life's tragedies to a customer who really only wanted to buy milk and go home. He had seen that happen before, when he was a kid. He promised himself he wouldn't end up like that. Of course then the 7-year-old Dallas stole a candy bar while the clerk was busy crying.

Cherry was right. They had to get out of that godforsaken town.

He ended up with his face on the steering wheel as he sat there parked behind an old building. It was all really hitting him. Ponyboy? He was so smart, but he'll never get anywhere. Darrel? The hardest working guy you'd ever meet, but all in vain. He had already addressed the fates of Soda and Steve. And Johnny? God bless the poor kid if he can even make it through the next few years without having a nervous breakdown or getting himself killed. Or, with the way things are going with his parents, kill himself.

Dallas ventured into a part of his mind he tended to stay away from; his own parents. He hadn't spoken to his father in months. He didn't even know where is mother was. Dallas shook his head and pulled himself out of that part of his mind. Pulling himself out of the way of danger and into safety.

Thing's shouldn't have to be like this. He thought. Then he put his car into drive and pointedly decided he had to go talk to the other guys.

Dallas felt so relieved to see the roof of Darrel's house coming into view through his windshield when he finally got there. He slammed his door shut and walked through the front-door without so much as knocking.

"Anyone in here? It's Dally." He said to no one in particular as he looked around the house.

His answer came from Two-Bit. "Nobody's home!" He chimed in a mock-female-sounding voice. Dallas shut the door to find that Two-Bit was behind it, sitting on the countertop. He had his hands around what was once a full chocolate cake and was looking up at Dallas like a kid who got caught, well, with chocolate frosting all over his face.

"Are Darrel and Pony even home?" Dallas asked him. Two-bit still hadn't moved. Like maybe if he didn't move Dallas wouldn't see him.

"No they're not home yet." He mumbled.

"So you're just here eating their cake?" Two-Bit simply nodded. "Alright, fair enough. Stop looking at me like that, I'm not a cop." Two-Bit laughed and tore off a piece for Dallas handed it to him. They ate without plates, or knives or forks or any of those needless things.

"So what brings you to the neighborhood?" He asked Dally, wiping some chocolate frosting off his lips with the back of his sleeve.

"Who, me?" Dallas asked him. Of course he knew Two-bit was talking to him, he was the only other person in the room. He was just trying to fill dead air while he thought of something to say. He was hoping he could talk to Darrel or Ponyboy or even Johnny. Two-Bit was a nice guy, but he was nearly as insensitive as, well… Dallas.

He hadn't even thought about the fate of Two-Bit. Probably because that was a bloodcurdling thing to imagine. Two-Bit was kind of a momma's boy, might have trouble moving out of his house, snuck over to other people's houses to steal their cake and couldn't keep his mouth shut to save his life. Dallas had a feeling all these things and more would eventually catch up to Two-Bit. He had a feeling Two-Bit would be someone who ended up soiling grocery sacks with tears. But he still liked Two-Bit.

"Naw, I meant the cake. Sometimes I like talking to it when I get real lonely." Two-Bit told him sarcastically.

"Yeah man, you would." Dallas answered; laughing and jumping up to join him up on the countertop.

He joked around with Two-Bit there for the next couple of hours, shoving the feelings that had been tormenting him back into that corner in his mind. He told himself he was just saving them for later; for a better time. Truth be told he was just waiting for those robberies with Cherry so that he could forget them completely.

So at 5:00 when Cherry's shift ended, Dallas was already in the parking lot. She smiled at the sight of him sitting there with his arm hanging out the window, waiting for her.

Cherry skated over to him. "Okay, so I've been thinking about this all day- I think we can actually really do this Dally!" She hopped into the passenger seat. "I was thinking we could do a break-in robbery tonight. We'll want to start off subtle, so we can get as much as we can done before people start to take us seriously-"He clamped his hand over her mouth to shut her up.

"Slow down, wouldya? I mean, really Cherry, you're settin' yourself up for a stroke." He removed his hand from her mouth.

"Sorry, I guess you're right." she admitted softly, blushing as she unlaced her skates and grimaced a little. "I hate these blisters." She wasn't talking to Dallas now, but more cursing her boss that wasn't even around. "I'm just glad I could focus on this plan thing, and not how annoying my customers seemed to be today." Now she was talking to Dallas. But she always thought her customers were annoying.

"Well, I thought about it a little too to be honest." Dallas told her. Her face immediately flickered with a small amount of pride. "Yeah, I mean, I think this might be just what Greasers need."

"And soon too." She agreed, nodding and leaning her head back.

He briefly wondered whether or not she had even clocked out, but didn't feel like mentioning anything. "Alright, so, to get to what's really important…"

She turned to look at him "What do you mean?"

"Do I get the hammer, or do you?"

"I get it, of course." She was suddenly bellicose.

"I don't think you do." He argued.

"And why not!" She demanded.

"Well you have your boot thing. You don't really need the hammer too do you?"

"The pipe is a quality weapon too!" She tried to persuade him.

"Yeah, and I'm sure you could really make it work for you." He tried to persuade her.

She thought it over. She realized that they really weren't entirely adults yet. The thought made her kind of happy, and therefore more agreeable. "Fine. I will."

He kept his feelings of victory to himself and pulled out of the parking lot.

They spent the rest of the evening sitting in the restaurant's vacant kitchen, discussing tactics and eating cheap cheeseburgers on the sticky linoleum floor. When it finally got dark it was time. They were met by feelings of both hesitation and anticipation. They weren't really sure what to expect. Would they return home with money and triumph? Or would they end up spending the night in a jail cell? Or worse yet; lying there bleeding in the gutter?

They couldn't know until they tried.