6:50 A.M. That was time to get up. I groaned and put the pillow over my face. I hated getting up this early. But I did, I got up and got dressed and touched my hair, knowing it was gonna get chopped today.
After breakfast and cleaning up breakfast we didn't go to the same break room like usual. We went down the corridor to another place, me and Pony and a few others and the staff person, the kind of smiley one from the first day.
"Where are we going?" Ponyboy said, and I looked at his hair, long and free of grease. His hair was still pretty tuff, him and Soda never had to use much grease on it anyway.
"Haircut. Then the doctor," he said.
"Doctor?" Pony said, and I didn't know why but I dreaded seeing a doctor. I'd gone to doctors before in emergency rooms when I had to have a broken arm set or something, and the doctors never cared that my old man was the one who broke my arm in the first place.
I sighed and sat in the chair in the hallway as one by one they went in and came out looking like socs with neat hair, and Pony went before me. He gave me a look, a sad desperate kind of look. I knew how he felt. He came out looking like some different version, it just didn't look like him. Then it was my turn.
The barber was some old guy who didn't approve of how long our hair was, I could tell by the way he looked at it.
"Don't you ever get haircuts?" he said, picking up a piece of my jet black hair. I shook my head.
"Not too much," I said. And he cut it and shaved it around the back and sides and I hated it. I looked so stupid this way. But I guess it didn't matter. What did it matter now?
Then we had to go and see the doctor. I was sitting there on the exam table in one of those paper hospital gown things. I breathed in and out when he told me to, that cold stethoscope against my skin.
I felt better being back in my clothes. We were sitting in another hallway in the cold hard chairs, this time waiting to talk to a psychologist. They must think we were crazy, or at least me. Pony actually didn't do anything. I thought after the first court date they'd let him go home. I knew they would. He didn't do nothing. He didn't kill anybody. I did. I was the crazy one.
The psychologist's office was kinda nice. There were plants all over the place and shiny little knick knack things and the chair was real comfortable, it was plushy and had arm rests and everything. I sat there thinking I could fall asleep in this chair.
"Johnny, how are you?" he said. He was kinda old, not that old, maybe 40's or something.
"Okay,"
"What happened? How did you get here?" he said, and I closed my eyes. I wasn't good at this, talking about all this stuff. And I didn't really want to talk about it. What good would it do?
"My friend was being drowned at this park, and then…I stopped them," There. I couldn't explain it, I didn't want to say it. I killed that kid. Killed him. Now he'd never have nothing, everything was done for him because of me.
"So you acted in self defense?" he said, and he didn't look really judgmental or nothing. I shrugged.
"Yeah, I guess so,"
"How do you feel about it?" he said, and I swung my feet.
"Feel about what?" I said, wanting to bite my nails. I touched my short sideburn, it felt funny, all shaved like that.
"How do you feel about what you did?"
God, this guy. I closed my eyes again, seeing the kid lying so still in the moonlight, and the darkness made the blood look a funny color, dark red, maroon. I could see it spreading so slowly, this puddle of blood, a swimming pool worth. There was a lot of blood in people.
"Lousy, man. I feel awful. That kid, that soc that I killed, he was only 17 or 18 and I killed him, man. I mean, he was drowning Ponyboy, he was gonna beat me up, they had a knife…but I still feel lousy that I had to do that,"
"So you feel you had to do that?" he said, and now I was biting my nails.
"I didn't know what to do. They were gonna kill Ponyboy, they were. They were gonna kill me. They beat me up before, those same guys, and I hadn't done nothing. This time me and Ponyboy were talking to their girlfriends. Us, a couple of lowlife hoods, greasers, white trash. That, they couldn't accept that. They were gonna kill Ponyboy and then they were gonna kill me. Maybe they would have drowned me, too, or just beaten me to death, or stabbed me or something. They were so drunk, like my old man gets drunk, and when people are so mad and drinking like that there's no stopping them,"
"Your "old man" your father, he drinks? Is he violent, too?"
I looked sideways out the window. This was not good. Maybe it sounded so bad. I didn't know. I didn't want to talk about my stupid folks, either.
"Yeah," I said, not looking at this guy anymore. I'd said enough.