We arrived home to find Two-Bit sitting on the bed in the boys' room, supervising as Pony threw the clothes and the other contents of their closet out their bedroom door, while Soda kicked the pile down the hallway into my room. At this point, their closet was pretty much empty, and most of the stuff that usually lay scattered around on their floor had already made the Soda–assisted journey down the hallway. I had taken a slightly different approach to cleaning out my closet, though no more organized, really, in the end. I had shoved everything that hadn't been hanging up into bags, and Darry helped me carry the bags down the hall and toss them into my new closet.

Eventually, all that remained was moving the furniture, and I had been right about Darry wanting to show off how strong he was. Two-Bit and Soda, of course, weren't allowed to help, both being hurt. I wasn't allowed to help with any of the heavy stuff either, since Darry seemed convinced I would drop it on myself or fall over and get crushed under a dresser or something, so he and Pony handled switching Soda and Pony's two dressers for mine, and switching our desks.

Two-Bit provided non-stop commentary and less-than helpful advice the entire time.

"Lift with the knees, Darry, don't they teach you anything worthwhile in that big-shot college?"

"Shut up," Two-Bit," Darry grunted, as he and Pony attempted to negotiate the corner into the hallway with the boys' desk.

"I'm serious. You throw out your back moving furniture and start hobbling around like an old man, ain't nobody gonna hire you to prance around on their roof, all gimpy like that."

"Shut up, Two-Bit." Pony put his end down while Darry reevaluated the clearance of the doorway as compared to the desk legs, eventually turning the desk onto its side.

"I mean it, big guy. Big old football stars can't be pulling muscles and shit like that doing girly stuff like redecorating the house. You got a reputation to preserve."

"If it's such girly stuff, how come I don't get to help?" I asked, and Darry sent Two-Bit a death glare.

"Shut UP!" he repeated, and Two-Bit finally did, just as they managed to get the desk out the door.

The one thing I was allowed to help with was the mattresses – even Darry couldn't come up with any sort of scenario involving me having a debilitating accident involving those. He pulled them off the beds and turned them on their sides, then I pushed them down the hall and lay them against the wall until he and Pony switched the bedframes.

All in all, that part of the transition went pretty quick, and eventually our rooms looked pretty much the same as they always had been, just reversed. The rooms themselves were identical, so mine didn't look any different than it ever had - the only difference was that now I could hear muted voices on both sides of me – Soda and Pony on one side as they remade their bed, and Darry talking with Two-Bit in my parents' room on the other side. Darry had moved most of his stuff into their room already – all that was left was to move their stuff into Darry's old room, and we had decided to wait to do that until after dinner.

I had to admit, I did feel safer, knowing there were brothers on both sides of me. Plus, that tiny little bit of fear in the back of my mind that Steve might someday come back into my room after me felt satisfaction that, if he did, he'd be surprised to find Soda and Pony, rather than me.

I remade my bed, but decided to leave dealing with my closet until later and wandered down into the kitchen to see if I could help out with dinner. I had assumed that it was Darry I had heard messing around in there, so I was surprised to find Two-Bit at the counter, cutting up vegetables for a stew.

"You taking turns cooking here, now?" I asked.

"Yeah, right. I told Darry I'd do this so he could fix the window in your parents' – uh, his room. Been closed so long it's swollen shut."

"Oh." That was a problem. Summer in Tulsa without the benefit of the night breeze could be stifling.

"Want some help?" I couldn't remember ever seeing Two-Bit cooking in our kitchen. He was good about helping with clean-up when he stayed for meals, but the cooking was usually left up to actual Curtises.

"You wanna peel potatoes?" he asked. "Darry doesn't like me having sharp implements in his house," he joked.

"I think he'd prefer you with the peeler than that," I said, pointing to the giant paring knife he was waving around.

"Probably," he admitted, but went back to his cutting anyway.

I jumped up to sit on the counter next to the sink and started peeling.

"So… you think this might help?" he asked, suddenly serious. "With your sleeping, I mean?"

"Maybe... I hope so."

"You still get pretty scared, huh?"

"Sometimes. Not as much as before."

"It ain't gonna happen again, Scout," he looked over at me. "I mean it. There's no way."

"I know. Two-Bit, do you know where he is? Steve? I mean, nobody's really heard from him or anything. Have you?"

"Nope. And I got nothin' good to say to him anyway. If you're worried about him showing up here, don't be. He ain't stupid enough for that, 'specially seein' as Darry ain't even had a piece o' him yet."

I had forgotten about that. Darry hadn't had his revenge, he had stayed with me instead while the others had gone off to take care of Steve. I sighed. I just didn't like it, that I had no idea what had become of him. Things just felt unresolved, and I needed resolution.

Two-Bit gave my arm a quick squeeze, and looked like he wanted to say something, but Darry came back into the kitchen right then.

"Scout, come on… I'm getting sick of telling you to get off the counter. I mean it. This house is falling apart enough without you going around breaking more stuff."

"I'm not breaking anything, Darry. Jeez, you'd think I weighed five hundred pounds or something. Sorry." I jumped down, and he took the peeler out of my hand.

"You two get out of here, it's my turn."

"I don't mind," I said. I was actually starting to really like cooking. I wished we had more money so I could try different stuff – as it were we pretty much ate pasta, hamburger, chicken or some sort of stew-like thing pretty much every night. Every time I saw something that looked interesting at the grocery store, Darry would tell me it was too expensive.

"If you really wanna help, go help the boys get their mess cleaned up. I thought moving rooms might encourage them to clean up a little, but they're just in there sitting around staring at their pile of clothes."

"I'll see what I can do," I said, though it was unlikely either of them would be moved to clean up at my suggestion.

It felt funny, knocking on what had been my own door.

"Yeah?"

"Can I come in?"

"Of course." I opened the door and Darry was right, they were both just lying around, a huge pile of clothes by the closet door.

"Can I help you fold some of that stuff?" I asked. They stared at each other.

"You really think we'd say no to that?" Soda asked, laughing.

"I guess not," I said, "but I'm not doing it myself."

Soda gave me his helpless look.

"You want any help at all, don't even try that."

"Okay, okay," he relented, and they both got up and started sorting the pile by what belonged to who, tossing things at me to fold as I made a Soda pile and a Pony pile. By the time Darry came to get us for dinner, we had made a sizable dent in the pile and I was even slightly encouraged that they might actually complete the task on their own.

Dinner was typical, the boys wanted to know all about what my coach's kid was like, and what his house looked like. Pretty much any house outside of our neighborhood seemed like a mansion to us. To be honest, I was a little embarrassed that Coach would be driving me home and seeing where I lived, though I'm sure he had no misconceptions about my social class. The teachers and coaches really never talked about the Greasers/Socs divide, but they were certainly well aware that it existed.

Two-Bit helped out with the dishes until his Mom came to pick him up, complaining as he left about how "losing his ability to drive was just about equivalent to cutting off his manhood." He got quite the reprimand from Darry, who generally didn't appreciate those kind of comments being made in my presence. I was laughing until he sent me a glance that clearly indicated I shouldn't be finding him funny, or encouraging him in any way.

"Bye, Two-Bit," I said, pulling myself back together.

"Seeya, Scooter. You sleep tight tonight, okay?"

"I'll try."

As soon as he was out the door, Darry turned and looked at the three of us.

"Let's finish this up, huh?"

"Okay," we all agreed. This was the part we all had been dreading so much, packing up our parents' things and moving them into Darry's old room. Since they had been gone, we had left everything pretty much untouched, but I think we all knew that, eventually, we would all need to deal with it, and Darry had come up with a logical reason that this was as good a time as any.

"Where do we start?" I asked, looking around in their room. Darry's stuff was all piled up on the bed. We had decided to leave our parents' furniture in that room and just move their clothes into Darry's old room. They had the nicest furniture – as well as the heaviest, and I think we'd decided to leave it there partly due to laziness after moving things all day, and partly due to sentimentality – we just wanted the room to at least still look like it always had, even if it would be Darry sleeping in there from then on.

"I'll do Dad's dresser, you do Mom's," Darry said to me. "You guys get the closets." Soda headed over to Dad's and Pony headed over to Mom's.

I went over to Mom's dresser and opened her top drawer – underwear, of course. No wonder Darry wanted me to do it. What guy wants to deal with their Mom's underwear? I took it out, placing everything into one of the boxes Darry had gotten from behind the grocery store for the purpose. I folded things neatly, finally emptying out the bottom drawer and closing up the box, labeling it "Mom." Darry finished up with Dad's at just about the same time and he pushed both boxes down the hallway and into the closet of his old room.

Soda had been carrying their shoes and belts and things down and putting them into the closet, while Pony had moved all of their stuff on hangers and hung it up down the hall. I had taken a smaller box in which to put the items that had been on top of their dresser, taking a few of Mom's things to keep in my room – some jewelry, her perfume… and I saw Darry take Dad's picture of our family and put that in his pile of stuff. I added that small box to the growing pile in Darry's old closet.

Finally, Darry reached up and took a bunch of boxes down from the top shelf of Mom's closet. None of us had any idea what they were, so we were pretty surprised to find each one marked with one of our names. Not knowing what lie within, we each took the one with our name and opened it.

Inside each box were things Mom had been saving since the day each of us were born. Everything was there, from our hospital nursery bracelets to cards we had given her or Dad for their last birthdays. We were all stunned. We had no idea that she had been saving any of this stuff.

"Did you know… about this?" Soda asked Darry.

"I had no idea," he said, looking as shocked as the rest of us. Dumbfounded, each of us went through our boxes, laughing at pictures we had drawn when we were little, making fun of each other for things we had written in cards to our parents and each other. What got to me most was something each of us had done in kindergarten: a family portrait. Darry's had Mom, Dad, and he and Soda, Soda's had our parents and the three boys, and Pony's and mine both had all six of us. It was bittersweet, knowing we'd never be that six again. I had a feeling we all felt the same way, and as we looked at them, suddenly we all grew quiet.

Soda brought us all back to reality as he started to laugh. We all wanted to know what was so funny, and he read a story he had written in first grade about what he wanted to be when he grew up.

"When I Grow Up" by Soda Curtis

When I grow up I am going to be a daddy, just like my Daddy. For my job I am going to be a fireman because they get to drive really big trucks and go fast and make a siren and play with hoses and water. For my other jobs I am going to take care of horses and fly planes. I won't eat vegetables because when you grow up you don't have to eat stuff you don't like.

My brother Darry is going to be a strongman in a circus because he is really, really strong. He can pick me and Pony up at the same time. Maybe he might be a daddy too, I'm not sure. My other brother Ponyboy might have to go in jail because he is always taking our stuff and that is stealing and you can go to jail for that. My sister is just a baby but when she grows up she might be a mom or a princess or maybe a nurse.

"Jail? Nice, Soda." Ponyboy was laughing.

"The circus? What the heck Soda, the only one who gets to have a respectable job is you?"

"Princess is a completely respectable job," I said, and they all laughed at me.

"Princess Scout, I presume," Soda said, and bowed his head at me. I grabbed one of Darry shirts off the pile and threw it at him, then jumped on him, forcing him backward on the rug.

"Aw, c'mon, I'm wounded. Don't attack me."

"Scout, get off him," Darry scolded, and I did. We were all quiet for a minute, and finally Pony spoke.

"I think it's really great that Mom saved all this. I mean, someday we can show it all to our kids, and stuff."

"Yeah, when you're thirty, and old enough to have kids," Darry joked.

"Seriously, though, Dar, don't you think this is neat? I mean, to see all this stuff?"

"Yeah," he admitted, "it is pretty neat. Maybe we should try to remember to keep adding important stuff. Like Scout's awards and stuff like that."

"I'll do it," Pony said. "I want to... I'll be in charge of it." It made sense. Pony was the most sentimental of all of us – he would know what kind of stuff deserved to be saved.

"Let's put them in Darry's old room, with the other stuff. Then I'll just add stuff I think should go in. You guys okay with that?"

We all looked at each other.

"Sure, Pone," Darry answered for all of us. "You'd do best at it out of all of us, anyway."

We put our stuff back into our respective boxes and carried them down the hall to Darry's old closet, piling them on top of the boxes that held all of our parents' clothes and possessions. Darry closed the door on all the boxes, and suddenly there was a sense of finality to it all, a feeling of having moved on.

"I think we'd all better get to bed," Darry said, breaking our silence. I hadn't realized it, but we had been looking at the things in our boxes for almost two hours, and it was past ten-thirty.

"Probably," Soda agreed, and we all headed off to our respective new rooms.

I got ready for bed and went down to Darry's room and knocked on the door. He told me to come in, and I sat down on the bed where he lay, reading a book.

"Does it feel weird, being in here?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said, "but I'll get used to it, just like everything else."

"I guess so… Thanks, Darry, for suggesting this… us switching."

"Feel safer?"

"Yeah, I do. So, thanks."

"It was time, anyway," he said, "for this." He motioned to the room and I knew he was right. Moving on was never easy, but it was a necessary step. I was kind of proud of us all for handling it so well.

"Yeah." I stood up. "Night, Darry."

"Night," he called back as I closed his door behind me. "Sleep well," he added.

For the first time in a really long time, I did.

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A/N: As always, thanks for reviewing. Also, I'd appreciate any comments on my latest one-shot, "Something Like a Star." I get really nervous writing Pony POV so input is greatly appreciated.