"Holy fucking shit." My brother Darry cursed from a few feet away. Ponyboy immediately released his grip on my hip and we flew apart, like magnets drawn to two separate poles.
"What the hell are you two doing?" Darry looked as though he might throw up right there in front of us.
"Darry..." Pony started.
"I don't wanna hear it, little buddy." Darry stopped and I thought he might finally lose his last meal. "Ally, go that way." Darry gestured to the left. I hurriedly gathered up my book before he could notice what it was, and then I hurried off, afraid to evoke Darry's wrath.
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Darry's POV
Feelings that I had been trying to stamp down came to the surface when I saw Ally and Pony locked in an embrace. I thought about how grown up she looked now; with those sparkling blue eyes- the same color I admired in Marilyn Monroe's. I thought of that soft, pale skin, unmarred by any sort of scars or imperfections. I tried not to think of all the things I would do to her if given half a chance.
"Ponyboy..." I had no idea where to go from there. Everyone down here was starting to look up to me, since I was the oldest at 19, and would be 20 soon. There was pressure to know everything, say everything, and to handle situations correctly and responsibly. I was lost for any words to give Pony except- "you are a braver man than I", or something along the lines of Pony being the first one to act on his impulses dealing with Ally.
Fuck, I still had a hard-on from seeing Ally and imagining that I was kissing her and holding her, instead of Pony. Times like these it was hard being the responsible one, or knowing what to say. The things I wanted to say should never be said.
Speaking of things which aren't, or should never be said, the last few weeks in the attic had become a silent war of masculinity and alpha male. The rope which I had hung in the name of keeping my arms in shape was now a device counting up to Ally's virginity. The lighthearted arm-wrestling that Steve and Soda used to do had now turned into a more serious affair. And bribing was no longer off the table. Though none of this had been explicitly said, I understood Steve and how he gave drags to Ally, and I understood why Dally had originally climbed up to the roof; the same reason all of us sat there every week.
And there she went, traipsing around innocently and reading everything in sight. Looking at Ally now, I couldn't conjure a single brotherly thought. Sure, I still loved her just as much, but it was no longer a brotherly love. The love I'd had for Ally before had rotted on the tree and now my dick was hard enough to fall off. Of course I understood that feeling this way about my baby sister was fucked and wrong- how could I stop though? How could any of us stop?
And would it be too late when we did?
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She found me. I called for Pony, Darry, Soda, Steve, Two-Bit, Johnny, Dally. She found me.
Grandmother dragged me from the attic up into the room, grasping tightly above the crease of my elbow. What had I done? I wondered if God had told her what Ponyboy and I did and if she would punish him too.
"You stupid, foolish girl. How could you leave one of your things in plain sight? You really think that the servants believe a book that hadn't been published yet when we closed off the room years ago would be in there now?"
Oh. The book. Of Mice and Men. So it had fallen off the bed, most likely onto the floor around the bed.
"I'm sorry, Grandmother. I thought I had it under my shirt, I was in a rush, I really didn't mean to, it won't happen again." I used every phrase, excuse and plead in the world. In the end it would not be enough. I heard the belt slip against the fabric of the grandmother's dress.
"Grandmother, please. I didn't mean it." A sob escaped from the confines of its prison and I feebly tried to protect my back and the back of my neck with my hands, legs, and arms.
"ALLY! Where are you?" I heard the voice of Darry, sounding very urgent in deed.
"ALLY!" Even Two-Bit sounded frightened now.
"DARRY!" I cried out, a sob almost breaking the word apart.
"ALLY!" I heard the thumping of footsteps, and soon they were all there. Logically, each one of them could have taken down the old woman with a fingernail. But everyone stayed frozen in place as the grandmother lifted me off of the bed and shut me up in the bathroom with her.
"NO! ALLY! Ally! ALLY!" Someone was banging on the door like a madman, and I was crying so hard that I could almost feel my soul trying to leave because my body was being too loud.
"No." I tried to appeal to the Grandmother, but I had almost resigned myself to this now; I thought back to all of my fantasies of late, how I wished to do dirty things with Steve, how I wished to do dirty things with my own brothers. How I had stared for so long at that dog-eared page in my book. I had been a bad girl indeed.
The belt made its first slash across my back and I screamed.