Chapter One

When I was ten, I moved with my dad and my brother, Dallas, from New York City to Tulsa, Oklahoma. In Oklahoma, Dally's friends became my friends. I was too shy and scared to find any of my own. Lucky for me, when Dally fell in with a group of hood kids—like I knew he would—they were the best hood kids.

Unlike my brother, two of them, Two-Bit Mathews and Sodapop Curtis, were always smiling. Sodapop's brothers, Darry and Ponyboy, were more serious. Darry was big and liked to act like a grownup even before the Curtis boys' folks died.

Ponyboy was even shyer than I was, and so was his best friend, Johnny Cade. I don't think I heard either of them talk for the first few weeks that I was in Tulsa. Sodapop had a best friend, too, Steve Randell. He was mad a lot, but Soda had a way of putting—and keeping—Steve in good moods.

These boys pretty much adopted us. I became good friends with Two-Bit's little sister, Karen. For a long time, Karen and I were the only girls around. Then Steve started dating Evie when we were only fourteen, and she got added to the mix. Sodapop started dating Sandy right before his parents passed away.

Speaking of which, when 1964 started out with Mr. and Mrs. Curtis dying in a car accident, we didn't think the year could get any worse.

I was never superstitious before my brother died, but after I was.

Before all the events that happened in that one fateful week, the four of us most involved were hurt. It was like a premonition. First it was Dally. Now, Dally fought more than any of the other boys, so it wasn't weird for him to be hurt from time to time. However, it was weird for Dally to get hurt by ordinary objects.

"So," I said, drawing out that one syllable, "you did this to yourself?"

It had only been a few weeks since Mr. and Mrs. Curtis had been killed in the car accident. Ponyboy's eyes were rimmed with red all the time, from all his crying.

Dallas was mad, but that didn't bother me none. I knew his anger wouldn't be directed at me. The rest of his gang, plus Karen, Evie, and Sandy, all watched wide-eyed as I pressed a wet wash cloth to his eyebrow.

"Yes." He mumbled. You see, Dallas liked beer. I don't care for it. I think it tastes like puke. But Dally loved it, and he especially loved it from a bottle. And one day, not long after Mr. and Mrs. Curtis were killed in a car accident, Dally had been opening a beer when—get this—the bottle cap popped off and caught him on the eyebrow.

Under Dally's bleeding eyebrows, his eyes narrowed. He glared at me like it was my fault, eyes blue and icy.

"I'm kinda amazed how much that's bleedin'," Two-Bit chipped in. He was more than a little soused himself, or otherwise I have no doubt he would have taken in Dallas's expression and stayed quiet.

When the bleeding finally stopped, I put peroxide on it, making Dally scowl up at me. "Oh, quit your belly-achin'. It's better than gettin' infected."

Dally's eyebrows were so pale that you could hardly see the curved scar that bottle cap left behind. If you really looked, you could see how the C-shaped scar cut through his eyebrow in half.

Johnny was the next to get hurt, and his injuries, I think, are really the beginning of it all. Johnny was beat up by the Socs, the rivals of the boys. We lived on the poor side of town, and the Socs called us greasers—because of all the hair grease the boys wore. We called them Socs, short for 'social', because they acted like they were in a snobby club all together.

It was nothing new for the Socs to jump us. They even jumped us girls a few times; once, Sandy had a black eye for a week from a Soc when she told him she wouldn't get in his car. I was lucky that Dallas was my brother. Neither the Soc or rougher greaser boys ever bothered me. But Johnny was beat almost to death by those Socs, and they left him a long, thin scar on his face.

None of us girls were there immediately after. We all saw Johnny a day or two later, but I remember Dally was so mad that he, Steve, Two-Bit, and Dally's best friend Tim Shepherd went on a rampage through the Soc's side of town. They all came back with busted lips and bleeding noses, black eyes and scraped up knuckles. Still, none of looked as bad as Johnny.

I had seen my brother the night after Johnny was beat, though. Dally was madder than I had ever seen him. His eyes were like blue fire. He had actually come home for once. He punched the tree in our front yard so hard that the bark splintered under his fist. Dally wouldn't let me clean it after; he just went to his room, slamming the door behind him.

Sodapop was itching to go with them the day Dally led the others to the Socs's side of town, but if he did that, and they got caught, he'd be put in a boy's home with Ponyboy for sure. They couldn't afford for either Soda or Pony to get in trouble, now that their parents were gone, and Darry was taking care of the boys.

"You know, it just ain't fair," he ranted to Sandy, Karen and I the day it was planned to happen. We were sitting in the DX while Soda wiped down counters and counted change, getting ready to end his shift.

He and Sandy had just begun dating, and they were in that stage of awkward, excited smiles. He gave her one before continuing. "They can do stuff like this, almost kill someone, and if we so much as look at them the wrong way we have the fuzz all over us."

"Life ain't fair," Karen said, never looking up from her nails, which she was filing. Soda had rolled his eyes, winked at Sandy, and popped Karen's hand with his wet towel.

Soda was teasing, but you could see it in the tightness of his smile that he was torn up about it. We all loved Johnny. He was quiet, somehow quieter than Ponyboy, and so sweet. Johnny was kinder than he ever had a reason to be. The bruises staining his tanned skin always reminded us that he hadn't learned his kindness at home.

Johnny didn't deserve the beating the Socs had given him. No one would, really, but especially not Johnny.

Next in line to get hurt was me. It happened when Evie and I were walking home from school at the beginning of my sophomore year and her junior year. Little boys in our neighborhood usually have a BB gun of some sort, and most are allowed only plastic BBs, which really can't hurt you. But some kids have metal BBs, and some kids just don't care who they shoot with those BBs.

I got shot in the calf by a kid with terrible aim. I tried really hard not to cry, but anyone who's had a BB in their leg would agree that it hurts something awful.

"Oh, shit," Evie said, catching my arm when I stumbled. She had a sailor's mouth, just not around Steve. "Are you okay?"

The tears were already stinging at my eyes. "Kind of."

When I tried to take a step, though, I knew it wasn't going to happen. Putting weight on the leg set me over the edge, tears running down my cheeks. Evie had to carry me to her house, where her mom, who worked as a nurse was able to push the BB out, which just made me to cry more. Now I have a perfectly round silver-pink scar on my calf.

The last to get hurt was Ponyboy. He rounded out our injuries five months after it started with Dally whenever he got jumped by Socs at the beginning of the hell week. They left him with a cut at his hairline and a bruise on his cheek. That day, late in the morning, started the domino effect that would eventually end with the death of my brother.

Later that night, Ponyboy, Dallas, and Johnny went to The Dingo to watch a movie. That, to Dally, meant picking up girls. I remember I was glad, because he had broken up with Sylvia as soon as he got out of jail that morning. I hated Sylvia more than a little bit. Darry was at home, actually getting to nap when his roofing job ended unexpectedly early. Sandy, Evie, Soda, and Steve were at the football game; so were Karen and I, but we weren't sitting with them. We were with Curly and his friends. After the game, when Curly broke the lights on the scoreboard, he got sent to reformatory once again. Two-Bit, we found out later, hooked up with Johnny and Pony at the movies.

The three of them walked Cherry and Marcia, two Socs, home. They almost got in a fight with their boyfriends, Randy and Bob. In the early hours of morning, Randy tried to drown Ponyboy in the fountain in the park and Johnny stabbed Bob. They ran away, missing a lot of action while they were hiding out in Windrixville. That's the story Dally told me, even though he lied to everyone else about exactly what happened that night.

That's where the story really starts, that week Ponyboy missed.