Chapter Two

I woke up the following Saturday to a phone call from Darry.

"Hullo?" I said, still asleep honestly.

"Brooklyn, please tell me you've seen Ponyboy and Johnny." The thing about Darry was that he was the calmest person I knew. He had a temper, sure, but it was nothing compared to Dally's. Plus, Darry's temper was a lot harder to push…unless your name was Ponyboy Curtis.

At first, I thought that he must have been in trouble. I didn't want Pony to get in more trouble, so I tried to be careful about telling the truth. You always told Darry the truth. Somehow, he knew when someone was lying, and he was never wrong.

"No, Dare, I haven't seen 'em since yesterday. Is somethin' the matter?" I could hear him sigh and repeat what I told him to Soda. "We can't find them. If you hear from them or see them, could you go to the DX and tell Sodapop?"

"Yeah, of course." I was getting kind of worried. Johnny and Pony rarely got in trouble and for them to be missing was a big thing. I couldn't think of anything that they could have done…which meant that it was liable that something happened to them.

"Is Dally home?" Dallas rarely if ever came home for more than five minutes, unless Dad was gone.

"Nope. He stayed at Buck's last night." I started chewing on my lip. If my brother was involved, it for sure wasn't a good thing.

Darry sighed again and said, "Tell Dal I want to talk to him."

He hung up without saying goodbye.

I got dressed and brushed my hair, trying to get my bedhead in order. Once I got my waves presentable, I put on my shoes and headed out to find that brother of mine. Too bad for Dally, he wasn't hard to find. If he wasn't at home, and he wasn't at the Curtis', then I could bet all the money I had he was at Buck's and probably win.

Our house wasn't that far from Buck's, so I made it there before Dallas even woke up. I didn't bother knocking. It wouldn't have made a difference anyway. First of all, Buck's front door was unlocked. Second of all, he was passed out on the couch anyway.

My brother had his own bedroom at Buck's house. He was sleeping on his stomach, his head covered by a pillow. Waking up Dally was always a challenge, especially if he had been drinking, so I started with pulling the pillow off his head.

"Mmmf. Go away, Buck." He covered his face with his arms.

"It's not Buck. It's your sister, now get up." He rolled half towards me and opened one clear blue eye.

"Didn't I tell you I'd skin you for stepping foot in this place?" I ignored him and pulled the blinds open. Since I had his pillow, Dally had to cover his face with his hands to block the light.

"Where's Johnny and Ponyboy?" Apparently, those were the magic words. He stopped rubbing at his face and dropped his hands to look at me. Dally's hard smile spread across his face and his eyes twinkled dangerously.

"Haven't read the papers yet, Brookie? Johnny knifed a Soc. I had to get the boys out." I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I threw the pillow into his face, hard.

"Don't lie to me. Johnny wouldn't do that." There was just no way. Not Johnny. Then I remembered the switch blade he started to carry after he caught that beating.

"I'll bet he would if the bastard Soc was drownin' Ponyboy in the fountain," Dally all but spit the words at me. I felt frozen for a second, staring at Dally where he still laid stretched across the bed. I glared at him.

"You sent them to Windrixville, didn't you? They'll get in so much more trouble, hiding out instead of just giving themselves up!" Dally got really mad really fast. He grabbed my arm, pulling me forward so that we were eye-to-eye. We were so close that I could smell the beer still on his breath.

"You listen here, Brooklyn Paige. You didn't know New York the way I did because I made it that way, and Johnny sure as hell ain't goin' to know jail if I have anything to say about it."

He pushed me back a bit before pushing himself off the bed and going through a drawer until he found a shirt that was his and not Buck's. "And if you know what's good for you, little sister, you'll keep your trap shut and not tell either Dally or Soda where them boys are."

"As far as you are concerned," he continued, pulling on socks and his boots, "Johnny and Pony lit out for Texas. You understand?"

I knew better than to disagree with Dally. He'd never hit me or anything like that, but I knew he could get dangerously mad. So, I just nodded. There was nothing else I could say about the whole situation.

"Be careful with them, Dally," I told him before leaving.

When Darry finally got to question Dally later that day, he told Darry that he didn't know where they were. That, yes, he had helped them, but no, he didn't know for sure where they were headed. Texas, he said. He thought Johnny had mentioned Texas.

I felt sick to my stomach, keeping that secret. Every time someone brought it up, I thought I would throw up. Or maybe choke on the words.

"I can't believe it was little old Johnny," Evie said that night when I went over to her house with Karen and Sandy. We were sitting in her bedroom and she was leaning out her window to smoke. Her parents weren't real keen on the idea of her smoking, so she did it secretly. Karen and I joined her, Sandy didn't. I didn't really want to smoke, but I wanted something to calm my nerves, and cigarettes always do the trick. I had learned that from Dally.

Out of all of us, Evie was the most like a typical greaser girl. Karen and I had older brothers that would beat us silly for dressing and behaving like other girls we knew. Sandy was just too sweet to be one, plus while her parents were always fighting, they still doted on her. I think a lot of the reason why the kids in our neighborhood were the way they were was because their parents didn't pay any attention to them. That's what got to Evie. Aside from not wanting her to smoke, her parents never paid her any mind.

"I bet it was the same boys that beat Johnny up the last time. Them Socs need to learn a lesson," Karen blew her smoke into perfect circles every time. I don't know how she did it. She was slick as Two-Bit, too, able to swipe things so easily and never getting caught. She was more like her mother, though, often serious and working as a waitress even though she was only fifteen at the time.

"That boy being dead isn't going to change anything." I leaned my head against the side of the window. I was feeling guilty, thinking about the whole thing. Darry had told us Pony ran out because they got in an argument and Darry had slapped him.

I knew Darry didn't mean to. Darry cared too much about Pony to ever hurt him on purpose. He tried so hard to keep Pony safe and in school. I guess it's pretty hard to make your fourteen-year-old brother understand that when you're only twenty yourself. It didn't help that Darry was always stressed out about things like money and keeping Pony and Soda out of a boys' home. He and Soda were worrying themselves sick.

Evie went off about the Socs. Maybe because her cousin was a Soc, or maybe because Steve influenced her, but Evie hated the Socs with a passion. Karen was more than happy to join in, trying to point out that the Socs would always have money and we wouldn't, and that I was right. Bob's death wouldn't change a thing.

It was getting more and more heated and then I broke in saying, "Come on, Sandy. Let's go home."

Dally didn't like me sleeping at home alone. Even though he and Dad hated each other, I was on better terms with our father. The only problem was that he was away so much because he was a truck driver. So most nights, I stayed at someone's house. Sometimes the Curtis' house, but mostly at either Karen's or Sandy's or Evie's.

It was chilly on the walk home. I was finishing my cigarette, and me and Sandy were walking huddled close together. The wind bit through our coats. We walked home the same way we always did at night, almost running in the dark between the streetlights. It wasn't just the Socs you had to worry about at night on our side of town.

"It's a shame, isn't it?" Sandy said after a while. She had a soft voice, soft like her china blue eyes. "Sodapop is worried sick about it."

"Can you blame him?" I asked. Even though I had talked to Darry that morning, I had seen either of the other two Curtis brothers. "Pony and Johnny are no Dallas. None of us expected this from them."

"I reckon that's true." Sandy was quieter than usual, but we all were. It didn't seem like a big deal at the time. Much later, we laid in Sandy's bed, listening to her parents argue quietly downstairs. Everyone's parents argued, it seemed like. Most of them just weren't quiet, like Sandy's. Most of them could be heard down the street, the way Johnny's could be on bad days.

I never remembered my own parents fighting. Mr. and Mrs. Curtis never did, either.

Sandy turned to me, her head rustling on her pillow. "Brooklyn, can you keep a secret?"

I had figured it'd be something about how she had planned to marry Soda. Just the day before—when things were normal—I had overheard Pony telling Johnny about Soda telling him he planned on marrying Sandy, and I just thought that was what she was getting at.

I wasn't thinking much of anything, really. Other than where Johnny and Pony were and if they were okay.

"You know I can Sandy," I said, flipping over onto my stomach. Me and Dally slept alike.

"It's about Sodapop." Of course it was. Just like I thought.

"What is it?" I asked.

Sandy paused. "I'm pregnant, and it isn't his."

That made me sit up I was so surprised, and she did too. Her nightgown's sleeve slid down her shoulder and the way her hair was tousled made her seem so much older than someone who just turned sixteen. Or maybe it was the fact that she was pregnant that made me suddenly feel so much younger than her.

"Then whose?" I whispered to her.

Sandy looked down, playing with her blankets, folding them between her fingers. "You don't know him. None of you do. Please, Brooklyn, don't say anything to him. I know the timing is bad, but I'm gonna tell him tomorrow. I have to."

Sandy wasn't the good girl I thought she was, I guess. None of us thought this would happen. But we didn't ever think Johnny would kill a boy, either. Or that Ponyboy would run away with him.

Sandy must have told her parents about the baby the same day she told Soda. She was gone the day after, off to Florida to live with her grandparents, even though Soda said he'd marry her. He knew the baby wasn't his, and he still would've married her. That's just the kind of guy Sodapop Curtis was.

She said no and left.

The day Sandy left, I took dinner to the Curtis house. Darry and Soda had enough to think about without having to do chores, I figured. I wanted to help, but I didn't know how to ask if they wanted it…so I cooked for them instead.

"Brookie," Soda reached out to catch my arm as I was leaving. Looking at Soda felt impossible when I first got to the house. Darry was still at work but being around either of them lately felt like walking on eggshells.

He used Dally's nickname for me to get my attention. It worked. I looked up at him, noticing how his brown eyes looked darker all rimmed in red from his crying.

"Did you know?"

"No," I told him. Tears sprung up in my own eyes, my throat getting tight around my lie. I felt like I was going to be sick, like I did when I thought about keeping Dally's lie. I couldn't take it, so I pulled my arm away from Soda and hurried out of the house.

I looked him right in the eye and said no. I've never felt so bad about anything in my life.