"Are you tryin' to act like your brother?" Dad said, throwing the envelope onto the table. I shrugged. I didn't know why this couldn't have waited until the morning, when I wasn't wearing a nightgown and my bangs weren't pinned to set their curl.
Dad had been pacing before the table. I was sitting down. He stopped and turned, placing his hands on the table and leaning toward me.
"This isn't you, Brooklyn. This way you been actin', it ain't right." I cocked an eyebrow at him. I was acting like Dally, and I knew it. This was my revenge, though. I wanted him to know how much it had hurt us to have our mother die and then to be all but abandoned by our father. I wanted Dad to know I was blaming him for Dally dying.
"Where'd you find this?" He asked, tapping the envelope.
"It was in the Curtis's attic," I said, not looking away from his eyes. It was something I'd seen Dally do. He would stare people down with his ice blue eyes. Mine were different than his, though, a softer blue-green. I didn't know if it would have the same effect. Dad and Dally had the same eyes. I didn't like looking at Dad's, because it reminded me of Dally. But I wasn't about to lose—get tough.
"What, so now you go lurkin' 'round people's attics?" I had to roll my eyes at that. I knew it would make Dad madder than heck, but I did it anyway. "Don't you roll your eyes at me, girl," he added.
"I think the real question, Father, is why were you hidin' stuff like that from your kids?" I said, and tapped the letter myself. It was just lying in the middle of the table like an island.
"Did you ever stop to consider why I would give that to the Curtis family for safe keepin'?" Safe keeping? More like hiding it.
"Why won't you just admit you were hidin' it?" I nearly hollered at him. Dally and me weren't very much alike in a lot of ways, but we both had bad tempers.
"Why wouldn't I hide a suicide note from my young children?" he hollered back at me. Bad tempers kind of ran in the Winston family.
"You did it because you blame us for her doin' it and we knew it!" I couldn't stop myself from saying it anymore. Tears were stinging at my eyes, but I refused to cry in front of him.
It was quiet for a long time after that. Both of us just stared at each other. I reckon we made one heck of a picture, me in my nightgown and my hair all pinned and him in his robe, white blond hair wild. I wondered if Dallas would look more like Dad if he had gotten to grow up, or would he have still looked a lot like me? Both of us had the high cheekbones of our mother, and tiny pointed chins. But Dallas also had our Dad's straight nose, his square jaw, not to mention his coloring. I was the spitting image of my mother. I even had her pale skin, freckles, strawberry blond hair that was redder than it was blond and blue-green eyes.
"Is that really what you think? Did Dallas think that way?" I nod. He wasn't angry the way I was waiting for him to get. Instead, he looked really sad.
"Why would y'all ever think that?" There were tears in his eyes. He didn't let them fall either.
"Because it's true. We were home when it happened, and you weren't. Afterwards you practically abandoned us." I crossed my arms when I said it. Then I nodded. I was right, and he was wrong.
"Is that what Dallas filled your head with?" That made me madder than heck. I stood up so fast, my chair was wobbling.
"Don't blame this on Dally!" I placed my hands on the table and leaned forward, copying him. "Don't you ever blame stuff that's your fault on him." I was shaking with anger.
I expected Dad to yell back at me, but he was shaking his head. The look he gave me was so sad. I didn't know what to do.
"Brooklyn. Baby Doll, you've got it all wrong." He reached forward, touching a piece of my hair. It reminded me of Sodapop just hours ago. I backed up away from him. "You don't know how wrong you are, honey."
The chair was pressing hard against the backs of my knees. I pushed farther against it. I needed the pain to know what was going on was real.
"What do you mean?" I asked. I wasn't so sure I wanted to hear the answer. It was coming anyway.
"Y'all were so young. I should've known y'all wouldn't understand it. Your momma was sick, Brooklyn. She was always sad. Even when she was smilin' she was sad deep down. That kinda sadness, you just can't fix it. Not even if you have a little boy who wants to be a firefighter when he grows up and a little girl who blows soap bubbles usin' forks."
I didn't think he would remember things like that. I barely let myself remember, the memories hurt so bad.
"There was no way to stop what was happenin'. Maybe there was, but it was too late by the time I realized what was goin' on. I'm just thankful to God that He gave me y'all before He took her."
I couldn't hardly breathe.
"Then why did Dally go and do the same damn thing?" I asked before I could stop myself from cussing. It didn't make any sense.
"Maybe he was sick, too, Baby Doll." When he said it, I could see the tears in his eyes start to fall. I had never thought that Dally dying had hurt him the way it hurt me. I had known Mama dying hurt him. I thought it hurt him so bad he hated his children for it.
I was like Dallas after Johnny died. I couldn't take the sadness. Only the difference between me and my brother was that I could shoulder my own sadness, just not my father's. I looked out the window and saw that the sun had risen.
"I have to get ready for school," I said stupidly. In my room I took the pins from my bangs and fluffed them before putting on makeup and getting dressed in a sweater and long skirt. Spring was coming, but it was still too cold to wear anything lighter. I guess Dad went back to his room or something because he wasn't in the kitchen when I walked back through.
The first place I went was the DX. I knew Soda would be working alone since it was morning and Steve had school. He was wiping down the counters when I walked in. Looking up, he smiled at me but I just couldn't make myself smile back.
"What's the matter with you, Brookie?" he asked, throwing his rag onto the counter and walking around to the other side.
"Nothin'," I lied. "Ain't I allowed to just come see you before school?" Soda put his hand under my chin so that I was forced to look up at him. I could tell he didn't believe me.
"Why don't we talk 'bout it after school, huh?" I didn't even know I was all tensed up until I let out a breath and my whole body relaxed.
"Yeah," I said. "Let's do that." I gave him a real smile when he hugged me after that.
"Just have a good day at school, okay? Don't go lettin' this get to you." I nodded against his shoulder and he let me go.
At school, Evie and Karen could tell something was off. I'd been doing better lately. They had stopped babysitting me for a while, but now they were treating me like the wind would break me like they did right after Dally died.
"Brooklyn!" I near jumped out of my skin at the sound of Karen's voice. She pulled the pair of scissors from my hand. "You nearly cut my hand off! What's wrong with you?"
"Oh. I was just thinkin'." She rolled her eyes and took over my job of cutting the fabric for the stupid throw pillow we had to make in the sewing section of our home economics class.
"Well, stop it. Never did you no good, anyways," she tried to joke, but I was distracted by thoughts of my mother and Dally. Even though I could have been mistaken for her sister if she were still alive, was it Dallas that was more like her? My mother had been fragile and her moods changed like the weather. Dallas had always seemed steady, but was he really?
Evie had to snap me out of it again at lunch. "You have to eat, kid." She all but shoved some of her salad into my mouth. A drink of her Coca-Cola followed soon after.
"I'm fine," I said over and over to brush them off. Finally they just stopped asking, and Karen slipped her hand in mine and I felt a little better.
"This some kind of two-for-one deal?" Curly asked, coming up behind us in the hallway later that day and throwing his arms around our shoulders. He smelled like his leather jacket and aftershave, and very faintly, beer.
"You go drinking last night, Curly?" I asked. Now that Curly was getting older, Tim had started letting him in on binges. This scared me. I didn't want them to die like had Dally died.
"Maybe a little," he said. Karen pushed his face away when he leaned in for a kiss. Unlike her brother, who could probably win a beer drinking contest, Karen hated even the smell of beer, let alone the taste.
"Don't be mad," I heard Curly whisper to her before I left them alone. The school day was almost over. The only class I had left was chemistry, which I didn't particularly like to go to. I didn't particularly like to skip school, either. It had always kind of bothered me and made me feel guilty, which was weird considering we were lucky to see Dally in school once every few months. That day, though, I just couldn't sit still any longer. I needed to move and I needed to think.
I really needed to talk to Sodapop.
I could have gotten in a lot of trouble if I'd been caught, but I hung around with people like the thieving Mathews siblings. I knew how to go unnoticed.
"You just gotta act like a Soc," Two-Bit would always say. "Don't give a damn. Stick that nose up in the air and walk like ya got a stick shoved where the sun don't shine, and ain't nobody going to question you."
I don't know whether it was a sassy walk that got me out of school, or the fact that the school didn't really care about the greasers, but I got out without anybody trying to stop me. It was safe to walk alone that time of day, since all the Socs were in school. So far, they'd held their side of the peace treaty laid out the night of the rumble, but their side of town was still fair game.
I didn't go to the DX straight away. I figured Soda'd be more worried if he saw me skipping school, so I went to see Dally instead. The grass in the cemetery was becoming green again since spring was coming. I think that's something Pony would have called 'ironic', because everyone in the cemetery besides me was dead and the grass just on top of them was alive.
This time I didn't have anything for Dally. No gifts of beer, or a note written over a decade ago, or pictures we thought were lost. I didn't have anything to say, either. I just wanted and needed to lay down beside my brother like we would when Mama would tuck us in for naps. I needed the safe feeling I always got knowing Dallas was nearby.
It wasn't like he could do anything about it anymore, but lining myself up alongside him still made me feel a lot better. The beer I left him last time was cloudy and slow to move when I picked it up. I should bring him a new one next time, I thought.
I didn't think I had been there for very long, just watching clouds and picking pieces of grass from the ground, whenever I heard footsteps. I shot up to see Sodapop walking towards me, a slow grin coming across his face.
"You've got grass all in your hair," he said, kneeling down behind me to pull the blades out. "I reckoned I'd find you here."
I didn't say anything for a few minutes. It felt nice to be sitting as close to Dally as I could with the weak sun warming my face and Soda Curtis's hands in my hair.
"I had a fight with my dad."
"About what?" Soda asked, working through a tangle in my hair.
"Dally. My mother. A lot of things, I guess." I sighed, followed by a deep breath. "Soda, do you think he could have done it all on purpose? Like Dallas was suicidal or somethin'?"
That was the closest I had ever come to telling someone the full truth about my mother's death, and it made my heart pound so hard it hurt. It didn't help that Soda's hands stopped on my hair and he didn't say anything for a real long time.
"There's something I think you should read." Read? I'd never known Sodapop to crack a book, even when he was in school. He helped me up and took my hand, leading us so that we were walking toward his house. Soda told me to stay in the living room before he went into his and Pony's room.
"Ponyboy's composition book?" I was confused. Why would Soda want me to read Pony's essay? He handed me three more folders. "How much did he write?"
"A whole book, that's what he wrote. He wrote a whole book in a week." I flipped through the pages, looking at all the lines covered in Pony's cursive writing.
"About what?" I had already guessed the answer, and it made my heart pound.
"It's all about Johnny and Dallas," he said and my knees went weak. I grabbed onto his sleeve. Leave it to Pony to write a whole damned book.
"I'll read it," I promised. I needed to. I had to. I owed my brother that much.