It was like Sodapop Curtis had a huge, uplifting effect on my life. I know longer felt awful and numb on a daily basis. When I thought of Dally, which was still so often, I was a little sad but not raging mad like I used to be. I was still doing well on my homework, but not nearly as well as I did before giving so much time to Soda and that was just fine with me.
"You ever ride a horse, Brookie?" he asked one day in the Curtis's kitchen. He was cooking mashed potatoes that seemed to be turning out to be an interesting shade of blue. Ponyboy and I were working on our homework together. Math seemed to be the only thing that stumped Pony from time to time, but it came easily with me. We had an agreement worked out that I would help him with math if he helped me with English, my worst subject. I was staying for dinner that night since Aunt Dolly had found herself a book club.
"I don't reckon I've ever even touched a horse, Soda," I said before circling one of the math problems Pony had done wrong. He was editing my English essay over The Canterbury Tales.
"That's right," he said. "I forgot you're my city girl." I had often been called a city girl by the gang and even my own father. I was not very rough and tumble, and though my clothes were never expensive and often hand-me downs, I always tailored them and took care of them. Aunt Dolly had recently given me a lot of her clothes she'd been wearing before getting pregnant. We were almost exactly the same size before, it seemed. Some of the clothes, she said, came from Spain from her now husband, like the white blouse embroidered with bright flowers I was wearing that day.
"I know what we're doing this weekend," he turned to me with a wink. It was like he had read my mind when he said, with a big smile, "You'll have to wear pants." I blushed and turned to Ponyboy.
"You're getting better at exponents." I knew that Soda was crazy about horses. When Dally would ride as a jockey, Soda was always there before the races, petting the horses and feeding them sugar cubes and apple slices over the tops of their stable doors.
Darry came in then, giving a bright smile to Ponyboy before going to look over Soda's shoulder. It looked like Darry and Pony really were working on being nicer to each other. Darry clapped Soda on the shoulder and shook his head.
"Blue, little brother? Really?" He rolled his eyes at the mashed potatoes and announced he was going to take a shower. Ponyboy was taking much longer with my homework than I had with his.
"I must be an awful writer," I said, watching him correct the way I had spelled a word.
"No! Essays are just longer!" Pony said, the color rising in his cheeks. He had always been sensitive, but since Johnny and Dally's deaths, he was more so. Johnny had been his best friend. I laid my head down on the table on top of my arms and watched Soda cook. Even though I did my homework much more regularly now and with more effort, I still hated it something awful.
When I got home later that night and asked Aunt Dolly if she happened to have brough any pants with her, you would have thought I asked for a million dollars. She laughed for a good minute before answering me.
"Brooklyn Paige, I don't believe you've ever worn a pair of pants in your life." As far as I could remember, she was right. I didn't like them, honestly. They looked uncomfortable. I knew that women had been wearing pants for years, but I never wanted to. I liked skirts and dresses.
"You're just like your mother. She never went in for trousers herself, and it seems she's passed this on pretty solidly to you. C'mon."
She made me try them on as soon as she handed them to me. They fit as closely as my tights and stockings did, but the material was much stiffer. I was right. I didn't like them. Aunt Dolly rolled them up at the hem, which actually made them a little better, but they still weren't for me.
"These feel funny," I said, moving around in them. I felt almost like I was wearing just stockings. I didn't feel free, like Evie and Karen always said I would if I wore them. I felt naked.
Aunt Dolly sighed. "You'd be making your grandmother proud right now. It seems her Old New York lineage has worked it's way into you, much better than it ever did in myself. You make my feminist heart hurt," she said with a wicked smile before smacking me on the butt.
"Hey!" I said, feeling the blush all the way to my hairline. She was belly laughing all the way to the kitchen. I took the pants off as soon as I could. Lucky for me, it had been a Monday and I wasn't expected to wear them until Saturday.
Me and Soda quickly and easily fell into a routine. He would walk me to school every morning now that the spring weather had taken a hold before walking to work. After school I would walk with Evie and Steve to the DX, where Steve and Evie flirted endlessly with each other, Soda picked up Steve's slack while teasing them happily, and I did my homework. One of Soda's favorite things to do while I did my homework was to walk by and flick my pencil so that I would mess up. When I would look up, his grin would be so reckless and his eyes so bright I couldn't even do anything other than smile at him.
Soda was always so happy that it seemed to infect people. When Soda was happy, you couldn't be angry or sad; you had to be happy, too, because Soda had that effect on people. It was a gift. He would whistle and spin me in circles when he walked me home or stop to pick a wild flower and put it in my hair. He held my hand with our fingers intertwined now and he still positioned himself between me and the street when we walked. He took me to see movies with him and Steve and Evie, to Ponyboy's track meets, and to watch Steve drag race. He still hadn't kissed me.
And he didn't kiss me, not until the Friday before I was supposed to go horseback riding with him. The sun had already set, and Aunt Dolly had already gone to bed when I heard the knock on the door. I had been sitting in the living room, trying and failing to get through Jude the Obscure which Ponyboy kept promising me would get better if I kept reading it. It wasn't getting any better. It was actually only getting more and more boring as I read on, so when I heard a knock on the door, I was happy for a chance at a break.
I was expecting Curly asking for a place to sleep for the night to avoid some hood or another so I was pretty surprised to open the door and see Sodapop leaning on my door frame.
"What are you doing here?" I asked with a smile while he offered his hand to me. /span/p
"I just wanted to see you," he said, smiling wide when I slipped my hand into his. "Brooklyn, do you by chance know a way onto your roof?"
I guess the surprise showed on my face because Soda started laughing and pulling me along with him.
"It's okay, I know one." He led me around the side of my house where there was a stack of tires from the huge trucks Dad drove. Soda very easily jumped on top of them and then reached down for me. I raised my arms up and placed my hands into his and he helped pull me up. It was a little hard in my skirt, but it only took us a little while to get to the roof.
The roofing tiles were surprisingly soft, the old wood more like a sponge than anything else. I was too afraid to lay down up there, but Soda wasn't. He put his head in my lap and looked up to the stars.
"Do you know any constellations?" I asked. My mother had taught them to me and Dally on top of out apartment building, all bundled up in coats and blankets to keep out the New York cold. When Soda shook his head, I pointed out a few of them and as much of the stories my mother told us that I could remember.
"You sure do know a lot, Brookie." I laughed, because I really didn't. If Soda wanted to talk to someone who knew a lot, he was better off talking to one of his brothers. I remembered the stories my mother would tell Dally and I before naptime and bedtime, but I didn't know as much as she had. And I certainly didn't know all the things Ponyboy and Darry knew.
"How'd you know how to get up here, anyway?" I asked, because I really was curious. I had lived in the house for years and it never occured to me to try to get on the roof.
"I was walking around one night and saw Dallas helping Johnny up here last year, right after the Socs had gotten him. They were just sittin' up there smoking cigarettes, and Dally was pointing up to the sky just like you were. I didn't know what they were doin' then, but I figure now they was looking at constellations."
I press my lips hard together. I know Soda didn't mean for it to hurt, but the pain is heavy and fast in my chest, making it feel too tight. But I'm also happy that Dally remembered, and before I even knew what I'm doing, I'm telling Sodapop about living in New York and our mother.
"We learned them from our mom, when we lived in New York. Most of the time she would show us outside of the window in our apartment living room. It was so small that that's where me and Dally slept, in the same bed. But sometimes if it was warmer than usual she would take us all the way up the stairs to the roof and we'd sit up there and she would point them out to us and tell us the stories behind them."
I felt his hand cover mine on his cheek, and I looked down at him to see his brown eyes all soft and his hair looked almost silver in the moonlight and he didn't have his usual big, goofy grin on his face. He was still smiling, but only with half of his mouth. Boys aren't supposed to be beautiful, but if anyone ever deserved to be called that, Sodapop Curtis did.
And again it was like I couldn't stop myself. I didn't even stop to think about it, I just pushed my hair behind my hair so that it wouldn't get in his face and leaned down over him. I don't know if he expected it, because I didn't even expect it and I was the one doing it. I didn't know what to expect, but I think we both surprised the other.
Once my lips touched his I felt him shift and somehow he managed to get his hand into my hair, pulling my mouth even closer to his. It felt amazing and right and like my heart was going to explode out of my chest. I felt alive in a way I hadn't since long, long before Dally's death.
Too soon Sodapop pulled away, but it was only to say, "This would be much easier if I sat up." So he did, and I kissed Sodapop Curtis on my roof with stars over our heads for who knows how long.