"Raise your hand if you got suspended from school today!" Two-Bit yelled when I entered the Curtis house a few hours later. I hadn't wanted to go home so I walked around for a while. I even walked so far as to go to the stables where Soda had taken me. I fed a few sugar cubes and apple slices to the horse we rode, whose name I learned was Clara.
Two-Bit scared me and I stopped in the doorway and looked around the room, seeing that all of my friends were there. Even Curly and Angela. I bit my lip and raised my hand a little ways, but I was surprised to see Karen raise her hand also.
"What did you do!" I said at the same time Two-Bit said, "You're a bad influence on my baby sister, Brooklyn Winston!" But he was smiling so I knew he didn't mean it.
Soda was sitting on the side of the couch closest to the door and he reached out and tugged on my hand until I sat down beside him. He put his arm around my shoulders and kissed the side of my head, making me smile.
"First off, gross. Second off, after you so gloriously threw milk at Sylvia, she reeked pretty bad for the rest of the day and I made a comment about where the smell was coming from that I will not say in earshot of my brother. Or in front of Ponyboy for fear that it will turn his face permanently red." This, in fact, was enough to make Ponyboy blush and Curly to punch him lightly on the arm.
"Did you really call Sylvia a dumb broad or did Angela make that part up?" Steve asked, leaning forward so that his elbows were on his knees.
"Um, no, that really happened." I picked up the end of my ponytail and looked at the strands of red-blonde hair. "I'm probably gonna get grounded when I get home."
"If you was my kid, I'd give you an award, not ground ya!" Two-Bit said. "Got yourself a spitfire of a girl, Sodapop Curtis."
My spitfire self sure did get grounded, too, because as luck would have it my father was home. But he also thought it was really funny, and I don't think he really wanted to ground me. I didn't think it would last long.
"What am I going to do with you, Babydoll," he said, laughing and shaking his head. All that the note Mr. Burns had given me said that I was suspended for 'extremely unladylike behavior', so I got to fill my dad in on all the details. I left out the part about knowing that Sylvia stuffed her bra and calling her a dumb broad.
"I'm not even sure how to ground you. It never worked for your brother." I shrugged and ate some more of my spaghetti.
"I don't think she even deserves a grounding, that story was hilarious. I wish I had been there to see it in person." Aunt Dolly winked at me from across the table and I smiled back at her.
"Yeah, but you told me our little Brookie has a boyfriend now." I about choked to death on the drink of milk I had just taken. According to Ponyboy, things like that are 'ironic'.
"Traitor," I said once I had recovered, pointing at Aunt Dolly with my fork. She smiled sweetly back at me.
"No, no, she said it was one of them Curtis boys your brother was good friends with. The middle one, right? Not the big one? He's too old for you. It's one of the younger ones with weird names?"
"No, it's not Darry. It's Sodapop." I grumbled into my food.
"The two younger ones have really odd names," Dad said around a mouthful of spaghetti.
"You just said that," I said at the same time Aunt Dolly said, "Well, you don't have much room to talk. You named your kids Dallas and Brooklyn."
"I think you mean I named my kids for the places I proposed to and married my wife. What are you goin' to name your kid, San Jose Miguel Gerardo Rodriguez?"
"That's racist, Daddy-O," I said while Aunt Dolly threw her napkin at him, but she was laughing.
"I already decided I'm having a girl, I just haven't chosen a name for her yet."
"I don't think it works that way, Dolly," Dad said while I went around the table collecting dishes to take to the sink. I'd always washed the dishes and still did, even though sometimes Aunt Dolly tried to protest and do them. Her belly was getting bigger every day it seemed and she still had two and a half months left of being pregnant.
I did my homework after washing the dishes and when Dad and Aunt Dolly both went to bed early, I quickly found myself bored. I didn't have much to do other than watch the television with the volume turned low.
I kept thinking about what Mr. Burns said, though. How he should have sent me and Pony to grief counseling. Ponyboy didn't need that, though. He'd written a whole novel. I hadn't done anything about Dally's death, really. Maybe if I had talked about it, I wouldn't have been so messed up for awhile, or gotten drunk off of moonshine on a stupid dare from a toothless cowboy, or gotten suspended from school and now grounded.
I thought about what Soda said, too, about how one day I would want to talk. And how he would listen. That is how I found myself dialing the Curtis's phone number and hoping that Soda would answer instead of Darry or Ponyboy. I got lucky.
"Hello?" Soda's voice asked on the other end. It didn't sound sleepy at all, even though when I glanced at the clock I realized it was ten o'clock at night and pretty late for calling.
"Hi," I say, smiling. "I was hoping you would answer."
"Brooklyn! Are you okay?" I didn't mean to worry him, and I shushed him because his voice had risen.
"Oh, I'm fine, silly. I'm at home. I just wanted to talk to you. Can't a girl call her boyfriend?" It was the first time I myself had said the word out loud. Thinking of Soda as my boyfriend was a little wild. I had grown up with him. I'd seen him as a nine year old with scraped up knees and as a fourteen year old learning how to drive. And now I knew him as my boyfriend.
"Well, yeah, but not when she's grounded. What if you get in more trouble?" I sighed, because I really hadn't thought that far ahead in this plan. My heart started to race, because what if I did get caught? I didn't want to be grounded any longer than I had to be.
"I just wanted to tell you bye for a week," I said, even though there were a thousand things I wanted to tell him instead. I heard him laugh, and when he talked again I could hear a smile in his voice.
"Bye for a week, Brooklyn. Be good. I wanna be able to see you again real soon, as soon as I can. Keep the sass down for a week." I rolled my eyes, because I wasn't even that sassy, but I knew he wasn't able to see it so I told him I had rolled my eyes.
"Of course you did," he said with a laugh. "Goodnight, Brooklyn Paige."
"Good night Sodapop Patrick," I answered and was greeted with the click of an ended phone call.
It was a long week for sure. Dad had to go back to work halfway through it, but he made sure that Aunt Dolly wouldn't let up on me as soon as he left. I heard them talking one night when I was supposed to already be asleep, but I was really lying on the floor with my ear to the crack at the bottom of the door.
"I can't let her get too wild. She can't be like Dallas. She's always been impulsive like him, like their mother." I heard Aunt Dolly sigh and set something on the table.
"She won't be like Dallas. You know that. She isn't like they were. Dallas got that from Bonnie, except he wasn't sad like she was all the time. He was mad, even when he was a little boy, remember? Bonnie brought that out in him with what she did. They got that all from our daddy. But Brooklyn's made of stronger stuff. She'll be okay."
"Still, she needs rules and they gotta come from us. I don't have Dallas here to watch over her anymore. Me and Dally didn't agree on much, but we at least agreed on that."
So most of my week was spent on homework and cleaning out Dally's room, which he never even used anyway, to make a nursery for the baby. On that Sunday, Aunt Dolly gave me packs of seeds, a shovel, and a sunhat.
"Now I know your mamma taught you how to garden, and if you could make things grow in New York at five years old you can make them grow in Oklahoma at fifteen."
"Aunt Dolly," I said, taking the things from her, "didn't Mimi teach you anything?" A big chunk of the week had also been spent learning to cook Spanish dishes so I could teach Aunt Dolly, who barely knew how to cook. My mamma had taught me a lot, and I had only been seven when she died. At seven I could have kept house better than Aunt Dolly could now.
"Oh, hush!" She said, laughing and popping me with her dish towel. "I may not be a domestic goddess, but I did manage to get myself married and I am putting forth effort to learn. Now let's go make this poor front yard of our look nicer."
I finally got to go back to school on Tuesday and I never knew I would be so happy to curl my bangs and get ready and head out the door for school. To my surprise and delight, Sodapop was leaning against my fence when I walked out the front door. He caught me up in a huge hug when I got to him, picking me off my feet and spinning me around.
The kiss that followed was long and sweet.
"I missed you," he said once he broke away from me.
"Oh yeah?" I asked, slipping my hand into his and tangling our fingers.
"Well, of course. I missed the freckles on your nose," he said and leaned over to kiss me on the nose, making me giggle. "And I missed holding your hand and hearing your sweet voice and walking you to school." And he kept telling me all the things he missed, getting sillier and sillier.
At one point he said, "Aaand I miss your forehead, except I don't reckon I've ever even seen it considerin' you've had bangs for as long as I've known you," and lifted up my bangs to plant a kiss on my forehead.
He was my happy Sodapop, and it was hard to remember just how serious he was capable of being. But I remembered the day in the graveyard and the night I got drunk and Pony's composition, of Soda saying he felt like a middleman and I knew he could be more than serious when he needed to be.
I didn't want to ruin his happy mood, so I decided I would wait until after school to tell him about my mother. It was a long story anyway, too long for a short walk to school. And to be honest, I was being selfish, savoring Soda's bright, handsome smile and his dancing laugh and the sun glowing in his golden hair. My heart felt too full in a good way as I took it all in. I tiptoed so I was tall enough to kiss his cheek and squeezed his hand in mine.
After a week away, walking with Soda in the early morning sunlight made me realize something: I loved him.