It was getting warmer every day, that long and sad winter moving far behind us. One day when I came home from school, there was a little Stingray the color of the sky sitting in the driveway. Sodapop let out a long whistle.
"Shoot. That your aunt's?" he asked and I shrugged.
"Must be. I didn't even know she had a car. It's not like you can hardly drive one up in New York. It's faster to walk, or take the subway." I gave Soda the apple we'd been passing back and forth as we walked and unlocked my front door.
"Hey, Aunt Dolly! I didn't know you had a car." Aunt Dolly was sitting on the couch covered in a tangle of different colored yarns. She'd been working on crocheting a baby blanket since she got to Oklahoma.
"Yeah, but it's been sitting for too long I think. The engine won't even start." She furrowed her brow and yanked out a whole line of crocheted chains. I had offered to help her with the blanket a lot of times, but she said she wanted to make it herself. Aunt Dolly had been using soft spring colors, light blue and yellow, white and purple. Even though she said she felt certain she'd have a girl, she didn't want to make anything pink just in case.
"Me and Steve can take a look at it if you want, Mrs. Rodriquez." Even though Aunt Dolly had asked Soda almost every time she saw him to call her Dolly, he still called her Mrs. Rodriquez.
"I can go get him now. He's probably at my house anyway." It was one of Steve's bad weeks when his dad would kick him out. Steve's dad always changed his mind, but every time his old man got in that mood Steve would hole up at the Curtis house.
"Oh, could you? That would be so great." I knew Aunt Dolly was worried. Esteban's latest letter had promised he would be here before the baby came, but with just three weeks left until Aunt Dolly was due, we hadn't gotten another letter forwarded from New York and he hadn't shown up.
While Soda left to get Steve, I went into the kitchen to make some lemonade for them. I knew it was Soda's favorite. When Mr. and Mrs. Curtis were alive, Mrs. Curtis would have to make two gallons: One for Sodapop and one for everyone else.
"Brooklyn, honey, do you know how to drive?" Aunt Dolly called from the living room.
"Yup. Dally taught me." Dally had insisted it was something both me and Johnny needed to know, so he'd taught us one month last summer using Buck's car. Johnny was the most careful driver I had ever seen. I liked to go faster, like Dallas, but not so fast that we barely made it around turns like he liked.
"Okay, good. You might have to be the one to drive me to the hospital." I had just mixed the sugar into the lemonade when I heard Steve and Soda outside admiring the car.
"Man, I reckon everyone in New York has cars this tuff." Steve said. Little did they know that hardly anyone had cars in New York City. Like I'd told Soda, it was pretty useless. It was almost always easier to walk or use public transport in the city.
I poured the lemonade into some glasses and took them outside.
Steve hadn't even started to work on the car or lift the hood. He was walking around it, running his hands over it. The DX was in a greaser neighborhood, so even though Socs would fill up there, they hardly ever brought their cars there to be worked on. I reckoned that was the nicest car Steve had ever gotten to work on.
"How'd your aunt get a car like this, anyway, Brookie?" Steve asked, popping the hood open.
"Well, according to her Esteban's got some money, but I wouldn't know since he still hasn't bothered to show up here." I didn't want to tell them that more likely my grandmother had bought it for her.
We might have lived in a rougher part of New York since my father's always been too proud to except help of any kind unless absolutely necessary but that didn't mean that Mimi was the same. She still lived in her big brownstone in Manhattan; we had lived in a tiny studio apartment tucked away on a crowded street in a shady neighborhood in the Bronx.
Soda drank his glass and Steve's glass of lemonade before Steve even had a chance to see that I had brought them any. Steve's head was tucked under the hood of the car when he started laughing.
"Brooklyn, please tell me that your aunt knows this car has no engine in it." It had been shipped from New York and towed into Tulsa. The tow man had left it on the curb outside our house just that morning.
"What do you mean it doesn't have an engine?!" I heard Aunt Dolly from behind us. She was resting her hand on top of her big belly.
"Where were you keeping it, Aunt Dolly? In a parking garage?" I asked and she nodded.
"Yeah, in Newark. I had to fly out from there because they had the soonest flight to Tulsa." I couldn't help but to laugh a little bit.
"Well no wonder your engine got stolen. I'm surprised they didn't take the whole car. Why would you ever leave anything in New Jersey?" Aunt Dolly was shaking her head.
"I can't believe this. They were probably just taking parts for chop shops or selling them for scraps. I'm going to go call Mother. Don't give me that look Brooklyn, you know she'll pay for it since its long distance."
In the end, Mimi paid for the long distance phone call, part of which Aunt Dolly forced me onto the phone so I could talk to her, and a new engine and a few other pieces Steve and Soda found to be missing. Steve and Soda were still laughing about it that night when we all went over to the Curtis house for dinner.
After Dallas and Johnny died, it just kind of became a tradition that we met up there to eat once a week. We each brought something over. Usually Mrs. Mathews had to cook whatever Two-Bit and Karen brought. She spoiled both of her kids rotten; even though they were both messy and tended to be lazy, she didn't mind one bit and waited on them hand and foot.
"You wouldn't believe it, Darry. Steve pops up the hood and there's this big hole underneath. The whole damn engine was gone!" Soda went into a fit of laughter every time he talked about it.
"The moral of this story is don't ever go to New Jersey, 'cause it's just a whole town of Mathews siblings. We went when I was like five and our mom sewed a leather cord to mine and Dally's gloves so that we couldn't wonder away from each other and get kidnapped." She had been convinced if one of us walked away for even a moment, we would be taken.
After dinner, Soda and Steve went to play pool while Ponyboy tried his best to help Two-Bit with his homework. The school had informed Two-Bit that they would have to kick him out when he turned twenty because that was the school board's rule, so he had decided he might as well graduate after he spent so much time there.
Evie was painting Karen's toenails on the couch. I had offered to help Darry with the dishes. I was gathering up what was left on the table around Two-Bit and Pony when I heard Darry curse.
"Son of a bitch," Darry said, and when he pulled his arm out of the water it was stained red. A knife, I found out later, had fallen into the dishwater and when Darry stuck his hand in it cut him.
But all I could see was the deep, angry cut it had made. Not on Darry's arm, though; no, it wasn't Darry's strong, tan arm I saw, even though I knew in the back of my mind it was his. I saw a tiny wrist, with silver bracelets covered in blood, the edge of a pink blouse dyed with it. It was all I could see, and my sight started to go blurry with it.
I could hear Ponyboy ask Darry if he was okay, but it sounded funny with my own blood pounding in my head. I felt the cup I was holding slip from my hand and somebody else cussed and then it was all black.
The first thing I was aware of was that it was much quieter when I woke up. There was no music from the radio, no sound of Steve and Soda arguing over who was cheating or bluffing. The second thing was that someone was petting my hair.
I opened my eyes and the first thing I saw was a desk messy with books. Pony's desk, in his room that he shared with Sodapop. The light was off, but the sun hadn't set just yet, so the room was full of soft shadows.
"Hey, there, sleepy head," Sodapop said. I looked up a bit and realized he was sitting in the desk chair. I pushed myself up. I was laying on top of the covers on Soda and Ponyboy's bed.
"What happened?" I asked, but it was in a whisper. I don't know why, something about the quiet seemed wrong to break it.
"Darry cut his arm. You fainted." He said, and touched the back of my head. It was tender there, like a bruise. I reached up, too, and placed my hand under his. I took a deep breath and sighed.
"Two-Bit and Pony took Darry to the hospital to get some stitches and Steve took Evie and Karen home, if you were wonderin' where everybody went."
I was looking down at my socks—I guessed Soda had taken off my shoes—when Soda took my hand. He didn't ask any questions, but when I lifted my head to look at him, I saw it in his dark brown eyes and the raised curve of his eyebrow.
My throat felt too tight and itchy to talk, but I knew he would understand, so I just nodded. Soda pulled me over from the bed into his lap and I rested my head in the space where his neck met his shoulder. It was warm and familiar there. Soda didn't speak and neither did I. I didn't cry, I had cried myself out for my mother years ago, but it was so nice to be held. It was exactly what I needed in that moment.
"Brooklyn Paige, I know just what you need." He pulled me through the shadowy house and began leading me down the street. The setting sun colored his soft blonde hair in pinks and oranges. Soda's warm brown eyes were always shining, and they were giving the sun a run for its money that evening as he led me through the neighborhood, whistling a song I didn't know.
Even when the sun set and the cool, purple twilight came, he kept walking. The Curtis house was just almost on the edge of town, and not far from it was some of the train tracks, and beyond that open fields, ranches, and farm land. We came to a barbed wire fence and Soda lifted one wire with his hand and stepped on another, creating enough space for me to slip through.
"Uh, this is trespassing." I said, looking around for a farmhouse or maybe a tractor or truck out in the distance. There didn't seem to be anything for miles, though. Still, I wasn't keen on getting grounded again.
"No one's around." I swear Sodapop Curtis's smile could melt Antarctica. I went through the wire and Soda followed me close behind. The sky was getting darker, but we weren't losing any light thanks to the full moon.
"Where are we going?" I asked, but all Soda would say was, "You'll see."
Sodapop walked me up a tall hill and slipped his arm around my waist. The hill sunk down into a huge valley, and it was absolutely covered with white flowers. Some of them were just beginning to open, and they were bent towards the rising moon the way a sunflower follows the sun.
"What is this place? Why are they blooming like this?" I could hear Soda laughing while I inched closer, sliding here and there as I came closer to the flowers.
"They're moonflowers. They only bloom at night." Whenever she could, our mom would take us to Central Park in New York City. While Dally played games of football or baseball with some other boys, my mother would pick wildflowers and teach me how to twist them into flower crown for our hair.
Sitting on the slope, I started picking and twisting. Soda sat down beside me and took over flower picking duty while I made the crown. It was a quiet and beautiful night.
"There was this time in New York, we were taking the subway to Manhattan, where my grandmother lives, and our mom had left us to wait in the crowd while she bought the tickets. I remember Dally holding my hand, because I was afraid of the trains. We were standing near the front, though, because Dally liked to look at them. There wasn't a lot of people down there that day, which is always surprising because usually New York is full of people.
"Anyway, we were waiting for our mom when we heard someone scream somewhere in the train station. When we turned to look, there was a woman crying and pointing at another boarding place. She was yelling for help. There were papers everywhere, because someone had dropped a briefcase, and a pair of men's shoes was destroyed on the tracks. Dally had pulled me over there to look. A little way down from the shoes there was the start of a long trail of blood. A man had jumped in front of the train as it was heading through."
I was looking down at the flowers in my lap while I twisted them together, but I could feel Soda's eyes on my face.
"Momma pulled us away, of course, and her face was all white. Later on the train she told us that some people are very sad, and nothing can help that sadness, at least not for very long. They could still be happy sometimes, but even when they were happy they were a little sad. She told us it hurts them a lot, and sometimes it hurts so bad and for so long and nothing helps, but they think dying will fix it."
I took a big sigh. My eyes had started to sting.
"She said we shouldn't think badly of him, that he didn't know any other way and the sadness just got to heavy. He shouldn't have been so messy and noisy with it, she said. It was okay to do it, if you really needed to, but people shouldn't have to see it."
I laughed. It tasted bitter in my mouth, because none of this was funny, but I laughed anyway. It reminded me of how Dallas chose to go.
"I guess Dallas wasn't listening that day." I had finished the crown, but it laid light and pretty in my lap. "In case you were wondering, my mother took the straight razor out of Dad's shaving kit and took it to her wrists."
When I looked over at Sodapop, he was staring out over the hollow in the ground and his brown eyes were no longer dancing. He was only like this for a moment before he turned to me with a soft smile and took the moonflower crown out of my lap and placed it on my head.