"I thought you said your aunt's husband was Spanish," Two-Bit asked. The boys were playing football. I was braiding Karen's hair while we sat on the new green grass in the vacant lot the greasers had always claimed as theirs. Two-Bit was talking about Esteban's dark blonde hair and green eyes and his light skin.

"Spain is part of Europe, stupid. The people there are light complexioned." Ponyboy kicked Two-Bit off of him after an especially hard tackle.

"Yeah!" I added after Pony, even though I sure hadn't known that. I heard Soda chuckle and looked up in time to see him smiling and shaking his head at me. Esteban had gotten to Tulsa not even a week after Aunt Dolly's car had. I had never seen her so happy before. She started crying and laughing at the same time. Dad was home at the time because it was the windy part of spring in Oklahoma and most days were too windy to safely drive the big trucks that my father drove. Esteban was staying with us until after the baby came, and once Aunt Dolly was better they were going to move into their own house.

To make room for Esteban, me and Dad cleaned out Dally's room. It wasn't like there was much there anyway. Dally kept most of his stuff at Buck's. Dally didn't really have anything worth keeping. The cops had offered Dad Dally's gun, but he had refused. I had Dally's necklace, but it was our mom's first. In the end, we just donated his clothes and threw away the trash he had left in there and washed his sheets for Esteban. I did keep a knife I found in there, though.

It was a switch blade, a nice one like the one Two-Bit had lost. The handle was made out of a deer's antler, though, not the smooth black metal that Two-Bit's was. I knew exactly where Dally had gotten it, on his ninth birthday from our grandfather in New York. It had been his as a kid. I kept it to give to Two-Bit. It seemed like the right thing to do.

Two-Bit had dang near cried when I gave it to him, and I did cry. He wouldn't take it at first, but I wouldn't let him say no so he finally took it from me. I could see the metal on the very bottom of the handle catching the sunlight from where it poked out of his back pocket. Our grandfather had had Dally's initials engraved in the blade, and they were still there when Two-Bit flicked it open.

"He's a nice guy." I told Two-Bit when the boys had taken a break, all of them sweaty and their hair falling limp despite the grease in it. "He doesn't know English very well still and Aunt Dolly talks to him in Spanish, but he's learning." Esteban didn't know that the word for baby in English is actually pretty close to the word for baby in Spanish, and he had asked me the night before if I was excited for the 'small person' Aunt Dolly would have.

Soda tried to rub his sweaty cheek against mine and I pushed him away, laughing.

"You're gross!" I said, but he only came closer and tried to pull me into him so that my face would be in his armpit. The wind was still going strong and it wasn't long before they were more or less dry. Only then did I let Soda wrap his arm around me. Already the sun was bleaching out his hair into a lighter shade of blonde. My own was getting redder with time in the sun, and I had even more freckles on my face, which Soda loved to peck with kisses.

"The summer brings out the Irish in you," my dad had said the other day. He wasn't wrong. Since I was little, every summer my hair was suddenly much redder than it was in the winter. It wasn't really summer yet, though it already felt like it. It sure was making going to school hard with such pretty, warm days. Really, it was the middle of tax season and that night Darry wanted me to teach him how to do them.

With my father gone so often, for bills and taxes and other important things to be done on time, he taught me how to do them. Dally knew how to do them too, but of course that never inspired him to do any of them. I had been doing them since I was nine. This was the first time Darry would have to do it since their parents had been gone. Let me tell you, taxes are not fun.

Soda walked me over to their house after having dinner at my house. I was surprised that my dad liked Soda so much. But I shouldn't have been, everyone I'd ever known liked Sodapop Curtis. Esteban could not believe that his real name was Sodapop and after about the seventh time he asked in his broken English what his real name was, Sodapop told him his middle name.

"It's Patrick." He said, and my dad chuckled. Aunt Dolly scolded Esteban for asking so often.

"I could not believe your niece is named for place in New York, why I believe this boy is named for drink? You Americans." Esteban said, but he gave Aunt Dolly a kiss on the cheek. If it bothered Soda, it wasn't for long. He was his happy self through dinner.

"Okay," I said to Darry. We were sitting at the kitchen table. Soda had moved the living room furniture out of the way so he could wrestle with Ponyboy. "A lot of this stuff is stupid, 'cause it doesn't even matter for most people. Basically all you gotta worry about is you are the independent tax filer and Soda and Pony are your dependents. Oh, and Soda's salary from the DX."

"Soda doesn't have to file his own separate taxes?" Darry asked. He had two tax packets. I had never filed Dally's jockey winnings separate, and I sure didn't know how to do that.

"Um, no, I don't think so. 'Cause Soda's salary isn't more'n half of the total income, right?" Darry shook his head so I picked up one of the packets and flipped through it until I found stuff he could actually fill out. It took a few hours, but we finally got it done.

"Well, that was stupid," Darry said, leaning back in his chair to stretch.

"I know, I told ya," I said and laid my head down on my arms. Darry got up from the table and Soda slid into his place. He laid his head down on the table so that it was facing me.

"Come here often?" He asked with his usual reckless smile.

"Only to see you." Soda smiled and reached his fingers out until they were brushing mine. He had seemed unusually quiet lately.

"I'll walk you home," Soda picked up my jacket and helped me into it.

"I'd be offended if you didn't."

With his arm around my shoulders, we started down the street. Soda was kicking a rock and I leaned into him. I thought about asking if he was okay, but if there was one thing I had learned from Sodapop so far it was to let people come to you when they were ready.

Three blocks away from my street, Soda cut away and took a turn.

"Soda, I have curfew," I said. He was walking fast and I had trouble keeping up.

"You won't be late if we hurry," he said and pulled me along with him. Soda didn't stop until we were on the bridge above the train tracks.

"What," I started to ask, but Soda cut me off.

"Under here. Right under here is where my parents died." I had laid it all out for him and now he was doing the same.

"Nobody else knows that, 'cept for Darry and Ponyboy of course. I ain't never told anybody though, not even Steve. But I thought you should. I want you to know."

I held my arms out in the offer of a hug and Soda pulled me into him.

"I just want you to know I'm serious about this. Me and you. I ain't going anywhere, no matter what happens."

I could feel my heart pick up the pace because I was pretty sure he was talking about the letter from Sandy. I was right.

"I would never take you back, I hope you know. There was no chance that baby was ever mine anyway, 'cause we had never…" but he trailed off. "It doesn't matter anymore."

He took my face into his hands and kissed me in a way that made my whole body go warm and light and felt like it would never end.

Later that same week, Aunt Dolly had her baby. She was blonde and blue eyed, but a soft gold tone like Esteban was and she was the prettiest baby I had ever seen, even if having her home meant getting woken up all night when she cried.

A girl that she and Esteban named Dulce, which apparently is both the name of people and used to describe sweet things in Spanish.

And Esteban thought Sodapop had a weird name.