I hated the spring weather. It brought out the allergies that me, Dally, and our father struggled with every year since moving to Oklahoma. None of us had ever had them in New York, but in Oklahoma the stupid winds blew everything all around. I sneezed until summer would finally begin.
"Brooklyn, why don't you just stop wearing makeup during the spring if you have to do this every day?" Evie asked. I was sitting on one of the stairs, putting my mascara back on.
"Because my eyelashes are blonder than Ponyboy was last month." We heard Two-Bit laughing before we saw him. He had his arm around Pony's shoulders and he was doubled over himself in laughing. Just the weekend before, Darry had finally been able to cut the last of the peroxide dyed blonde from Ponyboy's hair.
"Dammit, Brookie, but ain't you a riot sometimes." Ponyboy was blushing, but smiling. I knew it must have felt good to no longer have the reminder of his time with Johnny in Windrixville looking back at him in the mirror.
"Someone's gotta say somethin' that's actually funny once in a while," Ponyboy teased Two-Bit. They had been hanging out more since Johnny and Dally's deaths. Pony had always been funny like Two-Bit, when he bothered to open his mouth, but spending time with Two-Bit was bringing him out of his shell.
Just then, Karen and Curly came sliding down the railing of the staircase. I had to duck down to avoid getting kicked in the head. Curly landed first and caught Karen as she came to the end.
"I think my big brother is funny," Karen said, planting a kiss on Two-Bit's cheek.
"You are kissin' ass so I won't go tellin' Ma that you broke your curfew last night." Two-Bit wiped his cheek with his shirt sleeve and raised an eyebrow. It was always like this on the greaser side of the hallway. Rough and loud and crazy, but also always a lot of fun unless a fight happened to break out. Most kids, even the Socs, were smart enough not to go getting in fist fights on school grounds.
Sometimes I missed when Soda had been in school. We weren't dating then; heck, he wasn't even dating Sandy yet when he was still going to school. But he was always funny, him and Two-Bit playing off of each other while they did impressions of the teachers and the Socs. And he was always able to charm us out of any trouble we got in.
I also hated the Oklahoma spring winds, though not as much. I had figured out how to deal with those after a few years living in Tulsa, but I was still always a little afraid that my skirt would blow up and I'd end up flashing everybody.
Soda, on the other hand, loved spring. He didn't have allergies, and he actually liked the wind.
"It's like the earth is wakin' up," he said one day. We were laying in the new, soft green grass in the vacant lot. Soda had made sure to tuck my skirt under me around my legs before lying beside me. The clouds were moving really fast across the sky and the pieces of long hair that had already been pulled from my ponytail were blowing around.
"Well, I wish it would go back to sleep." Soda picked up my hand and looked at my nails. Karen had painted them a rosy pink.
"Like your lips," Soda said as he kissed the tip of each finger.
"You're cheesy," I said with a blush.
Soda was so good to me. Even with his greased hair and rough clothing, you could just tell that Sodapop wasn't just some hood. His chocolate brown eyes were always bright and his face was usually sporting a grin.
"Guess what you're going to have to do soon, Ponyboy?" Karen asked him later that week with a wicked grin on her face. Ponyboy was sweaty; he had just ran a pretty heated race during a home track meet. The boys had left to go to the concession stand since Pony wasn't running again for a little while
We all tried to make it to watch Pony compete. He was still having a hard time without Johnny. Of course he still had Soda, who split his time between me, Steve, and Ponyboy for the most part. And he'd become pretty attached to Two-Bit.
I was pretty sure where Karen was going with it, but I'm sure I still blushed as much as Ponyboy when Karen said the words 'sex ed'.
"Hey, I don't ever wanna hear you sayin' that word," Two-Bit had walked up just as Karen said it. He threw a handful of popcorn at her.
Steve was roaring with laughter. "That's right, our resident brainiac skipped a grade. He was too young for sex ed last year when he was a freshman." Steve was right. When me, Karen, and Curly had to sit through sex ed last year they gave Ponyboy an extra hour of gym because they thought he was too young.
"Oh, please. If you need a good reason not to have a baby anytime soon, just come over to my house and listen to Dulce cry. That ought to do it." Ponyboy did do sex ed, with plenty of teasing from Steve and Two-Bit. But he got through it, blushing all the way through, I'm sure.
When school finally came to an end for the year, it was with a lot of teasing. My grades had improved considerably after Dally's death, probably mostly thanks to Ponyboy. My mathematics score was so high they wanted to put me up a year in the subject, like Ponyboy, but only in math. Everything else had gotten better, but not that good.
"Lord Almighty, don't tell me we're gonna have to deal with another intellectual," Two-Bit hooted.
"Oh, don't act like yours are in the gutter, Mister A Minus in English," I swatted Two-Bit with my report card. His grades had jumped up when Ponyboy started helping him, too.
The start of summer was also the first time in a long time that any of the boys had gotten in a fight with a Soc. After that rumble went down, it actually seemed like things could be peaceful. I guess it was pretty peaceful until the day Soda and Steve came home from work with busted up hands and faces.
I didn't know until the day after it happened. By this point, my father was back to work and Aunt Dolly and Esteban had moved into their own house…right next door to ours. It was handy, though, since Dolly still needed a lot of help with Dulce. Since dad was at work, I was staying with Aunt Dolly and keeping the baby for her so she could do some errands.
When I went over to the Curtis house the day after it happened, Steve and Soda were in the middle of telling the story to Two-Bit, their arms waving around wildly.
"Soda!" I said, surprised to see the ring of black around one of his eyes. Steve's lip was split clean open and his knuckles were wrapped in bandages.
"Oh, we're fine Brookie. Come here." He pulled me down to sit on his lap and kissed my forehead. "Trust me, the Socs look worse."
"The S-" I started, but Two-Bit cut me off.
"Huuush, Brooklyn. Steve was gettin' to the good part." He leaned forward, completely focused on Steve like he was going to be tested over it. I turned towards Soda, touching his eye just under the bruise.
"Right, so like I was sayin' these Socs walk into the DX and I swear they must have been drunk or something because they actually had the idea to try to rob us. Like the bastards don't have enough money as it is! And that's actually what Soda said to 'em—'Don't y'all have enough money?', but he called them dumbasses, not bastards. And this guy tries to pull Soda by his shirt collar over the counter."
I looked at Soda and raised my eyebrows but he gave me a sheepish smile and buried his head against my stomach. This is why no one could be mad at Sodapop, because he did things like this that just melted your heart.
"The guy sucker punched Soda, as you can tell by his pretty face bein' all damaged. Obviously a chump Soc usually isn't able to sock Soda hard enough to bruise him. So what I do is I come out of the back, they didn't even know I was there and I surprised 'em. Then here comes Soda, jumping over the counter like some crazed horse…"
"But why'd they want to rob you anyhow?" I asked when Steve had finished his long retelling of the fight.
"That, Brooklyn, brings us back to Soda's pretty face. They got the dumb idea because their girlfriends always come into the DX to flirt with your boyfriend." I knew this happened, it was no secret. It had also never bothered me because I knew Soda flirted back to make fun of the girls, not because he had any interest in them.
"Well," I said, cupping Soda's face between my hands and taking in his warm brown eyes and his reckless smile and the way his features were both strong yet still boyish. "You're just gonna have stop being so handsome. You're just too good-lookin' for your own good."
And then I squished his face between my hands. "That's better!"
"They make me sick," Two-Bit said, making a sour face.
"Oh, I'm right there with you, brother." Steve mimed throwing up.
Since Dad had gone back to work and Aunt Dolly, Esteban and Dulce didn't live with us anymore, I had a lot of alone time again. And by alone time I meant plenty of time to sneak Soda into my house.
It had been Soda's idea, since we were never really alone. There were people at the usual places we went, drive-ins and Pony's track meets and such. And of course, at least one of Soda's brothers was always home and before there had been Aunt Dolly and then Aunt Dolly, Esteban, and Dulce, not to mention my dad while the winds were too bad.
"It can be our little secret," Soda had said as he wrapped his arms around my waist and kissed me.
Sometimes I would cook for him or we would cook together and sometimes we would move furniture out of the way in the living room and put records on and Soda would teach me how to swing dance. Or we would sit on the roof so I could point out constellations and when you could see planets.
A lot of the time, though, I would get blankets from my bed and we'd cuddle on the couch. But I had a rule that at least one of them had to be sitting up because I wasn't ready for other things to happen. Honestly, I was scared. I had never done anything more than kiss a boy and I had no idea how far Soda had gone with Sandy.
I was laying with my head on Soda's chest and my arms around his waist while we watched some low budget horror movie on the television. Soda had been drawing on my leg absentmindedly with his finger when his hand started inching towards the hem of my skirt.
"Be good," I warned him, even though I didn't make any move to stop him.
"I'm always good," Soda replied, but I snorted.
"That black eye of yours would say differently." I could feel his laugh move through his chest.
"You got me there, sweetheart." He moved his hand from my leg to my hip and left it there.
I only knew that Soda knew for sure that Sandy's baby wasn't his because they'd never done that. I didn't want to ask him exactly how far they had gone. Sometimes I looked back and wondered when Sandy would blush at Angela's risky questions if she was blushing because she was thinking of Soda or whoever her baby's father was.
I knew I'd never get the answer, but I found that the more daring Soda got the less I cared. I also started to care less about being scared. More and more, I was just curious what would happen if I let Soda go farther.
But I was holding out. Not because I was that much of a total prude even if Angela and most other greaser girls made me blush with their actions. And not because I was trying to be a tease or anything. I just didn't want to go that far with anyone, even handsome, charming Sodapop Curtis, unless they loved me.
I was pretty sure even then that I loved him, but I hadn't told him. And he hadn't told me, but I certainly wasn't going to say it first. So I was waiting to hear him say it.