Grace stayed the rest of the summer, but her parents insisted she come home just before the new school year started.
This was very good news for me and Sodapop. We had gotten used to having time alone before Grace showed up in Tulsa, and the whole time she was there I could tell Soda was itching for her to leave so we could have that time again.
As soon as we were sure we would have that time again, Soda came over. I had barely opened the door when he had taken my face in his hands. He kissed me even as he led me backward so that we both kind of fell on the couch. Soda pulled away for just a second to laugh and then he went back to kissing me, for so long and so deep I was sure my lips would show a bruise afterwards.
Going back to school also meant that the anniversary of Johnny and Dally's deaths were coming up.
I don't know the date of my mother's death. I was a little kid, and I didn't care about what day of the week it was, let alone the month or day. And I don't want to know the date; I never asked Dallas for it and I'll never ask my father.
But I know the date Dally died all too well. October 22, 1964. Just two weeks after my fifteenth birthday on October 6th. Just two weeks before he had died, Dallas had given me a new dress he had bought using money he won from horse races. Dad had left red velvet cupcakes on the kitchen table, my favorite, before going to bed to sleep after a long haul.
I didn't even want to I think about October, 1965.
"Don't even try," I told anyone who asked about my birthday. My dad, Soda, Aunt Dolly, Karen. They all got the same answer. "It's just going to be another day."
That's what I wanted, and I wasn't going to budge on it either. Before September was even over, I had gotten everyone on board to ignoring my coming birthday.
I didn't want to be in Tulsa for the entire month of October, let alone Dally's death anniversary date. It was just my luck that the 22nd was going to land on a Friday. Which meant I would have to go to school. Maybe. I was already thinking of skipping on October 1st.
"Don't you dare say it," I said on the morning of my birthday when Soda came by to walk me to school.
"Say what?" Soda asked, throwing his arm around my shoulders and planting a kiss on my temple. "It's just Wednesday, Brooklyn."
I leaned into him and smiled.
I got exactly what I wanted that day. Nobody mentioned it and nobody tried to give me anything. That probably sounds really sad, but it made me happy. It felt better to not pay it any mind.
October 22 was still an issue. There's only sixteen days between October 6 and October 22. In those sixteen days between, things had gone from normal to never the same again. But this time, nothing happened in those sixteen days. Unless you count Dulce learning to crawl and stand up in the same day as something, because Aunt Dolly sure did.
"She's so smart!" Aunt Dolly had gushed to Dad, just days before the 22nd. Dad had taken the whole week off, something he never did.
"Dallas did the same thing. He got bored so easy once he learned something. He was always wantin' to learn something new."
On the morning of that day, I did not want to go to school. I laid in bed as long as I could, but eventually my dad called for me to get dressed.
"You're going to be late, Baby Doll!" He called from the kitchen. I groaned and rolled myself out of bed. I didn't bother with makeup or my hair, besides undoing the braid and taking the setting pins out of my bangs and fluffing them. I put on a light blue dress and a white sweater, careful not to wear anything too dark.
Dad had made pancakes for breakfast, already buttered and sugared the way I liked them because I didn't like syrup. I ate them even though I wasn't all that hungry, and I drank all of my chocolate milk on top of that.
I'm sure my dad knew how much I didn't want to go to school. But I didn't say anything about it and neither did I, so after breakfast I grabbed my school books and headed outside to meet Sodapop at the gate like I always did.
Except Soda wasn't leaning against our gate with the morning sun shining in his gold hair like he usually was. He was leaning, but it was against the Curtis's pickup truck.
"But we walk to school," I said dumbly, because I was tired and sad and couldn't understand Soda's big smile and bright eyes.
"You're not goin' to school," he said, giving me a happy kiss on the mouth.
"What about the DX?" I asked. "Don't you have work?"
"I ain't going to work neither."
I felt one of my eyebrows go up. I don't know how Two-Bit managed to get us all to start copying that habit of his.
"Then where are we goin'?"
"We're getting out of Tulsa. For the day, anyway. I already told your dad and he said okay and called the school and told them you're sick."
"But where are we going?" Sodapop opened my door for me and I could feel his warm hand on my back, guiding me into the passenger seat of the truck.
"It's a surprise," Soda's eyes were shining the way they did when he and Steve won a drag race and when we rode horses down at the stables and when he beat Darry in a wrestling match. He was excited and happy, and despite it all, it was catching.
"Okay," I said easily with a smile spreading across my face. Soda held my hand while he drove and sang along to every Elvis song that played on the radio.
The only time I'd been outside of Tulsa since moving there was to visit cousins. But Soda was taking us a different way than I'd ever been. He was right about it being a surprise, because I had no idea where we were going.
Outside the window, the building became few and far between. Then there were no buildings at all, just a lot of tall grass turning yellow with the fall.
"Where are we going?" I asked Soda again. His hand was playing with the hem of my skirt.
"A place," he said, smiling bright.
We passed some farms with red barns and a ranch or two. But Soda kept driving until he turned suddenly on a dirt road I couldn't even tell was there, with the grasses so tall and thick.
It scared me when the truck started to bounce over the rock—I didn't know we were going on a dirt road. I reached over and grabbed tight to Soda's arm and he laughed.
"You really are my city girl," he said. Soda drove until we reached a tiny wooden house that had been painted white. It looked old, but taken care of.
"What is this place?"
"This is where me and Darry and Ponyboy and Dad would come when we went huntin'. We'd stay in this house. It used to be my grandparent's place."
"Well, what are we doin' here?"
Soda hopped out of the passenger side of the truck and came over to my side. He opened the door but didn't move to let me get out. Instead he wrapped his arms around my waist and tilted his head to look up at me.
"I told you we were gonna get outta Tulsa for the day." His smile and the twinkle in his eyes both said trouble.
"You're a liar, Sodapop Curtis." I was laughing, but I leaned down to kiss him on the lips. "There's no way my dad knows about this!"
"I make a very convincing Mr. Winston over the phone."
It should be a sad day, a terrible sad day, but it's not. All thanks to Sodapop Curtis. He just had this way about him. Nothing could ever keep Soda down.
"You've never seen the country," Soda said, lifting me by the waist. "So I'm going to show you." He set me down in yellow grass that was almost as high as my knees. The grass and the house and a little forest of trees were all that could be seen out there.
"It'll be our secret day." I felt Soda wrap his arms back around my waist and set his head on top of mine while I looked around.
"Our secret day," I said, taking in the way you could see the sky from horizon to horizon. "I've never been somewhere so open. And I thought Tulsa was empty!"
"It's not empty!" Soda took my hand, pulling me toward the trees. "Come with me."
I thought the forest looked little, but it was bigger than I had imagined. Soda told me that this is the place where his father would take them to hunt deer. It was more crowded in there than it looked and more than once Sodapop had to lift me over a fallen tree trunk or a huge rock.
I didn't know how Soda knew where he was going. There was no path. But after walking for maybe half an hour, the trees suddenly opened up into a clearing shaped like a lopsided circle.
"You know all sorts of secret places," I said, thinking about the night with the moonflowers.
"I better, considerin' I've lived in Tulsa my whole life."
The grass in the little clearing was yellow, like all the fall grass, but it was soft when I laid back in it. Up above the trees blocked out most of the sky, red and orange and brown fall leaves replacing the blue. When a breeze came through, the leaves rained down on us so that I laughed.
"This is better than being in Tulsa," I said, moving to rest my head on Soda's chest. I could feel his heartbeat under my cheek.
"I thought it might be." You could hear the smile in his voice.
Sodapop always knew what people needed, and he'd give it to you if he could. Maybe that was the reason I started to cry. Because Soda knew I needed to be away from Tulsa, away from the place it happened, to face that it had been a full year since my brother had died. To face the fact that I was a year older, but he never would be.
The tears came fast and hot and hard, so that they made my throat feel small and thick and my eyes stung.
"Shhh," Soda dropped kisses on my hairline while my hands made fists around his shirt. He brought both of us up so that we were sitting, me in his lap.
I felt something wet hit my head, and I knew Soda needed this too. I had forgotten somehow, in between trying to pretend it didn't happen, that other people would be hurt by this day, too.
Sometimes I forgot how alike me and Dally could be. He had pretended that our mother hadn't died from the moment it happened, and it made him angry and hard.
I loved my brother, but I never wanted to be like him. He wasn't someone to look up to, like Johnny thought. He was gallant, Johnny wasn't wrong there. But it came with too heavy a price.
I didn't want to be gallant. I wanted to feel everything, not hold it back. So I wiped the tears first from my face and then from Soda's and then I kissed him as hard as I could.
I kissed his so that he was all I thought of and all I could concentrate on. He was all I wanted to feel.
I hope this makes up for the long absence of updates for this story :)