PROLOGUE:
"I don't know why I could talk to her; maybe for the same reason she could talk to me. The first thing I knew, I was telling her about our sister, Mickie. I never talked about her. It was personal.
Mickie was wild, almost like she belonged more to the world than to us, even back when Mom and Dad were around. Mom always said the instant Soda laid eyes on Mickie, he'd claimed her. 'My sister,' he declared, proud as anything, and nobody'd ever doubted it."
The long column of ash finally fell off the end of Pony's forgotten cigarette, dotting his paper with flecks of black and gray that smudged when he tried to swipe them away. He tore the sheet in half a few times over, pushing the scraps to the corner of his desk. Stamping out the butt, Pony lit another, taking a moment to shake the cramp from his hand before beginning again.
"When I was ten, I thought they were just alike, Soda and Mickie. Except Mickie was more like a she-wolf, pretty and feral and free."
Pony paused, reading back over the last line. He shook his head, drawing a heavy slash through the words. They weren't right, but he went on.
"She was a fierce one, always getting herself into trouble, jumping in the middle of fights, but she was different with Soda. He looked out for her, the only force that could ever reel her in; Mickie wouldn't mind anyone else. She'd still stand there teasing him and rolling her eyes, giving him a hell of a time. Gosh, but Sodapop was crazy about her. 'I've got me an ornery little sister,' Soda'd say, ruffling her hair. 'How come you're so mean, Mickie Mouse?' and Mickie would scowl and punch him, but never hard. She may have seemed like she belonged to another world, but she was Soda's.
"Don't you still see her?" Cherry asked.
"She was taken away," I said. "After Mom and Dad were gone. The state said she'd be better off."
Cherry didn't say anything else, and I was glad. I couldn't tell her how Soda had cried after they took Mickie. I had cried, too, because all we really wanted was to stay together, and we'd lost her. I couldn't think about how, if we only had more money—"
Ponyboy stopped writing, slamming his pencil down on his desk. He was panting harder than if he'd just come off the track, sticky with sweat under his thin, white t-shirt.
"Everything okay in here?"
Darry's voice at the door nearly sent him through the roof. Pony swallowed his gasp, but there wasn't much he could do to hide the skittish jolt. He glanced up at his brother and nodded a bit too quickly.
Darry frowned, taking a step into the room. He slid the paper across the desk, his eyes flickering over the page of frantic scrawling just long enough to glimpse the details, to read her name.
Letting out a heavy sigh, Darry checked his watch. "You've been at it for a while now. How about taking a break?"
Ponyboy's head snapped up, shadows catching in the hollows under his wide eyes. "Just a little longer, Dar," he nearly whispered. "Please, I… I gotta get this right."
Pony held his breath, praying that - maybe, just this once - Darry would understand. How could he explain that Dally and Johnny's story had all but written itself, the words pouring out of him, easily filling the pages. But, when it came to Mickie…
Darry shifted, running a hand through the back of his hair "Look, Pone, you don't have to—"
"I do," Pony insisted, taking up his pencil again.
Why was this so difficult? How could he ramble on about the others, devote pages to people he barely knew, wouldn't ever speak to again, yet couldn't find the words to tell the story he'd replayed in his head at least a million times over? Sure, he'd smoked an entire pack writing those few lines about about Mom and Dad. But he'd gotten through it, hadn't he? What made this different?
Snatching up the paper, he crumpled it into a ball and tossed it at the pile surrounding the wastebasket, then drew a fresh sheet. Darry was rustling around behind him, but Pony hardly noticed until Darry snatched the half-empty pack of smokes off the desk and shook them in his face.
"Thought I told you to take it easy on these," he said. But he didn't sound angry or even annoyed. He just sounded sad.
The familiar instinct to freeze gripped Pony, his pencil hovering over the blank page before him. He could feel Darry staring at him, waiting for a response, but he didn't look up.
"Yeah, I know," Pony mumbled, hoping it would be enough.
The knot in his stomach loosened, as Darry's reluctant footsteps made their way back across the room. He lingered in the doorway, toying with a loose screw on the hinge.
"She's more like an unbroke colt," Darry said quieter than Pony knew he could be. He quit fiddling with the screw and shoved his hand in his pocket. "I know you're the wordsmith in the family. But I always thought Mickie looked just like a dark-gold buckskin. Same coloring, and all."
Pony blinked, the unexpected insight - from Darry, of all people - hitting hard. For a moment, he just sat there, stunned, until Darry reached for the doorknob.
"Thanks," Pony managed.
Darry gave an almost imperceptible nod, shutting the door after him as he left the room. Ponyboy took a deep breath, the gears in his mind spinning faster than he could keep up with. The words began to flow freely now, his pencil racing across the page.
"The first thing I knew I was telling her about Mickey Mouse, Soda's horse…"
MICKIE:
I waited until the other girls were sleeping, or at least pretending to be, before reading it again. The dim light in the dormitory barely illuminated the pages in my hands, but the story was familiar, full of memories I hadn't visited in a while. Slowly, I read it once more, the words pulling me back into a world I'd been forced to leave behind.
The rest of Pony's theme carried the echoes of nights spent fighting to survive, to belong... everything he'd been through with Johnny and Dallas. But this part was about something else, something closer.
"Mickey Mouse," I whispered, my breath catching.
I could see the struggle, the way Pony danced around the truth. As real as our little brother had made it seem, Soda'd never had a horse. This was about us - about Soda and me. My fingers traced the edge of the paper, a quiet realization settling in. Losing a horse must be easier to write about than losing a sister. Still, the sting of being left out again was sharp, cutting deeper than I wanted to admit.
I blinked hard, the lines blurring together, and folded the creased theme. Slipping it under my pillow, I lay back on my cot, the rusted springs letting out their final groan. Tomorrow, I would see Soda, and for a few precious hours, the world would make sense again. But tonight, I was alone with Ponyboy's words and the hollow space where my story should have been.