The next morning I woke up sore as can be. Rumbling was painful work! Luckily they didn't seem to happen all too often. I looked at the clock in my room and realized it was really late for a Sunday morning. Mom usually woke me up to ask if I wanted to go to church with her. I dragged myself out of bed with my head pounding and walked into the kitchen. Dad and Soda were sitting at the table eating some breakfast and I could hear the shower running.

"Good morning Ponyboy. How are you feeling?" Dad called out as I sat down at the table. "I'm pretty sore and my head is hurting. I think I hit it a few times last night." Dad just nodded and then went to the medicine cabinet and pulled out the bottle of Aspirin.

"Do you know how many of these you usually take?" He asked me shaking the bottle. I just shrugged. "Mom usually just hands me pills and I swallow. Speaking of which where is Mom?" Dad was too busy looking at the bottle to try and read how much I was supposed to take, but Soda turned to answer me. "She went to church a bit ago. She didn't want to wake you. She knows you're hurt."

Dad settled on two pills and set them in front of me to take "start with this and I'll give you more if it's not helping." I took the pills and swallowed them with some water. Then turned back to Soda "She knows I'm hurt? Does she know that we rumbled last night?" I asked, my eyes wide with shock.

"Not fully. She doesn't know about the rumble, but she knows you were in a fight. That bruise on your face really turned for the worse so there was no way to keep it from her. We told her some kids were picking on you during the party last night, but not to worry your two big protective brothers jumped in and saved the day! We made sure to let her know you got some good swings in first though." Soda smiled and picked up his plate and brought it to the sink as he told the story. "Is Mom really mad?" I asked.

Soda ran back over to me and put me in a head lock and started ruffling my hair "At her baby? NEVER! You're about to get a lot of attention kiddo. She didn't want to leave your room when she heard. Darry and I got a lecture about leaving you long enough for a fight to break out, but wasn't as bad as if she knew that we brought you to an actual fight" before I could respond to that I heard Darry yelling down the hall at Soda for leaving something on his side of the room. Soda just shot me a grin saying "that guy needs to relax" and then took off down the hall to go pick up whatever Darry was complaining about.

Dad was looking me over once Soda left "you really feeling ok?" I thought it over. How was I feeling? Worse now that everything had settled, but I was still happy that I went and felt proud of how I held myself. I finally responded "yeah I feel fine. I'm glad that I got to go" Dad just nodded at that and pushed me a plate of breakfast.

I was just finishing up eating when Mom came home. She rushed into the house and when she saw me she pulled me into a hug "Oh baby I'm so sorry that happened! You feeling ok?" She pulled away so she could look me in the eyes as I responded. I nodded and said "yeah I feel fine." She searched me over and pursed her lips trying to decide if I was lying or not.

Finally she nodded "Are you in any pain? I can get you some medicine if you need anything?" I just shook my head "no Dad already gave me some." Although I wasn't sure if it was enough because my head was still hurting a bit. Mom seemed surprised by that, but then just nodded "Well I think you should maybe take it easy today. You have a big day tomorrow and I want you to get plenty of rest."

I agreed with her on that and stood up to go back to my room and maybe lay down again for a bit. As I walked down the hall Sodapop stuck his head out his door "see told ya. The baby can do no wrong. Special treatment for our favorite kid" I rolled my eyes and he gave me a wink. I went to my room and laid down for the afternoon.

After a few hours I came back out. I was surprised that none of that gang was over by now, but maybe they were keeping a low profile. The party just I got in a fight story wouldn't work if all the guys showed up with some injuries. Mom was sure to be suspicious if she saw all of them so it was probably for the best. I found my family hanging out in the living room. The TV was going, but Soda was telling Mom about Sandy and how he wanted to bring her for dinner sometime soon and Darry and Dad were talking about football.

When I walked into the room Mom jumped up and again fussed over me asking how I was feeling. She gave me some more medicine and Darry and Soda just mocked me as I was babied. That was their favorite thing to tease me about. I acted like I was annoyed when Mom did stuff like this, but truth was I loved it. It was nice to get all the attention and have someone care so much. I was so quiet compared to my brothers that I was often times a bit forgotten so I liked when things were all about me for once.

Since the guys didn't come over we didn't have our typical Sunday afternoon football game which I was ok with because I was too sore and my head pounded too much to run around and I sure didn't want to be tackled. I read a bit, but with just our family around we played some old games and it was fun being just us. I love having the guys around, but sometimes it's nice when it's just our family. It doesn't happen very often at all so I tried to soak it in while I could.

As it got later in the evening I started getting nervous about tomorrow and starting up school again. At dinner I asked Sodapop what 8th grade was like since he was the most recent one in that grade. He just said it was just like 7th grade. Same school. same everything just a higher grade. I wasn't sure if I trusted his opinion since school wasn't really his thing. I decided to ask Darry as well. He said basically the same thing as Soda though. That it wasn't that much different than 7th grade. I still wanted more of an answer than that, but knew if I asked again Mom would know I was nervous and she would make a bigger deal out of it than I wanted to so I let the topic go.

We enjoyed a quiet evening as a family and then Mom told Sodapop and I that we needed to go to bed for school tomorrow. She told us to get all our stuff together so we would be prepared in the morning. The quiet ended with that as Soda ran around the house searching for his stuff. How that kid functioned I would never know. It took almost an hour for him to finally put everything together and Mom even did a load of laundry. I think he did it just so we could stay up later because even though I was all packed up in a few minutes, he kept coming into my room pretending to look for stuff and messing around.

Finally Mom told him to knock it off and that we really needed to go to bed. She kicked him out of my room where he was 'looking for a notebook under my bed.' I was cracking up as he pulled an assortment of things out from under the bed. There was no notebook. Soda didn't even take a backpack home most days. He didn't ever do homework.

When Soda eventually left Mom walked over and sat on my bed "you ready for tomorrow honey?" she asked. I was really starting to feel nervous now. I started chewing on my nails as I do when I get nervous about something, but I tried to just nod at her. It didn't fool her though. She wrapped me in a hug and said "you'll do great tomorrow! It's the same school just slightly different classes. You'll be fine" she kissed my head and left the room.

I laid in bed for what felt like forever waiting for the next day. I must have fallen asleep at some point though because I was woken up by Mom to start getting ready for school. She had made a huge back to school breakfast and Johnny and Steve stopped by before school and ate as well. Soda started running around the house getting ready and forgetting all his stuff. Mom just rolled her eyes and asked him what on earth he was doing for an hour last night if he still wasn't prepared. Dad just laughed and then wished me luck on my first day as Darry and him headed off to work. The guys all took off for the high school and I got in the car with Mom.

The whole ride to the school I didn't say a word. Just chewed on my nails. Mom told me to stop twice but then seemed to give up. We got to the school and she wished me luck and told me again that everything would be fine. I went straight to the office when I walked in to get my new schedule. I was happy to see that I still had most of my same teachers. I guess this really wasn't so different after all.

The first half of the day flew by. The teachers introduced me to the class and I sat quietly in the back and took notes. It didn't seem all that much harder than 7th grade, but I was more engaged than before.

At lunch I ran into Curly Shepard. "Hey Curtis!" I noticed he didn't say 'little' or 'baby' and I was grateful for that. I could be just Curtis. That was fine. "I thought you said you were in 8th grade now? I haven't seen you in class" he said. I responded by showing him my schedule. He looked it over and then handed it back "so you skip a grade and are still in all the nerd classes?" he asked. I just shrugged "guess so" and then went to get my food. I thought he would leave but he just followed me. He sat at the table with me and started telling me about his gang here at school and how I could join his group. I just nodded along and listened as he talked.

"You don't say much do you Curtis?" He finally said. I just shrugged again "what do you want me to say?" He just looked at me "guess nothing. That must be why those guys let you hang around with them. Tim never lets me hang around. Says I'm too annoying. That's why I'm starting my own gang. But you're so quiet I bet they don't even notice if you are around or not" I just shrugged again. I had never thought about it like that. But Curly did make a good point.

Once lunch was over Curly gave me a punch in the arm and said he would see me around. The second half of the day went even quicker. I already had homework to do, but for once I was excited to learn. I wasn't going to be as bored that's for sure. Heck it might even be a bit challenging work which I was excited about. The last bell rang and I headed to the parking lot and found Mom waiting to pick me up. I jumped in the car and immediately she asked how my day went.

"It was actually really good!" I said with a grin. "I like all my classes and even sat with a friend at lunch" Mom seemed really pleased about that. I didn't tell her who that friend was. She knew the Shepards. Everyone in town knew the Shepards and I'm not sure how she would feel about Curly and me being friends. She liked Dally sure enough, but the Shepards were a different level. We got home and all the guys were already there since the high school got out earlier. They were playing some poker when we walked in but hearing the door Soda jumped up and asked me how my day went.

"It was great Soda! 8th grade is so much better! The classes are more interesting and it's nice having first pick of electives. I even get to take an art class this semester!" I told him unable to contain my excitement. "That's great Pony! Just think after this semester you'll get to be in school with all of us and the real fun will begin!" he playfully said. I joined in on the poker game for a bit and talked to Johnny about my new classes.

After awhile Mom told me I needed to go do my homework. She told Soda and the rest of the guys as well, but they all just laughed and said they didn't get any homework since it was the first day back. I knew they were lying and was sure Mom did too, but she didn't press the issue. She just wanted the boys to stay in school. She wasn't pushing for top grades. Well at least not from them. It was common knowledge that I needed to get top grades, but I didn't mind. I also wanted to get top grades. School was something I was actually good at.