Author's Note: I put a scene I was originally putting in the beginning chapter two at the end of chapter one. You can read it there, if you're interested.

Chapter Two

I never had a buddy like Mark before, or honestly many buddies that were truly my own. Even Johnny had been Soda's friend first, having been the same age and all. Mark though, he was mine. And I was his. That happens when you're young; someone you never thought much of can weave their way into the fabric of your life in a way that makes it see like they were always woven there. Or maybe I just wanted someone to be near and there he was. Everywhere.

So much so I wasn't exactly surprised when he pulled up beside me when I was walking home from school on a Friday. We'd been buddying around most Fridays. He was in a bright red Plymouth Fury, a car any hood should know was too flashy to steal. Of course, Mark wasn't just any hood.

"Get in. I got you a Snickers." He waved it around.

He had gotten it for me special. I knew Mark didn't like candy or anything too sweet. I got to know a lot about Mark in the past few weeks.

"Curtis. Pony. Ponyboy," he whined. "Get in the car. Have some candy."

I did. It was a tuff car. Boy, Steve would be jealous.

Mark grinned, as he tossed me the Snickers. "Tried-and-true. Nine out of ten perverts agree it's their preferred method for luring boys into their vehicles." He pulled away from the curb. "Where were you? I thought practice was over at five?"

It flattered me that he knew my schedule. "I had to talk to my English teacher."

"You could've told me. Bryon's off tryin' to get up some chick's skirt. I'm so bored." Douglas was always trying to get up some girl's skirt.

"Where are we going?" I asked as I started eating the candy, mostly to have something to do. Sometimes being with Mark confused my hands, and they forgot how to act like hands.

"How 'bout we go to the expressway and drag?"

"In this? No way."

"Chicken shit."

"I ain't chicken. I can't go and get in more trouble with the fuzz. Darry'll kill me before the state gets a chance to throw me in a boys' home. Don't you worry about that stuff?"

But I knew the answer. Mark didn't worry about anything. Even though he was an orphan, too - the only other kid I knew who'd lost both parents. Mark's parents killed each other in front of him when he was in elementary school. It was a sad story, but the East Side was full of sad stories. As bad as it is, you kinda get numb to it. You have to. He lived with his friend.

"Curtis, they ain't gonna take us away from nobody. Then they'd have to deal with us. And would it really be so bad, if we get stuck in a boys' home together? Maybe we can share bunkbeds. I always wanted bunkbeds. I call top bunk."

I just looked at him.

"Okay," he went on. "We can share the top. Keep warm, that way." I could feel my ears heat up. Mark made a lot of funny jokes like that. Jokes that made me feel funny.

"I've had enough trouble for a lifetime, Mark."

"Then you shouldn't have gotten into a car with me, huh? Stolen car, drugs -"

"What drugs?" I asked, alarmed.

"There's a couple of doobies in the glove box. Came with the car. Don't look at me like that, Curtis. Fine, we won't drag."

We drove around for a while, up around First Street where there were a bunch of seedy bars.

"Was it Big Shane who taught you to fight? I remember he was a hell of a brawler." That caught me off guard. I think Mark lived to catch me off-guard, thinking back.

I shrugged, hoping he wasn't fixing to jump someone.

When I didn't say anything he tilted his head back and said, "Big Shane," with reverence.

Everyone on our side of the Union Depot called Dad 'Big Shane,' except for Mom who had called him 'Tiny.' No one around here could ever pronounce 'Shaynne' quite right. He liked a fight as much as my brothers, maybe even more.

"Beat my old man up one time. I was in the car outside the Wild Coyote, waiting to drive him home."

"Sorry." I tried to think of something to say to change the subject, but couldn't come up with anything quick enough.

"I'm sure he had it comin'. He was a mean bastard, my old man," Mark carried on jovially. I looked out the window. "Think he made a pass at a barmaid, and you know, Big Shane held court on the East Side, everyone came out to watch, but I saw from the car. He beat him to a pulp." Then Mark kinda laughed. "A real savage, Big Shane."

"I don't like fights," I heard myself say. I rubbed nougat and caramel off my incisors with my tongue and kept chewing.

"What? Are you gonna tell me you're into that hippie shit?"

I shook my head as I swallowed. I was shrouded in too much melancholy for that. "I just don't like them."

"You know, you're a funny guy, Curtis. Can't say I ever met anyone like you. Is it funny being you?"

I shrugged. I'd never been anyone else.

It would have bothered me coming from anyone but Mark. I knew he didn't mean nothing by it. He genuinely wanted to know. I could really talk to him. Mark could get you to open up, share things you'd never thought you'd share. He had a bravado like a lot of greasers, but he wasn't the sort to judge. He didn't dig - we saw things differently. But he was interested in the way I saw things. Insatiably curious, I guess you could call him, as an ill-fated cat. I'm kinda curious too, which may be why we got along so well so fast. We had a lot in common.

It was a shame no one ever taught him to read.

"You miss your parents still?" I asked.

I got lost one time when I was little, at a fair in Anadarko. I guess I wandered off. I didn't mean to. One minute I was walking alongside the rest of my family, then looked up to see I must have taken a different turn and was alone crushed in a crowd. I must have been pretty young, because in my memory I was eye level with all the grownups' belts. I frantically searched around the fair for what seemed like hours, panicked but too shy to ask a stranger. I was bawling, sure I would be lost there forever and I would never go home or see my family again. I don't remember how I got found, but I must have been.

I kinda felt like that since Mom and Dad died, if you want to know the truth. All the time in some small, but feral, place inside my chest. When would I shake that feeling?

"Never paid it much mind, myself," he replied nonchalantly.

I digested that. I wondered what it was like to be untouchable like Mark. Sometimes he seemed unreal - ethereal, maybe - like he was transplanted from some other planet where desperation hadn't been invented.

He wasn't hard like Dally had been. He wasn't angry at the world, or dejected, or even disillusioned. It was like he was completely immune to life, which had given him lemons that he chucked over a chain link fence for kicks. I envied him.

He made a hard left, sending me against the passenger door. "Let's go climb the water tower."

So we went to the water tower, because Mark wanted to, and I wanted to do what he wanted. We passed by a couple of Tim Shepard's guys, which I should have expected as the water tower wasn't far from their alleys. They did a double take at Mark and me in this tuff car and started laughing. I slunked down in the seat. I hoped it didn't get back to Darry.

"Maybe if we leave the car here, they'll take it off our hands."

I hopped out. "Race you!"

I had a head start and was faster than Mark, so he was still behind me when I skidded to a halt by the railroad tracks. Near one of the rusted ties, a purple-blue crocus was in bloom. Juxtaposition, that's what it's called.

I crouched down to get a closer look.

I hadn't heard Mark catch up, but his foot came down and scraped the lonely flower back across the cracked soil it had dared to breach.

I looked up at him. "Why did you have to go and do that? It was nice."

"You ever see something so perfect and you just want to ruin it?"

I didn't dig that at all, but I decided it was more important to show Mark how good I was at climbing a water tower than to argue about flowers.

I jumped up to finish our race, doing a handspring on my way. It was also important that Mark see I could do a handspring.

See, I liked Mark so much I could overlook the needless destruction, the fact that he maybe liked me because I'd been in so much trouble, his off handed comments about my family, and that he had some wild ideas about cowboys and Indians.

I made it under the tower first. Only the first ten feet or so of the water tower took much effort, then there was a ladder leading to the top. Each rung stained our palms with rust.

When we got up there, I was taken back by the size of the tank. It was huge. I wiped off my hands on my pants.

"Hey, look at this! Everything's so tiny." He leaned over the railing.

I looked down at the ground beneath us. You couldn't make out anything that well. Not the crossties of the tracks, much less that abused crocus, but further out you could see our city. The water tower was not far from downtown, so we looked over Tulsa at all the buildings and houses. And I thought about going for Sunday drives with Mom and Dad, and how Mom would say that in each house we drove by there was a family just as important as us, living lives as complicated.

I felt small.

Mark whooped. "It's like we're kings," he said.

I had an odd thought that someday this would not be my city. I couldn't wait, but missed it already. (Can you be wistful and nostalgic all at once?) I wondered where Mark would be in two years, after we were done with high school. I didn't ask him, though. I knew he didn't think about the future.

I heard a rumble, but couldn't spot the train.

Mark had turned around to examine the graffiti - if you could call it that - on the tank. It was a smattering of initials and declarations of things like 'David was HERE!' We were far from the first people to climb up here.

"You think R.S. and S.V. are still together?" I asked, looking at the lopsided heart that held those letters.

He didn't answer. "Do you have any paint? We should write our names on here."

"I don't carry paint around with me."

"Well you should, you could paint something real big up here and everyone would see it."

"What would I paint?" I ask, as we circled the tank. I tapped it, to see what sound it would make.

"You could paint me. My face grinning over Tulsa." He demonstrated. His lips were chapped.

This moment was good. Mark already looked like a painting of himself, golden against the greenish-gray sky. Golden eyelashes. Golden freckles. Golden grin. Golden everything. Even the hair in his armpits, golden, when he stretched his arms above his head and his t-shirt sleeves fell, hem rising to expose another sliver of gold. It was February, you'd think he'd be freezing, but as with everything else, temperature didn't seem to affect him.

The air was still. I had goosebumps under my sweatshirt. I should have worn a coat.

The best we could do was to use a blade to etch our initials into the peeling paint on the railing. We sat down on the grated floor. Half facing-Tulsa and half-facing each other, each with a leg dangling off the platform. It was exhausting to climb up all that way, which I hadn't really noticed. We were so close. My arms and legs were heavy, but my head was light.

I would draw Mark tonight, I decided. I would not draw his eyelashes or his freckles. I'd draw him small and far away legs bent as they were bent, but not touching mine. I'd draw him separate, or maybe we were so intertwined I had disappeared from the frame. I wanted to capture him as I saw him. Taut, a perpetually coiled spring. One ankle exposed under his rucked up pantleg. He wasn't wearing socks. I liked his ankle. I thought it was the best ankle I'd ever seen.

I had given up trying to match his hair color with my paints weeks ago. Some things can't be recreated, or saved.

"You know," he sounded like he was really thinking about what he was gonna say, a rare thing for him, "you're as pretty as any chick I know."

Pretty. That should have bothered me. I don't look too tough naturally. It's kinda a sore spot for me, if I'm being honest. I'm kinda soft spoken and I keep my fingernails clean and neat. That sort of thing can mark you when you're a guy, especially in my neighborhood.

But then, in that moment with Mark's knee pressing against my thigh, I didn't mind being called pretty. The idea that Mark might think me so sent a thrill through me. And the way he said it - it meant that when we saw a girl walking down the street and he turned to look back at her, he might just as soon look at me like that. I wanted nothing more than for him to look at me like that.

I couldn't stand for him to see me, so I leaned back down on the grate and looked up at the sky, which was real cloudy. Had I ever been closer to heaven?

I wasn't completely sure what heart palpitations were, but I thought I might be having them right then.

Pulling up my legs, because I felt I might slip out through the railing and plummet to my death, I put the soles of my worn tennis shoes on the bar. He mimicked me.

I didn't remember the sun setting but it was dark when Mark brought himself up on his elbow and turned to look down at me. Through his t-shirt I could see his chest expanding and contracting in the rhythm of his breathing.

I was terrified.

Lightening fractured the sky above his head. Instinctively I counted for the thunder: one mississippi .. two mississippi ... three -

"Are we expectin' twisters?" I asked in sudden realization. Green sky, lightning, no rain … We both grew up in the heartland; we should have known better.

"Well, shit." He dropped his head and started laughing, which filled me with a bubbling joy, like I was the one laughing. So I did.

"We should probably get down from here."

"Knew you was chicken."

"I ain't itchin' to be swept up by a tornado." - the thunder clapped - "Or electrocuted."

He jumped up and extended his hand down to me. I took it and let him pull me up.

I stood next to him, looking out from that manmade precipice one last time before we climbed down.

If Mark wanted, we hunted for action, but evenings like this, just the two of us were my favorite.

We walked back to the car, which had not been taken off our hands after all.

He fiddled under the steering wheel to get the car going again, before we drove away. I had no idea how late it was. I turned on the radio to a Beatles song. When I went to change the station Mark's hand stilled mine.

"No. I kinda like this one." That was a thing about Mark. He liked what he liked when he liked it. It didn't matter if he was supposed to or not.

His hand on my wrist, we let the car fill with layered percussion. It spoke to me. Maybe because Mark liked it, or maybe because there was something wrong with me. You know there is, when you start digging the Beatles.

When the song ended, Mark moved his hand. I remember how he raked his eyes over me, leaving me raw and exposed.

"We can go drag, if you still want," I said.

I'd catch hell from Darry, but that didn't seem to matter anymore than the imminent tornado. I didn't want to say goodbye yet.

We were going about 90, when I saw a police car lying in wait. It didn't even take a second for the siren to start wailing and the cruiser to pull out behind us.

Glory, I thought, we're in for it now. Red lights flashed against the car's mirrors.

But Mark wasn't slowing down. Mark hit the gas.

"Are you crazy?" I shouted over the roar of the engine. We'd never be able to outrun the fuzz. He'd just make it worse for us.

"Guess I am!"

I grabbed onto the console with sweaty hands, as we weaved through cars that were all trying to pull to the right.

I no longer feared being caught. I was afraid we'd crash and die. My eyes were so wide they felt dry.

Mark made a sharp turn onto one of the wooded dirt roads that led to the lake. The cop zipped passed.

We pulled off to the side. It was dark. Mark had turned off the headlights.

"That was close," he said, unconcerned. "We'll have to ditch the car and make it back to town on foot."

I opened the door and nearly fell out. We set off to the trees, but didn't get far before I stumbled. I got sick.

After I was done, I kept my head down for a minute between my knees, trying to collect myself, spitting out residual vomit.

I stilled when I felt Mark touch the back of my head and card his fingers through my hair. It was odd, but I didn't say anything, because I liked it. I liked it a lot.

I sat up, wiped my mouth, and looked at him. He looked back.

His fingers tightened in my hair, it pulled at my scalp in a way that felt very good. He didn't say anything, but his face darted at mine, so swiftly our teeth clinked together like drinking glasses. It echoed through my entirety. Not just my body, everything.

I had no time to panic. Red lit up the forest. I guess the cop had turned back.

"Just run. I'll handle this."

So I ran.

It wasn't until I got home that I realized Mark had slipped two joints in my sweatshirt pocket, but I had other things to worry about.

Mark had kissed me.