Chapter Eleven

Tarzan had just airing, and we were watching Ron Ely swing around on vines in a loincloth. He was no Mike Henry, but it was still pretty good. Soda came in and went up to the TV and turned the dial, so the Green Hornet flicked on.

"Hey!" I objected, from my spot on the floor. "We was watching that."

"I wasn't." Steve said, as he took out his comb. His hair looked so stupid without grease. It was really fluffy, a comb wouldn't do any good.

I rolled my eyes. I couldn't stand anything Soda did those weeks after he walked in on me and Mark. He hated everything I did. He didn't want me reading Breakfast at Tiffany's because it was too girly or watching Tarzan because it was too manly. I couldn't please him. He didn't want me drawing. He didn't want me sitting with my legs crossed. And when Steve had swiped my chips out of my hands earlier, so I had to jump on his back, Soda didn't even want us wrestling. I was sick of it.

Or maybe it was that if I was annoyed, I could pretend I wasn't hurt.

I'd been with Mark long enough to recognize the signs before a blow-up, only this time it was in me. It festered like an infected wound. I might have lost it then, but Darry shouted from the kitchen table, where he had all the bills splayed out deciding which ones were priorities.

"You got the PSAT coming up. Go study for it." He noticed the tension between me and Soda, it'd be hard not to.

Soda cut in. "Shoot, ain't that just practice? And it's in two weeks, he can -

"What would you know about it?" I snapped. "You ain't ever take it."

How did he have the audacity to take up for me? I didn't bother to look at his face, before I got up and grabbed the little green book and went to my room.

I needed a critique partner, and so did Cherry. We could have each found someone else in the class, but we didn't. We pushed our desks so they were closer and exchanged papers.

She made marks on my paper and occasionally paused to put the back of her pen between her teeth, before adding comments in the margins. I'd been writing about wild things and captivity, midnight-blue skies and cages, ever since I read: You call yourself a free spirit, a "wild thing," and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself.

I think Cherry's story might have also been about captivity. It was good, but she used the word "rancour" three times in five pages. When we were done talking about our stories and flipping through the thesaurus, we got to talking. Really talking for the first time since last fall. It was funny that I probably talked to her for all of five hours our whole lives at this point, but I'll always think about her. She was as lonely as me. Maybe that was it too.

She wasn't doing cheerleading this year. And she wasn't hanging around with her old girl-friends, but I had been too wrapped up in myself to really notice how hard it'd been for her. If I became a legend after Bob died, Cherry became fabled in her own right. A cautionary tale about pitting boys against each other. She got blamed for what happened, because people thought she was running around on Bob with low-class boys. I knew what people said, but I'd been too concerned with my own problems to think about what it must have been like for Cherry. And though she had told me at the drive-in - before Johnny killed Bob, before she spied for us, before she testified in front of a judge and her parents and God - that she might not say 'hi' to me at school, it was me who had avoided her. It was me who heard jokes about her and jokes about me and her, and I just stood there. I felt nauseated with shame. It wasn't fair, her life had changed by all that too. And it wasn't her fault. I hope she knew that. I'm not sure she did.

"My parents wanted me to transfer to another school, but I'm not going to be driven out for my senior year."

"I'm sorry," I said.

"You didn't do a thing." She shook her head and changed the subject. "I got early acceptance into this little school in Los Angeles, my parents think it's a bad idea, but my brother's out there and I can't stay here…" And I thought: It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.

But still I envied her. I wanted out too, even if part of me knew no matter how far I got, I could never really leave. Any of it.

We talked about colleges, and it seemed very real then that she was going to be done with high school, then I would be done with high school. "You're lucky you're close to Mr. Syme," she said.

"Huh? How do you mean?" I glanced at him. He was on the other side of the room hunched over pointing at another student's paper.

"Everyone says he writes the best letters of rec, but you need to ask him months in advance."

We kept talking until class ended. I forgot how good it felt to talk to somebody.

"Did you see Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" Cherry asked, after the bell rang, and we gathered our books and pushed our seats back.

"No, but I want to."

"I'm friendly with the boy who works the box office at the Ritz Theatre, and he's never asked to see my ID."

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was rated R, but that wasn't what had stopped me. I had a fake ID by then. (Oh yeah, I don't think I mentioned that I got a fake ID card with Mark over the summer. It gave my age as twenty-two and had "operator" spelled wrong. It didn't seem to matter much.)

The last time I'd been to the movie house I had wanted to see it, but Mark wanted to see the remake of Stagecoach instead. It wasn't as good as the original, but it was okay, I guess.

"It's so good. I thought about you when I saw it. It's still playing. Maybe we could -"

"Mark!" He was waiting for me outside of class. He did that sometimes. He had to be on the other end of the building in less than two minutes, but he would walk alongside me to my next class. He didn't care if he was late. School was about the only time we could see each other, with Soda now hovering like he was.

Cherry sized him up, and then turned to me without acknowledging him. "See you around, Ponyboy."

"What did that stuck-up bitch want?" Mark asked.

I still didn't take up for her like I should have. "We have to be partners in Creative Writing."

"You had to be?" I couldn't read his face, but I could hear the accusation. Some of the rage I had for Soda bubbled up in me then with Mark. I couldn't take it. I mean it. I thought I might explode.

Then Mark looked past me and said, "What are you doing there, bla -"

He was talking to the kid who always showed up first for Mr. Syme's next class. We were blocking the doorway, and he was waiting for us to let him through.

"Don't be a dick." I grabbed his elbow and led him away. "Sorry," I mumbled to the kid. It was probably bad enough to be one of the only Black students here. That was before the big shake up.

The kid hastily passed us, and we kept walking. I braced for what Mark would say, looking around the hall. There were plenty of kids around. Maybe that's why he let it go. Instead he started, "You know there's a dance coming up …"

"Darry already said I could go." I was in the bathroom shaving my upper lip, getting ready. I rinsed off the blade and put it back in the medicine cabinet, before I turned to leave the bathroom, but Soda was in my way.

I pushed past him.

"Who are you going with?" he asked my back, as I crossed over into our bedroom to get dressed.

"I don't know, me and a bunch of guys are going stag." That was true.

"You should have asked someone. Loads of girls would want to go with you. Two-Bit was saying -"

"I didn't feel like it." I didn't need the third-degree from Soda. I went to grab a shirt, the dresser drawer was stuck. I yanked at it. Hard.

Soda grew quiet, so the only sound was my struggle. Then he asked, "Is Jennings going to be there?"

I still couldn't get the drawer open. I bet Soda shoved it back in the dresser off the track. He was always so careless.

"It's a school dance," I said, annoyed. "He goes to my school."

I gave the drawer one last yank, and got it open enough to get out a shirt.

"Ponyboy -"

"What?"

"If he's going to go, I don't think you should."

"Well, I guess it's a good thing I don't care what you think." I didn't even want to go that bad, but I thought I should be allowed to go to a dance. Soda wasn't in charge of me.

I pulled the shirt on and went to grab my jacket that was hanging on the back of the door, and that's when I noticed it: a collage of women cut from skin mags, crowded together and overlapping. He'd used too much paste; they were warped and wrinkled.

"What is that?" I asked, exasperated.

"I cut out the best ones. I thought you should have them around."

"No," I said it, before I thought it. But as soon as the syllable left my mouth I knew I meant it. I was done. I couldn't even feel my frustration anymore. Only a stubborn sort of recklessness. Freedom?

"What?"

"No, you can't make me fucking look at this trash."

"I got to do something! You ain't even trying!"

I felt something stir in me then. "I'm not gonna," I said, brash as Dad.

"What did you just say?"

"You heard me. I don't want to change." That was a lie.

I'd have given anything to be normal, and the shame around being a homosexual would persist in me for decades. Maybe for the rest of my life, if I'm being honest. It would pop up like a perennial, but I could learn to live with that and accept myself out of spite. Because I couldn't live with hating myself, not if Soda hated me too. You'd think that growing up like I did, I'd have developed a thicker skin. I was still sensitive, I always would be. Always weaker than I needed to be, but I could be weak and angry. That was something I had learned about anger. There wasn't always power in it. Sometimes anger was a pitiful, small weed sprouting deviant and thorny through the cracks in a foundation, but somehow that could manage to be righteous.

"Don't say that," he hissed.

"You can't tell me what to do." I was so mad; I was shaking. I tried to slam the door shut, but the door swung back open. Stupid latch. The collage fell to the ground. I kicked it and turned to walk away, but Soda grabbed my forearm.

Rounding on him, I shouted, "Don't touch me!" and tore myself from his grip. What was he going to do to me?

Then he called, "Darry!"

I froze - my hands, my lungs, my blood - until Darry came in.

"What the hell is going on?" He looked at us, then something caught his eyes on the ground. He crouched down and picked up the collage. Darry looked at the collage and his eyebrows shot up before he looked at me. "Is this some kind of art thing?"

"That's not art," I told him. "And s'not mine. Soda put it on my door." I tattled, even though I knew if we were gonna start telling on each other, it wouldn't be Soda who'd be in for it.

Darry looked genuinely confused, as he brought himself up to his full height, crumpled page in his hand. "We can't have pornography hanging up here. What if the state comes by?"

"Fine," Soda said through his teeth, but his eyes were still fixed on me.

"What -" Darry started again, but a car horn cut him off. My ride was here.

"He can't go to the dance." Soda's voice was viscid, like he had to rip it from his own tongue before spitting it out.

"Give me a reason."

I stared at Soda, with his crossed arms and his chin jutting out past the thin line of his mouth. I thought that was it. I searched his face, pleading. Don't tell him. You can't tell him.

He jerked his head and looked away from me. He didn't say anything.

The car honked again.

"Be home by eleven," Darry told me.

I fled, with the sort of desperation of an animal who gnaws off its own leg to escape a steel-jaw trap. I hurdled over our chain-linked fence and hopped into the back of Terry's Dodge. As we peeled out, we took a curb and beer bottles rattled against each other in their cardboard carriers in the footwell. Mark was driving.

It was a regular school dance with a ton of kids and a lousy band made up of some juniors with poorly tuned guitars trying to play The Lovin' Spoonful covers. I wasn't in the mood to be at a dance, not with my fate being decided three miles away.

Of course, we weren't there to dance. Mark was leading me around group to group, letting them all know we'd be outside selling. Well, he'd be selling. I'd be next to him, wishing I was somewhere else.

My life was caving in, and my chest felt like it would collapse under the mounting weight. Soda was going to tell Darry. He wouldn't be able to hold it back, even if he wanted to, if Darry got questioning him. They would take me to a doctor and the doctor would tell Darry to put me in a hospital, and I'd only get to eat vanilla pudding and Nurse Ratched would strap me to the electroshock table.

"Hey, there's Bryon." Mark started to wave enthusiastically. He was already pretty tipsy. We'd all dranken a lot in the car before we even got there. "Bryon!"

We said 'hi' to Bryon and his date, before finishing the rounds and heading back outside to Jone's car, narrowly avoiding a run-in with Angie. Terry was already passed out in the front seat, with his mouth hanging open. We had our backs to him, as he sat on the hood and leaned against the windshield. Kids were coming in and Mark was doing small deals.

Patterson the cop was nearby pretending not to notice us, pushing and drinking. Mark said he had him handled.

Mark titled his bottle all the way back to get the last drop and tossed it into the grass. I wished he wouldn't litter.

"We can run away," he said.

We had a lull between customers, and Mark was trying to cheer me up. We were sitting real close. Thigh against thigh, shoulders touching. I wanted more. I think Soda's attempts to withhold affection had the exact opposite effect than he intended. I think that was something Soda didn't understand. He pushed me away and into Mark's arms. I know I'm too soft, but when no one touched me for a long time, I began to feel like I wasn't real.

I inched my hand closer to Mark's, until my pinkie was on top of his pinkie. Mine was still crooked from the break. "I tried that once, remember?"

"You haven't tried it with me." It was a little breezy out. It blew his bangs up and gave me goose pimples.

I didn't think he'd really leave Bryon like that. But I dreamed for a moment of ditching Tulsa, hitchhiking to San Francisco or New York … There were more people like me. People who called themselves gay and not queer …

"Hey!" My hand recoiled, before my brain knew what was happening. Then this guy came over, and I figured it was some trouble Mark must have been courting, but then this guy said, "Hey, pretty boy!"

I'd been called everything like that and worse before, but it hit me that time. Maybe because I was getting it at home now, too.

"You gonna take that, Curtis?" Mark spurred on, the corners of his mouth twitching.

Patterson was flipping through a magazine a little ways away. He didn't look up.

I tried to affect apathy. I slid off of the hood, slowly. "What do you want?"

Then he decked me. And I sort of lost it.

He had about four inches on me, and maybe 30 pounds. But I had a lot of rage, and he only got in a few swings, before I had him on the ground.

I shoved him to the ground and I thought that was gonna be it. I stayed defensive, with my feet spread out and grounded and watched the guy on his hands and knees in the grass. The air had grown still enough that I could hear his ragged breathing and the thud of my heart against my ribs, an animal in a cage beginning to settle down.

I knew Mark was watching me. I didn't turn my back on the guy, but I looked over my shoulder at Mark. He looked pleased, and I liked how that felt, filtered through my own adrenaline. I thought he was right and we should run away.

Mark jumped off the hood.

I didn't realize what the problem was at first, but the guy had one of Mark's discarded bottles in his hand and was trudging towards me.

I looked around for some kind of weapon of my own, but then Mark got between us and put up his hands like he was directing traffic.

"Hey, come on," he said, voice real calm-like. "Man, fight fair."

There was a second where I thought for sure the guy would back down or at least drop it. But he raised his hand and broke the bottle over Mark's head. It was an awful sound, the bottle breaking over his skull.

Mark went down, and I caught him under his armpits.

Patterson said, "Hey kids!"

But I stopped paying attention. My world came down to the blood that began to trickle down Mark's forehead.

It got so bloody so fast; you know how head wounds bleed. I tried to stop the bleeding with my sleeve, but it kept seeping through trickling between my fingers. I could feel his pulse. His gold eyes got glassy, and he didn't look right. Uncanny, spooky.

"Something's wrong!" I called to Patterson. He said something into his radio. I think he was calling for an ambulance.

I layed Mark on the ground. And his head lolled around.

"Oh, buddy," he spoke, but it didn't sound like him.

"Mark?"

"Go get my brother."

And I obeyed, because I always did what Mark said. Mostly.

Douglas went with Mark in the ambulance, which left me to bring them the car Douglas came in. I gave his date a ride too. I thought that was less suspicious than showing up at the hospital alone. I don't remember why, or much of the car ride.

I didn't notice anything special about Cathy at the time. She seemed like every other girl at the dance, as far as I was concerned. She kept trying to talk to me. I wished she'd just shut up and let me drive. I was too worried about Mark to make small talk, and pulling out from the school parking lot, I realized I didn't have a license, but I had drugs and had been drinking. With my luck, we'd get pulled over.

Then she said, "Breakfast at Tiffany's? It's one of my favorites. It's way better than the movie."

I took notice of her then. She was holding my bloodied jacket, staring my paperback that was half out of the pocket. "No, it's not." I knew literature is subjective, but that was a stupid opinion.

"It's more realistic."

I looked away from her to focus on my driving, but I couldn't let it go. "Holly never learned to love in the novella. You think that's more realistic? You think some people just ain't capable of love?" I wondered how anyone could be so heartless.

"Oh, I don't know. I wouldn't have taken you for such a romantic, Ponyboy."

I snatched my jacket from her hand and flung into the backseat.

It didn't take us long to find Mark and Douglas, Cathy knew where to go. She told me she worked at the snack bar downstairs and her mom worked there too, as a social worker. No surprise there, the way she acted.

Mark was out of it, from the concussion and the painkillers they gave him. It was all we could do to drag him to the back seat. I got in after him and he moved around until he was practically lying in my lap. He was arranging my jacket so it covered both of us. He had 13 stitches holding his scalp together. Flakes of dried blood clumped in his hair. But he was fine enough to go home.

It really bothered me to see Mark so out of it. I don't know why, maybe it was because normally it was me who got high while he stayed in control. Even when he was inebriated he was still in control.

Douglas was right there in the front seat with Cathy.

I felt trapped, and though Mark was effectively just as trapped as me, he wasn't concerned. I remembered him saying that he thought Bryon might already know. I still doubted it.

He started rubbing the front of my pants. I could tell he thought he was really funny. I don't think even Mark would have had the balls to do that in the car with his brother, if it weren't for the drugs.

Douglas was asking me inane questions about starting the car, and I could hardly think for Mark's hand had snaked its way past my waistband. Flustard and panicked I tried to answer him, but Cathy turned back to look at us for a second. We locked eyes, before she faced herself forward looking at the road. She hadn't seen anything. There was nothing she could see beneath my jacket. If she said anything to anyone, she'd seem crazy, I assured myself.

I had to answer Bryon's question. "I hot-wired it." – face burning, I swallowed and tried to steady my voice - "Mark showed me how to weeks ago."

We didn't say much else to each other the rest of the drive.

"You're so pretty when you're upset," Mark said softly."Ponyboy-Prettyboy Curtis. Prettyboy Curtis."

Then he burst out in laughter, before he started humming a Dusty Springfield song we used to always hear at Jack's. He gave me a grin and reached for my face. I felt the gravitational pull of his wild eyes. I couldn't be upset with him. He was going to be okay. Mark was always okay.

I almost forgot about Soda and Darry. I had Douglas drop me off at the vacant lot, and for a while I waited there, trying to build up the nerve to go home. I thought about Bob's blood on blue cement, and Johnny's body on starched white sheets, and Dally crumpling into a corpse just a few yards from where I now stood. I wondered if anyone cleaned up the blood or if it was baked in the sun before it got washed away by rain. A whole year had gone by, and here I was again afraid I'd get locked up.

Darry was waiting on the porch when I approached.

"You're - what they hell is wrong you?" He sounded mad. He reached for me and I flinched. "Did you get into another fight?"

Oh. I didn't see what the big deal was. Darry and Soda both got into a lot of fights in high school.

"No - Well, kinda, but this isn't my blood."

He sighed. The light was out on the porch, but the lamp from the living room poured out, along with the National Anthem from the TV, signing-off. It must have been nearly midnight. Shit.

Darry sat down in an old rusted swing and picked up a beer from the ground.

I hesitated, before sitting down next to him. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting.

The anthem ended and the test-pattern tone rang through, before it was static and someone turned it off.

"Soda's home?" I asked quietly. I could hear him shuffling around inside.

Darry took a drink and grunted. "He's in an awful mood, ever since you left. He didn't tell me anything." He turned his head toward me, must have seen my whole body relax. "Should he have?"

"It's stupid."

The swing creaked as Darry rocked it, pushing against the beam with his foot. He held out the beer. "Want a sip?"

I accepted it. Darry didn't let me drink much. He must have wanted to be nice.

And I couldn't exactly tell him I'd already drank enough beer for the day. So I took the bottle. It was cold from the icebox and dripped with condensation. I brought it to my face, and pressed the side of the bottle against my fat lip, and closed my eyes, before taking a swig. It tasted better than the beer in Terry Jone's car.

That year the state fair happened on Soda's birthday. The air was thick with hay and greasy fair food and mechanical noise of the rides and children's laughter. It was a little hokey, but it wasn't like there was ever too much excitement in Tulsa, so the fair always got a good turnout. It was the first year they didn't let me in for free (if you could pass for 12 they let you in for free.) We went with the boys. Even Darry. It was the last time I remember us all being together like that. It hadn't been the same since Johnny and Dally died, but maybe it was just everyone getting older.

It was the last year they allowed freakshows and strippers at the fair. I didn't want to see any strippers, so I was actually thankful when Evie showed up to latch onto Steve's arm. They wouldn't want to see strippers, with a girl tagging along.

Normally, I didn't like freakshows. I don't even like looking at animals in zoos. But now it didn't seem so bad. I wondered what it would be like to work one, to travel from town to town being gawked at. But at least they weren't stuck in fucking Tulsa.

A boy who couldn't have been much older than me walked on broken glass. I had to fight the urge to look away. The man with the megaphone was flamboyant. I thought I'd seen him at the fair a couple years ago, but I saw everything different now. I watched the rest of the show and tried to imagine what it was like when the tent went down and they were regular people.

After they sent us out to make room for another crowd, we got corndogs and sat around a picnic table.

Soda was distracted that day. I didn't care.

Evie was really bubbly, telling us how her brother took his draft notice to the draft board and they said he didn't have to go because of his record. Her brother slit her father's throat. I don't remember when I first heard about it, but I knew you weren't supposed to bring that up. It was still good that he wasn't shipping off. More and more boys were getting drafted, and we spent a lot of time talking about it. It was on everyone's mind. Especially since Soda was 18 today. He'd have to register. I tried not to think about it. It was easier to be mad at Soda than to think about that.

"We'll be getting married, soon as Evie finishes school." Steve said, confident and matter-of-fact.

Evie let out a little squeal at that. They were gonna get married and have a kid, so he could get a deferment.

"Well, they don't take queers." Two-Bit said, and I stopped chewing. "So shave my legs and call me 'Sally,' I'd smooch anyone so I don't got to go. How 'bout it, Soda?" Two-Bit waggled his eyebrows. He was kidding. It was ridiculous and absurd, but I knew it upset Soda.

His eyes went wide and pained. "That's sick, man."

It got so quiet, I wished I was dead.

Steve changed the subject. "Angel Shepard and Wayne Smith are getting hitched."

Soda looked over at me. I don't know why.

"What, why?" I asked, surprised. I didn't know she was even dating anyone. It was only a week since I'd last seen her at the dance. There was a rumor going around that she sent that guy after me. I never found out if that was true.

"Why do you think?" Steve wadded his paper boat and tossed it at me.

Evie spoke up. "Gina told me yesterday. She's been beside herself." Evie looked at me before looking down and dipped her corndog in mustard. Angie and Gina were friends (even though Gina went with Douglas first - I'll never understand girls), so Evie probably knew more about everything that went down with Angie and me. Steve probably did too. Steve and Evie both loved to gossip. Steve already told Soda about Mark getting caught with the principal's car to make his probation meetings. You can bet Soda used that for another reason to hate Mark. It seemed like kid stuff to me now, with Mark's other transgressions and our friends getting compelled down the aisle.

It was so funny that I could know kids who were getting married, even if I guess it wasn't that strange. Mom was seventeen when she and Dad got married, and I knew other kids who got into trouble or were trying not to get drafted. Tim Shepard had been married for a few years now. I was sort of glad I wouldn't ever have to get married like that. I felt bad for Angie. I felt bad for everyone.

That was the night before we got the news about Evie's brother, Charlie. We were there talking with Evie, when Mark was with Charlie getting at shot outside the bar he tended at. The world is terrible and small. At least, Tulsa is.