Chapter Fourteen

There are so many ways to tell a story. That's something Mom taught me. Stories change each time they're told, and everyone has their own to share. Two people can experience the same event and give you completely different accounts without either of them lying. If you could ask Soda, he'd tell it one way, and so would Mark, and Mr. Syme. Everyone would. Hell, even Bryon Douglas would have his own take. And if I were to tell this story again, it would be different. Like Heraclitus said, "No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man."

I guess I'm glad I'm the man who can tell you this story now, but I know it's not the only one. I'm a storyteller, before anything else. So I get it, but I can't explain why I included some things and left others out. It's just my way of trying to make sense of things. After all, that's what storytelling is— tearing things apart and rearranging them until they make sense. That's all I do. Try to make sense of things.

I've told the story of writing Rejected at least three thousand times—to middle school classrooms, to journalists, to friends. I've seen myself recount it on news segments, read it in magazines, and even in the back of the most recent edition of the book. Most versions go something like this:

It started as a short story assignment for Creative Writing. I was inspired by the guys I grew up with—but no, Steve, none of the characters are based on you. The short story wouldn't let me sleep. Some stories were like that, before it was a job. They wouldn't sit still. They begged—no, demanded to be written. I finished the first draft in five days—or rather, it wrote itself. My hands were just the conduit. The book changed a lot between drafts, but the first draft came obscenely quick.

As I got older, I added pieces about grief. I'd lost a lot as a teenager and writing was my way of dealing with it. Trite stuff. You've heard all this before.

What I don't always say is that when I first read the short story in class, with our desks in a circle, Mr. Syme said, "I wish it wasn't over. It sounds like a beginning." I wouldn't have continued if it hadn't been for him. Someday, I'll credit him properly for that. It's the least I can do.

And that story is true. But there's another story, equally true. Mark was gone, Jack's was closed, and suddenly I found myself alone with time to spare and the compulsion to be somebody else. I couldn't face any of it, so I wrote. Every free moment, I was at the typewriter, until I had a stack of unbound pages. I felt less lonely with those characters. Without Mark, I was like a plant that had fallen out of orbit. I didn't know what to do without him calling the shots. That's the truth.

There are also true stories that go untold. Because people have made the world unfair. Because some things are so heinous they defy language.

But I'll try. I'm sorry, I'll quit procrastinating. I know you want to hear about what happened with the raid.

It was in the paper, both in the morning and evening editions, then even more later in the week. Illegal Bar Raided, Fourteen Perverts Arrested. There was some stuff about a liquor license and the owner of the bar, some former bootlegger, who I hadn't known existed before.

They printed everyone's name, age, address. Well, almost everyone's.

I made it into the paper, but not under my name. Most of the patrons were booked for disorderly conduct, but Mr. Syme was arrested for lewd and lascivious behavior because he was "found in the gentlemen's room with a young man during the raid."

I was there. We weren't doing anything when the police barged in, and I didn't see anyone being disorderly.

They wrote a lot about Mr. Syme because he was a teacher. Mr. Matson was even quoted, saying that they fired Mr. Syme for low moral character. The district's priority is ensuring that the students graduate and become responsibile members of the community. This was before Mr. Syme was even convicted.

The worst part, though, was what wasn't in there. There was no mention of Jack anywhere in any news story. I scoured every paper, watched the local news every evening, but she was always conspicuously missing. They made it like she never existed.

Charlie Redman made the front page. But Jack was a Black woman, with short conked hair and a cowboy's strut. She wasn't killed by a couple of roughnecks. It was a harder story to tell. I still don't know what to do with the injustice of it.

Miss Doris wasn't at the library during my next shift, either. They said she had a family emergency. I never saw either of them again. I like to imagine they ran off together again, because it's too hard to imagine anything else.

We had substitutes for the rest of the semester in Creative Writing. Since it was generally well-behaved girls in class, they let us do whatever we wanted. No one even tried to get us to write anything. I did, though. I wrote in my notebook, sitting next to Cherry, who often sat and read, but sometimes tried to talk to me. Cherry was above gossiping, but most of the girls in class weren't.

"No wonder he liked you best," Patti Burton said one day, when everyone was still going on about Mr. Syme being a homosexual.

"Don't be gross." Though Cherry was still on the outs with the other socy kids, she could still cut them down to size. "Mr. Syme liked him because he writes well and his stories aren't just 'Mary Jane Goes to Prom.'"

I was normally good at keeping my mouth shut, but it was hard to keep quiet when I knew how wrong everyone was about Mr. Syme. I couldn't take up for him, but I couldn't just sit there any longer.

The sub was some old lady that day. I don't think she could see well enough to know when I left.

Mr. Syme's classroom was on the first floor and right beside it were double doors leading out to one of the parking lots. One door was propped open with a little wooden wedge, so I went outside for a smoke, stepping over a spilled thermos and crushed bag of chips. You weren't supposed to leave to smoke except for during your lunch, but no one cared that much.

I really meant to cut back, the track season was about to start, but everything kept being stressful. I would try to give it up tomorrow for years, to varying degrees of success.

Leaning against the wall, I lit up, closing my eyes and letting the nicotine filling my lungs assuage the tightness in my chest.

There didn't seem to be anyone around. Most kids were in class, and even the kids who had first lunch were either in the cafeteria or already off campus.

Then I heard the faint, unmistakable sounds of a scuffle from around the corner. I went to check it out.

Curly Shepard and a couple guys I didn't know too well, along with Williamson — which surprised me — were all crowded around the corner of the building. They had the Black sophomore from English 10 Honors pinned against the brick. They'd been working him over.

Curly looked over his shoulder. Then relaxed when he saw me.

"Shepard," I greeted him.

"Hey, Curtis, what are you doing out here? Ain't you supposed to be in class?" He smirked, his tone mocking. I noticed then he had a switchblade out.

"What are you doing out here?" I asked, genuinely curious. "Thought you dropped out."

"I gotta keep coming, part of my parole."

He turned back to the kid. His guys kept the poor boy pressed against the wall. He was kind of a scrawny guy. He had no chance of escaping, outnumbered like that.

I raised an eyebrow. "This part of your parole too?"

Curly's grin widened. "This? Nah, this is just a little fun. Ain't that right, Buckwheat?" He jabbed the knife toward the guy's face, who flinched but didn't say a word.

"It don't look like he's having much fun," I said, blowing smoke to the side, careful to keep my eyes on Curly. "How 'bout you let him go and we have a fair fight just you and me?" I discarded the rest of my weed, preparing to square up.

"That what you want?" Curly was always a man of few words, but in that question there felt like there were a lot unsaid. We weren't buddies anymore.

"A skin fight." I didn't have my blade on me that day, not that it would have been a good idea to fight with knives on school grounds.

"You don't always set the rules, Curtis." He stalked over to me with his blade still out, but arm extended too far from his body.

We circled up. He was right handed, so I kept stepping to that side. When he made a move, I grabbed his wrist with my right hand and socked him in the jaw with my left.

I always felt bad, because Curly's old man was too drunk to be much of a fighter and Tim didn't have the patience to go over things with him. That's why I could always take him in a fight, even though he fought more. He was dumb. He made too many stupid mistakes.

With his wrist still held tight in my hand, I brought my knee up to his gut and knocked the wind out of him. He lost his grip on the switchblade.

I should have kicked it away. It wasn't fair, but Curly was the one that made it that way. I picked up the open switch, held it like his brother. It was dull. Curly didn't take good care of it.

I was real little when Dad gave me my first blade. And he didn't give his boys something without making sure good and well that we knew how to use it. And I planned to use it then, because I had a new familiarity with cruelty. I wanted to make Curly regret jumping someone for being different.

"Pony!" It was Cherry. But I couldn't turn my back on Curly to see her expression but I could picture it.

By now Williamson and the other guys had let the kid down, the four of them just standing there watching.

I snapped the blade closed and pocketed it. "I'm real sick of this bullshit. Don't go around beatin' people up for no goddamn reason."

He looked pissed but sufficiently cowed. Curly was easy to handle back then. He was used to being bullied and bossed around by Tim.

Curly and the others slunk off, shooting off dirty looks over their shoulder. Who cared. Then it was just me, Cherry, and the kid that got jumped.

He started picking up a crushed brown paper bag that was cast to the side, making his way back to the building. He must have been eating lunch by himself out there. I guess that's why he always got to English so early.

"Ponyboy, are you —" Cherry began, then noticed Lenny. She appeared to think for a second, before her expression softened. "Hi."

Lenny gave a little wave but barely looked up. He was trying not to bawl and I was trying not to look at him. It's scary to get jumped.

I offer him a smoke to steady his nerves. "I'm Ponyboy," I said, handing him a cigarette before lighting my own. "This is Cherry."

He stood up and took a shaky breath. "I know. Lenny. Lenny Johnson." He accepted the weed and I passed my lit match. I didn't offer any to Cherry, because I knew she'd decline.

Then Lenny took a long drag before letting out a strangled burst of coughs.

Alarmed, I thumped him on his back. "You okay?"

"I don't smoke," he wheezed, holding the cigarette away from himself, before dropping it and crushing it with the toe of his shoe. What a waste.

Cherry hid her smile behind her hand.

"It's a bad habit," I told him, then I inhaled some more smoke from my own cancer stick. "I need to cut back."

We were quiet for a moment, until Cherry said, "So that's Tim Shepard's little brother? He looks … dirty."

He did. And he didn't have that same thing about him that Tim and Dally and Bob had, but he'd have the same fate. Same as Mark. He'd die in prison or shot down by cops or in a gang fight. I was filled with a forlorn sense of pity. I'm not saying they were good people or that they didn't do anything wrong. I'm saying they never stood a chance. You know what I'm saying.

"He's a racist hood," Lenny muttered, hand still shaking as he wiped off milk from the outside of his thermos with a paper napkin and screwed the lid back on.

"Curly's not —" I searched for the right way to explain it. "He'll fight on the same side as those Brumly outfits, same as anyone else. We both will."

Lenny didn't seem to have much in common with the boys from Brumly. He wasn't trying to dress poor like the other rich kids. He had neatly pressed khakis and a blue argyle sweater, which was now stretched out around the collar showing more of his crisp white button down, which I could see now had a few drops of blood on it. I fought the urge to survey the damage. I didn't know him that well then.

"So, he'd be nice to me so long as I know my place?" -– I opened my mouth to respond, but he beat me to it – "Sorry, nevermind. Thanks for that back there." He went to leave.

I realized how stupid I was, as oblivious as Randy Adderson. Lenny had just been jumped. He didn't need an explanation or a justification for Curly in that moment. I didn't know what he needed.

"I'm sorry, you're right." I said. I took another drag and kicked the limestone step. "I'm sorry everything's so fucking unbearable. I'm so fucking tired of it all. You should be able to eat your lunch without nobody hasslin' ya."

Lenny looked up at me dumbfounded. Cherry was too. I'd forgotten she was there. I wouldn't have sworn in front of her, if I'd been thinking.

Feeling overexposed, I decided to change the subject. "Didn't you run for Booker T. Washington last year?"

"Uh, yeah."

"You didn't do Cross-Country." Most runners did both. "You should come-out for track tryouts next week."

The bell rang.

Mark had narrowed my focus. But there was a world outside of him and I felt bad that I had missed it for so long. With Mark gone, I could talk to anyone I wanted, do anything I wanted. I could make friends. I was unsure if I'd ever get used to it.

That Saturday, me, Soda, and Darry were watching cartoons. Well, Darry was reading the paper. News of the raid had died down. Soda hadn't said anything about it, but his eyes wandered to the typewriter that Mr. Syme had given me, when we were in our room. I can guess what he thought, but he wanted to move on and he thought I was moving on with Cathy, so he didn't want to bring anything back up.

Looney Tunes came on, but I couldn't watch that anymore. Just as I reached for the dial, I saw the mailman through the window and hopped up to meet him on the porch.

He had the stack of mail in his hand, but hadn't opened the box yet. "Looks like you've got some important mail today. Take care, kid."

I took the stack. "Thanks, sir." I was a little confused. Most of the time he didn't say anything.

I was looking for a letter from Mark, which was pretty delusional, even for me. I'm not sure what I wanted him to say. It was for the best that no letter ever came. But that day we did get two pieces of mail that would change everything.

What caught my attention was the large manila envelope addressed to P.M. Curtis. With everything going on, I hadn't thought too much about the Erwin T. Speicher poetry contest.

Discarding the rest of the mail on the coffee table, I opened the envelope. There was the issue of the magazine my poem was in and a few other pieces of paper. I flipped through the pages until I saw my poem. It looked unreal and as I reread it, it seemed to me that somebody else had written it.

"That's it, the contest?" Darry was looking over a letter from the editor congratulating me and encouraging me to submit other work, while I read a bio for P.M. Curtis, that didn't say much about me. "Is this a big deal, Pony?" Darry was as politely perplexed now, as he was when Nell, the secretary, had called him before.

"Kinda." There was also a handwritten note from Nell saying to keep in touch and the hundred dollar check. "What do I do with this?" We all got paid in cash. None of us had bank accounts at the time.

"What's that?" Soda asked. He had gone through the rest of the mail and had an envelope in his hand, bewildered.

"The money for the poetry-thing," Darry answered. When Soda still stared blankly, Darry asked me, "You didn't tell him. Why didn't you tell him?"

I didn't answer.

Something about Soda's face made me feel guilty. He looked like someone had backhanded him.

I had to leave. I was published. I should have been happy.

"I'm gonna call Cathy." I didn't want to tell Two-Bit or Steve, but I was learning that girls could be easier to talk to about some things. I was hoping she might be excited enough that I might start feeling it too.

As I reached for the phone, Soda said, "Me and Steve are takin' Jill and Evie to Dance Party. You should bring Cathy." Pepsi's Dance Party was Tulsa's knockoff of Saturday American Bandstand. Mostly girls were into it, but Soda couldn't resist dancing crazy and getting on channel 6. That day, though, he didn't seem to have his usual enthusiasm for it.

Steve gave us a talk in the car before we got to the trailer park to pick up Evie on our way to KOTV, about how we needed to be nice to her. I rolled my eyes. Because we were normally so mean to her, apparently. It was the first time I'd seen her since Charlie's funeral.

She seemed to have a good time dancing with Steve.

"Where's your brother?" Jill asked, dancing over to me. You had to stay dancing the whole time you were there on the floor.

"I saw him step outside," Cathy leaned over to shout over the music.

Jill looked disappointed at that. I don't remember her too well. She was pretty enough, but Soda wasn't serious about her, which is maybe why he had ditched her to have a smoke outside. I didn't think too much about it. When he came back he flashed her a goofy grin and took her to dance right in front of one of the cameras.

I didn't normally like dancing back then, but Cathy really enjoyed it. It wasn't bad being her boyfriend. It was nice to spend time with her, hold her hand, and not have her expect anything from me. She liked it, too. I still got a lot of attention from people in Tulsa and she really dug that. Maybe because she has so many brothers and sisters. And it was nice to pretend to be normal sometimes. I could almost even fool myself.

It didn't cure me, though. And without Jack's, I was spending more time at Mohawk Park, hanging around Bird Creek. It felt like picking at a scab. I just couldn't stop myself. One time I saw the guy who'd first propositioned me. He turned away when he saw me this time. He remembered me. But I wasn't the same me that I was back then. "Mr. Sheldon?" I called, though it wasn't the sort of place anyone wanted their surname broadcasted. "Ponyboy." His voice was so haunted and heavy. But that's another story.

When the program ended, we went to Jay's for cokes and burgers. Steve and Evie were in the front and Soda, Jill, Cathy, and me were squeezed into the back. Soda was leaning halfout the rolled down window, being uncharacteristically subdued. Cathy was on my lap, but I didn't mind. She was sipping her cherry-pineapple 7 Up and making conversation with the girls about Steve and Evie's wedding. Evie had an engagement ring now, a simple gold band with a small diamond that she was very proud of.

"And Pony, you'll walk down the aisle with Gina, of course."

"Huh?" I asked. No one asked me if I wanted to be in their wedding party.

Steve glared at me through the rearview mirror. He didn't need to do that. I wasn't going to be rude about it.

"Oh!" Evie said suddenly. "Steve told me about your English teacher, Pony. That's so scary. It's good he's not teaching anymore."

Cathy replied, "I'd never heard anyone say anything bad about him as a teacher …. When you were talking about your wedding colors, did you mean burnt-orange or more of a yellow-orange?"

But Soda said, "I don't think they needed to arrest them." I perked up. "Should've just shot 'em right there. One bullet per faggot."

I felt like I'd been shot in the back. Steve gave an affirmative grunt.

Cathy stiffened in my lap. "I can't believe you would say that."

Soda looked sharply at Cathy and me. He could still read me and even though he wanted to believe I'd changed, I could tell he wasn't buying it now.

"What do you care 'bout a bunch of fairies?" he asked.

"I'm decent person, you're –"

"Pony, control your girl," Steve jumped in.

"Fuck you." I'd be nice to Evie, but I didn't have to be nice to him.

Steve turned around and leaned over the front bench. "What'd you say to me, you little shit?"

Sodapop yelled, "Hey!"

We might have had it out, but Cathy tugged on my arm. "Let's just go."

Soda was in the kitchen when I got home after taking Cathy home, smoking at the table and looking out at Mom's garden. It was still weedy and overgrown, but a patch of snapdragons had come back this year and the rhubarb looked like it was ready for harvesting.

I went to bed early and pretended to be sleeping when he came in.

I left early the next day, leaving a note to tell Darry I'd gone for a walk. The sun had just come up and everything was peaceful.

I don't remember how I got to the water tower or climbing up there. I don't know how long I was up for either. It seemed a lot smaller since the last time I was up there with Mark. I sat perched on the very top railing, legs hanging over the edge, thinking about bugs splattering against a windshield. What would it feel like?

"It's awful high up here, huh, Ponyboy?"

I didn't startle when Soda spoke, though I hadn't heard him climbing up. I felt distant from myself, like I did that evening at the cemetery.

I just sat there.

"How about gettin' down?" His voice was soft and cautious. I remember how scared he looked. I remember not really caring.

When I didn't move, he slowly reached for my arm. Then we heard the train whistle and I jerked away, swaying a bit on the railing, he quickly grabbed me and we sort of tumbled to the grated floor of the platform around the tank.

The train chugged through below, sending vibrations through the legs of the tower. It made the whole structure rattle.

"What do you think you're doing? You could get yourself killed up there?" Further from the ledge now as we sat up, his voice wasn't gentle.

The train sounds faded.

"What do you care?" I asked quietly.

"Pony."

"Isn't that what you want? That's what you said, right? 'One bullet per faggot?'" I could only look out past him.

The sky was clear and blue that day, with just a few perfectly white clouds like bolls of cotton. It should have been a beautiful day. Things were beginning to bloom.

"I wasn't talking about you. I was talking about those— those queers."

"An' what exactly do you think I am?"

My gaze moved to him then. It was like he had a mouthful of broken glass. "You're not …"

"I am. I'm sorry, but I just am." I felt wetness hit my upper lip and sniffled. When I wiped my nose with my sleeve, for some inexplicable reason I was surprised to look down and find it wasn't blood.

Soda sighed, then jerked his head to the tank of the tower, where it still read, 'STAY GOLD PONYBOY.' It would for years.

"Was this Mark?" he asked.

I nodded. Wasn't everything Mark? My eyes found the MJPC we had carved. It was so thin, you'd really have to look for it in the initials of people trying to leave their mark behind. It may have been a small love story, but it was important to me.

I don't know if he ever really loved me, but I loved him.

"He's gonna end up like Dallas," I said. "Or maybe worse."

Sodapop's face was stricken. "You're heartbroken." It might have been the first time he realized that. He took a breath so deep I could hear it. "You know how mom used to say I was like her extra limb that she couldn't control?"

I nodded. Soda was Mom's wildest kid, always breaking curtain rods and eating toadstools. She said she might have killed him when he was a toddler, if it weren't for Dad. I always figured he was her favorite.

"That's how I feel about you. You're just goin' around doin' God knows what, with God knows who ... and it hurts. It hurts to see you hurt. You dig?"

"Then why are you doing this to me?" I didn't want to sound so damaged and small. I didn't want to be crying.

"Always hiding, living in the shadows, what kinda life is that? Having your name in the paper sayin' you're a …. Never having a family?" He was bawling, too. "You could never be happy like that."

"Maybe I could be. If I left Tulsa." You could see it all from up there. The train tracks, the houses, and the Golden Driller Statue that had been moved in front of the Exposition Center since I was last here. Everything changes, but things stay the same.

I expected him to argue with me, but he said, "Maybe." He scraped some peeling paint with his thumbnail. "You're so much bigger than this place. You're so special. I mean it. I know you're gonna go and do some cool shit and I want…. I want to get to see it." He wiped his eyes with his barearm. "I'm done fightin' you. I can't give up on you, but I can lay off."

I could tell he was in pain. I felt it too.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you about the poem," I said.

"I'm sorry I made you feel like you couldn't."

He was so handsome, against that beatific cyan sky. Like a postcard. I had missed him so much. We were ready to go back home.

The metal creaked underfoot, as we stood to climb down to walk to his Triumph, which lay on the ground. He hadn't bothered parking with the kickstand. It was a tuff bike.

Soda would never understand, and we'd never be close like we we used to be again. But I thought maybe we would be okay.

When we meandered over the tracks, I noticed a few crocuses had braved cracked soil for another season.

Soda placed a hand on my shoulder, and I realized I was a few steps ahead of him.

I looked back. It was strange to be taller than him.

He was so solemn. "I got to tell you somethin', but don't go and tell anyone, you hear me?"

"What is it?"

"I got my draft notice."

Note: Thank you for reading this far. I plan to post the epilogue sometime in the next few weeks. I'm hoping you'll stick with me for that and for the other stories I want to write in this 'verse. Pony's story isn't over yet.