Disclaimer: S.E. Hinton owns these characters, I do not. (insert sad music.)

Chapter 8

1 hour after it all went wrong…

I woke up, blinking blood out of my eyes, and tried to get my vision to focus.

Everything was blurry and my head was pounding. Once I was able to see properly, I looked around.

I was in a basement with gray, murky walls that had a wood trim, and the floor was concrete, the same as the sidewalk.

I looked beside me and saw Ponyboy lying on the floor, blood trickling down his eyes from under his hair. (Red flag #1.)

Rushing over to him, I held him up and noticed for the first time that there were shackles around my hands and feet. Not that it mattered, I only cared about my brother.

I lifted him slightly and gently shook him until he woke up. I let out a sigh of relief when Pony opened his bleary eyes.

"Ugh… Soda?" Pony managed to say. I smiled weakly at him.

"Hey, little colt," I answered, hoping to keep him awake.

"What… happened? Glory, Soda, you've got bruises all over your face!" he said, pointing at me.

Touching my face gingerly, I winced, hoping for the pain to subside.

I hope I didn't break my cheekbones or anything. (Is that even possible?)

Ponyboy tried to sit up but his attempt was short-lived after he yelped in spite of himself.

"Slow down, you've probably got broken ribs," I told him. His face was beaded in sweat and blood but he nodded and stayed down.

Ponyboy looked around as if he was taking in the surroundings the same way I did. He looked down at the shackles on his arms and legs and went paler than he already was.

"Are we…" he asked, and I nodded, trying to comfort him.

"Looks like it. We'll be okay though, we just need to find a way out," I said. I tried standing up and my ankles gave out completely, so naturally, I crashed onto the cold, hard, floor.

"Soda! Are you okay?!" Ponyboy asked frantically, crawling over to me. He placed his hand under my chest and lifted me.

"I'm okay, I just twisted my ankle…" I muttered though pain was shooting in and out of it.

I didn't want him freaking out and moving too fast because of his ribs, so I sat up and breathed deeply.

"I'm okay, I'm okay…" I told Ponyboy and I leaned back against the gray walls. (Ew, gross, who would want to touch their back against that?)

There was nothing else in the room except for two chairs in the middle of the room and a wooden plank in the far, right corner.

If I got a hold of it, I could use the board as a weapon, I thought to myself, but between my twisted ankle, it being far away, and the shackles around my ankles, I figured it'd take a miracle for me to be able to hobble all the way there.

Another thing I noticed was that there were stairs on the other side of the room, which meant that there was a way out, but we couldn't reach it.

I brought the shackles up to my chest and tried pulling them apart, picking the lock, or doing anything to get them off me. Ponyboy was doing the same thing until we heard a door creak and heavy footsteps clambering down the stairs.

A small hint of natural light peeked through from the open door, shining the imperfections of the gloomy basement. It didn't stay for long though, as it disappeared quickly.

The mysterious figure approached us and stood in front, only a few feet away.

I made furious attempts at them, but they stood out of range and the stupid shackles held me back.

I took a good look at our captor, (hopefully that means what I think it means, I don't know, I'm not good with words, or anything academic, really.)

He was wearing a pink and black tuxedo, though something told me that it was originally white. (Red flag #2.)

It had a few missing buttons, and he was wearing khaki pants that had a maroon belt with a shiny, gold buckle. (Ooh, fancy. Something tells me he isn't a greaser.)

His hair was brown and combed back, even though he had just come from a fight.

Our fight. (Red flag #3.)

I recognized him as one of the socs who was making fun of Ponyboy when Steve and I listened in and he was even there when they jumped us.

He stared at me with cold, icy blue eyes and his face held a devious smile, as though he was staring at an animal in an aquarium. (Glory, that's hard to say.)

"Who are you and what do you think you're doing?!" I demanded. The soc chuckled silently and bent down to my level, though still out of range.

"Let's just say I'm one of Bob's friends. One that is giving something you and your brother should've gotten ages ago," he sneered, walking over to Ponyboy.

Everything in me told me to scream, fight, run, hide. Just do something! But I fought the urge because I knew I'd be endangering Pony and that was the opposite of what I wanted.

"Bob?! You mean…" Pony asks and the captor confirms by laughing.

"Who else do you think I'm talking about?! It's about time you've paid for your mistakes." I grew angry. Why should we be punished?

"Our mistakes?! We didn't kill Bob, it was…" I stop myself from going too far. Ponyboy shoots me a murderous look. I shut my trap.

"Your greaser friend? Well, he's not here, is he? No, you two are going to have to take his place! Admittedly, I only wanted this grease ball over here, but you were there too, and we simply couldn't have another greaser crying wolf to everyone else, couldn't we?" he explains, getting closer to Ponyboy.

"Your greaser friend should be here instead of you, but looks like he was smart and left before he could pay." At that comment, Ponyboy exploded with anger.

"Keep him out of your mouth or I'll show you what payment I can make!" Ponyboy shouted, fighting against the shackles.

Our captor pulled out a piece of duct tape and slapped Ponyboy's mouth, where he could now only make muffled noises.

My instinct told me to yell at him, to shout, to tell him to keep his hands off of my kid brother.

So that's exactly what I did.

"You leave him alone right now!" I shouted, aimlessly. The captor made his way over to me and lifted me up by my shirt collar.

"You don't get to tell me what to do," he whispered harshly in my ear, and he threw down on the ground.

(At this point, I'm practically best friends with hard concrete floors because of how much we've come in contact.)

Ponyboy came over to me, shouting things from his somewhat closed mouth, though I couldn't make out any of them.

I sat up and stayed close to Ponyboy, holding him close, hoping that he would stay safe.

The captor put a hand over his hair, flattening it again, and grinned.

"Hope you're making yourselves comfortable because it'll be a long time before you ever make your way outta here," he said.

"You're insane!" I remarked, but that just made his grin even bigger.

"Maybe a bit, but I don't see this as insanity, I see it as justice, but you'll never understand. You're just dumb greasers after all, with no brain to fill that space in your heads."

He left laughing, closing our only way out behind him. I looked over at Ponyboy and tried to hug him, but he pushed me away.

What had I done wrong? Everything was changing so quickly and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I sighed. (This is all going so horribly wrong.)

Leaning back against the wall, I closed my eyes, hoping I would wake up in Pony and mine's shared room. Though I knew it wasn't going to come true, I lied to myself anyway.

It's one of the only things I'm good at these days.

Author's Note

Hello everyone! Here is the next chapter. I hope to be updating this story a lot more consistently since I have a ton of motivation right now. I don't have much to say other than thank you so much for all the support you've given me, it warms my heart! Drink water and take care of yourself! (Shoutout to lalalei for being my first reviewer, it means the world to me!)