iNside Out
by Wheatbread
I was standing near the magazine rack when the brass bells over the front door jangled and Johnny slipped inside. The kid's black eyes darted around the store, summing everything into a singular purpose. Here was a man on a mission. I kept my nose hidden in a Western Horseman and stole glances at him over the photo of some cowgirl leading her horse to water.
He was a wreck, all nervous and cold. A piece of straw jutting from tousled dark hair bespoke a chilly night ride in a boxcar. I scoffed silently in spite of myself, feeling the superiority of my real age. Kids never think about the weather's sure to change, then it changes and they're caught in a t-shirt with the sleeves cut off. Except this time Johnny impressed me. He was actually wearing a plaid woolen shirt he must have gotten from over at Buck's the night before. That was nice on the part of the AI, because Hinton never really said whether Johnny got to change when Ponyboy did. The shirt hung on him like a sack, but it was woolen so even the occasional shiver he was doing seemed a little out of place. I chalked it up to nerves and followed him with my eyes as he went around the store picking up the supplies that he and Ponyboy would live on for the next couple of weeks. Healthy stuff—bologna, Wonder bread in its nostalgic plastic bag with the colored circles logo.
Johnny had to pass by the front of the store, and that's when I noticed the man behind the counter for the first time. He was apparent fortyish, wore his sparse greying hair in a wide arc of horseshoe-halo finesse and looked as though he could run a marathon and never hit the wall. I probably wouldn't have looked twice, except the guy had started paying attention to us. He laid his book down and stood up, glancing first at Johnny and then over at me. I set the magazine back in the rack and pretended to be searching for something else, shuffling down the row. Before I knew it, Johnny had come up next to me and I nearly bumped into him.
"Excuse me," he said, about as polite and decent as any sixteen year old could ever be to an apparent twelve year old. He wasn't much taller than me but with a slender build and bones like a bird. Immediately my heart went out to him. It made me angry that anyone would want to pick on him. I heard him inhale sharply and he brushed past me to seize something off the shelf—a paperback copy of Gone With the Wind. His eyes gleamed and he carefully laid it in his basket and hurried on.
"Young man, can I help you find something?"
Startled, I looked up. The man at the counter was staring right at me.
"Uh, no," I said, and cleared my throat trying to think of a good thing to say. I can never think of anything, so of course my twelve year old tongue went ahead and said something on its own. "I only came in to loiter, sir, that's all."
I felt Johnny's eyes on me suddenly, studying me. That wasn't good. He wasn't supposed to even notice me. I glanced over at him and he quickly dropped his gaze and went on, putting a box of matches in his basket with the other items. I was not his concern and, besides, he was just about finished shopping.
"Loitering, huh? That's all we need, another smart alec kid. If you aren't gonna buy anything, I'd like it better if you found your way back out the door there. You punks make me nervous, coming around here, looking things over."
"Yes sir," I said, restraining myself from calling him Sonny Boy. In realtime years I'd already put in enough living to be this guy's dad, but I let it go knowing he would never understand the humor. I looked like a kid now, what could I do about it? I walked to the door and stopped, finally thinking of something. "Oh yeah," I said, turning back. "I need to use the bathroom."
"Bathroom's for paying customers." He said it with a practiced snap. "Now get lost, kid."
I can't believe how popular that saying is. Get lost, kid. Get lost, punk. I had long forgotten how sucky it was to be a kid. Oh how I wished for that Trekkie phaser now. My hand plunged into an empty pocket, but I had dutifully left the contraband behind this time. I swallowed down my rage and went out the door.
For some reason I wandered around the side of the store, only vaguely paying attention to where I was going because I was mad. And then I stopped. There before me sat anew set of wheels on a Chevrolet convertible, gleaming in the morning sun, all alone, parked next to the building. I stared at it and pictured the guy from the counter polishing a fingerprint off its chrome door handle. It's gotta be his, I thought. Anyone could tell it was a source of pride to him the way he kept it clean and polished. There was even a metal bucket nearby that he had probably used to wash the car during his last break. The bucket was overturned and leaning against the wall to drain, and an old rag lay next to it in the sun, already completely dry.
I studied that rag for a second and then looked back in through the window where I could see the man ringing Johnny's items up at the register. Neither of them were looking my direction. I went over to the car, nonchalantly stooping to pick up the rag on my way. One more glance back through the window and I could see Johnny heading for the door. I reached down and unscrewed the gas cap. The bell on the door jangled. I stuffed the rag down the hole and whipped a c'jette out of my pocket. Johnny hurried off with his paper bag. I pressed the ignition on the c'jette and held it to the rag until it caught fire. Immediately the fumes from the tank came in contact with the flame from the rag and I had to step back a little ways as the fire roared to life on the side of the car—a flaming, spewing tongue of lashing anger.
A few seconds later through the ripples of heat waves I saw the man's head slowly pivot toward the window, perhaps catching the movement of the flame from the corner of his vision. His eyes bulged in their sockets when he saw me standing there. I smiled and waved my hand at him,imagining the yellowed heat waves were causing my whole body to ripple and wave at him. He came bursting out, screaming at the top of his lungs.
"What in Sam Hill!" Incredulity spluttered from every pore. He was dancing around, looking from me to the car and back to me again. "What in Sam Hill do you think you're doing to my car, you crazy little punk?"
In way of explanation, I just pointed at the flames, then glanced at the speck in the distance which was Johnny. The black haired kid hadn't seen any of the commotion and was already headed back to the church which meant I no longer had reason to stick around either, but this was far too interesting and I stood there long enough to see what would happen next. The man took off his apron and began beating the flames out, which I thought was very brave of him, given the circumstances. Miraculously he got the fire out and then whirled on me.
"You filthy little city punk! This time I am calling the sheriff."
I waited until his athletic hands were just beginning to knead themselves into the shoulders of my leather jacket, and then I reached out and punched the escape button. His face twisted into a sharp swirl, like brightly colored clothing in a washing machine. I tumbled through that spiral. Down, down, I landed back on my bed. I was laughing hysterically, and then I sat bolt upright.
"Knuckles!" I said, punching myself in the forehead. I'd gone and left the c-reader set to auto save.
Introduction
Kevan bought his first paperback copy of the novel with the last three dollars from his twelvth birthday. In 1984 he had to pay $2.95 for a Laurel Leaf edition, whatever that meant, but the cover art looked grim and interesting – some tough hoodlum types wearing denim and leather. He turned genuine paper pages with Clearasil stained fingers and devoured India ink print with the eyes he had been born with. The characters came alive to him, and became him. Aside from Where the Red Fern Grows, it was the first novel he ever finished, and for days afterward he went around with a mournful gleam in his eye, sorrow-struck the book was over.
(Around that time he also smoked halfway through his first cigarette before getting sick. It happened to be a Kool, choice brand of his new idol.)
Two weeks later, at the public library, he discovered additional titles by the same author and his reading career began in earnest. So did his writing. He used an old spiral ring notebook to whittle out his first derivative story. Taking some cues from his favorite author, the story began with a pre-glimpse at a later fight scene:
The kid came toward me, taking a pocket knife out of his jacket and bending it open. "Snickt," it said, like Wolverine's claws. I had seen the kid a few times at school. Waylon, they called him. He was a grade lower than me, but big for his age. Most of the Indian kids around here in Idaho are big for their age. I kept watching, and when he lunged I was ready. I beat him down with my baseball bat, swinging it off my shoulder with one hand like a hatchet. It caught him in the wrist. He dropped the knife and started to cry.
"Aw, he's nothing but a crybaby," I said, kicking the knife away. I tossed my mitt on the ground next to my wrecked BMX so I could grip the bat with two hands, then I stood over him. "You guys shouldn't have messed with me."
I felt a tap on my shoulder and looked up into the dark eyes of the kid's older brother. He snatched the bat out of my fingers and flung it away like a tinker toy. It twirled through the air, rebounded off a tree, and fell over a fence into someone's back yard. I swallowed hard, staring at the place where it had gone over the fence, and then looked back up at him.
He had thick, reddish brown fingers and he poked me in the chest to emphasize his words. "Fight fair." His voice was low and threatening. Then he clunked our heads together, which was no small feat, seeing as how his brother was still on the ground. He rammed me down to meet his brother's forehead, then jerked me back by my shirt collar like a rag doll.
His image swayed like a mirage through my fluttering eyelids while he stepped back into the shadow of the privacy fence. His buddies were all standing around. They slapped him on the back of his fringed latigo jacket, laughing, and he just stood there and stared at me with eyes so black I could see myself in them, even from where I was standing.
I listened to the hoots and laughter around me and didn't think anything was very funny. My chest bones were hurting for one thing from those finger pokes, and now my head and throat were throbbing as well. This wasn't my idea of a good time. But these guys wanted to see a fight and me and Waylon were going to have to give them one.
I waited while Waylon stood up, massaging his shoulder with one hand and his forehead with the other. He had wiped tears and snot off on his sleeve, and, by the look on his face, I could see he had chosen to kick my ki'yash, which is Indian lingo around here for...well, you get the idea.
Waylon took some deep breaths for a few seconds and got himself all excited and then he charged at me with a haymaker and war whoop. The war whoop surprised me. I flinched back and ducked to the left. His fist went wide and my right leg happened to trip him as he sailed by. It was a lucky trip. Or unlucky, depending which side you were on. Waylon careened to the ground and struck his head on a large chunk of granite that was sticking out of the ground. I will never know why adults want to leave big jagged rocks like that in back alleys for kids to hurt ourselves on when we're fighting.
His friends and brother crowded over right away, picked him up all bloody and not breathing. I stood there, panting and wiping my hands on my shirt. One by one their heads turned toward me, except for Waylon's brother. I peered around them to see Waylon and his eyes were open but staring out in different directions. His chest seemed sunken and unmoving. Big brother started shaking him, shouting something in Nez Perce. I got the feeling none of them had ever heard of first aid or mouth to mouth. Waylon was definitely dead or going to be soon with all that shaking and there wasn't anything I could do about it! It would be about 10 more seconds before they decided I'd killed their baby brother.
I grabbed up my bicycle, jumped on, and started pedalling like my pants were on fire. Several pairs of shoes chased behind me as far as the next block but by that time I was flying down that hill. I kept right on going. All I knew, was, I had to find Mr. Curtis. Mr. Curtis could help me. I worship that old guy, and from what I had heard, he'd been a fugitive one time himself in Oklahoma. If anyone would know what to do, Mr. Curtis would.
In his early thirties, feeling nostalgic, Kevan clicked a "buy it now" button and downloaded his second copy of the novel. It was a digital edition made for his ebook reader, but somehow the story sucked him in again. He couldn't help falling head over feet for SE Hinton's characters and the setting of an era he had been born too late to live first hand.
That time around he did more than simply read through the novel. At work, an acquaintance raved about fan fiction, and for the first time Kevan discovered an online community that shared his affinity for the Outsiders. There were fans of all ages, busily contributing their own stories to the growing subculture. Kevan was enthralled. He took detailed notes as he read through his copy, comparing it as he did with SE Hinton's related novels, which couldn't be downloaded at the time and had to once again be leafed through with his fingers. He re-read and made a study of That was Then, This is Now, and Rumble Fish, Tex, and even Taming the Star Runner. He also did further research into the greaser/social club era of Tulsa. He ended up posting a series of his own short stories in which he strove for harmony with the Hinton universe, and came to think of himself as a purist—not like those hopeless slasher perverts. He quickly became known online for his synthesis of reality with Hinton factology.
Excerpt from A.L.E.X. (a Rumble Fish fan fiction):
"The Motorcycle Boy ain't never coming back this time," Rusty James said, lamenting again. I swear, every day the dude would tell me about how he should have been there for his big brother but wasn't. If only he had done this, or hadn't let him do that. For a junior high punk Rusty James had a serious guilt complex.
This time was different, though. While Rusty James rambled on, something special happened to me. I got a queer feeling come over me like a shadow at first. Suddenly I knew better. I had been to that river, had swum with the Beta fish. And they'd made it. It was all right there, unfolding before me like a plastic shower curtain in a rain storm. I tell you, they made it to that river.
One of the cops on duty that night must've had a heart. I watched as he plucked them off the ground, one, two, and tossed them, wriggling, gills flapping, but alive into the river! Those little Siamese fighting fish didn't know what to do in all that water. They just took off in different directions, waving goodbye to each other with their big flashy tails. Me, I slowly drifted along, floating beyond my lifeless body. There was Rusty James below. I left my brother screaming soundlessly in the night. I left it all behind, plunging down into the cold dark river after the fish. I was finally free.
Splash, wham! and just like that I was back. Staggering backward to steady myself, perspiration washed down my spine and it felt like river water pouring from my clothes into a puddle under me. I stood panting and swaying. A second ago, I had been in murky depths. I had been...him!
I shook my head, and sweat splattered around the walls of the cell. Whew, I hate it when it happens. A lucid moment—an epiphany. My shoulders heaved and fell rhythmically as my heart rate slowly came back to normal. I looked around for Rusty James to see if he'd shared the experience, but he wasn't even looking in my direction. He was still sitting there on his cot, staring at all the graffiti on the wall and not really seeing it, a hundred miles away in his own private purgatory.
I swallowed and coughed hoarsely, tried gathering my thoughts as my body calmed down. I'd been given a message for the kid, an assignment of sorts. That much was obvious. And Rusty James needed to know. I searched my mind desperately for a way to get it across. Finally I thought of a tack and ventured out.
"The Motorcycle Boy," I said, and cleared my throat waiting for him 'til he looked over at me."He is within you. He's inside all of us."
Rusty James got up slowly, looking at me kind of strange-like. He nodded his head a few times like he was really agreeing with what I'd said and considering it, and he smiled at me. I watched him walk over to the bars of our cell where he put his hands up and rested his forehead against them.
"Jeez," he said quietly, and then as though he were talking to the rest of the reformatory and not just to me anymore, his voice rising in crescendo,"Get me out of here. This freak's gonna make me insane!"
Kevan's lapse into obsession burned most of a year before life intruded. For one thing, his dog, Shaka, had puppies. While trying to find decent homes for them he met his future wife. These and subsequent interests absorbed his attention and the Outsiders drifted once more into dark recesses.
Life went on. Kevan married, became a career man, had kids, had grand kids, etcetera. Finally the mid 2040's had rolled around. By then artificial intelligences were building software constructs of novels, virtualizing the reading experience so that a reader could actually become a favorite character, realizing the story as it unfolded through his or her eyes, or choose to walk alongside a protagonist as she journeyed from cover to cover. The reader could flip forward or backward on the timeline of a novel. In some constructs, there were extended features where the reader could live out his or her own fantasies within the setting of a particular book—renting or buying houses, getting a virtual job, taking part in epic battles. That was when the Outsiders as classical literature finally came into its own. Kevan was smitten once again.
It is impossible to understand this third and most important of Kevan's fixations without some further knowledge of his personal history. By 2040 he was a widower, living alone, and fretting over the lives of his children and grand children. Life had become something a person held together tenaciously or not at all. The world itself was a dangerous place to be alive. One eventful day, while sorting through his ground mail on the short walk between his hover-pod and front porch, he was mortally wounded in a random letter bomb prank.
A week later the cleaning drones were still picking pieces of him from the shrubbery.
Thankfully, he had good insurance and a recent algorithm backup of all that made him Kevan. Through the miracle of AI assisted soul-recarnation, clinician professionals retrofitted him with a new and youthful body within four months of the otherwise tragedy, and in meantime he resided in virtual animation within the confines of the clinic's reality construct.
Somewhat unluckily, however, was the mistake in the wish list section of his latest will and testament. While he was sure he had keyed: "the apparent age of my new body shall be 21," somewhere in the data transmission process the tens place and the ones place got a little switch-a-roo'd. And so in that clumsy fashion it all began—the seventy-three year old mind of Kevan Kyler was stuffed unceremoniously into the body of a pre-adolescent. And along with all the hot-blooded vim and vigor that goes with youth, he found his interests also regressing.
