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chippedshake · 2 days

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14 and I'm thinkin' 'bout God again

Ponyboy had never gone to church before. He’d never seen the point in it. No one in his family was a believer, and if he was going to spend a couple hours watching someone talk, he would rather have it be a movie than a sermon.

But now that his parents were gone, he started wondering where they were. They would’ve made their way into heaven, he was sure of that. But did it even exist? Was someone else right? Was there another sort of afterlife? Were they sent to hell for being non-believers?

Was there nothing? Had their souls just disappeared? Were they really sleeping forever, unconscious? If that was what was waiting for everyone, what was even the point of being alive? The sun would explode and consume everything and they would be gone and all that would be left would be a void. No life. No thoughts. No memories.

He slipped into the church with Johnny right before the service began, trying to be quiet so no one would notice them and their not-so-clean clothes.

In the back of our car, everyone is so far from me

Marcia wanted to phase through the backseat and reappear in her bed. Bob and Randy had been drinking and Cherry was glaring holes into the back of their heads and Marcia was exhausted and couldn't garner the energy to join in.

She was tired for everything these days. Too tired for rallies and protests. Too tired to play with her little sister. Too tired to care about Randy and Bob drinking until they threw up. Too tired to pay attention in class. Too tired to care about how Bob being behind the wheel was illegal and about how it was illegal because it could kill them.

She just wanted things to be easy. Why did everything have to be a fight?

Maybe it’d be easier if she just stayed in her room alone and did nothing. Staring at the ceiling, laying on her bed, fading in and out of sleep. Maybe it’d be easier if she just stopped existing.

17 and I'm feelin' so out of place, I've been movin' too much

Dally slept where he could. Buck said he didn’t need the rent money, but Dally knew better than that and tried to stay away for as long as he could because there was no way Buck would accept any form of payment from him. Not even helping around the bar or cleaning up after they closed.

He stayed at Tim’s a couple times, but he was definitely an outsider there. Angela always gave him the stink eye – she was friends with Sylvia – and Curly gave him a wide berth. Tim was nice enough, but clearly didn’t want his bad influence around his kid brother and sister. A bit hypocritical, maybe, but imagining Tim palling around with Johnny made Dally understand why Tim seemed three seconds away from strangling him when he told Curly a dirty joke.

There was Sylvia’s, sure, but they were always fighting and didn't get along too well even when they weren't. The Curtises’ couch was taken by someone else – usually Johnny – most of the time and Dally would rather die cold and alone on the street than force Johnny out of the only place he could call home.

(Nevermind that it was his, too)

And lately, I've been runnin' 'round in circles every day

Johnny paced the lot for the third time. He couldn’t sleep. Not so soon after. Everytime he closed his eyes, he swore he could hear the low rumble of a Mustang coming around the corner to finish the job.

To follow through with all those threats.

He knew he should go to the Curtises’, but he didn’t want to bother them. Darry had enough to worry about without having to pick up charity cases.

Fourth lap. It was nearing midnight. He wasn’t getting any sleep tonight.

19 and I'm gettin' too drunk again

It was noon on a Wednesday and Two-Bit was nursing his third beer.

He thought about Steve’s face curling in disgust whenever he smelled alcohol on Two-Bit’s breath. Susie looking at him in disappointment with those big, brown eyes whenever he came home drunk. Sodapop’s pitying looks whenever he had beer for breakfast and Darry telling him about AA meetings and Ponyboy reciting statistics in an attempt to get him to stop.

He thought about visiting the hospital and seeing Johnny, laying there, useless and in pain. Being useless and watching, helpless, as he died slowly and painfully. He thought about Dally crumpling under a streetlight, seventeen and hopeless. He thought about how he was never going to leave their neighborhood, how he was never going to graduate from highschool, how Ponyboy and Darry would leave and find someplace better and Steve and Soda would open their own gas station and he would be left there alone, still nursing his third beer on a Wednesday morning when he was thirty.

He took another swig.

And I'm fallin' in love with everyone just for a minute

She was pretty. A brunette, not a blonde, and brown eyes, not blue, but she was pretty. And she was funny and smart and really liked Soda.

They’d had fun that evening and she was a bit older than him so she lived alone and they were at her place. He should be happy. He should be enjoying himself. But all he could think about was blond hair and someone else’s kid.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured as he stepped away, buttoning his shirt back up, “I can’t.”

20 and I'm runnin' away from everythin', I dropped out of school

Whenever Darry had a problem as a kid – homework he couldn’t figure out, a fight with some friends, someone being rude to him –, his dad would always remind him he played football, not track. He didn’t run away from things, he tackled them. He would force him to face the problem head-on and figure it out and not let it rest until it was solved.

Lately, he’d been thinking that maybe he could replace Ponyboy as the track star in the family.

Sure, he paid the bills and got custody and made half-hearted apologies when he was too out of line with Ponyboy, but the moment sadness poked its head out, tentatively asking if it could heal his wounds now, he shoved it down twice as hard as last time. He hadn’t let himself cry once in the last seven months, no matter how many times he wanted to. That wasn’t about to change any time soon.

(It changed a month later as he hugged his brothers in a hospital waiting room when it finally came to be too much.)

To end up wakin' on another cold park bench

Steve’s father was kicking him out more often. It used to be once a month, for maybe two or three days. Now it was practically every week.

It almost wasn’t worth going back.

He couldn’t go over to the Curtises’ that often. Not just because it wasn’t fair for them to have to put up with him for so long, but also because it was humiliating. If he wasn’t even good enough for his own father to want him around, then who would?

Johnny would see him at the lot and Dally would see him at Buck’s so he went to the park. It was deserted at night and was on their turf so he could sleep undisturbed.

He tried to ignore the shame rolling around in his chest when he woke up at sunrise to clean himself up with the fountain’s icy water.

And I've turned off a part of me

Soda wasn’t allowed to have feelings anymore, apparently. He wasn’t a person anymore, just a rope. A rope for his brothers to tug back and forth until he tore right down the middle.

He’d never been all that good at following rules, but this was one he could follow. No feelings? He could do that. He could make himself a smiling, steady presence for his brothers. He could stretch himself thin enough to cover everyone.

He could keep his family together.

that I can't find anymore

He’d tried. Ponyboy swore that he’d tried.

But he couldn’t finish Gone with the Wind. He couldn’t. He couldn’t bring himself to concentrate on a sentence for more than a couple seconds before his mind started to wander. Johnny had been better than him at finding meaning in things. There was probably something there that he couldn’t see.

Why even read if he couldn’t know what Johnny would have thought? What he would have felt? Why should Ponyboy get to read words that Johnny never would?

How was he supposed to stay gold when the golden part of himself was rotting underground?

I'm sick of always questionin' myself

Cherry walked home alone from the drive-in for the fourth time this month. Every time. He got drunk every single time, no matter what she did.

Was she doing something wrong? Did being a good girlfriend mean turning a blind eye and pretending like she didn’t care? Was it all her fault? Maybe if she was better in some way – not as annoying, more obedient, nicer – he wouldn’t have to drink himself stupid every Friday.

It’s not your fault, she told herself. It was not her fault. It was Bob’s. She didn’t have to be more submissive, he had to stop drinking.

But it wasn’t his fault either. He didn’t conjure up alcohol out of nowhere. Store clerks and older kids and adults, they turned a blind eye. They let a boy, a child, get something that was almost a drug so they could put some money in their pockets and he would have the courage to beat up other children.

And what I'm doin' wrong

Randy watched as Bob swung another punch. He was wearing rings. That was going to scar. The kid was almost crying.

What were they even doing? Why were they here? What did they want to prove? The kid hadn’t even done anything wrong, he was just wandering around.

Randy’d seen the guy around school. He was quiet, kept to himself. Had bruises sometimes and always told teachers – the few that cared – that he’d fallen. It was obvious he hadn’t. Who falls into hands around their neck?

Why were they beating on someone who already had it so rough? It wasn’t the kid’s fault he was a greaser, just like it wasn’t Bob’s fault his parents let him get away with murder and it wasn’t Randy’s fault his parents didn’t let him take a breath without telling them about it.

It was wrong, it was all so wrong, the way they all thrived on violence, acting like it made some sort of a difference to anyone. Who was watching them and deciding the winner? Who would make the rules change if they just beat on one more innocent kid, made one more little boy scared to walk around at night?

I've been fightin' with who I am inside my head

Sylvia collapsed onto the couch with a sigh, half expecting her mother to come out to scold her for being unladylike.

Not like that was going to happen anytime soon. She’d chosen herself over her children when she’d up and left with no warning. So now there was no one around to tell Sylvia to wear longer skirts or less makeup or tie her hair back or go back to school.

School. It was four. Remmy'd finished an hour ago. She had to pick him up. Fuck. She’d let Evie drag her along to a rally and lost track of time.

The teacher rolled her eyes when Sylvia showed up half an hour later, muttering about whores and how it wasn’t her job to take care of accidents. Sylvia figured she could have nicely corrected her and told her Remmy was her baby brother and she was late because she’d been trying to get equal rights, actually, but she didn’t really feel like it. Saying that bitch’s boyfriend was the father was much more satisfying.

It wasn’t worth it, though, when Remmy stormed off alone down the street and she had to run after him. He was mad. Of course he was mad. She’d been an hour and a half late picking him up and instead of apologizing and taking him home quietly, she’d picked a fight with his teacher.

She really was useless, wasn’t she? Every day she told herself today would be the day she changed for the better, but she never really did.

And I don't know me anymore

Maybe a label was supposed to be enough. Drunk. Brother. Dreamer. Useless. Girlfriend. Greaser. Soc.

Why wasn’t it?

And I wish I was somebody else

Just to feel like I'm enough for myself

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