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Ponyboy had fallen asleep the minute the train had started moving, but, though he was exhausted beyond belief, Johnny hadn’t allowed himself to sleep. For one, he had to make sure that he could wake Ponyboy up in time to jump off the train when they got to Windrixville and for another...he wasn’t sure he really wanted to sleep.
They’d sat next to the big open door of the train car to start out with, but once they’d got moving they’d moved so they were staring out of it. That was what Johnny was doing now, staring out at the dark landscape as it passed by in shadows, nothing definitive. It felt like his future.
The gun Dally had given him was heavy in his pocket. It was meant to protect him and Ponyboy against the Socs that might come after them. But, as he sat there in the darkness, the world passing by in front of him, he pulled it out of his pocket and turned it over in his hands, thinking of all the other ways that it could be used.
It hadn’t been more than an hour since Ponyboy had found him at the vacant lot. It hadn’t been more than an hour since the Socs had found them at the park. It hadn’t been more than an hour since they’d chased them and grabbed Ponyboy and held him under the water in the fountain, trying to drown him, for talking to their girlfriends.
It hadn’t been more than an hour since Johnny had killed someone.
And as he sat in the darkness on the train, holding the gun in his hands, he wondered whether he shouldn’t just do Ponyboy and Dally and everyone a favor and put the cold of the barrel to his temple and pull the trigger.
He was the one that had murdered somebody. Ponyboy hadn’t done that. Neither had Dally. Well...he wasn’t sure about Dally, but he hadn’t gotten caught and if he hadn’t gotten caught now he probably never would. Johnny had been stupid enough to not only stab and kill someone in front of their friends, but the person he stabbed was wealthy, popular. He wasn’t some gang thug in New York. He would be missed.
The gun was heavy. A lot heavier than he’d thought a gun would be. It fit in his hand, though, too. Sometimes whenever the trees broke long enough for the moon to shine through Johnny still saw them covered in Bob Sheldon’s bright red blood.
He’d wiped his hands off in the grass after Ponyboy had come around, but they still looked red. He’d wiped his knife off there too. The knife he still had in his back pocket.
It occurred to him then that he should probably get rid of the murder weapon, but he’d gotten that switchblade to protect himself and it had done its job and that wasn’t its fault. He’d been carrying it around since the Socs had found him in the vacant lot in Apirl. It had become like a security blanket, something he carried around knowing he could defend himself at any moment because he had it. Despite what he had done, he couldn’t force himself to take it out of his pocket and throw it away now.
The moon shone through the trees again and he saw his hands, bright red, wrapped around the handle of the gun and a horrible thought drifted through his mind.
The gun fits perfectly in your hands because there’s a reason for that, because they’re bright red, because they’re the hands of a murderer.
He wanted to scream. He wanted to throw the gun off the train. He wanted to throw himself off the train too, but then Ponyboy would be alone and as much as he wanted to convince himself no one would hold Ponyboy accountable for what had happened, he knew that wasn’t the truth.
I can’t take much more of this, Ponyboy...I’ll-I’ll kill myself or something.
The words he’d spoken only hours earlier he’d meant at the time, but he felt like he hadn’t really known the definition of the feeling he thought he was feeling when he’d said that. He thought he knew what it was like to be desperate and alone and without any direction or hope for a future, but he realized now that he hadn’t.
Before he’d had a chance of getting away, having a life outside of this dysfunctional town, but now he was only leaving it because if he didn’t his life would get even worse, because if he didn’t what slim hope for a future he could have now was better than staying and having no future at all.
The gun was looking friendlier and friendlier, despite knowing Ponyboy was still right there.
He took off the safety.
And that was when the train began to slow. He put the safety back on and woke Ponyboy.