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A quiet record, through a wall, and cold porcelain in his hands. The mushroom soup looks exactly the same splattering against the bowl as it did before he ate it half an hour ago and Ponyboy suspects that’s half the reason his stomach won’t stop heaving until it’s cramping and the last bit of bile is trickling over his lips, sour. He’s light-headed by the time he’s done, but at least there aren’t slimy chunks sliding up his throat, over his tongue.
Soda comes in a minute too late. “Shit, honey. Again?”
Ponyboy doesn’t know what to say when Soda runs a comforting hand through his hair, so he says nothing.
“Still feelin’ like hell?”
He snorts weakly. “No shit.”
“Alright enough to give me sass, though, huh?” grins Soda, smoothing a sweaty lock of hair behind his head and gently taking the bowl from the side of his bed. “I’ll get you some more water and some crackers. You can’t be feelin’ too good on an empty stomach.”
“Sure. Thanks Soda.”
He leans back again and closes his eyes, willing his headache away. He’s drifting off back to sleep before Soda comes back and sets the glass on the bedside table. “Hey honey? You asleep already?”
“Nah.”
“You wanna hear something good?”
“Sure, Soda.”
“Dally’s alright,” he says gently. “Hospital’s letting him out once he wakes up.”
“Oh.” Ponyboy cringes away from the image, of a face so pale he blends into the sheets of a hospital bed and bandages and needles melting into his arm. Bloodless lips and singed hair. Another body, waxen. Once he wakes up.
He thinks maybe he’s hallucinated it all because nobody mentions it again. Although, everyone seems to be tiptoeing around him these days, speaking soft, hesitant, like he’ll shatter if a wrong word slips free. Soda tells him he’s imagining it, but doesn’t quite meet his eyes.
There seem to be a hundred little sketches of horses tacked around the room by the time the week is up. His hand is still a little shaky, but Steve only touches the corners of the paper, hesitant, when he moves a stack of drawings off a chair to sit down and prop his feet up on the bedside table. Ponyboy immediately narrows his eyes.
“What, kid?” Steve chews the end of his cigarette. “Why ya lookin’ at me funny?”
“You gonna rat me out if I smoke?”
“Nah, shoot, I don’t care. Soda’s already makin’ me sit up with you; he can’t make me babysit your dumb ass as well.”
Ponyboy throws his pillow at Steve’s head and immediately regrets it when Steve catches it easy and doesn’t give it back. He scowls and picks up his pencil again. The end snaps when he tries shading in the corner of a horse’s eye. Steve snickers.
“S’like you have a rota of who has to sit over me all day. I ain’t a kid.”
“Sure, kid,” Steve grins. He drops ash on Ponyboy’s pillow. “Darry’s got it taped to the fridge an’ if we’re misbehavin’, we get extra duties. The hell else do you think I’m here for?”
“Fuck you,” he mutters, and ignores him when Steve threatens to tell Darry exactly what type of language he’s been using. “An’ if you’re all forced to hang around here how comes I’ve never seen Dallas?”
Steve stills suddenly, and Ponyboy frowns as he watches his dumb smirk fade into the carefully constructed neutral that Soda claims he’s imagining. He’s tentative when he opens his mouth again, closes it.
“Shoot, kid. They ain’t tell ya?”
“Nobody tells me anythin’ an’ I swear—”
“Glory, calm down,” says Steve, taking his feet off the table—his hands are hovering like he’s not sure what to do with them. “Calm down or Darry’ll have my neck for gettin’ you worked up.”
Ponyboy sinks back down to the bed and scowls, forces himself to unclench his fists. They’re sweaty, now. “Nobody tells me anythin’, not even Soda. What’s up with Dal? Is he still in hospital ‘cause of them burns? I though Soda said he was coming back—”
There’s something awful forcing its way up his windpipe, making it hard to breathe, and he can’t fathom why or what it’s all about, but Steve’s voice seems kind of distant.
“Kid, he—”
“He ain’t,” Ponyboy forces out, choking over his words as they tumble out of his mouth. “He ain’t.”
“He ain’t,” Steve agrees. He’s still doing the awkward hand-waving as he attempts to force the pillow back into Ponyboy’s arms, and Pony clings to it. “It’s okay, Ponyboy, I swear. He ain’t.”
“Then what?”
“He’s just gonna be in there a little longer.”
Pony lets out a breath and says, “Glory,” a little weakly. “You gonna tell me why or is that one of them things nobody’s allowed tell me either?”
Steve sits back down, levels him with a long look. “He woke up, sure. He was gonna get let out but he freaked. He’s fine, Pony.”
“Why’d he freak?”
The front door opens with a clatter and Steve just shrugs at him, and lights another smoke, and leaves Ponyboy swimming.
“It ain’t nothing,” he’s trying to say, sounding grouchier than Ponyboy’s ever heard him, and raspier. His voice echoes in the small bathroom, enough that it sounds like a rumble from down the corridor. He can hear Darry responding, but his voice is low enough that he can’t quite make out what he’s saying.
Maybe he should go back to bed. A sliver of moon cuts through the gap in the curtains and he gulps—Soda stirs but Ponyboy turns away again. He’s not going mad; that’s Dallas’ voice through the wall and he knows deep down that he shouldn’t be here.
The bathroom door opens in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it way—he knows that one second, he’s holding onto the doorframe while he watches the spots on the wallpaper dance in grey and in the next, harsh fluorescent light is spilling yellow into the corridor, splitting the night, and there’s a gaunt face right up next to his.
“Howdy, kid.”
“I ain’t a kid.”
The ghost of a smile, and a bony hand ruffling his hair. “Awful late to be meetin’ ya out here.”
“Thought I heard you,” Ponyboy mumbles. “Nobody told me you were out.”
The corners of his lips curve minutely down for a moment and Ponyboy shivers. “The doc said I was in a bad way. Coulda died. Imagine? Dyin’ for the sake of a snot-nosed kid?”
Ponyboy desperately doesn’t want to and Dallas’ smile looks like it’s stretched too thin. His voice comes out kind of thick. “Glad you didn’t.”
“Glory, kid,” he says, and it’s softer than he’s ever heard Dal speak. “You gave me a fright. Thought I killed ya, you know?”
Ponyboy says nothing, and Dallas sighs, long and slow. “Glad you ain’t dead either.”
He’s expecting a comment about using his head or the stupid shit he does but he’s gone in another second and Darry’s leading him back to bed. His cold toes find Soda’s calves under the blanket, and he almost thinks that he could have dreamed it all.
Dallas’ breath comes in a rattle, and he descends into fits of hacking coughing and swearing every half hour. It’s ugly. Darry changes the bandages up his arms every morning and he curses the whole time, teeth gritted, eyes flashing and sweat beading at his temples.
Ponyboy doesn’t quite know how Dally can stand to look him in the eye, but he seems so tired when he does. After all, he was the one who killed that Soc, who ran into the fire first, who got them into this whole mess. He doesn’t apologise. He doesn’t quite know what to say anymore.
He’s got a black eye. It’s not unusual, or unexpected, but he heard Darry mention that if he doesn’t cut it out, his bum arm will never heal. Ponyboy peers through his curtain of hair, watches Dally swear and throw his cards onto the table, sliding a dollar over to Two-Bit. Two-Bit’s eyes are drawn to Dally’s arm, and the way he holds it gingerly. It’s not long before he leaves and Pony’s left in the room with him, alone, as he smokes and stares into the mantlepiece like he’s imagining twisting it in his hands, bending it so it’s unrecognisable. He’s on edge but afraid to break the silence.
It’s Dallas, but it’s not, at the same time. Like something’s been sucked from him, spirit. He’s a wraith. What switched out his last bit of life? He finds himself drawing the curve of Dally’s high brow before he thinks about what he’s doing, the shadow under his eyes, the bend in his back and his chin resting in bony hands. Smoke, around his head.
“You know,” he says, and Ponyboy jumps. He seems to smile a bit, eyes half-lidded, appraising. “You don’t look half as tuff with your hair all yellow.”
Ponyboy scowls. “You’ve said I look lousy already. No need to rub it in.”
“Blonde just ain’t a tough colour.”
“You’re blonde an’ you’re doing just fine.”
He grins at that, and Ponyboy relaxes. “Blondes have gotta work twice as hard to look half as tough. You ain’t got a chance, kid.”
He goes back to staring at the wall and Ponyboy looks back down to his drawing. Same face, same features. He startles when Dallas speaks again.
“Besides,” He’s fixed with one sharp blue eye. “Once you got it, there ain’t no going back.”
“Tough like me,” mumbles Ponyboy and Dally frowns like he wasn’t expecting him to remember what was said.
“You’re sure you’re not coming?”
“Nah, I’m good. I’ll watch the kid.”
Ponyboy leans back and looks at the ceiling for a moment, before shutting his eyes. His arms are looped loosely around his knees, drawing them up to his chest and keeping them there. He pretends he doesn’t notice the way people tiptoe around him—he’s allowed out of bed but he hasn’t found the will to go back to school, and surprisingly, Darry hasn’t said anything.
He wants to ask whose funeral they’re going to—he’s not dumb; it’s a funeral—but the thought makes his hands shake and bile rise in his throat. Even Two-Bit looks sombre these days. Briefly, he wonders why Dally isn’t going but dismisses it—of course he wouldn’t want to go to a funeral. Dally doesn’t care enough about anyone to go to a funeral.
“There’s meatloaf in the fridge,” Darry’s saying. “We’ll be back in a few hours.”
“Whatever.”
Clattering, and the front door slams and a car starts up. It’s quiet again and the wall is cold and solid against the back of his head. He sits in silence until someone jabs him in the ribs with a toe.
“C’mon, blondie, get your ass off the floor. There’s meatloaf to heat up. I ain’t eating it cold.”
Ponyboy mutters a string of cuss words under his breath and heaves himself to his feet. He doesn’t ask why Dally won’t do it himself, and he frowns when Ponyboy slides one plate across the table.
“You ain’t eating?”
“I’m not hungry.”
He puts his fork down, and leans across the table. “Really?”
“I’ll eat later.”
“Sure, kid. Whatever.”
Dally chews with his mouth open and Ponyboy doesn’t tell him that everything still tastes like that damn baloney.
“I was gonna go out and see if there’s anythin’ interesting around town. You wanna come?”
Shaking his head takes effort and Dally frowns again, tossing his plate in the sink and leaning on the counter opposite Ponyboy. The sun catches one of his eyes, making him look decidedly wolfish when he tips his head to regard him. “They really ain’t tell you shit?”
“No,” says Ponyboy, mutinously. “Nothin’ at all.”
“You don’t know why they’ve all gone out?”
“No.”
“You don’t know that Johnny’s fuckin’ dead?”
Ponyboy looks up like he’s been shocked. “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” he snaps. “He ain’t.”
“Jesus fucking Christ, you were there. He’s dead, kid. We watched half the damn church fallin’ on his head.”
“Johnny is not dead,” he insists, voice starting to shake. “He ain’t fuckin’ dead.”
Dally scowls, taking a step forward. “So that’s why Darry’s got the whole gang babyin’ you, huh? Glory. Goin’ damn mad. Lord, look at you, can’t even face what’s right in front of your nose.”
“He ain’t dead!” he insists, only vaguely aware that he’s raising his voice, when Dally surges another three steps forward and he’s suddenly right up in his face, teeth out, sharp, each word a knife through the chest.
“He’s fucking dead. Six feet under. And he ain’t comin’ back.”
“He ain’t dead.”
Dallas takes him by the shoulders and shakes, hard, knocking a gasp out of him that’s drowned by the rushing in his head. “You’re not a fucking kid no more. He’s dead, and you wanna know why?”
They pause then, trapped in the moment. Dally’s fingers on his upper arms are so tight that he thinks they might bruise. For a wild moment, he looks more alive than he’s seen him in weeks, eyes wild, piercing, darting all over his face, flushed, and chest heaving like he’s run a mile from the cops.
“Come on, Ponyboy. He’s dead. Say it.”
Deadly calm, intense. Desperate. He says nothing and Dallas lets go, his eyes blazing, and Ponyboy screws his eyes shut, expecting a hit—
“He ain’t dead,” he insists in a whisper. A sob slips Ponyboy’s lips and just like that, Dallas crumples, all the fight dissipating at once. He sags into the counter and nudges his shoulder, just barely, and his voice comes out in a rasp.
“Alright,” he concedes. “Whatever. Hang it all, kid. Whatever you want to believe.”
“He ain’t dead.”
“No, he ain’t. You’re right, I’m windin’ you up an’ Johnny’s sittin’ all lonesome in the lot right now. Everyone else has gone out huntin’ action or whatever, and your big brother’s at work. C’mon, wanna see what’s on TV?”
A rough hand guides him from the counter. He follows like he’s in a dream—it’s pale, the hand, hovering just in front of him, bony fingers and a split knuckle and the shine of a ring—and thinks about drawing it. How he’d capture the way it’s comforting, in a strange way. And in the next moment, he’s curled on the opposite end of the couch with a cartoon playing faintly and his eyelids are heavy.
He wakes up bleary with an ache deep in his gut that’s only partially because he skipped lunch. There’s an arm tossed over the couch behind him, over his shoulder, and Dally’s breath rattles as he snores. He looks tired. Pale. And not for the first time, Ponyboy can’t quite figure out exactly what could touch Dallas Winston where it hurts.
He finds that he’s mastered the art of going unnoticed, or maybe that people never assume he’s listening anymore. There’s talk of courts, and Socs, and he feels sick, knowing he could get put in a home. Darry and Soda spend a lot of time with him these days and it’s not that he minds that in itself—it’s the tension that comes with it, strung out too thin, the half-looks and the knowledge that it can’t be this way forever.
There’s something comforting about the smell of mothballs. Or at least, that’s what he’s thinking as he huddles in the space between an old curtain and cold glass—he’s not entirely sure why they smell like mothballs, as they’ve been hanging on the same living room window for as long as he remembers, but the smell is too distinctive to miss. They’re heavy, these curtains, and double layered. Scratchy. He can sit with half of them bunched on his lap, his face buried into the thick fabric, and the gossamer sash curtain drifting in front of his eyes, just brushing his nose and throwing the light into a hundred little sparkles that blur his vision. It’s warm and light behind there and he wonders why he hasn’t appreciated it in so long.
“You seen the kid?”
“Naw, why? He’s probably sleepin’ again.”
Two-Bit mutters something indistinctive under his breath and Ponyboy hears the creak of the couch springs when someone sinks down onto it. There’s banging in the kitchen when someone opens the fridge, then the clink of glass bottles knocking the table. Steve swears and someone snickers. Ponyboy lets his eyes drift closed again.
“Darry’s real worried about him,” says Soda. Someone grunts in response.
“What’s the doc say?”
“Man, it’s just more of the same. It’ll pass in time, fuckin’ bullshit. He’s still real mixed up about it all an’ I don’t think it’s getting better.”
“He’ll be fine,” says Two-Bit. “I mean, he was like this after—”
“Yeah,” says Soda. “Yeah.”
Ponyboy opens his eyes and watches a moth crawl along the glass in front of him. It stops at a dirty spot on the glass and flies away, burying itself in the curtain—Ponyboy lifts his hand very slowly and wipes the speck off the window.
“Darry was talkin’ of getting him to the library or some shit, just to get him out of the house, you know.”
“I’ll take him,” says Dallas, unexpectedly. “When you guys are at work. Ain’t got nothin’ better to do.”
“Man, now isn’t that a thought,” Two-Bit snorts. “Winston in a god-damned library. Lord, I even thought I’d see Soda in one of them first.”
“Shut your trap Mathews, before I make you.”
Ponyboy runs a finger down the embroidery on the side of the curtain and wonders if they came with the house, because they don’t seem like the type of thing his mom or dad would have brought.
“You’ll for real take him to a library?” asks Soda. Ponyboy imagines that Dallas is shrugging, probably taking a drag of his cigarette if the smell is anything to go by. He wonders who the hell he’s going to a library for.
“Don’t see why not. If I ain’t hungover again, that is.”
There’s a quiet huff of laughter, and Steve asks, “Oh yeah, what happened last night? With you an’ that red-headed chick in the end? She let you up her skirt?”
“Uh-huh,” he says smugly, and someone chokes on their drink—there’s the general racket of someone getting slapped on the back and laughter.
“How?”
“It’s real easy,” he brags. “All these broads are the same. Just gotta butter her up real nice an’ pretend to listen to her problems for a while, then swear you won’t tell a soul an’ she ends up practically sittin’ on your dick without even havin’ to touch her up a bit.”
More laughter. Ponyboy resists the urge to cover his ears, but plants his face firmly in the curtain on his lap and tries to concentrate on the smell of mothballs. Maybe it’s not mothballs he’s smelling. After all, he did see one of those damn insects not five minutes ago.
“She a good lay?”
“Naw. Shame too, she’s so good-lookin’. I like em’ feisty, if you know what I mean—this bitch started cryin’ halfway through an’ expecting me to comfort her.”
“You’re kidding—”
“Man, I wish I was. But I guess that’s all women, fuckin’ lying to ya—thought I knew what I was getting when she threw a coke at me that first time.”
“Wait,” says Two-Bit. “The red-head—you're not talkin' about that Cherry Valence chick?”
“Who the hell d’you think I was on about?”
“I dunno, but not her, Glory—”
“Two-Bit left with Kathy before she came in,” snickers Steve. “Missed watchin’ a cute Soc girl try act tough in a drive-through.”
Two-Bit cusses good-naturedly and someone turns on the TV. An advertisement for pancake mix fills the room.
“Just goes to show though, don’t it,” says Dally as Ponyboy tries to sink further into the windowsill. “Women ain’t worth it, not even the ones who think themselves classy. Little whores, the lot of them. Ain’t none of ‘em loyal.”
Soda mutters something under his breath and Two-Bit wonders aloud, “How fast d’you reckon it will get out?”
“Pretty quick, I'll say,” says Dally, snidely. “Considerin’ we started in the back of that tuff little stingray of hers, an’ I made her do the walk of shame through Buck’s place in the morning. Only a shame I weren’t there to see her face.”
Ponyboy squeezes his eyes further shut and thinks I could fall in love with Dallas Winston and I hope I never see him again or I will.
“It ain’t a big deal,” he says, and Ponyboy desperately wants to believe him. He doesn’t believe Darry when he says it, eyes not quite meeting his, or even Soda, who smooths his hair back and stares like he might lose him forever if he’s out of sight. But he thinks he could. Believe it, that is. Because it slips Dally’s lips like it really ain’t nothing at all, between a cough and a breath of smoke.
He doesn’t remind him that the doctor told him to stop smoking while his lungs are healing. Dally knows, and doesn’t care, and Ponyboy knows it.
“Sure.”
“I mean it, kid. You’re a hero and that. They don’t split up heroes, trust me.”
“I don’t—” he chokes out, and puts his head between his knees. There’s a sigh from behind him and a steady hand suddenly lands on the small of his back.
“Fuck it,” says Dallas. His knee’s bouncing, but he jumps up before it can grate on Ponyboy’s nerves, and he already misses the weight of a hand on his back. “C’mere, kid. Let’s get outta the damn house.”
He picks up a twig and drags it across the ground, leaving a mark in the dirt. Dallas’ eyes follow the movement. He’s smoking again, slouched against the porch railing with his eyes narrow.
Ponyboy rests his cheek on his knee and squints up at him. He’s been uncharacteristically muted since Windrixville—not tender. Tender’s not the right word. He’s not quite capable of being tender, but it’s as close as, and Ponyboy doesn’t mind it so much. Maybe it’s what prompts him to toe the line, to say, “You know, you really don’t gotta babysit me all the time,” because Dally doesn’t ever do anything he doesn’t want to.
He only shrugs, and tosses his cigarette off the porch. “That you tellin’ me to get lost, kid?”
Ponyboy blushes, and starts snapping the twig in his hands into tiny pieces. Half, and half again. “No.”
“Sure sounds like it.”
“I ain’t—I don’t want you to leave,” he says quietly. Dally only appraises him, before coming to sit down on the steps so they’re shoulder to shoulder. The sun’s setting, and Darry and Soda should be home soon.
He means it, and means it more than in the now. Maybe forever. Dallas doesn’t look at him, just stares into the horizon, and Ponyboy feels words clamming up in his throat, which he bottles away with the strange feeling to scream, maybe, or melt into the ground. Dallas’ skin looks sallow in the fading light, paper thin.
Just one more thing, gritty and aching. But Dallas doesn’t ever do anything he doesn’t want to do and if he’ll leave like Johnny, then there’s not anything Ponyboy can do to change it.
“You’ll be alright,” says Dally, and Ponyboy struggles to remember exactly the way he looks when he sighs.
He lets the pencil roll between his fingers and hit the desk with a clatter, and resists the urge to rip the paper in front of him into a hundred little pieces and watch them go with the wind.
There are words in front of him. Scrawl about Paul Newman, a buckskin horse and hair grease, and a final reminder that there’s still good in the world. He struggles to make sense of it all, even as the sun rises in the room, bathing grey in light yellow. He presses his pencil further into the paper and watches the lead crumbling into tiny black specks that scatter onto the floor, ashes. The pencil finally gives way and snaps.
The letter is folded again and placed into the book. He thinks, that maybe, wherever he is now, Dallas couldn’t stand to look at him after all.