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Sometimes I hate Steve Randle.
And sometimes it’s even more than he hates himself, which is hard to believe. But I’ve known him for a long time, almost as long as Sodapop Curtis. Which I suppose I could be mad about. Seeing he cares more for him than he’ll ever care for me.
I met Steve when I was ten years old in Mrs. Hall’s fifth grade class. Him and Soda were messing around like they always did; throwing shit and making a bunch of noise. I don’t know what but something ended up in my hair and that’s how come the both of them were laughing at me the entire day.
I’m not one for being laughed at. My mom always told me to stick up for myself, told my brothers not to be assholes too. She wanted to raise the perfect children, and it sucks she kinda dropped that ball by my eighth birthday. But still it gave me the nerve to confront them. Walk right over to them and wave a finger in their no good faces.
Soda seemed scared, like he didn’t know how to handle girls taking back to him. Like he didn’t expect none of us to have a mind of our own. But I do. And I sure let him have a piece of it.
Steve just stood there and smiled, a real cocky one with his stupid fucked up teeth that somehow no one managed to make fun of. I didn’t know why. Maybe cause they were scared of him. But I wasn’t, I wasn’t gonna be scared of no snot nosed boy with the temper of a toddler. And I certainly wasn’t gonna back down to him either. I remember what my mama said.
And you know what he did? That brat just kept on smiling and then he reached out for my hair. My mom always told me to not let anyone lay a finger on me unless I said so or then I could break their skulls open like a piñata. So that’s what I was preparing to do.
‘It’s just a bit of paper.’
He retracted his hand as quickly as he left it out, a small piece of paper folded up in between his fingers.
‘It’s a note.’
He reached out and handed the note to me. I knew I should’ve have taken it. I really shouldn’t have. But I did anyway. I took that note right out from in his fingers and I put it right in my mouth. Chewing it up and everything. I couldn’t swallow it though, so I just pretended to. Kept looking him in the eyes the entire time. My mama would’ve been awful proud of me, I thought.
Sodapop looked disgusted. Like I was somehow the most nasty person in the world. And if that is what he thought, that was perfectly fine with me.
But Steve just kept on smiling. Like he was amused by me. I amused him. God I hated him right then and right there cause I knew I wasn’t put on this planet to make boys like Steve Randle smile.
And then here I am nearly seven years later and I still hated the way he smiled.
But in a different way. I got to know him pretty well in those six to seven years. I gotta know the ins and outs of him. What made him tick and what made that same smile appear. Like clockwork. I knew Steve Randle like the back of my hand. I knew him better than Sodapop. And I knew him better than he knew himself.
Steve liked to indulge often in the fantasy that Sodapop knew him best. But he would never go to him whenever his dad kicked him out and begged him to come back the next day. Instead he was knocking on my door or my window in the middle of the night with balled up fists and angry eyes. I hated when he would do that. Cause then the next day my mother would look at me with the same knowing look she always had.
‘Evie. Did you have a boy in your room?’
‘No, mama. It was just Steve.’
My mama understood what I meant. Raising three boys all nastier than the next. My mama knew that Steve and I weren’t nothing she should be worried about. She knew I had no interest in filling whatever place Steve wanted me too. Whether that was for his shitty excuse of a father or the absence of a mother.
I guess that’s why my own mother didn’t mind him so much. Pretended not to notice when he came racketing through my window at two in the morning. Sure, he was an asshole, but never to me. Not once.
Sure he yelled and picked fights, but I never fought back. And pretty soon after a while of me humoring whatever meltdown he was in the middle of, he would calm down and apologize.
My mom said it was because he never had a mama to grow up and teach him how to handle his emotions. That’s why my mama made sure to try extra hard with my brothers. Make sure they never yelled at a lady no matter how mad they were or who that lady was. So I guess she pitied Steve. I did too. Who couldn’t.
I cried when he got picked up one time about a year ago. It was the only time I ever let myself cry Steve Randle. And it was cause no one even seemed to give a shit. His father didn’t even notice for nearly three days. Soda found the whole situation humorous. It seemed like the only people to care were me, my mama, and Sodapop’s parents.
They cared about him an awful lot. And I was glad they did, he deserved a good family and a good love. It was something I knew I could never give to him the way he wanted, so as much as I despised Sodapop, I was glad when I found out he had crashed on their couch.
For a long while I couldn’t pinpoint exactly why I had so much hate for Soda. Growing up I thought it was jealousy of some sort. Knowing that Steve would always be closer, think he was closer, to Soda than to me. Even when we started dating, he still spent every minute with Sodapop. I used to think that I wanted him all to myself, which was stupid really. Because no one can handle Steve Randle on their own. Not even Sodapop.
But Sodapop just let him keep thinking that. Let him keep thinking that he was the only reason Steve was alive. The only reason he wasn’t looking to get drafted or drunk off his ass every weekend. Some hypocrite he was. And boy did that irk me.
Because not only did Sodapop have him so far under his spell that it would take fucking Houdini to help him, but he actually had him falling in love with him.
I noticed it for the first time when I was fifteen.
He was supposed to come over, spend my birthday with me. He knew how important birthdays were to me. But he still didn’t show. The next day I found out that him and Soda had gotten into some trouble betting on horses at the rodeo and had run off together for the night. And the next day I saw him, I won’t go into too much detail, but his neck was sure colored something else. Like a toddler who had just learned to finger paint.
I didn’t ask him about him. Why he had cheated on me and with who. I knew why. I knew who. And I knew I deserved far better than whatever had Steve Randle so confused that he could hardly even look me in the eye.
So I broke up with him. I told my mama and she told me I had done a real good job for myself. That boys like Steve Randle were far too complicated for girls like me. I knew what that meant. It meant she saw too much of my father in Steve and too much of herself in me.
It went unspoken for a little while why I had broken up with him. And in those few months I noticed more and more. More touches and less space. I noticed Steve Randle had fallen in love again, and not with me.
It made me wonder if he was ever really in love with me. Or if he just said that to keep up appearances. Just thought that because it’s what his father wanted.
I meant his father once, and only once, it was still far too much. He looked me up and down and grinned. The same grin Steve gave me on the playground the first day we met. I amused him too. And I was getting damn sick of amusing men.
My older brother offered to beat him up, like that would do anything to change the sixteen years of conditioning Steve went through and would continue to. My brother, Micheal, he kept on telling me he didn’t like how Steve treated me. How I was just Steve’s side piece and almost like a caretaker to him. I told him that I knew that and I told him I can take care of myself.
I knew I wasn’t anything like Dally’s girl, Sylvia. Or Sodapop’s girl, Sandy. Not that they were bad or nothing. I rather like them. Especially Sylvia, she had a fire like my mama. But I didn’t like how Sandy was just as much of a fake as Sodapop.
It wasn’t her fault though. She was a nice girl. Really. Delt too much of a bad hand. So I shouldn’t really be mad at her for it, and I kept telling myself that. But most of all I kept telling Steve that. Kept telling him that Sandy really wasn’t a horrid girl. And I knew that deep down, he knew that. He knew she was as perfectly lovely as anyone else, he just couldn’t stand her being with him.
I wondered once if that was how Sodapop felt about me. Considering how protective he got the very first time he saw me. Grabbing onto Steve like he was somehow his property. It pissed me off. It seemed dangerous how much Soda guarded Steve. I felt bad for him. Steve that is. I didn’t feel shit for Soda. Sometimes I wished he would just roll over and die. But he couldn’t. Not for his brothers sake and not for Steve’s either.
I know that made me a bad person for wishing that. Not that I ever actually wished it. Not that hard anyway. But it made me feel better when my mama didn’t like him either. She said he was too good to be true. To perfect for anyone to believe. And hell if she wasn’t dead on with that. But my mama was always dead on in everything she said.
And when she told me that boys like Steve Randle weren’t exactly like other boys, I knew what she meant. I knew it wasn’t normal for boys to look at other boys the way Steve did. Have his eyes and hands linger for a moment too long. He thought he was the only person to notice it. Pissed him off too. But I was the first. And apparently it was clear enough that my mama picked up on it as well. I guess that’s another reason why she didn’t hate him too much. Cause the only way that he could hurt me was if I cared.
I cared. Not about whatever he had with Sodapop. I cared about him. I didn’t want to see him get screwed over. Sure, he wasn’t the best person, but he didn’t deserve that. He didn’t deserve half the shit that happened to him. And I suppose I didn’t either, I guess. But I’m capable of making my own decisions, and I decide that just because I hate Steve Randle sometimes, doesn’t mean that he doesn’t hate himself more.
I found it funny how much Steve hated Ponyboy Curtis, Soda’s little brother. He was always complaining about him being a tagalong and a no good annoying little kid. Like I wasn’t also a tagalong everytime he was with Soda. I had to hold myself back every time he went on about how much he just wished the kid would disappear. I wondered if he ever felt that way about me. But no. I was far too good to him. It made me also wonder if he was ever able to get his head out of his ass, if he would actually like Pony like he liked me.
If he even liked me. He insisted he did. He insisted I was the first person he ever loved. Which was something considering how many of my firsts he was. My mama always told me that stuff was supposed to be special. Cause of my father and all. But I guess that I never really cared too much. Being a girl was all too much too complicated. Especially being one in our neighborhood.
Still, life is complicated. I’m complicated. My mama is complicated. Sodapop is complicated. Relationships are complicated. But most of all, Steve Randle is complicated.
So I guess we had a lot more in common than I ever thought was possible. And I guess if amusing people is the worst thing I can do, then I suppose I’m doing pretty well off. And that’s pretty damn amusing too.