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“I’m not going to fight.”
The silence of the room is deafening as any excitement for the rumble dies down, which is amazing seeing as there isn’t much expressed to begin with. Or it would have been amazing, if it weren’t for the situation. Of course, I expected this reaction. Bob is, or more like was , my best friend, after all. Even if the norm is to pretend you can’t feel, to not fight for your murdered friend is crazy. But I mean what I say; I’m not going to fight. To me, it’s pointless. No matter who wins the rumble tonight, nothing’s going to change, because we’ll still be Socs and Ponyboy, and his friends will still be Greasers.
Eliot, another person who was there that night, speaks up first, his voice level and controlled, the calm before the storm. “What do you mean you’re ‘not going to fight’, Randy? You have to fight. Doesn’t Bob’s death mean anything to you?”
The other people there spoke up in agreement, again, as I expected. Some called me a coward, and some started cursing my name. I can see looks ranging from outrage, to hurt, to acceptance. Honestly, it makes me wonder; if this was happening to someone else, if I was part of the audience watching someone speak my words, would I be supporting them and their decision? Or would I be following the crowd as usual? I don’t know anymore, and that scares me more than their looks ever could. “Look guys, I’ve really thought about this and I don’t think we should fight-”
Another one shouts out in a rare outburst of emotion, “Don’t tell me you sympathise with those greasers? One killed your best friend!” and it echoes across the nearly empty lounge.
One of the problems with having big houses like this is that you end up with more space than you know what to do with. It makes the entire building echoey, and empty feeling. I suppose it echoes another thing other than our voices as well, however:
How we’re feeling, even if we don’t show it.
Bob was our leader, in a sense. He gave our lives direction, something to do, in a world where we’re handed everything and must do nothing. Even if we had things to do, it never felt like enough. It always felt like we needed to do more, like we needed to earn all the things we were handed, at least for some of us. Bob helped give direction to that, I guess. He was kind, even when we made mistakes, and there was just something about him that everybody felt. I don’t know if it was charm, or charisma, but he just drew people towards him, like moths to a flame, or people to power. He seemed so lovely, so entrancing, that we just went along with what he said, even though we knew it was wrong sometimes. Like when we beat up that kid, Johnny, both times. The five of us knew it was wrong, but we just had this kind of blind faith that things would be okay for us. We didn’t think things would turn out this way. In fact, I’m not even sure we thought at all. We just drunkenly followed, pushed for someone to say ‘no’, and now without Bob, that same feeling of needing to do more to get a response has taken shape, creating this kind of hollow emptiness. Like everything around us is just happening, and we’re not a part of it.
And that’s another thing that bothers me with this stuff about the rumble. The remaining four of us that were there that night, and the ten or so other people who hung out with Bob for that matter, should know by now that doing these types of things- looking for violence and blindly following others -will only end horribly, and yet they won’t listen. So after thinking about all this carefully in the newly returned silence, I finally figure out what to say.
I take a deep but shaky breath as I start, “I know you guys must be upset. I would be too, I think. But I need you to listen to me, please. Bob’s death has affected me more than you could ever know. He was the best friend I could ever have had, and I’ll never forget that. But for as good of a friend he was, he had his faults and his problems. He wasn’t perfect, or invincible, but he acted like it and made us kind of believe he was, even though we all knew he was only human too.”
“I personally didn’t believe he was invincible. Nobody is.” A stranger to me interrupts, though he hushes up when everybody else looks at him. He may or may not have thought so, but everybody else did.
I continued on, “We knew he wasn’t untouchable, and that things wouldn’t stay the way they were forever. Yet we hoped, and believed, and followed him. We would have followed him to the ends of the earth, had he asked. We allowed him to believe he was unstoppable, and things ended up like this.”
I am interrupted by Eliot now. Golly, for a room with only, what, 15 people including myself? People sure do get interrupted a lot. “So you’re saying this is our fault?” Eliot is outraged this time.
“No, I’m saying that we played a part. We fed into the violence and hotheaded-ness and now look at what happened. That’s why I’m saying I refuse to continue doing that. I refuse to participate in violence and shows of power that will get us nowhere. It's fine if you believe otherwise- But this is how I feel about it, and I’m sticking by it,” I finished. I know that that little speech isn’t enough to change their minds. Maybe nothing ever will be. But if I didn’t say it just then, then I never would. I just take one last glance at them before I walk out without a single protest from anyone else. They were still upset at me, but that’s fine with me now. I’ll talk to them again eventually. Until then, I think it’s best I stay away. It’s almost 7 o’clock anyway.