Chapter Text
I was careful with my daddy’s car, because I knew I’d pay for it if there was so much as a scratch on the paint job. Daddy wasn’t a mean drunk; he didn’t hit me or anything. But I knew he’d yell, and that was almost worse. Maybe if I had bruises on my face and arms like some of the greaser girls I’d gone to high school with, someone would’ve said something. Maybe Momma would’ve stood up and walked out with me.
But none of that ever happened, and I’d only started calling Daddy a drunk when I started at the University. I was still living with the two of them, but most days I felt like a stranger in that house. I felt older than the two of them put together.
Summer had come again, just like it always did, and I didn’t think anything of driving to the movie house alone until I looked up and saw Ponyboy Curtis right there before my eyes. I let out a kind of scream as my ticket fluttered to the floor, forgotten. “Hi!” I said. And then, because he was staring at me like he’d seen a ghost, I said it again, quieter: “Hi.”
Ponyboy and I had never really been friends. I knew that, and he knew that, too. For just a second—that brief, shining second before Bob died and Ponyboy split—I’d thought maybe we could be friends if we were given enough time. I’d felt like he just understood me in some way no one else had ever bothered to. He didn’t keep every thought and feeling buttoned up and closed off like the Socs did. Even Marcia, who I loved to pieces, always had a wall somewhere behind her eyes. I could never get past that, not with her or anyone else.
Any other Soc, I suppose, because with Ponyboy, I couldn’t find that wall at all. He didn’t ever seem like he was trying to keep something from me. He didn’t seem like he was wishing for something else when he looked at me. He just looked right at me and listened.
But after the fire, and after Johnny Cade and Dallas Winston died, we barely looked at each other. I waved at him in the halls, and he waved back sometimes, and I thought about him when I watched the sunset, but nothing else really changed. I’d thought that nothing else had really changed.
Except when I saw him in the movie house, there was this itch under my skin like I knew something was out there. Like I had to run to it. I’d felt that itch before, in the year after Bob and Johnny Cade and Dallas Winston died. Then, I’d started working harder, started caring less about what my friends thought of me. It didn’t matter much—every Soc on the west side thought I was crazy already. I should’ve known they wouldn’t understand, not after we’d been spoon fed these stories about greasers ever since we were kids. Stories about greasers, and about ourselves, too. We always knew we were born with the sun on a string. We always knew the greasers wanted to take it from us.
Maybe if I’d never met Ponyboy, I would’ve kept thinking that way too. Maybe I would’ve married Bob straight after high school and had a litter of kids and stayed in the kitchen till the day I died. But that’s not what happened.
And so I stood there in the movie house, and I stared at Ponyboy. I wanted to tell him that he’d changed everything, but I didn’t know how to say it without coming off as dreadfully forward. “Hi,” I said instead, for the third time.
He blinked fast, like I might disappear. “Hi,” he said. “Cherry Valance. Where’ve you been?”
I laughed like it was a silly question, but I knew what he meant. It felt like the last four years had been a dream, and we were only now waking up. “I’m attending the University now,” I said. “I’m studying to be a lawyer.”
“Oh,” he said, and then we were quiet for a while.
I should’ve picked up my ticket and gone into the theater right then, but it felt like my feet were bolted to the ground. “How about a drink?” I asked. “There’s a nice spot down the street. My treat.” We were friends, I reminded myself. We’d been friends for that brief, shining moment.
But he just shook his head. “Nah, Cherry,” he said. “I gotta work.” I hadn’t realized till then that he was wearing the black vest and trousers that all the movie house workers wore.
“Oh,” I said, then, “Oh,” again. “Well, what time do you get off?” I was picking at my nails without realizing it. I straightened my hands and looked him right in the face, smiling. “I want to see you again.”
He only hesitated for a second. “I get off at ten-thirty,” he said. “I’ll see you then.” He said it slowly, like he didn’t quite believe I’d keep my word, but I couldn’t keep the grin off my face. I turned right around and walked out of the movie house feeling higher than a kite. I completely forgot about my movie ticket. I left it lying there on the floor.
To be quite honest, it wasn’t just seeing Ponyboy that made me so happy. Not that I wasn’t happy to see him; I was happy, happier than I’d expected. There was something I’d forgotten about the way he spoke to a person: A peculiar lilt in his voice, and those gray-green eyes that seemed to glow from the inside. I always wanted to talk to him more once I’d started.
But it wasn’t just Ponyboy. I mean, it wasn’t on his own merit entirely that I was happy to see him. I was happy because…
There are certain things that a girl has to be delicate about. There are certain things a girl can’t discuss too openly. Things to be disclosed only in passing with a laugh so if anyone brings it up later on, a girl can claim she was only joking, or that she was misheard, or that she didn’t mean it like that.
A girl has to be careful.
Sure, getting with a greaser wasn’t about to improve anything for me. But it was better than…Well. It was better than other ways I could’ve turned out. At least Ponyboy and I would look good together. We’d look right together.
I reminded myself not to get too far ahead of myself as I walked down the sidewalk. It was almost seven; that was plenty of time before I could go and collect Ponyboy. I should’ve gone to the library and gotten some work done. I had to work twice as hard as any of my male cohorts in the law program at the University, despite the fact that I knew three times as much as the smartest of them. I should’ve gone to the library, but I was still thinking about Ponyboy. My feet walked straight past the library and on down the street. I had a lot to think about.
I had a plan. I’d always had plans, ever since I was little. I had plans for how to build a treehouse, and how to get the girls in my class to like me. I had plans for if the house caught fire or if a tornado swept down our street. I had plans for running away too, though I never once acted on those ones.
I had a plan, and it was forming before I even meant to plan it, gathering speed like a train as I mosied on down the sidewalk. I knew how to get a boy to like me. I knew I liked Ponyboy, or I had back in the tenth grade.
Of course, that had been before Bob and Johnny Cade and Dallas Winston had died, and I suspected that the both of Ponyboy and I were different people now.
But that wouldn’t matter, I reminded myself, setting my jaw like I was ready to be punched square on. Because I had a plan.
I got back to the movie house at ten-fifteen. It was true dark outside, long past sunset. It didn’t matter much; it wasn’t as if anyone was waiting up for me. Still, I felt like a bit of a deviant as I stepped back into the movie house. For all my plans, I wasn’t usually this bold.
Ponyboy was sweeping up when I entered, but he straightened up to look as the door shut behind me. He stared at me like he just couldn’t believe I was there. I smiled, feeling myself stretch just a little taller. Boys looking at me like that always made me feel like a million bucks. I liked boys that looked like they were really looking at my face, watching to see what I thought and felt. Boys who weren’t just using their eyes to trace my curves or try and see up my skirt.
I waited by the door till he was done. My heart was pounding like Momma’s Singer, but I kept my face slick and clear as glass. I had my plan, and I didn’t intend to stray from it. “Hey, Ponyboy,” I said once he’d finished sweeping. “How about that drink?”
He was still staring at me as we walked out. One of the other guys working the movie house let out a wolf whistle at me, but it was like neither of us even heard him. We were both sweaty-palmed but trying hard to play it cool.
The spot was a dive bar called Orpha’s. Paul had told me about it once, and after I started attending the University, I figured I might want a place to spend my evenings. There were still a few months left before I could go into such a place in an entirely legal fashion, but I knew the bouncer. I knew about the tough way he’d come up and his lady friend Alice. I knew enough about him that Ponyboy and I breezed right past with nothing more than a smile and a nod. The plan.
It was dim inside Orpha’s, and loud. Ponyboy had his hands deep in his pockets. His shoulders were hunched. I took one of his arms, not holding on too tight or too close. Just enough to let him know I was there. “Do you want something to drink?” I asked. He didn’t give me an answer except for an equivocal shrug.
My own hands were shaking awfully, so I made my way to the bar and secured a Manhattan for him and a martini for myself. I snuck a look at him as I waited for Pearl at the bar to finish our drinks. He was sitting there like he was ready for a fight: His feet planted, his face glaring. I wouldn’t have tried to talk to him if I’d seen him.
But I had a plan, and so, with our drinks in hand, I made my way back to our table. “I wasn’t sure what you like so I got a Manhattan,” I said, somewhat breathless. “I’ve always liked them. It might be a little strong if—”
“What are we doing here, Cherry?” he asked abruptly. He still had that look on his face, like he was a real tough rumbler. Like he was ready to fight me.
I blinked, feeling my eyelashes brush my cheek. “What do you mean?” I slipped up a little bit; my voice had a ring of insincerity. It sounded like I’d rehearsed it.
“What I mean is this,” he said. He waved a hand, indicating my whole self. “You breezed into my life and then you breezed right out again, and now you’re back, and—” His voice wasn’t loud, relative to the noise of Orpha’s, but it hit me like cold water. He and I stared at one another, and I felt us both breathing hard. For a second, it was like we were breathing at the exact same moment. In and out like one set of lungs.
“That isn’t fair,” I said, but my voice sounded phony again, like I was reading from a book.
Ponyboy heard it too. He pushed his chair back, and even though I couldn’t really hear it in Orpha’s noise, I winced at the screech of chair legs against the floor. “I’m leaving,” he said. I couldn’t see a single thing in his face. He didn’t seem to have any emotion behind his eyes. I felt a chill rushing down my spine. It was just like talking to a Soc.
He almost made it to the door before I moved. I grabbed his hand tight enough that he’d have to push me if he wanted to break free. “Wait,” I said, and then I found that I didn’t have anything else to say. He looked at me, and I looked deep into his eyes, trying to find who I’d thought he was four years ago. “What about the sunset?” I asked.
There was a kind of calm that usually only appears right as the storm clouds roll in. I held my breath. I wanted so desperately to say something, though I wasn’t even sure what I might say. But I knew I couldn’t, because I had a plan. I was following the plan, and the plan said to wait.
He stepped back fast. My hand had relaxed without me telling it to. He didn’t run, just stood there and looked at me. His eyes—The wall had fallen, and I saw something halfway between misery and intrigue there.
“You know where I live,” he said. “Look me up if you want to watch the sunset some night.” And with that, he turned and loped up the stairs and out the door into the night.
I stood there for a second, feeling my heartbeat sink back to its normal pace. Then I returned to our table and drank my martini. And since he wasn’t there to finish it, I drank Ponyboy’s Manhattan, too.